Tesla Official Afshar Turns Up at SpaceX in New Starship RoleOmead Afshar is said to join Elon Musk’s rocket companyMusk has a long history of swapping executives’ rolesByDana Hull, Edward Ludlow, and Loren Grush10 November 2022 at 01:03 GMTOmead Afshar, who led operations at Tesla Inc.’s new plant in Texas, is now at SpaceX working on Elon Musk’s ambitious Starship deep-space rocket, according to people familiar with the matter.Afshar has been named vice president: Starship production at the company
Elon is clearly serious about ramping up Starship production
Quote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 11/10/2022 11:26 amElon is clearly serious about ramping up Starship productionHuh?Starship doesn't need any sort of production increase. They are still in basic design and testing.
Quote from: deadman1204 on 11/10/2022 01:57 pmQuote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 11/10/2022 11:26 amElon is clearly serious about ramping up Starship productionHuh?Starship doesn't need any sort of production increase. They are still in basic design and testing. I don't think that's as much about building individual SH or SS flight vehicles.I believe it's more about building the factory to build those vehicles.Building rockets in tents by the beach is all well and good, but that factory will need to get a lot more streamlined to build the large numbers of boosters and ships that are eventually needed.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/spacexs-gwynne-shotwell-takes-over-starbase-mars-missionFYI - its behind a paywall, so may just be clickbait
SpaceX shook up leadership at Starbase, CNBC sources confirm.COO Gwynne Shotwell and VP Mark Juncosa are now leading the facility and operations, as senior director Sam Patel moves back to Florida and Omead Afshar joins from Tesla as production VP:
Confirming and adding to reports previously this week by Bloomberg and The Information, as one source told CNBC that Juncosa's visit over the summer uncovered alarming findings about progress toward Starship's first orbital launch attempt.
Additionally, CNBC learned that SpaceX rolled out an offer to salaried employees at its HQ in Hawthorne, CA of a 10%-25% pay bump to relocate to Starbase, as the company pushes to add more hands to support the Starship program:
SpaceX shakes up Starship leadership in Texas as push for the rocket’s next milestone intensifiesPUBLISHED FRI, NOV 11 202212:37 PM ESTMichael Sheetz@THESHEETZTWEETZKEY POINTSA significant reorganization is underway at SpaceX’s Texas launch facility.SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell and vice president Mark Juncosa are now overseeing the facility and operations of company’s Starbase location.The appointments demonstrate the sense of urgency within the company to get Starship flying. Both Shotwell and Juncosa have been at SpaceX since its early days under Elon Musk.
While some folks want to create the narrative that the changes in management at Starbase are due to Elon playing with the blue bird, in reality, as the article mentions, it's all down to getting a more focused path to orbit with Starship and put the program in the right way.This is important for the company as the program was not in the right track during Mark's visit in the summer. The many tests we've seen in the past and Elon's change in narrative and concern for a RUD stems from this same change in management. Slow and steady wins the race.
Those reading this as a move because Elon is busy with twitter might be forgetting that a lot of other executives from Hawthorne have taken over control of the teams at Starbase one by one since the summer. This is just another one being moved into place as the teams down there need a firm hand to guide them through the orbital test flight, most of them don't even know what it is to actually launch a rocket into space and orbit. It was such a mess before and now things are finally going much better. There's still some screw ups but certainly not like the one from July. Let's hope this keeps going.
