SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets

The Haywood Algorithm for Success

The advice that comes from a review by Charles Haywood of a book by Daymond John, the founder of FUBU, roughly paraphrased, is: "Each day, you need to do all of the things that are necessary for you to succeed." It's impressive in its simplicity but powerful in its effect when followed.

Most people will make a to-do list, do as many of the items as they can until they get tired, and then go home and go to bed. These people will never build successful companies.

If you want to succeed, you need to do all of the items on your list. Some days, the list is short. Some days, the list is long. It doesn't matter, in either case, you just need to do it all.

A concept related to doing every item on your to-do list is "not giving up." Imagine it is a Friday afternoon, and a supplier informs you that they are not going to be able to deliver a key part that your factory needs on Monday. Most people, in most jobs, will shrug and figure they'll sort it out after the weekend, accepting the resulting small productivity hit.

But now imagine that for some reason, if the part is not received on Monday, your family will die.

Are you suddenly discovering new reserves of determination and creativity? You could call up the supplier and browbeat/scream/cajole/threaten them. You could LinkedIn stalk them, find out who their boss is, discover that their boss is acquaintances with an old college friend, and beg said friend for the boss's contact info so you can apply leverage (which I recently did).

You could spend all night calling alternative suppliers in China and seeing if any of them can send the part by airmail. You could spend all weekend redesigning your processes so the part is unnecessary.

Most people care an in-between amount about their job. They want to do right by their employer and they have pride in their work, but they will not do dangerous or illegal or personally risky things to be 5% better at it, and they will not stay up all night finishing their to-do list every single day.

Part of what makes "founder mode" so effective is that startup founders have both a compensation structure and social permission that lets them treat every single issue that comes up at work as if their family is about to die.

SpaceX: A Departure from the Norm

Before we talk about SpaceX, let's talk about every single other private rocketry company ever. It's easy to do because they all failed (or are in the process of failing, or are likely to fail in the future).

SpaceX is a clear departure from the norm, as it's the only private rocketry company that has consistently achieved success.

The Challenges of Space Travel

Space travel is fundamentally difficult due to two main reasons:

1. The tyranny of Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation, which demonstrates that adding more and more fuel to your rocket has less and less of an effect.
2. The fact that if Earth were just a teensy bit denser or a teensy bit larger, it would literally be impossible to attain orbit with chemical rockets.

Because getting to orbit is barely possible, the machines we build to do it need to operate at the absolute limit of performance that human engineers can attain.

The Haywood Algorithm in Action at SpaceX

Eric Berger's book provides numerous examples of SpaceX's unwavering dedication to following the Haywood Algorithm:

• When preparing to move their Falcon 9 rocket for the very first time, they hired the "second largest crane in Texas" to first stack the pieces of the rocket and then lower them onto a waiting trailer. Halfway through the operation, they realized it wouldn't work because of the wind and that they would have to assemble them on the ground.
• To move the rocket to Florida, they decided to drive it there, even though it couldn't fit under a standard freeway overpass. They found an absurd and tortuous route down backroads from Texas to Florida, with power lines and traffic lights, which they navigated by having one of their best engineers drive in front of the trailer with a flexible, 17-foot pole taped to his car.
• Building a launch pad for 1% of the normal cost is a tall order even for SpaceX, but Elon Musk refuses to sign purchase orders for rebar, saying it's too expensive, and for cheaper rebar from China.
• As they geared up for the launch of that first Falcon 9 rocket, Berger tells us: "Musk wandered around asking anyone at hand – technicians, junior engineers, and company vice presidents alike – the same question: ‘What can we do to go faster?’”

Elon Musk's Influence on SpaceX Culture

Every bit of SpaceX's highly idiosyncratic culture, everything you might consider toxic and everything you might consider admirable, all flows from one man at the top: Elon Musk.

Musk would often fly to South Texas on weekends, spending Saturday night at the launch site to check on its progress and prodding where needed.

The secret weapon of SpaceX is that anytime they're tempted to fall prey to loss-aversion, and to quietly shelve some big risky plan because it threatens to derail the valuable business they've already built, Elon shows up and screams and threatens to fire everybody unless they do the risky thing.

SpaceX's Unique Perspective

Elon and SpaceX behave the way they do because they firmly believe in their goal of making life multiplanetary. A version of SpaceX that merely became worth trillions of dollars, but never enabled the colonization of Mars, would be a disastrous failure in Elon's eyes.

Every bit of company strategy is evaluated on the basis of whether it makes Mars more or less likely. This explains all the choices that look crazy from the outside.

Government Opposition to SpaceX

Practically from the moment SpaceX came into existence, its enemies were trying to destroy it. Politicians like Charles Bolden and Richard Shelby did everything in their power to make life difficult for SpaceX.

It was only Elon's reputation as "a lunatic who will sue everyone" that prevented NASA from awarding the entire Commercial Crew Program to Boeing despite SpaceX offering to do it for about half as much money.

Elon Musk's Counterattack

When it became clear that an FAA empowered by a Harris administration would put one roadblock after another in front of him, Musk's only choice was to rebel.

At this point, it might be wise to stop betting against him.