Business, Space

Gwynne Shotwell At ISPCS

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Aim of her talk is to embolden those who want to enter the space industry, and encourage those doing it. Lows and highs in the industry, but right now lots of highs.

Company formed in March, 2002, she was seventh employee to bring in business, ended year with fourteen. 2006 Falcon 1 first flight, lot of people never involved in industry before. Couldn’t fly from Vandenberg because of safety concerns, had to go out of Kwajalein. Learned a lot on first failure — SpaceX became a very different company that day. 2006 also year they won COTS agreement, historical public-private partnership. Created Falcon 9 and Dragon, and made US competitive in space launch again.

Moved into new cavernous facility in Hawthorne in 2008 (now running out of space). Also year of first successful Falcon 1 flight. Also won Cargo Resupply Contract. 618 employees at end of that year.

2010, successfully flew Falcon 9 twice, and successfully recovered Dragon capsule. Signed largest commercial contract ever with Iridium (half a billion dollars), ended year with 1200 employees.

Didn’t fly in 2011, because getting Dragon ready to fly. Flew successfully to ISS in 2012, developed new version of Falcon 9, 2000 employees.

Showing Falcon 9R launch video.

What’s next?

Into regular operations. First flight for SES out of the Cape in less than a month, with another commercial launch, and four flights to ISS. Developing suits, seats, life support and escape systems for Dragon to carry people. First flight in about three years, don’t know if it will be NASA or SpaceX astronauts, first flight just to orbit and return.

Falcon Heavy still in work, expecting $1100/lb. 53 metric tons. Grasshopper more in the media than Elon this days, a rock star. Showing latest Grasshopper video. “This is not fake.” 25 people working Grasshopper program, about 3000 who want to. Moving to Spaceport America for Falcon-9R test vehicle. Showing photo of first stage three meters above the ocean fully intact (didn’t survive impact). “Really close to full and rapid reuse of stages.” First time photo has been shown. Not high resolution, but clearly a full vertical stage. First flight in New Mexico hopefully in December.

We want to go to Mars, think it’s the right place to go. Describing similarity of Mars to earth in terms of geographical features — grand canyons, volcanoes, rocks. Showing Mars landscape, with similarity to American southwest.

14 thoughts on “Gwynne Shotwell At ISPCS”

  1. “Showing photo of first stage three meters above the ocean fully intact (didn’t survive impact). “Really close to full and rapid reuse of stages.” ”

    It’s that last inch that hurts so much.

    1. They also showed video of a similar test stage flying to about 2400 feet, and landing softly on the pad.

      Don’t you ever tire of acting like a jackwagon on the Internet?

  3. Couldn’t fly from Vandenberg because of safety concerns

    That’s a PC statement with the advantage of being technically true if not entirely true. I like her. She does a good job.

    first stage three meters above the ocean fully intact

    Just wow.

    Elon’s imperfections are so overwhelmed by his accomplishments and his future visions. We need him to stop morphing his MCT into a hyperloop and stay focused.

    1. Couldn’t fly from Vandenberg because of safety concerns

      That’s a PC statement with the advantage of being technically true if not entirely true. I like her. She does a good job.

      In retrospect, given what happened on the first Falcon 1 flight, those precautions don’t look so unreasonable.

      1. The case could be made but the reality is there was a pad sitter (downrange ?) for the purpose of denying them a launch opportunity. So as I said it was technically true as to being about safety but…

      2. The Air Force NEVER had any spectacular failures at Vandenberg, so I can see how they might have been terribly concerned about that little Falcon I.

        1. The government self-insures their launches so when they lose one, we taxpayers pick up the tab. IIRC, there was a Titan IV with an NRO payload near the flightpath of that Falcon 1. Together, those cost well over a billion dollars. Had the SpaceX launch failed (like it did seconds from liftoff at Kwaj), there as concern the downrange vehicle would be in danger. Perhaps it was valid, perhaps not. I doubt SpaceX would’ve been able to pay for that rocket and payload.

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