For Elon Musk, it's living the dream, all his time is for playing with
rockets, fast cars, satellites, boring machines, AI, Ventilators ...
whatever he wants to do. His personal workshop where he gets to do all this
fun stuff is the largest in the history of mankind. Better than
self-funded, it funds itself. As they say....
“He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins.”
--
Craig Fink
WeBeGood@xxxxxxxxx
On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 7:54 AM Kevin Ho <rebelwithoutajob@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I prefer it the other way around. Get a comfortable union job, spend time
with my family, have leftover time to play with rockets.
There are a huge number of things I want to do in life, and only a tiny
fraction of them are things other people are likely to pay me to do. The
rest I must self-fund.
On Apr 9, 2020, at 2:20 AM, Craig Remillard <craig.rem@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dunno. I've been at it 14 years now, counting all-in grad school,
internship, and career. I've got plenty of doubts about specific projects
and decisions at the awesome companies I've worked for, but in the end I'd
be working 50h/wk regardless of the job, that's just how I roll. The
concept of retirement or permanent vacation is terrifying, even as I've
gained the means to make it possible. I could do without the chronic stress
of course, but I've lived through enough personal poverty, child-rearing,
family crisis, and unsatisfying-but-stressful jobs to know that is part and
parcel of being an important part of anything. The marginal cost of doing
something historical comes out to somewhere in the range of 2-4% more of my
life. Seems worth it so far.
On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:03 AM Bob Herguth <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Some tasks take massive commitment to accomplish. After having spent my
first 7 years at a startup working 3,000-3,500+ hours a year not including
travel time, I found it a valuable experience. And in the end, there
wasn’t an employer who didn’t want me at that point, plus I created
something that lasted a long while. So while yes, it’s demanding physically
and mentally, those that make it through might be better off for the
experience. It would certainly be a bad idea to legislate against such a
thing. I could have left at any time. It was my choice. If I had to do
it all over again, I would have asked for a cot in my office. Would have
been financially better off to find a different job after 3 or 5 years (or
better still to invest that time in my own company)? Yes.
-- Bob
*From:* arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
*On Behalf Of *Henry Vanderbilt
*Sent:* Wednesday, April 08, 2020 7:23 PM
*To:* arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [AR] Re: SpaceX Crumple Test
I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. There is a fundamental
mismatch between the Silicon Valley work-to-burnout company culture
described here and the space transport industry.
Typical burnout from this pace/pressure of work is about two years. At
that point you need a year off, or at least doing something low-pressure.
This works for Sili Valley because their typical projects ship in 18
months, give or take. By your two-year worker burnout, your project has
shipped and if it was a hit, your stock options may be worth a lot. You
can possibly afford to take that year easy. Then work to burnout somewhere
else another two years, rinse and repeat, then retire young and rich - or
at least move into a lower-pressure field before it kills you.
Typical space-launch product cycle is more like, what, five to seven
years? Only the typical "NewSpace" entrepreneur came to the industry from,
you guessed it, Sili Valley. So they do what they know. And they can get
away with it despite the mismatch because, well, space is so friggin' cool,
so there are always more eager recruits. But. This Sili Valley model will
be constantly losing rocket people to burnout not that long after they're
experienced enough to start being really productive. And the projects risk
dragging out far longer than they needed to because of all the turnover.
In Sili Valley, it makes fortunes. In this industry, it weakens
companies, slows projects, and can lead to highly visible dumbass mistakes
out of high-turnover rookie inexperience or just sheer exhaustion. We've
all seen it.
The solution is simple, conceptually: Slow the work pace just enough so
burnout takes longer than the product cycle. Sundays off, period. One or
two Saturdays every month too. Send people home after twelve hours, max.
And make people actually use at least a week of their vacation time.
SpaceX seems instead, at least from what I see here, to be trying to
speed up the product cycle to be faster than burnout. But, alas, beyond a
certain point that only accelerates the burnouts and stretches the product
cycle further.
Make haste - well, not slowly - but a bit less hastily - and you'll get
there sooner. (And you'll put less of your effort into training a large
and motivated talent pool for your would-be rivals, if you happen to be the
current industry leader.)
Henry
On 4/8/2020 5:25 PM, Edward Wranosky wrote:
A person I knew who moved from Space X to another company said the motto
was:
"If you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday
either - you won't have a job."
On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 5:15 PM Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm sure the ex-SpaceXers have closer connections to people on the
program, but that also limits what they can say about it. This is what
a friend of mine relayed to me last year:
"I have a friend who is working on that project. Says this is the
worst period of his life. Working 16-18 hours per day. When I saw him
two weekends ago he looked like a shell of himself. These brilliant
engineers they recruit are going to be shit engineers after they burn
out.
"He showed me an email that made me speechless from Elon. Just
complete disregard for the health and well being of employees.
Literally said to get the job done at all costs."
That was last year, they've had a hiring push since then, maybe things
are working smoother now. But at most companies working on the CEO's
pet project can be the worst place to be; triply so with this CEO.
There are still people making arguments that working another marginal
hour never has a negative return. The problem is that the gains of big
pushes are immediate and the losses are often longer term; increased
turnover, loss of institutional knowledge, making unforced errors.
It's less impressive to build something really quickly if you destroy
it with no return really quickly, even if management then argues "well
it's good we learned this now instead of later" for things they didn't
need to learn.
And just that the workers are human and to work them to breakdown or
divorce or alcoholism is, to use the technical term, "totally a dick
move". Unfortunately the people who get to make those decisions are
often selected for their ability to not care about that.
