ready for anything. comcast along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. and the history of his rocket company space x in his new book left off. the blue willow bookshop in houston hosted this event. a. >> welcome, everyone. the owner of the bookshop in houston texas i know we have people joining us from all over

the country and even beyond in the world. i am thrilled tonight to bere he with, to introduce a icon of our staff. we are so thrilled they are going to be joining us tonight. so, i would like to introduce our guest author and his conversational partner. eric berger, senior space editor, covers space x, nasa and everything and beyond. eric is a former reporter for the chronicle, and as we know [inaudible] we are so thrilled that he is here tonight. in conversation with andrea leinfelder, space reporter for the houston chronicle. and being in space city here, we have a lot to talk about when it comes to space. i am going to turn this over to eric and andrea to have a wonderful conversation, and i

will come back on and help facilitate the questions and answer period. welcome, eric. welcome, andrea. thank you for coming tonight. >> thank you, valerie. >> it's very exciting about your book. i love how you started it off. right now we have so much happening in south texas with the starship. it feels a little bit like the cowboy days of the falcon one, soys i'm curious why you decided to start the book that way and yowhat kind of similarities you see with whatil is happening now and then. >> i wanted to help the readers understand why we should care about this little rocket that space x put so much effort into launching 15 years ago. it's kind of ancient history, sort of, the way the speed at which space x moves. the reality is that if they

hadn't been successful with the falcon one rocket and finally launched it in 2008 successfully, they never would have gotten to orbit, they never would have continued to where they are today. another thing that is important to understand is the way space x is today, all that dna was established back in t this realy confessed it was period from 2002 and 2008 when they started the company. when elon musk was hiring the people he thought would help him succeed in this quest to build a rocket from scratch. the fact that today they are building this crazy starship that one day may take people to mars is all down to what happened then and it's interesting because another parallel, they launched the falcon one from the middle of nowhere basically in the central pacific ocean is so to fly from la to hawaii and then the same

distance again you find your self and i'm not saying south texas in the middle of nowhere, but they do have a lot of freedom to operate in south texas like they had where there's not that much oversight and they can kind of do what they need to do and move like elon musk likes to move. >> it was such a small company then. your book talks about how there's all these people working a handful of hours, and i know they still work hard but they are a bigger company so how can they afford to keep doing these kind of designs where they test and fail and fix and fail and fix. how can they be doing that? >> yeah, i mean, so they have their core business which is the falcon nine rocket, and that's what they are launching humans on, the third crew mission coming up this spring. so that rocket can't really afford to fail. they've gone through and now

it's gone successfully about seven consecutive times. so they want to success with that and want success with the dragon program. but starship, they are not putting people on that anytime soon. they are not even putting cargo. they are just testing out some of the flight systems and out the engines and in the last couple they had challenges relighting the engines before landing so we want to figure that out and so they've built this factory in south texas to churn out vehicle after vehicle at a low cost and fly and then they will learn from each mistake and move forward. >> when you talk to people does it feel like the early days when they were exploring and when you read the book it feels like everyone was so excited, hands-on and building things and not just one example where his whole career like they are not

doing that. it's this hands on design. do they feel the same way when they talk about the falcon one? >> it's really interesting. the way elon musk started the company as he hired a couple senior vice presidents that had experience in the field and most of the engineers were kids in their 20s just out of school or in graduate school and they were hungry, didn't have families to go home to. basically willing to kill themselves in terms of working hard for the company. if you go on a visit it's the same kind of energy. there's more people, hundreds instead of dozens of engineers. still wasn't much bigger but it's still just people in their 20s mostly and they are running around and they don't where 50 hats like the people in

the south but they are moving at no less of a speed and that is the sort of drive elon musk has to push his team forward as fast as they can go. >> i love the level of detail in kiyour book. i can just picture elon musk chuckling. i am a survivor fan and they were working on the island so long. how many hours of interviews does it take and do you have a favorite one? >> it's hard to pick a favorite one. i spent a long time probably about 20 hours in different settings and then lots of time with the other employees. each one about a two-hour interview and then i would go back with questions and clarification to get feedback

and sort of go forward from there just to make sure because someone would tell me a story and i would cross check with someone else and say what do you remember about this. there's lots of fun anecdotes. one is this incident from a 2002 after the company was formed and they were flying to try to find someone to build tanks to contain these. stayed in a holiday inn express one night and they got up and they were down at the breakfasta bar and i guess it was the first time elon musk had encountered pop tarts because according to the company that were in the breakfast room, he looked at it, stared at it, was fascinated and then proceeded to toast it and instead of putting them in

