Review of "Reentry"

Eric Berger builds on his previous book Liftoff to tell the story of the Falcon 9, the rocket which changed spaceflight forever.

It’s cliche at this point to say Elon Musk is a controversial figure. He has become increasingly outspoken and politically partisan in recent years, upsetting many. But there has emerged a curious phenomenon of people being unable to separate the man from his works, and inferring from his political opinions that he is stupid, and that his companies aren’t any good. For example a recent hit piece in The New Republic stated “The rockets from his rocket company, SpaceX, keep exploding” despite the hundreds of successful Falcon 9 flights.

Such people in particular could do with reading Reentry by Eric Berger, which tells the inside story of this remarkable vehicle.

Berger is a veteran space journalist, senior space editor at Ars Technica, and well qualified to write a book such as this. He covered the Falcon 1 days of SpaceX in his previous book Liftoff, which is worth a read. Like that book, this is not a biography of Elon Musk. He is treated essentially a background character in the stories of the engineers working at SpaceX who are the focus of the narrative. We get a good view from the coal face of what makes this company tick.

And what a company. The stark contrast between its performance and Boeing’s in delivering crew to the International Space Station is in the news right now. It has achieved feats thought to be impossible by experts and surpassed entire countries in its capacity to put mass into orbit. It’s worth learning what makes them able to surpass other companies, and yes that also includes its leadership.

The Musk Method

“Elon Time” has become something of a meme in the space community. He publicly provides incredibly aggressive timelines which invariably slip - but despite this SpaceX still manages to accomplish incredible feats far quicker than their competitors. In Reentry we see some of this kind of urgency from the inside, with Musk offering “silver bullet” permissions for his engineers to disable abort commands during a test fire in order to get it completed faster.

The book highlights the youth of some of the key people involved, and it reminds me of the similarly young cohort that send men to the Moon - the average age of a flight controller during Apollo 11 was 28. Is it that only the youth have the energy to put in the consistently long hours (80-100 hours are frequently mentioned by interviewees) and high effort to get such things done, or perhaps that a meritocratic system lets talented youth get promoted to positions of authority quickly?

The impression of the internal culture of SpaceX at the time is one of relatively flat hierarchy, and little formal structure. Not unusual for startups, but most startups aren’t operating at the scale SpaceX was at this point. It’s easy to play things fast and loose with software, less so with hardware - especially space hardware. SpaceX seems to have got away with it though.

Another thing that stands out is that SpaceX emerged in an environment rich with poorly allocated capital. Lazy contractors and failed companies had left a lot of equipment and facilities (eg SLC-40 and the old Beal test stand) that could be easily snapped up and used. The stagnation of the established space industries has also created a supply of human capital - talented engineers who were yearning for a more dynamic environment.

Rejecting established ways of operating invites scorn though. For instance when SpaceX was working towards their first flight in 2009, with their rocket out in the open, Berger writes:

ULA employees would drive up the access road and stop at the fence. They took photos, shouted mocking comments, and laughed at their would-be competitors

Funnily enough, I don’t think they do this anymore.

But is there a Musk “magic”? We see him here demanding things be done at a fraction of the normal cost, and on aggressive timetables with employees working overtime during crunches - but plenty of bosses do these things. Normally it results in poor outcomes, not outstanding success. Certainly we see the dark side of Musk’s approach, in terms of burn out and harsh treatment of staff. Is this an intrinsic part of what makes the company work?

The impression that many of Berger’s interviewees give is of doing the hardest, but most important work of their lives. They do not seem to express much regret no matter what Musk put them through.

The Technical Side

There are plenty of insights in the book on technical matters - innovative solutions and the hard lessons that were learned getting to them. Often its revealed that the internal work on getting Falcon 9 to flight was a lot messier than the public facing statements suggested.

The vertical landings that Falcon has become famous for were not an obvious solution to the problem of re-usability - in fact there was a high degree of public skepticism, and this book reveals that was also the case inside SpaceX. Reentry covers the process by which the idea got traction with Musk (after a misadventure with parachute recovery) and he then drove the company to execute the idea.

Given the recent upset with Boeing Starliner, there are some interesting contrasts presented between its development and the Dragon program. The way faults in the two capsules were handled diverged in a way that made the latter much preferred by the astronauts interviewed, and their feelings on this matter seem to have been vindicated by subsequent events.

Another recurring theme is a willingness, where appropriate, to embrace risk. To push forward with a test or a launch rather than spend too much time on analysis or meeting overly stringent requirements. There are many instances where this could have potentially gone very wrong for SpaceX, the company failed, and nobody would be talking about them anymore. So perhaps one of the big ingredients in the formula is a fair share of luck.

The Lesson

Should budding entrepreneurs copy Musk’s methods? Many have tried, few have got very far. As important it is for authors like Eric Berger to record the history of a company like SpaceX, and for those interested in following in their footsteps to read it, I wonder how much of what is described in Reentry is generally applicable. The founding of SpaceX and the development of the Falcon 9 happened during a specific point in history, when the Space Shuttle was winding down and there was a struggle over what NASA should do next. Not only was there a pool of engineers keen to change things, the book highlights that there were many people in government who actively helped SpaceX along, seeing it as a necessary disrupting force at a time of stagnation. The events described in the book only make sense in that context.

But… the spirit of this company is I think something anybody can learn from. Nobody is going to talk about their career in B2B SaaS in the way SpaceXers talk about their work in this book. Its an odd experience to envy someone as they describe working 80 hours a week and being yelled at by their boss, but you’ll get that feeling reading Reentry. Would that we could all accomplish such great things.

Reentry by Eric Berger is available for preorder now

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