I Left My Heart in SpaceX – Starbase

One of the unique parts of life in the military is you never really know what your job will be.  Sure, you have your specialty code, but ultimately you are a widget they can and will slot into whatever position they need filled.  Case in point, my current day job is as a speechwriter for a four star general even though my background is cyber.  As part of my duties, I was fortunate enough to tag along on my boss’s trip to SpaceX’s Texas compound, Starbase.  It. Was. Awesome.

Let me back-up.  I applied to join the Space Force from the Air Force for three reasons: 1) a greater likelihood to stay on the operational cyber side instead of communication support, 2) better odds with good assignment locations, and 3) because space is freakin’ cool.  The weight put towards each reason varies day by day, but when I got to visit Starbase, reason #3 rocketed up to 100%. 

While a lot of the conversations were either classified or proprietary, the tour we took of their facilities blew my mind.  It’s one thing to read about how SpaceX does business, but it’s another to walk into a half-constructed Starship and have the lead structural engineer explain just how massive the scale of their ambition is.  I fanboyed hard, to the point where the engineer giving us the tour started talking to me more than the general because he had me hooked like a fat kid scarfing a tray of cupcakes. 

While the Starship factory was fantastic (seriously, so cool), equally awesome was the attitude of the folks walking around with us.  You could see how much they cared about the project and why they stick around, even with the 24/7, 365 work life.  Not only that, but they way they approach the design and production process is so divergent to how things usually get done at that scale.  When they need to fix a problem or figure out a design, they don’t sit around tossing ideas back and forth in meetings and committees for months on end.  They get the sheet metal out, fire up the cutting torches, and build something.  Once they see what works and what doesn’t, they build something new that iterates on the last version.  And then they do it again.  And again.  And again. 

That’s what I loved most about it, the willingness to push something out just to see what happens and the humility to learn from the failures.  There’s no boardroom of middle management fighting over failed proposals because they staked their personal reputation on some pipedream.  Instead, there’s an engineer telling his people that the last thing he wants to see is an idea in AutoCAD instead of in real life. 

SpaceX inspires me, and not for the reason you might think.  It’s not the fact they’ve basically rebuilt America’s industrial space power singlehandedly (which is awesome).  It’s not that they’ve figured out things most people thought was impossible like reusing rockets (which is also awesome).  And it’s not even that they’re continuing to break barriers and take space travel to the next level with the Starship (which is also also awesome).  It’s that they are so committed to their dream that they are willing to forsake any sort of pride in order to see it through.

I told my boss that if he didn’t see me on the plane later that afternoon he shouldn’t worry—I’d just be back at Starbase, looking up at the stars with the people working hardest to get us there.