Leepsteer

The folks at @SPACEdotcom do a beautiful job covering Starship. Here from my upcoming book, amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-… , is a brief excerpt about Musk's emotion in April at the first test launch: “My stomach is twisted in knots,” Musk told Mark Juncosa as they stood on the balcony atop the 265-foot-tall high-bay assembly building at Starbase. “It always happens before a big launch. I have PTSD from the failures on Kwaj.” It was April 2023, time for the experimental launch of Starship. When he arrived in south Texas, Musk did what he often did before a major rocket launch, including his first one seventeen years earlier: he retreated into the future. He peppered Juncosa with ideas and edicts for replacing Starbase’s four football-field-size assembly tents with a mammoth factory building that could make rockets at a rate of more than one a month. They should start constructing the factory right away, along with a new village of solar-roofed homes for workers. Creating a rocket like Starship was hard, but he knew that the more important step was being able to churn it out at scale. It would eventually take a fleet of a thousand to sustain a human colony on Mars. “My biggest concern is our trajectory. Are we on a trajectory to get to Mars before civilization crumbles?” When the other engineers joined them for a three-hour pre-launch review in the conference room atop the high bay, Musk gave them a pep talk. “It’s worth keeping in mind as you go through all the tribulations that the thing you’re working on is the coolest fucking thing on Earth. By a lot. What’s the second coolest? This is far cooler than whatever is the second coolest.” The talk then turned to the topic of risk. The dozen or so regulatory agencies that had to approve the flight test did not share Musk’s love of it. The engineers briefed him on all the safety reviews and requirements they had endured. “Getting the license was existentially soul-sucking,” Juncosa said. Shana Diez and Jake McKenzie provided details. “My fucking brain is hurting,” Musk said, holding his head. “I’m trying to figure out how we get humanity to Mars with all this bullshit.” He processed in silence for two minutes, and when he emerged from his trance, he was philosophical. “This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.” That’s why America could no longer build things like high-speed rail or rockets that go to the moon. “When you’ve had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.”