A visit to SpaceX

Today I was incredibly fortunate to take a private tour of SpaceX.  SpaceX is the amazing company founded by one of Paypal's founders, Elon Musk, who is as passionate about space and energy as Steve Jobs was about technology.  Elon built an unbelievable company from scratch that has achieved what so many other companies and governments have failed to: cheap, efficient, reliable space travel.  Touring their facility was an absolute treat; walking around inside was like a tour of the most amazing metal shop and manufacturing facility you can imagine.  I felt like a kid walking into Disneyland for the first time; I could hardly stop smiling.  My only disappointment was that I couldn't take photos inside; but with a few Google searches, I was about to find a whole bunch that more or less depict what I saw.

After I arrived, I first met an ex-coworker from Google there, John; he got a nice promotion almost 4 years ago and had incredible foresight to join SpaceX long before they were making headlines right and left in the news.  He took us around and showed us a few great things; he couldn't be happier there and proudly told us about how his Dad toured the facility and said: "Son, you did well; you couldn't have found a better place to work."

The first part of the building we entered was like any modern office: full of computers, desks, and cubicles.  Elon is quite humble and has a cubicle himself and not an office.  There were numerous conference rooms scattered throughout the area, and the ones I saw were named after space scientists like Von Braun: an early rocket scientist from the 1920's and 1930's.

John showed us to the lunch room / show room / mission control area, which was also the entrance to the main shop floor:




One of the first things we saw was 2 Dragon Capsules (the main space shuttle SpaceX builds).  The first was the actual dragon capsule that went into space and successfully returned to Earth; it was quite charred from its trip, and clearly had a few miles on it :)  It looked like:

Because Iron Man's Tony Stark was actually inspired by Elon Musk and the SpaceX facility is so impressive, parts of the Iron Man movie was actually shot right in the SpaceX building.  Doing a quick Google Image search for "Elon Musk" will show you the lifestyle he lives and why he is the perfect inspiration for Tony Stark.  Hammer Industries and all of the robots they were manufacturing was filmed right where we toured.  To commemorate this, they had a statue of Iron Man in the main shop entrance:

After thanking John for showing us around, we went back in and met the main tour group.  I was taken around by the people ops director, and he held a private tour for only Googlers; it was a small group of perhaps 10 or so people walking around.  This was truly an amazing opportunity as the SpaceX facility is private; there are no regular tours.  So going on a tour alone is a treat; going on a small one led by an incredibly knowledgeable person was an unreal gift.  It was led by one of the technical trainers, Warren, who regularly worked with so many teams at the company; he was the perfect person to lead such a tour as his knowledge was very good about all of the departments within.

We started off with a presentation and overview of what the company does.  They have amazingly in just 8 years built many rockets and had 3 successful launches into space.  The most recent accomplishment was one nobody else has achieved: sending a capsule into space loaded with all kinds of supplies, docking it to the International Space Station, loading it up with items to send back to Earth, and successfully landing it.  This is an amazing feat, and on top of all of that they are able to do this at a fraction of the cost of any other government out there even with mostly all American labor and American parts (about 85%); not too shabby.  The company is now profitable, and may go public in a year.  They've grown rapidly to about 1,800 employees.  We regularly hear jokes made about simple things in life like: "Well, it isn't exactly rocket science".  Rocket science is exactly what SpaceX does.

We saw many cool videos and images showing their work like:

Then we started our tour.  Warren was so passionate about his work and shared many amazing stories.  I was fascinated to hear him talk about NASA culture vs. SpaceX culture; the difference felt as wide as the grand canyon.  NASA employees are often found wearing suits and ties, balding, and preferring old proven solutions.  Compare that to the SpaceX culture where employees wear shorts and t-shirts, are often recent college grads, are scrappy, innovative, and nimble, are people who haven't been told limitations of what's possible, who question everything, and who prefer simple and modern solutions over old ones.  