vertically he put them in horizontally and hand to stick his hands in to pull them out and burn himself and said some not nice words in wisconsin at holiday inn express in 2002. another story that i really like was when the president of the company now hired in as the vice president of sales in 2002 and was instrumental on a number of levels. for flight for she was at a space conference and it was after midnight and she was sitting in the bathroom watching it on a laptop and she had gone to actually explain why the rocket had failed so this was like this super uplifting moment as she is watching this sort of alone and screaming in the

bathroom in a scottish hotel in edinburg and she told me that now before she writes scotland down and puts it in her shoes o that she's standing over scotland when they launch rockets for luck so i thought that was a nice touch. >> it is a nice touch. a big part of the book that you hit on his they had a bunch of 20-year-olds working really hard and it is a reason why it is successful. when you were talking to elon musk, how does he describe this and how he made them want to work so hard and ultimately their success. but when you talk to elon musk, does he see himself as rising? >> he for sure i think understands. he has anct expectation that

people that come to work for him are going to work hard because they believe in whateverg he's doing. the gift that he gives them is the ability to make a difference because if you go to space x, you can be someone who really does build a first rocket. you can land a rocket on a boat. the program is going to be -- he has a track record for getting success done. one of the engineers told me look, i gave 15 years, the best years of myy life and it was a trade i was going to make for the opportunity. w

and so he realizes that but he also expects it. i don't want to say he uses people up, but he expects people to give their all. >> i feel like that same attitude towards regulators. early on in the book you talk about the head of nasa and a couplele of other regulatory authorities but like how does that fearlessness in the beginning help? >> before they launched their first rockets, space x had sued northrop grumman and lockheed and boeing, the biggest competitors in the aerospace industry.gg they protested nasa, sued the department of defense. so, this is someone who is breaking some eggs on the way to space and that is just sort of

how he reacts. if he feels like he has been wronged, he will fight back and it doesn't always suit him or helpus him because he comes acrs as brash and may be unreliable and can anger potential customers. for some people in the government, it makes him uncomfortable to work with. but in the end he typically does deliver and it really was his protest of the nasa contract in 2004 that ultimately would save the company. this was a contract nasa had awarded to a company called kistler to develop the transportation system to bring car go to the international space station. he thought that wasn't fair. he said you shouldn't broadcast our most important customer. this isn't right. we've got to do it and he ended

up being right because that protest basically forced them to withdraw, hold and open competition that was the commercial cargo, spacecraft and led to commercial crew. it was one of those contracts that they got at the end of 2008 that saved the company from bankruptcy. so you take the good and the bad. he will fight when he thinks that he's on the right, has a right on his side, he will fight you. >> i know when i was doing the book i even knew i couldn't be like this is the one, this is the one. i forget the term it was but the rocket just crumbling. whenos you hear the stories and

think -- >> they probably felt that way. it is interesting. the book is framed around the four launches, the falcon one. i o think each of the failures e interesting because they tell you something about the company and the people who worked there and he made some mistakes after the firstad launch when in fact they left the vehicle exposed. that was in retrospect a pretty obvious mistake, kind of a rookie mistake you might say. then the second vehicle they were aware of the potential problem with the second stage but to fix it would have required more time and they were running up against performance issues and the third one was

heartbreaking because they had tested the engine and haven't seen this bit of thrust that came on right at the end and it ultimately got them and there was lots of drama. before i started working on the project, i thought i wonder if there is a full book to be told and when i got into it it was fascinating because the people involvedau and sort of what they went through to get the rocket to orbit is a heck of a story. so, this group of people grew really close because they were

living sometimes on this tiny island the size of a couple of city blocks and they would cook steaks. one of the things i love as i find out later on when he left the company in 2015 on the last day of the cafeteria they made that recipe. thiske is your first book, righ? so what is it like now taking that 500 words to a new book like what was that process like? >> it was a lot of fun because i can say when they launched that

final falcon one rocket, people in houston will remember september of 2008 not for the falcon nine or space x but for hurricane ike. we saw it coming more than two weeks before it made landfall. so there were just days and days forecasting for theas chronicle tracking the storm every day, all day. then it made landfall in mid-september i and had a devastating storm surge. i was done, exhausted. it just wore me out. it was like september of 2008 was a complete blur. writing the book was a lot of fun because i knew a lot about space x from 2010 to the present day but i knew almost nothing about 2002 to 2008. so, for me it was kind of an

exploration to go back and find that out just like the reader what to do. so things that were new and interesting to me i figured would be new and interesting to other people. then otherer people who were familiar with the story i was able to talk with people who really had never talked like this before and sort of get their stories. so there's lots of details and stuff that has never been told before. >> ewhat do you think that was? >> first of all the engineers and the technicians who pull this off are incredibly proud of their achievement where you

would launch from california to the central pacific and dealing with the logistical challenges. so first of all, i think they felt they were proud of it in early 19 i think it is time to tell the story and send the green light that is okay to talk. did you just use right into it? >> when i came in 2015 they were huge proponents of the oxford. after having not used it for 15 years i had that beaten into my head so i was okay with that.

