SpaceX plans to debut Red Dragon with 2018 Mars mission

Speaking for myself I believe there is something incredibly unique in the way humans devote incredible amounts of energy to aspects of life that aren't inherently necessary to survival but nonetheless add to the richness of our lives. Art and music are examples of things that while not required for life, certainly make life more interesting.

The human drive to explore the places beyond the horizon and to expand our knowledge are things I would certainly describe as of profound importance, even if they don't have immediate direct benefits, although often times they do.

In the end I think JFK put it best in his 1962 speech at Rice:

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win…

This seems to be a trend with Musk-run companies. Do they really attract people that are that dedicated to the mission? Or do they get a lot of people padding their resume, then jumping ship to somewhere that compensates more fairly with work/life balance?

In my experience, it wasn’t so much the long hours that wore thin on employees but instead it was the unreliable scheduling that prevented many people from making plans to enjoy their limited time off. There has been progress made in this regard as we have grown and gotten a better handle on some of our critical processes.

I should add that much like with anything else it’s difficult to please everyone all the time and not all of these changes have been well received by everyone. Overtime work for hourly employees is much more regulated and carefully watched now than it was a few years ago and I fall into a camp that isn’t exactly pleased with this. While I think the new changes are better for the overall well being of most employees there are many of us who specifically prefer an environment that skews more heavily towards work in terms of work/life balance.

Pay also tends to be lower than the industry average, especially considering living expenses in LA/Socal, but from what I’ve seen while introductory pay is low it tends to ramp up rather quickly once you hit the 3-4 year mark and is much more aligned with competitors at that point. This probably is at least partially related to the relatively high turnover here which means promotions and advancement can come quickly if you can stick it out.

I should make clear that my experience is coming from the perspective of an hourly technician that is compensated for overtime, unlike the salaried engineers, although in talking with many during the course of my day they seem to have a similar experience.

Sadly, whenever these discussions about employees leaving SpaceX come up, some commenters invariably come to the false conclusion that anyone who leaves SpaceX is a loser or somehow couldn’t hack it here. This is obviously not true.

Priorities change and work being the number one or singular focus during one period of life doesn’t make it so perpetually. People get older/more mature and some decide they want to start a family, travel more, want to own a home (not an easy task even as a well paid engineer here in LA), or any number of other good reasons that may lead to leaving SpaceX. None of these reasons should reflect poorly on those who leave.

With that being said, I find it incredibly annoying when new employees come in, some with very impressive backgrounds, and within a few weeks start complaining about the work environment despite it being made abundantly clear to them at every point in the hiring process. I was first hired for a job consisting of extremely low skill manual labor and even for someone in my position it was made very clear what was expected of me from the very first phone screening.

SpaceX is an excellent example of how culture comes from the top.

I used to have a boss who complained that his employees turned up late or not at all for meetings. He would often turn up late or not at all for meetings.

I had another boss who used email excessively. His team used email excessively.

Elon Musk is mission-driven, work-oriented and puts in very long hours. Thus SpaceX is mission-driven, work-oriented, and people put in long hours.

It's all a matter of choice, I admire Musk and SpaceX whilst also appreciating many people want to spend more time with their family.

Just an observation to think on next time your employees don't exhibit the culture you'd like - the answer can often be found in a mirror.

We are talking about a company which intends to send people on Mars. Really ?

:-)

The fantasy is that work should be engaging, fulfilling, fun, and yet only moderately challenging, doesn't take too many hours, has you surrounded by ideal colleagues, with policies that fit you perfectly... you get the idea.

Reality doesn't work like that and it's so silly that people keep pretending otherwise.

And as I said, it's fine. But the most important way in which SpaceX is different than most is that for Elon and his company, Mars and space are terminal goals, while profit is only means to get there. It's exactly the opposite to how most companies operate.

Besides, Musk can offer free trips back trivially. [see WaitButWhy's extraordinarily long post about SpaceX]

This is actually true for most countries. America's economic strength lies in the fact that it creates software, micro-chips, manufactured goods, entertainment, etc.

Tell me, where in the ground do you dig up a micro-processor? Or a hollywood blockbuster? Or a Tesla Model S? Or the source code for google's search engine?

Economic value is primarily created by human activity. Once there is human activity on Mars there is the potential for economic value there. And once human activity on Mars is relatively self-sustaining, which we can achieve through building up the local industry combined with certain technological innovations, then that human activity will indeed provide things of net positive value to the rest of human civilization.

It seems so hard now, but in fifty or a hundred years we'll look back and it'll just seem normal and possibly even natural.

We tend to discount the truly incredible and jaw dropping amount of labor and ingenuity that has gone into building the prosaic world we see out the window every day. Even something like providing water to New York City is itself a herculean effort beyond the capability of even the entire human race only a few centuries ago. What we've done to network the world together digitally, to build engines of mass trade of manufactured goods across and between continents, to travel across land/sea/air from point to point with minimal overhead beyond the raw requirements imposed by the laws of physics, all of these things are awe inspiring creations when you give yourself the opportunity to look at them in whole. And many of them are vastly more difficult and in some cases more questionably of long term value than colonizing Mars.

They didn't cancel it yet because for now there is currently no activity there with a profit, and they are not sure how to divide it. But once there is a way to gain money, don't expect that the treaty will last too much.

It would be a classic Mexican standoff, but the group with access to orbital and inter-planetary platforms would win. You could try to starve them out, but you couldn't keep them from obliterating you while it was happening.

Its not sour grapes. When Neil Armstrong went to the moon it was for all Americans and all of Humanity. During the space shuttle missions there was a public effort to try to select a broad representation of cultures, backgrounds, educations, nationalities etc to be astronauts.

However, if the only ultra rich get to go, which it sounds like the case since that would be the only way to fund a private mission, why should everyone left be ok with it? Why should the richest people in the world, most who have had a incredibly large role in environmentally destroying the ONLY planet all of humanity can live on, just leave everyone else to clean up the mess? It would be the ultimate FU to the rest of the 99.9% of humanity.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9792854/neil-degrasse-tys...

Since so far everything is done for NASA I don't have a problem with it. NASA, like any giant government agency subcontracts out a lot of work to various parties. The whole "Military-industrial complex" thing. In the case of LEO where it's NASA controlled but privately contracted SpaceX is awesome because they are bringing down the cost of launches to LEO. This saves us, the US taxpayer $$$.

The frikin Mars mission is different because from what I understand SpaceX is going with or without NASA. That's the difference between an Apollo mission, where the Saturn V was developed by Boeing and others, and Boeing just going alone.

Personally, I think this legislation is a bad idea and is a direct attack on a global common. It will be interesting to see how this holds up internationally. Its almost like the US saying to the world we open up waters in the middle of the Atlantic (international waters) for resource extraction by any of our corporations. Try and stop us.

The Martian independence play is to just put a bunch of fragmentation grenades into LEO, rather than mess around with nukes. Nobody who expects to keep living on Earth would ever do something so foolish, but if you wanted to cut ties with your homeworld in a hurry, without killing anyone directly, that would certainly do it.

Reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O5h4enjrHw around the 2:30 mark.

In a century's time (give or take), being able to build sprawling, cheap (for certain values of cheap), polluting factories without having to worry about poisoning the local rivers or running afoul of environmental regulations might start to look like a decent deal.