With this culture comes an abundance of passion and energy for what the SpaceX team does.  The perfect story to illustrate this was with the recent Dragon Capsule launch.  So many of the team showed up for the launch, docking, and splash down events and stood right outside of mission control to cheer on these big moments for the company, the industry, and all of space travel.  Oh, and some of these events occurred at 4am and still hordes of employees showed up.  Just as can be seen in this photo:

  

We got to see the mission control room; it's full of computers and desks and actually is pretty simple.  It probably looked something like the below photo when Dragon was flying; it was almost entirely empty when I was there on Friday as the mission had ended and everyone got to go home and get some much deserved sleep!

The machinery and products being built here were unbelievably impressive.  One room held a nearly million dollar "3-D metal printer."  This device would take in a 3-D digital representation of what was desired and use lasers and raw metal dust to "print" the device; it allows SpaceX to make all kinds of intricate pieces, some of which can't be built otherwise.  Another crazy device was a huge circular and vertical welder: instead of using solder like a traditional welder, this machine had a drill bit that spun so fast that it melts 2 metal pieces together.  The output of all of this is often rocket cases or rocket engines.  SpaceX's are completely custom built and far more efficient than NASA's; we walked by some that looked very impressive like this:

Another great example of the SpaceX style of thinking is cost.  Anytime a component could be purchased by a third party, the price was closely scrutinized.  If the price tag seemed overly high, Elon simply would tell his team they needed to figure out how to build that component themselves at SpaceX from scratch and do it far cheaper.  Another cool example was comparing the size of components between NASA and SpaceX.  NASA had much less concern for size, and as a result made huge rockets that required massive barges to ship around their rockets; this is slow and expensive.  SpaceX only builds things that are small enough to be loaded on a truck and driven around the country; this keeps costs quite low and transportation times too.  By keeping parts and designs simple, costs are much lower than NASAs.  And for all of this, SpaceX's launch record is a perfect 3 successes out of 3 tries; most other groups who have tried to launch something 3 times had at least one explosion.

On site, they had quite a few Dragon capsules.  Of course, this is one of their main products, so it's not a big surprise.  Here's a polished looking new Dragon capsule:

Here's what the capsule looked like when attached to the International Space Station last week:

We saw many Dragon capsules in various stages of production; just like a car assembly line, many are being built at the same time and go through various stages of development.  Some Dragons were just skeletons beginning to be assembled.  Others were more complete and had electronic equipment being added on.  One was completely draped in a metal cloth for radio wave testing.  We got to see the bottoms of the capsules being built; that's an interesting part as it contains the heat shields that keep the cargo and eventually astronauts alive when re-entering Earth; they're designed to withstand 4,000 degrees Farenheit of heat or more while still keeping the cargo at a comfy 85 degrees.  We got to see the heat tiles and walk within inches of them; it amazed me they let us get so close to such a vital part of the ship.

Here's one last glimpse of the amazing machine shop and the incredible products they build:

Thank you, SpaceX, for a world class tour of your stellar facility.  SpaceX is an amazingly impressive company, and one that I respect incredibly.  Google and it are the two companies at the top of my personal list for being absolutely impressive and amazing.  Well done SpaceX - I'm a huge fan.

Over Budget and Late

If you ever feel like your project is late or over budget, check out this one that's only about $1.8B over budget and 7 years late.  

Book Report: Investor's Manifesto

I just finished reading Investor's Manifesto by William Bernstein; this is an incredible guide to retirement and offers unique insights into how to easily plan for a decent retirement. The author has spent a ton of time writing financial books and collaborating with some of the best financial minds out there, and offers an amazingly simple and yet incredibly hard to beat approach to maximizing your stock returns.

