Elon Musk’s outsider status ‘key to SpaceX success’
Elon Musk’s ‘right hand woman’ at SpaceX says his business acumen and leadership cannot be understated.
Elon Musk’s outsider attitude and desire to self-fund projects has been the crucial plank to SpaceX’s success to date, according to chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell, who says the ambitious company is still on track to send humans to Mars in coming years.
Speaking to Macquarie Group chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake at Macquarie’s technology summit, Ms Shotwell, who joined SpaceX in 2002, said Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s leadership and tenacity couldn’t be understated, despite the fact he’s an often polarising figure.
Ms Shotwell has been widely credited of helping steer SpaceX clear of any turmoil surrounding its founder.
“What really captured my attention about SpaceX was that first of all, Elon was not an industry insider,” Ms Shotwell said. “But he was a successful entrepreneur, and I thought if anyone is going to get a successful business going in this industry, I figured it would be Elon.
“And I also said to myself, look if SpaceX doesn‘t work out, I should still leave the [ government consulting] industry because it is super boring, and I’ll go sell real estate, or be a barista, I’ll figure out something else to do.”
The fact that SpaceX is privately funded has been the most important element of its success to date, Ms Shotwell said, because it hasn‘t had to follow anyone else’s rules or agendas, and has forced a culture of ingenuity and self-reliance.
SpaceX designed its own engines, for example, and its own space software using its own processes.
“We looked at every cost element of the vehicle, and of the entire system, and we made smart business choices for how we were going to lay out the system,” she said.
“We got to look at every piece of the launch industry and design the system and operations that we thought would be the most successful.”
“It’s fascinating that this latitude is what allowed you to make these breakthroughs,” Ms Wikramanayake said in response.
SpaceX has been targeting July for the first orbital flight of its Starship system, one that the company hopes will eventually take humans to Mars.
Ms Shotwell said that inhabiting Mars will be the equivalent of “starting a new country from scratch”, and would require significant thought and deliberation about who would be the first participants for the interplanetary mission.
“It’s daunting, really, but also brings up some very interesting social issues as well. You get to start from scratch,” she said. “It’s going to be pretty interesting, thinking about who you bring, how you want people to live there, how you govern … It brings up enormously interesting social questions.
“The most important thing will be to keep human life alive on the surface. So, food, medicine, capability to get there and capability to return. I don‘t think governments are going to be important, I think people are going to purely focused on survival, then building out settlements so more people can come.
“We need to be very intentional about the kinds of people that we send, and the kinds of people that sing up to go. I think that needs to be very planned. You‘re not going to just want people the career-type knowledge, you want great thinkers and people who understand society and will function in a pretty harsh environment.”
The executive described SpaceX as a “work-hard, mission driven company” and said it wasn’t great at diversity in its early days, but that the company’s work will be an opportunity for meaningful collaboration between geopolitical rivals, including the likes of Russia and China.
“Space is bigger than the countries here on Earth,” she said.
“What I hope to achieve in SpaceX is to get people to think about going even further beyond Mars.
“Mars is an extraordinary leap for humankind, but I am most interested in figuring out how to go meet people in other solar systems, from maybe even other galaxies … I hope that SpaceX starts that process, and that is a much more difficult process than even leaving Mother Earth and going to Mars.”