Visiting SpaceX & Meeting Elon Musk [Munro Clip]
Munro LiveCited 7× on HN, 2021–2021
interview · general · 2021–2021 on HN
A clip of Sandy Munro, a veteran automotive engineer, describing his visit to a SpaceX Starship design review and meeting Elon Musk. He says he was struck by how deeply Musk is involved in engineering.
Used as a neutral outsider's first-hand account of SpaceX's fast engineering culture and Musk's hands-on role.
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7 comments from Hacker News
Here's a video from someone who observed a design review for Starship[1]. From the sound of it, Elon is in the thick of it in the R&D engineering. [1] ▶ this video
Elon spends nearly as much time at SpaceX as he does Tesla. There's no question that Elon regularly mucks in at the lowest levels of engineering at SpaceX. If you want evidence from a reasonably neutral observer, take Sandy Munro (himself an engineer who has worked on everything from cars to aeroplanes). He recently interviewed Elon, ostensibly about Tesla but the interview was in a meeting room at SpaceX. After the interview he was invited to a two hour design review meeting and was "blown away" at Elon's depth of involvement. ▶ this video (6:10 to 8:45)
He is very much involved at actual day-to-day engineering at SpaceX. He is the CEO and the chief engineer there. Sources: link ▶ this video
Elon spends nearly as much time at SpaceX as he does Tesla. There's no question that Elon mucks in at the lowest levels of engineering at SpaceX. If you want evidence from a reasonably neutral observer, take Sandy Munro (himself an engineer who has worked on everything from cars to aeroplanes). He recently interviewed Elon, ostensibly about Tesla but the interview was in a meeting room at SpaceX. After the interview he was invited to a two hour design review meeting and was "blown away" at Elon's depth of involvement. ▶ this video (6:10 to 8:45)
Sandy Munro was invited to SpaceX design review session, so he has some first-hand comments about that on this video (@6:17): ▶ this video
Sandy Munro (former Chief Engineer at Ford and worked on lots of Aerospace projects) was invited to SpaceX design review session (@6:17): ▶ this video
This aligned perfectly with the thread, ▶ this video I went on a tour of Blue Origin, I learned next to nothing. It looked like a the rich kids house that had a coleco and a neo geo. The picture they paint of spacex is one of being in continuous flow vs cautious pessimism.