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Another encouraging piece about private space efforts:<br><br>
<br>
Hondas in
Space
<br>
Jennifer Reingold<br>
Fast Company, February 2005<br>
<a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/91/honda.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/91/honda.html<br>
</a>
<a href="http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/91/honda.html" eudora="autourl">
http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/91/honda.html<br>
</a> <br>
My review:<br><br>
For Elon Musk and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), failure
<i>is</i> an option. Musk is applying a good chunk of his estimated $328
million fortune (most from owning much of PayPal when it went public) to
a grand goal: shifting the course of history to open space for humanity.
Having observed how aerospace defied Moore's Law by making access to
space more costly and no more reliable, the bold entrepreneur was
determined to make space travel attainable by regular people. But that
meant, among other things, diverging radically from NASA’s “perfect
place” culture and embracing the role of failure. As SpaceX’s senior
design engineer sees it, “If things are not failing, you are not
innovating enough.”<br>
<br>
The willingness to tolerate failure in favor of fast learning through
rapid prototyping is one of the crucial elements of the SpaceX model.
This enables a rapid pace of execution which the company believes is its
fundamental advantage in pursuing an adventurous goal: Build a rocket
capable of sending small payloads into low-Earth orbit at a cost
one-tenth today’s going rate in the United States. SpaceX appears to be
almost ready to launch its first vehicle, a 60,000-lb. rocket called the
Falcon I, able to deliver a 1,500-lb. payload. Although Burt Rutan’s
SpaceShipOne made it into space according to the minimum requirement,
success would make SpaceX the first entirely privately funded rocket to
reach orbit.<br>
<br>
That first rocket has three paying customers, and its planned larger
successor, Falcon V, already has one. Reingold notes that wealthy
Internet entrepreneurs seem to be drawn to the idea of opening up space
to the masses. SpaceX has implemented some of the Net companies
practices, such as making many small improvements at low cost, avoiding
large, expensive R&D labs as well as government subsidies. Yet the
company blends old and new practices in whatever way will work best,
mixing (as Reingold nicely puts it) dotcom and DEFCON, 1999 and
1969.<br>
<br>
Musk and his team operate according to a few principles and a mostly
horizontal organization. They combine a cost-reduction fervor with Musk’s
willingness to quickly approve investments that will help. “Not inherited
here” syndrome is not allowed there. Comparing a Ferrari to a Honda, Musk
argues that SpaceX can make a rocket that is both cheap and quickly made,
yet reliable. Finally, Musk finds his talent by looking for the young and
restless, then gives them an ownership stake in what they are
building.<br>
<br><br>
<br>
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<font size=2>_______________________________________________________<br>
Max More, Ph.D.<br>
max@maxmore.com or more@extropy.org<br>
<a href="http://www.maxmore.com/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.maxmore.com<br>
</a>Strategic Philosopher<br>
Chairman, Extropy Institute.
<a href="http://www.extropy.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.extropy.org</a> <more@extropy.org><br>
________________________________________________________________<br>
Director of Content Solutions, ManyWorlds Inc.:
<a href="http://www.manyworlds.com/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.manyworlds.com<br>
</a>--- Thought leadership in the innovation economy<br>
m.more@manyworlds.com<br>
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