closer attention from the american people. the reporter on the secret service for the washington post in 2012, in the prologue of her new book, zero fail, she writes that she started her coverage on the scandal in which agents brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms while making arrangements for president obama to visit in columbia. we talked about her in-depth book in her new book, subtitled rise and fall of secret service. >> this episode of note with, was sent back c-span.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcast. ♪♪ >> author eric the career of elon musk in the history of his rocket company, spacex in his new book, click off. the bookshop in houston posted this event. >> welcome, everyone. i am the owner of the bookshop

in houston, texas. we have people joining us from all over the country and beyond. i am thrilled to be here interview and icon of our staff, we are so thrilled that want to join us tonight so i'd like to interview our guest author and his conversational partner. senior space editor, spacex, nasa and everything beyond. the houston chronicle and as we know, we are so thrilled here tonight. in conversation with andrea, reporter for the houston chronicle's and being in space city, we have a lot to talk about when it comes to space. i'm going to turn over to eric

and andrea and have a wonderful conversation and i will come back on and help facilitate the questions and answer time. welcome, thank you for coming tonight. >> thank you, valerie. >> well, very exciting about your book. i loved how you started it off. right now obviously we have so much happening and texas with the star ship but it feels kind of like maybe cowboys days of the talking one so i'm curious why you decided to go with the book that way and the similarities between now and then. >> i want help readers understand why we should care about this dinky little rocket that they have put so much effort into launching 15 years ago. it's kind of ancient history sort of at the speed of which spacex moves but the reality is

they haven't been successful with the rocket and finally launched in 20088 successfully, they never would have gone into orbit, they never would have continued but the company wouldn't exist today and the other think that's important to understand is the way spacex is today, all the dna was established back. from 2002 -- 2008 when they started the company and went elon musk was hiring people he thought would help him succeed in this quest to build a rocket from scratch so the fact that they built was crazy starship and one day it may take people to mars, it's all down to what happened then and another parallel, they launched falcon one from the middle of nowhere in the central pacific ocean so if you live l.a. to hawaii and

then the same distance again find yourself -- are not saying south texas in the middle of nowhere but they do have a lot of freedom to operate in south texas but is not that much range and vacant kind of do what they need to move at the speed elon musk likes to move. >> there were such a small company and your book talks aboutng a handful of people working all these hours. i know they still work very hard but they are bigger companies, how can they afford to keep doing these designs, they test, fail, fix. how can they keep when got? >> they have their core business which is the falcon nine rocket, that's what they want humansnt n the third mission is coming up this spring so that rocket really can't afford to fail,

they've gone through the pains with that vehicle and its long successful seven, eight consecutive times and they want success with that. they want success with the dragon program but starship, they are not putting people on that anytime soon, they're not even putting cargo, they are not trying to get to orbit, they just testing out some of the systems and figure out the engines and controlst them if te last couple they have had challenges relighting the hundreds rightag before they wat to figure that out out so they built this to just turn out vehicle after vehicle are relatively low-cost and fly them and then they will learn from each mistake and move forward. >> when you talk to people, is if you like the early phase, when you read the book it feels like everyone was so excited hands-on building things, one

example where this guy his whole career was designing a not, hands-on interactive design, as i feel the same way? >> it's really interesting, the way elon musk started the company was he hired a couple senior vice presidents and they went out and hired kids in their 20s just out of school are still in graduate school in the best of the best, hungry, didn't have families to go home to, basically willing to kill themselves in terms of working hard for the company and if you go visit boca chica, it is the same energy, there is more, there's hundreds and set up dozens of engineers, the rocket is bigger but it is still just people in their 20s and engineers they are running around, scurrying around and they don't have, they don't where 50 hats like the people in

the falcon one days did but they are moving at no less of a speed and again that down to this drive elon musk has to push his teams forward as fast as they can go. >> i loved your book, your flipping through and i could just picture elon musk but that may not charge, i just loved that detail and i'm a survivor fan, they were working on the island so long so how many hours of interviews did it take to get these details into do you have a favorite one? e last month. >> it's hard to pick a favorite one. i spent a long time, probably 20 hours with yvonne in different settings and lots of time with other employees, each initially about a two hour interview they

would go back with questions and clarifications and get feedback from them and fell forward from there just to make sure because some would tell me a story and are cross check with someone else, what would you remember about this from a for you there? one is an incident from 2002, musk and engineers were flying to some companies to try to find someone to build the tanks and contain these and staying in a holiday one express one night and then they got up down to the breakfast bar and was the first time elon countered pop tarts because according to the people but company in the breakfast room from sort of looked at it and stared at it and was fascinated by it and proceeded to toasted and set up bring them

in berkeley, he put them in horizontally he haden to stick s hands in to pull them out and burned himself and said not nice words at the holiday inn express in 2002. another story i like was the president of the company now, she was hired on as vice president in 2002 and she was instrumental to the company's success in a number of levels but before she was in scotland at a space conference it was after midnight and she was sitting in the bathroom watching the laptop and she had prompted her to ask linked to the customers the third failure why the rocket failed so this was a super uplifting moment as she's watching this alone screaming in

