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An Inside Look At the SpaceX Rocket Factory
Dave Bullock writes "The folks at SpaceX are working hard in their Hawthorne labs, cubicles and factory, building rockets that will hopefully bring future astronauts to the International Space Station. At the behest of Wired, I toured the former 747 factory which is now a rocket assembly line. 'Eschewing the traditional startup trappings of two college grads eating ramen, watching Adult Swim and coding until the wee hours of the night, SpaceX instead employs hundreds of brainiacs and builds its rockets in a massive hangar that once housed a 747 assembly line. Started in 2002 by PayPal founder Elon Musk, SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) brings a startup mentality to launching rockets into orbit, which until recently was almost exclusively government turf. The hope is that minimal bureaucracy, innovation and in-house manufacturing and testing can be used to put payloads into space at roughly one-tenth the cost of traditional methods.'"
Amen, brother Derek. Having worked for a startup, and with friends at many others, and now working on my own, I have to say I'm sick of the "Have a marginally clever idea, befriend an MBA, write a business plan, find an angel, work your ass off, get some venture capital, IPO" model. That's just not appropriate in so many cases. My role models are welders and plumbers, not Pets.com. Will it work out? Who knows. I do know that I'm not starving, I sleep well at night, and my son knows what I look like.