A quick recap of the book roughly by chapter:
1) History shows us many financial bubbles. Countless have happened in the past, and undoubtedly more will happen again.
2) The stock market is unpredictable. It's folly to think anyone can consistently time the market or predict the future; chartists, advisors, professionals all cannot repeatedly do this. It's nonsense to think anyone can.
3) A realistic investment goal is simply to match market performance. Index funds are a very cheap and easy way to do this; Vanguard offers many very cheap index funds that very closely mirror various markets (eg. stock market, bonds, international companies, real estate, etc.)
4) The enemy is you. Most often the biggest cause of investment loses come strictly from the investor! People who too closely monitor their finances may commit to the worst financial move: selling low & buying high.
5) Financial companies make a lot of money by taking yours. In the long run, investors are better off avoiding investment professionals and instead simply trying to match market performance.
6) A great formula for investing is: take your age, and buy that % in bonds (eg. a 30 year old holds 30% bonds). Take 100 - your age and invest that % in stocks (eg. a 30 year old invests 70% in stocks) Rebalance this annually to adjust for your changing age and also to move money into the cheapest asset. You can adjust this formula for risk tolerance; if you're more conservative or more aggressive, adjust the percentages accordingly.
7) Keep your investment strategy very simple. You can outperform so many other professional investors this way. The index strategy is the safest/best long term strategy one can realistically count on.

Meat, sickness

US Meat and Poultry Is Widely Contaminated With Drug-Resistant Staph Bacteria, Study Finds
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110415083153.htm

I've seen plenty of articles like this about mass produced meat making us sick; I've hardly felt sick at all after 2 years of vegetarianism, and that was after getting sick ALL THE TIME as a carnivore. Could be a coincidence, but I'll continue avoiding meat.

Slax: securely viewing the net

If you're like me at all, you're somewhat fearful of putting your login name & password into financial websites. Even though any respectable website is configured to send that data encrypted (so nobody can steal it while it's sent across the internet,) it's still very possible that the computer you typed that into has been compromised. Yep, even if it's your very own computer that you know well & take immaculately good care of.

If you're at all like me, you occasionally install random patches or software to do all kinds of things. Or, you just surf the net or click links friends email you. All of that can very easily lead to viruses on your computer. And even regularly running virus detection software can't eliminate all nasty viruses. Have you heard of the Zeus virus? This is the scariest virus I've ever heard of; it's ingeniously designed to be easily spread, undetectable by most virus software (eg. Mcafee, Norton, etc.) and guess what it does? It steals your bank account passwords! I would hate to watch my bank account mysteriously drained by something like this. I'm not just trying to make mountains out of molehills; this is a genuine serious issue and has infected millions of computers in the US.

Every once in awhile, I find a new virus on my computer. I consider my computer usage relatively safe, but still this happens. So what can you do to be safe? I've seen a few solutions. First, I'm very inspired by Gmail's 2-factor authentication feature. That's a lot of words that basically mean it doesn't matter if someone steals your login name & password; they still can't login. I can't wait for more financial sites to offer this capability; but knowing the speed at which many large financial institutions operate, my gut feeling is it will be awhile before this happens. Another option I've seen people employ is to have a dedicated computer that is used only for logging into financial sites. This seems a bit extreme to me, but in theory is a bit safer than what most people currently do. Others use Macs or Linux, which have a far lower risk of nasty viruses; this seems a better solution, but again not perfect and doesn't work for me due to some programs I want only being available for PCs. You could partition your hard drive and install a couple operating systems on it; this would work, but is only for the very computer savvy. My recommended solution that even grandma can use: use the free software Slax. Slax is an entire operating system that lives on a CD; I simply burn their software to CD, pop it in my computer's CD tray, and boot up to it for safe & secure internet browsing. I can still run Windows, use all the programs I like, and boot safely into Slax when I want to be extra sure I'm browsing safely. The only risk here is I have to trust the developers who release Slax and believe they haven't distributed something like Zeus on it! I'm hopeful this is not something they have done. And, it does take 5 or so minutes every time I want to switch operating systems. While this isn't a perfect solution, it's a FAR safer one from just logging in via a browser on windows.

So, I highly recommend the very easy to use Slax to anyone who shares my fears. And if you have other creative solutions to this problem, I'd love to hear.

