Dear readers,
Welcome to Quartz’s newsletter on the economic possibilities of the extraterrestrial sphere. Please forward widely, and let me know what you think. This week: Elon Musk’s secret sauce, the spirit of Ingenuity, and a new publicly traded space company.
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This week marked the tenth anniversary of the commercial crew program, which returned human spaceflight to the US last year when astronauts first flew onboard SpaceX’s Dragon.
Ken Davidian, a researcher at the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space, argues that commercial space follows an evolutionary model; reductively, a variety of options are presented to the market, which selects some to be retained, and the process begins anew.
“Commercially successful results cannot necessarily be predicted,” he writes. “This is because evolution is a locally adaptive process whose course is not pre-determined. This also emphasizes that few people in an emerging commercial market know what they are doing, or why.”
That last bit should ring true to anyone following space business. If it doesn’t, pick up Eric Berger’s “Liftoff: Elon Musk and the desperate early days that launched SpaceX.”
The new book, by one of the space program’s most dedicated and informed chroniclers, zooms in on the unlikely development of the Falcon 1 rocket. This work forged SpaceX’s culture and, in so doing, laid the groundwork for today’s world of venture-backed space start-ups.
Replete with first-person accounts, Liftoff paints a picture of the gritty reality faced by SpaceX’s engineers as they sought to become the first viable private rocket-maker, particularly when the US Air Force left them no other choice but to do much of their work on an atoll in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
The question of why SpaceX succeeded where so many others failed is at the heart of any narrative about the firm. Timing, in some sense, is everything: The convergence of technological advances, political circumstances, and business culture at the turn of the century gave SpaceX opportunities its predecessors didn’t have. Much of Musk’s obsession with hiring top talent, for example, is cribbed from Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley.
But if success in consumer technology were enough, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin would be in orbit by now. Musk’s single-minded drive to challenge the cozy space establishment and empower engineers to build the most cost-efficient rocket made SpaceX what it is. He could be generous with rewards, dispensing all-expenses paid vacations and soft-serve machines.
But the book, like my own and others about SpaceX, raises a related question: Is Musk’s often brutal treatment of his employees also necessary succeed?
Examples of burn-out and family stress undergird the narrative. Also pettiness: Musk left the company’s top engineer, Tom Mueller, out of a bonding trip on a Zero-G flight because he was angry about an engine failure. He started a fight about inventory with another key employee, Chris Thompson, in the middle of a critical launch countdown that Musk didn’t seem to be aware of. He publicly blamed a technician for a launch failure before the full analysis revealed he wasn’t at fault.
Musk, never comfortable with introspection, might be asking himself similar questions. Liftoff ends with SpaceX on the path to becoming the success it is today, but its final lines are about Musk’s regret about not bonding with the team that suffered to make his dreams of a reality. He never had “a drink on the beach with the team. I never did that. It wouldn’t have hurt.”
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IMAGERY INTERLUDE
NASA hopes that its Ingenuity helicopter, pictured below on the surface of Mars, will take its first flight on Sunday, April 11.
The tiny rotor-winged aircraft was dropped from the belly of the Perseverance rover on April 3, and survived a freezing overnight stay on the grounds of an ancient lakebed. After it flexes its wings and practices rotating them, Ingenuity’s first flight will be more of a hop up to 10 feet above the ground, before returning for a careful landing. If all goes well, the interplanetary drone will be able to fly further around Jezero Crater.
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The pandemic has made remote work more common—but should remote workers get a pay cut if they move somewhere less expensive?
Policies like these at Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft might not seem outlandish; after all, location is a factor that most companies take into account when determining wages. But there are a number of reasons why companies that dock remote workers’ pay might come to regret it, such as lowering employee morale and losing out on top talent, likely without losing workers’ productivity.
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SPACE DEBRIS
Moar space equities. AST SpaceMobile, a company building a satellite network to extend the range of mobile phones, is now officially trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol ASTS. The company is the second space firm after Virgin Galactic to go public through a SPAC transaction.
Heads up. The SpaceX rocket that unexpectedly re-entered over the US didn’t burn up entirely in the atmosphere—a five foot long tank used to store high-pressure fluids fell into a resident’s yard. SpaceX still refuses to say why its rocket failed to follow normal reentry procedures.
Ready, willing, and ABL. ABL Space Systems, a small rocket start-up, has won a contract from Lockheed Martin for as many as 58 launches in the years ahead, which could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars at a retail price point of $12 million per flight. ABL has yet to launch its first vehicle, but expects to do so later this year.
Terminal Overdrive. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell confirmed what industry analysts had long suspected—the biggest challenge for the company’s satellite network is building a cost-effective ground terminal. The rotating dish originally cost the company $3,000 a pop, but the price has been cut in half since then and Shotwell expects it to continue to fall as manufacturing becomes more efficient and economies of scale come into play. Still, that’s a big starting loss on Starlink’s $499 initial set-up fee.
Buyer Brown. Michael Brown, the head of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), has been tapped by president Joe Biden to be the Pentagon’s top purchaser of military hardware. DIU is built around partnering with privately funded technology companies that aren’t traditional defense contractors, including many new space start-ups. Brown’s pick is seen as a signal that Biden’s Defense department is taking the threat of Chinese innovation seriously—”the president has called it strategic competition with China,” Brown told Politico last month. “I think he’s right.”
Your pal,
Tim
This was issue 91 of our newsletter. Hope your week is out of this world! Please send your theories of effective space industry management, Starlink ground terminal teardowns, tips, and informed opinions to tim@qz.com.