Unlikely to happen now, but a way for the (job) market to better act
on that would be requiring companies to disclose their numbers on
turnover, fatalities, long term disability and other payouts to
injured workers. Knowing how many people never worked again after
taking a job at a particular test site would help people to make
better decisions.
Ben
On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 11:54 AM Michael Clive <zeinin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
have seen them used in different ways. I have found there are environments
Anthony,
Those policies tend to always be the spoken rule at most places, but I
where there is a very steep political/personal cost to slowing things down
for safety reasons. I have also found there are places that have iron-clad
no-consequences implementations of that rule. XCOR comes to mind.
of social pressure to not slow down the works, under any circumstances. I
I would suspect that the Starship development group has a huge amount
would bet that someone knew this was a risk, but someone else in the
organization talked them out of reporting it, much like what happened with
the cone weld last time.
forward is directly into a brick wall, and anyone who stands in the way of
The cultural norm on Starship seems to be forward-at-any-cost, even if
progress could be seen as weak or not-a-team-player.
Millennium prize) is a management theory one: Obviously, SLS style
One of the biggest unsolved questions for me (my own personal
management is a complete failure in terms of productivity per unit time and
per dollar spent. SpaceX style management is vastly effective at reaching
the goals set by Elon, at significant cost to company culture. The question
is: What is the middle ground? How does a manager build a high performing
company that accomplishes great things with a low amount of chaos and
waste? are those mutually exclusive?
wrote:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 5:52 PM Anthony Cesaroni <anthony@xxxxxxxxxxx>
and will get my support if they make a mistake. We learn this way, while
Anyone on my crew can stop anything if they are uncomfortable with it
improving safety and quality.
Behalf Of William Claybaugh
Anthony J. Cesaroni
President/CEO
Cesaroni Technology/Cesaroni Aerospace
http://www.cesaronitech.com/
(941) 360-3100 x101 Sarasota
(905) 887-2370 x222 Toronto
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
wrote:Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 8:44 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Re: SpaceX Crumple Test
Anthony:
Spoken like a manager....
Bill
On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 6:37 PM Anthony Cesaroni <anthony@xxxxxxxxxxx>
error occurred? That way, the team learns and if there was an individual
Isn’t it better to review, interview the crew and identify why the
responsible for the error, that individual can recognize and preempt the
situation from occurring again. That, educates and reinforces the
engineering and test system. If it’s neglect, then that needs to be
identified and the team needs to understand why that happened as well, in
order to mitigate neglect going forward. Firing staff just causes people to
cover up and avoid responsibility in my experience.
Behalf Of ken mason
Anthony J. Cesaroni
President/CEO
Cesaroni Technology/Cesaroni Aerospace
http://www.cesaronitech.com/
(941) 360-3100 x101 Sarasota
(905) 887-2370 x222 Toronto
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Should of been double checked with other engineers and/or a test reedinessSent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 8:18 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Re: SpaceX Crumple Test
It's such a basic mistake that could get some one fired on the spot.
review meeting..
will get done right the 2nd time. I recommend a high volume (Cv) remote
But as they said, it's not a fundamental design error. So suspect it
sensing dome loading regulator like a Grove Poweractor or Tescom.
wrote:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 5:09 PM Jonathan Goff <jongoff@xxxxxxxxx>
wonder if they'll actually learn any lessons from that.
I wonder how much of it was due to overworking their team. And I
rocketmaster.ken@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
~Jon
On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 5:00 PM roxanna Mason <
happens and I won't throw the first rock.
A rookie mistake from the world leader in launch vehicle design. It
arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of roxanna Mason
Import thing is to learn from our mistakes.
On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 2:33 PM Bob Herguth <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From the twitter feed.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1246677676733104130
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
some equipment or component failure even a ruptured line albeit such lowSent: Tuesday, April 07, 2020 1:09 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Re: SpaceX Crumple Test
Giving Space X the benefit of the doubt/speculation, my money is on
pressures.
their belts, hard for me to believe it's something even I would of avoided,
Once again, a company that has the accomplishments that it has under
with ease.
hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Maybe they'll tell us.
On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 12:05 PM Henry Vanderbilt <
likely
On 4/7/2020 11:45 AM, roxanna Mason wrote:
Back to this whole thing about Space-X failing that SS tank makes no
sense, are they that incompetent? Even I would of know the
thermodynamic difference between GN2 and GHe. Just like my pulse jet
on GH2 draining a K bottle under 5 sec,it sails thru pipes and
regulators,i.e.The square root of the diff of the respective MW.
So it's git to be something else, I mean heck, they're orbiting
satellites and recovering boosters almost routinely! Maybe they're
farming out some of their testing workload to save time.
It's all speculation at this point. Worth throwing even the less
somepossibilities out there to see if they might fit what's known. The GN2
vs GHe thing was one such. Though, again, the most likely related fail
would not have been miscalculated plumbing feed capacity - as you've
pointed out, that is pretty basic - but rather a higher than expected
chill rate of GN2 across a thin stainless bulkhead. (Mind, that one
might have gotten them even on GHe, if for some reason they assumed
oninterval during which they wouldn't need to make up pressure.)
Simplest explanation is still either a test configuration error or a
test hardware failure causing under-pressurization of the tank that
crumpled. Either way, it's likely a simple fix-it-and-move-on thing.
Those few of us who care may well see the point casually mentioned in
another context six months from now. The rest of the world will sail
regardless.
Henry