A Taste for the Unordinary

I have always had a unique taste that I've never really been able to adequately describe. Then it hit me recently; I tend to like things that are a bit unordinary, that make you think, and especially when they contradict conventional wisdom. When something meets that last criteria, I go bonkers over whatever that is. Perhaps this fuels my appetite for reading a lot of random things out there :) A few examples I came across of this:

- On average, every year 1,000 people die by a plane crash but 10,000 die from health consequences surrounding plane exhaust.
http://www.aolnews.com/surge-desk/article/planes-dont-kill-people-plane-exhaust-does/19669550

- An alcoholic drink a day ok might not only be okay for pregnant women, but possibly even beneficial:
http://blogs.chron.com/momhouston/2010/10/study_light_drinking_during_pr_1.html

- Twitter predicts the stock market?!? Okay, I'm not so sure if I believe this one, but... somebody does!
http://gizmodo.com/5667682/twitter-can-predict-the-stock-market-six-days-in-advance

Google Reader Play is an awesome site that is full of mind boggling articles like this. I'm not just trying to pitch a product of my employer's, but rather I'm wanting to share something that fascinates me every time I use it and that may be of interest to you. Reader Play lets you leverage the wisdom of the crowds and see what folks on the internet find to be the most intriguing news of the day. I find this a fascinating way to expand my mind and learn all kinds of random new things. This site has quickly been moving up on my most visited sites list, and is a very enjoyable way to spend a few minutes every day. Check it out!

How not to manage people

I recently had a chat with a coworker about management styles and how they can either inspire employees to work hard for their company or do the exact opposite. I'm fortunate to work for a company that many would argue inspires its work force to feel as if each person really makes a difference and desires to contribute to the company. There's a huge difference in being forced to sit at a desk for 40 hours a week and being motivated & driven to want to be there. Driving employees by fear, micromanagement, and prodding is a recipe for disaster. Making employees a part of the company and self-driven to succeed I'd argue is a path to win.

One of the things I've loved most about my job over the last 4+ years is that I've been able to travel to many fortune 500 companies & go inside their offices. I've been able to see how movie studios, car companies, technology manufacturers, banking institutions, and more are run and the dynamic inside. I've seen how their management treats the employees and the effects it has on workforces. It's been an incredible journey and I've been able to learn so much about the inner workings of other companies without having to actually work there. I've witnessed corporate cultures of great motivation and many times of complete discontent.

I'll leave specific company names aside, but talk about a few fascinating observations I've made.

One company runs like a totalitarianism. The owner founded this large company all by himself and wants his wishes and his wishes alone executed. He hires managers from the military as he feels they are trained not to question their superiors; they will blindly take orders from above and execute and will not generate "risky" innovative ideas. Well... this has resulted in a culture of fear and is one that breeds in-fighting, distrust, clawing your way to the top, and generally low morale. The founder wanted a world where only his voice mattered, and a dictatorship he has achieved.

Another company was the epitome of micromanagement. I walked into the office and it literally looked like a college computer science lab. The employees worked in an environment that looked like this:

Instead of small students at the computers, there were adult employees. Computers were smashed together even more closely, and employees looked generally quite miserable. There was practically no room to decorate and make a desk your own, no privacy, no ability to have a private conversation, no collaboration, no care for the individual, and the perfect setup for management to see what every employee worked on at any point in the day. You can bet this environment did not foster innovation or creativity but instead a desire to quit.

A third company I'll mention had the most crazy way of measuring an employee's contributions to the company: by the number of hours spent keeping your seat warm. The company didn't seem to value the actual reason why employees are hired: to produce specific results. Instead, they took every employee in the company and ranked them by the number of hours they worked per week. If the number was under 45, the employee was in the red zone. 45 - 55 was yellow. 55+ was green. I took an informal survey of a few of my peers and asked what kind of employee behavior this would encourage. The answers were all similar: surfing facebook more frequently from work, feeling disgruntled, not wanting to help the company out, and contemplating an exit strategy from the company.

Okay, enough of the depressing stuff. Not all companies are ran this poorly. I've seen some amazing management styles founded on trust, giving employees freedom to get their work done, and measuring results and not hours. It's your ship is an incredible book on effective management techniques and ways to truly motivate people to work together to achieve amazing feats. I highly recommend reading it and I promise you will learn many valuable lessons.