you know what was weird when i got the book with an extensive copy when i gott it back but all the numbers, like 50. i thought this isn't how it's a done. but i guess i don't know. i learned that. >> is there anything else you want to tell the readers are the people buying this book about all that went into it or everything you hope they get out of it? >> i would just say that it's a hell of a story. everything was on the line for elon musk and space x. it was really touch and go. there was an eight week period where it was a crisis every day and they just really pulled

together too make something special happen and it's super fun to tell the story. >> these are great stories. we have some questions and i'm just going to ask you one of the ones that i think is hilarious is because you had some behind the scenes access what is the funniest thing you've seen in someone's lab or desk? >> around 2011, he started talking about building this heavy rocket taking three falcon nine's and putting them together so there were 27 engines.

he had kind of a note on his desk sometime back in 2012 or 2013 like one of the early schematics and drawings of that and itit sort of was written retired before this happens. your favorite story from the book? >> boy, you know, i put in a a lot of stuff i did cut to some information about the first couple of launches of that it

tells how elon musk is always looking. his eyes are never really on the present. he's always looking in the future.. there's an anecdote that during the first launch of the falcon one he gets aggressive with the conductor. twenty minutessing before liftof asking him about ordering aluminum for the falcon which they ultimately got filled but it's like he never launched a rocket beforeck and this is cruh time and here he is the night before the launch in 2010 they had gone to the launch pad because there was this issue with the rockethe being damaged and it needed to be fixed before the attempt so they were driving back and he said to the hotel about four in the morning. his mind was just on the future. hehe wanted to talk about landig

thee falcon nine. he wanted to talk about reusing them. for them at the time it was a totally revolutionary booster. he was looking far beyond the next day to five or ten years down the future. that is a really interesting intro to the psyche. i know your parents are on the chat on this call because they said they were very proud of you. >> thanks, mom and dad. when i was a kid, this would have been like 1978 so i was young. i don't know if it was a project in class a or what but wrote to

nasa and i was interested and they sent me back this envelope withre these pictures taken by e voyagers of the planets solar system and they were beautiful eight by ten photos. that was just so cool and eye-opening. so it speaks to the power of nasa to draw people in. it worked for me. other companies mentionede blue origin and a lot of people want to know your answer to that.

>> most are vastly different and it is because it's a drawn from elon musk. hehe sets the tone with his demanding workplace and the phrase i use in the book is he wants to make the impossible possible. so he asks great things of people but then he gives them the freedom to go out and do that. and he moves really fast. that is in direct contrast including blue origin. they hired a ceo of a guy named bob smith. he was hired to come in as the company moved from this hobby shop development to flying missions in space and working with the department of defense and smith made blue origin more like a company closer to boeing

or nevada or lockheed martin. it's interesting there are some parallels in history in 2006, he hired his first ceo from a launch company and he was very much a s traditional ceo, kind f the adult in the room and lasted nine months because he didn't fith in with the culture. people were wearing shorts and t-shirts and flip-flops. he doesn't care. he's like get your job done. and as i say, he clashed and was gone pretty quickly.

>> i think the one thing about the spaceflight is that it can be a unifying experience at the outset it was a cold war type thing. it was the soviets in the united states and we were both trying to show the supremacy of the various forms of government but since the 19 '90s we worked with the soviets and the russians and so it has been a unifying adventure. working very closely for the decades obviouslyly some americs got in on the russian vehicles.

i would agree space would be a competition but also a way to bring usus together and with the united states and traditional partners but also russia and potentially china and that would be a pretty nice counterpoint to the divisions here on earth that we could come together to come together. great question. space x is going to play a role in getting humans back to the moon in the mid to late 2020s. my guess also would be that they would launch on the space x

rocket. nasa has been building this space launch system which back when i was covering this it was in competition with the falcon heavy. it launched in 2018 and we are still waiting for the rocket. now the competition is between sls and starship. it's very much an open question now whether it will reach orbit before sls and i think it has a pretty good chance. and that rocket is bigger, much cheaper, reusable, all the things the sls vehicle is not. if it is successful i could see that being the architecture for the moon. that is allll to be determined. the biden administration is looking at this. there's not even a new administrator in place, so we will see.

