Reentry

 

I just finished reading Eric Berger's Reentry, a follow up to his previous book Liftoff, documenting the history of the SpaceX company. SpaceX, along with a couple of other companies¹, have completely "disrupted" the business of launching rockets. It's the story of SpaceX achieving affordable reusability of a rocket booster.

The book also reveals the tyrannical side of Elon Musk. On the one hand, there should be little doubt that Musk's drive and demanding leadership style are responsible for the exceptional success of his businesses, but on the other hand he seems like the boss from hell. He screams at people, issues summary firings without process, sets unreasonable deadlines, and demands hundred hour work weeks. He works around the clock and he thinks everybody else should too. Still, he gets results.

The other thing revealing about the book is the degree to which established forces and bureaucracy attempted to protect the existing interests and processes in the aerospace sector from disruption. It made me furious at what seems to me an unethical relationship between private sector companies, politicians, and an intransigent civil service. Space is being revolutionized but it was necessary for the newcomers to be assisted by just a few helpful leaders in NASA and the US Air Force to overcome inertia and outdated thinking. I wonder how many other sectors suffer from this problem?

I work in healthcare, which is one of the most highly regulated sectors, and well . . .

Footnotes

1 The other companies I'm thinking of are Blue Origin and Rocket Lab.