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SpaceX, a short human interest story


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I had the most fascinating experience of touring the SpaceX rocket manufacturing facility in Hawthorne, California last evening!  If you know someone there, you can get the tour [SpaceX workload dependent].
 
The Falcon rockets, satellite fairings, nose cones, and engines are all built there. 
As you know, the rockets, engines and now the satellite fairings [via controllable steering parachutes]are reusable, landing back on earth on land or on sea.
 
Upon entering the facility, one of the first things I noticed was the transparency of all!  And noticeable as the tour progressed, was the feeling of the lack of bureaucracy and the lack of what we call, "red tape".
Because it's a working facility, there are roped off areas that we could not inhabit, but all is open and quite transparent as the workers perform their magic.
The Merlin and Raptor engine assembly lines, where we were within 5 feet of the engines being assembled is amazing! The clean room area walls are transparent as we watched the technicians perform.
SpaceX rocket facility is the only company that assembles the entire rocket with engine, in the horizontal position.
 
The SpaceX tour is up close and personal in every way.  When I say up close and personal, I'm referring not only from a spectators point of view, but to the workers situation as well. 
I had the wonderful benefit of working for a small company during my years at Vandyland [Vandenberg Air Force Base], where we were all up close and personal within our working environment .   Engineers, technicians, documentation, assembly, etc., all within physical reach and close interaction with each other.  This is what exists within the exciting walls of SpaceX Hawthorne. 
This concept is automatically a red tape reducer, as it's open to highly fast and efficient idea creation, sharing, and problem solving activities within multiple work groups.  And, transparent........all techs and others have free access to any departments documentation.  Along with that, suggestions and ideas are highly encouraged by all per Elon Musk.  A parallel......per Mooney's beloved Bill Wheat, the suggestion and idea encouragement concept from any one on the Mooney factory floor [including janitors or others] was in place during the hey days of Mooney.  I love it!  Bureaucracy.......none of that at SpaceX.
 
Logic, common sense, efficiency are all part of the SpaceX concept.  This allows them to create and produce space stuff at such a relatively low cost to their customer.  If it exists and will work correctly, why reinvent it, they say.  Yet, invent they do............reusable rockets, engines, fairings!
 
On a side note..........I swear I did not see any employee over 25 years of age.  SpaceX rocket shop is a haven for young creative intelligent highly motivated and dedicated space geeks [girls and boys]! Incredibly inspirational this is!!
 
The world needs the creative likes of Musk, Branson, Bezos, etc.  Musk.....who else would throw their sports car out in space?  On to Mars SpaceX goes!
 
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2 hours ago, MooneyMitch said:
On a side note..........I swear I did not see any employee over 25 years of age.  SpaceX rocket shop is a haven for young creative intelligent highly motivated and dedicated space geeks [girls and boys]! Incredibly inspirational this is!!
 

Sometimes when an organization is like that it's because the experienced people won't touch it.  ;)

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2 hours ago, EricJ said:

Sometimes when an organization is like that it's because the experienced people won't touch it.  ;)

I was told Elon prefers the young folks.  Reason given is they are generally without family commitments and completely free to commit to SpaceX.

All appear totally committed to the project and quite happy being so.

As I said, they are complete space geeks. 

I love it!  

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Just now, MooneyMitch said:

I was told Elon prefers the young folks.  Reason given is they are generally with out family commitments and completely free to commit to SpaceX.

My understanding is that he also doesn't like people to challenge him, and reducing the number of experienced people reduces the chances that somebody will say 'no'.

I'm glad you had a good tour and had a positive experience.

 

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17 minutes ago, flyer338 said:

Thank you for a most interesting post, and now I am trying to figure out how to get a tour. Hawthorne is a reasonable Mooney ride from Las Vegas. I do not know anyone at SpaceX, but I greatly admire what they are doing. 

I was most fortunate to go on the tour.  My longtime dear friend/ former co-workers daughter in law had accidentally by chance, struck up a friendship earlier this year with the young female engineer that gave us the tour.

Tour guides are techs., engineers, at SpaceX.  They volunteer to give tours and expound on the projects and love doing so.  

Our tour was 6:30 in the evening and was one hour approximately.

Thrilling...

By the way, SpaceX is next to Hawthorne Airport.  Quite an easy walk there from the ramp.

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I have been working a lot lately at a rocket company. But one of the ones that is amazingly burdened with red tape. So much so that it is their company color.

Anyway, it is amazing that regulations that were put in place to keep companies from ripping off the government ultimately cost the government more than the companies could have ever ripped them off.

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