>> another question from croatia asking us who among us has the final say in approval [inaudible] or colonization? >> if they want to send people to mars, who gives permission for that? the fact of the matter is it would be the u.s. government. the faa would pretty much helicense the launch. the un would probably not have much say at all. they govern the transfer of the u.s. secrets and technology to others including space so that wouldn't really play a role. the second matter is licensing

the march will be a tricky endeavory and it's not for the geopolitical reasons although that could be a factor it would be more along the lines of is their life on mars underground that we don'tw know about or was there a past life and what is sending humans sort of interfere with whatever ecosystem there is. it's called planetary protection. and space x says he really doesn't care, like he doesn't think that it will disturb it and even if they do it's h microbes and humans need to be going out h into the cosmos and starting at mars what is the problem. but there are scientists and environmentalists that raised serious concerns about that.

how would they respond to a disaster with loss of life and how would the faa play out? >> it wouldn't be an issue so much with the faa but with the u.s. congress. that would be a terrible tragedy. it's's also something there areo guarantees with spaceflight whatsoever. there are some pretty good safety precautions with the

falcon nine rocket that has an excellent record in terms of getting to orbit. theas newest version has never failed after 70 attempts and if it does fail it has an escape system so if something went wrong there was no way for the crew to safely get back to t eah really. with dragon there is a system such that if something goes wrong within a fraction of a second, it is a powerful thruster that can push it away iso the loss of the probability is about one to 240 missions. so it's definitely not zero but the loss of crew was about to hundred 35 so theoretically lower than the space shuttle. that would be an extremely serious issue and raise questions about whether all of the promises in commercial space coming through. so there's a lot of effort

obviously being taken to protect against that for many reasons. i know people wouldn't be able to get over this as the time goes on and we don't want to take up too much time. asi had information last decembr about this. to be building a rocket ship every two weeks which is what they are doing down there launchingin them frequently.

we think the space community deserves better. you shouldn't wait ten or 15 years for a rocket to be developed. it should have been faster. they had an incredible forcing function on the industry. for china, japan was scrambling to catch up in terms of cost and reusability as well. >> can you repeat the first part of that question? >> the question is what can they teach the larger industry?

it seems to be encompassing [inaudible] >> i think the usability has been key. that is as we talk more and more about debris in space it's something that's been focused on in a lot of different fields so i think it is more an aspect pushed for an agenda being considered a pretty broadly. it's still not really affordable but i think that they are kind of pushing the boundary into

bringing more people in. but seven or eight missions i also think it's put the feasibility up there at a broader level. for a lot of these activities, things like tourists in orbit, space hotels doing interesting things with private space stations, none of that could happen until you have a lower cost reliable way to get people up there and $50 million or whatever they are charging to the commercial customers iss not cheap. the fact of the matter is that opportunity wasn't there.

you can get one up at a time and you can fly for people autonomously and it can stay up there for three or four months if you go somewhere to a space station. this is opening up opportunities that didn't exist and i frankly have been surprised by already the number of commercial tourism missions that have been announced. it's just that there are moree n the way and it will be down to sort of having this lower-cost system put in place. >> [inaudible] do you think that weewo would he

these other private launch companies in the o pipeline? they have shown other investors that there's money to be made in space so it makes it a lot easier if you are a start up company and you can say we are the next space x. we have a similar growth plan, this is our vision. we are going to revolutionize whatever so if you look since about 2010 so after the first falcon nine success, the amount of funding going into the private equity for the space companies has gone up a lot and space x has shown you can be successful with a commercial

vehicle. there are dozens of other companies trying to do the same thing some of which will succeed on the backs of space x. >> i appreciate everyone joining tonighthe. it's amazing what's happened and you have brought a lot for us. really also what you've done and i'm hoping everybody will appreciate this is like you said, some of these things were happening when other major things were happening but now you are bringing it back and telling us o the history and helping us kind of form the basefor how we go forward in the

meetings. we appreciate all of the reporting that you do and reporting on the o space industy here and in the greater houston area. eric is going to be back for the rest of the book and we will get to that. it's been a thrill tonight to meet both of you and talk with both of you. for the space city weather, we cannot live without and i'm so thrilled both of a you are here tonight and thank you for taking the time. sorry i couldn't answer all the questions but hopefully you will be able to get contact on social media and ask your questions. thank you so much the greatest

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>> secret service was founded in the aftermath but it wasn't until the death of john f. kennedy that the presidential protection service again to get closer attention from the american people. carol began reporting on the secret service for the "washington post" in 2012. she writes that she started her coverage on the scandal for which agents brought we talk about her in-depth the book in her new book is subtitled the rise and fall of the secret

service. the longest-serving flight director reflected on his life and career during his conversation at the 2021 tucson festival of books. he wrote shuttle houston life in the center seat of mission control. >> joining us today for the panel shuttle houston is paul dye with four decades of experience as an engineer, builder and retired in 2019 is the longest-serving flight director in history. and the leader of several missions. he received an outstanding leadership medal, three exceptional service metals and presidential medal. now a leadership consultant and