the bathroom she told me before we launched, she writes scrolling down and puts it in her shoe so she's standing over scotland when they want rocket so i thought that was a nice touch. >> that is a nice touch. the big part of the book you hit on, they had a bunch of 20-year-old working really hard and this is a reason why it was successful and why are couple people left so i'm curious when you were talking to t elon musk, how does he describe this? other employees describe how you made them want to work so hard and it ultimately led to success and get rocket to get up but when you talk to him, did he see himself as driving that hard? >> he for sure understands what he does to people and he has an

expectation that people who come to work for him are going to work hard because they believe in whatever he's doing. the rare gift he gives them is the ability to make a difference because if you go to spacex, you can be someone who really does he rocket privately developed, you can build a spaceship that's going to go to mars and it's not like you're going down waiting for a government contract to come through or, if the program is going to be canceled because congress changed, he has a track record getting success done. as an engineer left, he told me look, i gave 15 best years of my life and it was a trade i was

willing to make for the opportunity so he realizes that but also expects, i don't want to say uses people up but he expects people to give their all. >> i feel like this is the same attitude toward regulators. early in the book you talk about had to head of nasa, he went head-to-head with a couple of other regulatory authorities so how does that fearlessness in the beginning help or can you talk about that? >> even before they launched their first rocket,un spacex sud boeing, the biggest competitors in u.s. airspace industry. they protested nasa the government, they sued the department of defense so this is someone who's breaking some eggs on the way to space and that is

just how he asked, if he feels like he's been wrong, he will fight back and it doesn't always suit him or help him because he comes across as brash he can anchor potential customers and for some people it makes him uncomfortable to work with but in the end, he typically does deliver and it really was a nasa contract in 2004 that ultimately would save the company. this was a contract nasa awarded to a company called kistler to begin the transportation system to bring carl to the international space station and elon thought that wasn't fair, he talked and said you shouldn't protest our most important customer, nasa, potentially.

he said no it's not right, we've got to do it he ended up being right because the protest basicallyy forced nasa to withdraw the award, hold an open competition, commercial cargo for dragon spacecraft and eventually it led to commercial crew and wass a contract for gt into thousand eight that saved the company from bankruptcy so you take the good and the back, he's a fighter and he will fight when he thinks he's on his side, he will fight you. >> i know when i was reading the book, i even knew before, this is the one, this is the one and then he kept having such terrible luck. the rocket probably, when you are hearing these stories, you're thinking he can't like

every rough cart they coulde have. >> they probably felt that way, i think. it is interesting. the book is ultimately framedd around these four watches, the three failures in the fourth was a success and i think each failure is interesting because they tell you something about the company from other people who work there and elon south makes mistakes after the first launch he blamed an engineer and technician when in b fact, they weren exposed to this environmt for too long, in retrospect, that was pretty obvious mistake, a rookie mistake, you might say that the second vehicle, they were w aware of the potential problem the second stage but to fix it would have required a long time andnd would, they were running up against performance and they needed to buy again and

the third one was just heartbreaking because they tested the engine, they hadn't seen this dress that came on right at the end of the burn and that's what got him and yes, there was lots of drama and before he started working on the project, i thought i wonder if there is a full book to be talked about and when i got into it, it was fascinating because the people involved in what they went through to get the rocket intoto orbit is a heck of a sto. >> then you weave in all the other stories nicely. i have to know, goulash, is it delicious? >> it's great, i highly recommend it. one of the characters in the book from turkey, this group of

people grew close because they were living, sometimes they would be on this tiny island, city blocks were no rocket was being assembled and they would cook steaks or whatever, is this recipe of turkish goulash it is one thing i loved about that as i found out later on when he left the company in 2015 on the last day the cafeteria space asked me that recipe, i thought that was so cool so they put the recipe in the book and he said sure, you can make it at home. >> when you are going through the process ofn interviewing and writingin this book, what was tt like? this was your first. >> yes. >> what was it like, you've been there forever but i'm taking 500 words 12 holbrook, was that process like? >> it was a lot of fun because i

can say i wasn't even aware of spacex when they launched falcon one rocket. people in houston who remember september 2008 for the falcon nine -- but for hurricane ike and what i remember about the storm was we saw itt coming more than two weeks before may amend full. there were days andla days forecasting for the side of tracking the storm every day all day and spent it made landfall mid-september and had a devastating stormnd surge and i was done, exhausted so it wore me out. september 2008 is a complete blur so writing a book was a lot of fun because i knew a lot about spacex from 2010 to present day but i knew almost

nothing about 2002 -- 2008 so for me it was exploration to go back and find that out just like a reader what so things are new and interesting to me i thought would be new and interesting to other people and then other people work familiar with the story but i was able to talk to people who had never talked like this before and get their stories, there's lots of detail and staff never been told before. there's a gun brought to the army base so. >> you talk about how eager they were, why do you think that was? >> first of all, the engineers and technicians who pulled this off are incredibly proud of their achievement i because it really was against all odds to

do with that little amount of money, that technology and be uprooted from where you thought you would want from california to central pacific dealing with logistical challenges of that so first of all, i think they felt they were proud of it and felt, when i approached elon in early 2019 basically said okay, i think it is time to tell the story and he's like, he basically sent a green lightll o people that it's okay to talk now. >> i have to ask, how did he feel about using the oxford, did into it works. >> when i came in 2015, they were huge proponents of the oxford.

having not used it for 15 years, i had it been into my head so i was okay with that. it was weird when i got the book with an extensive copy and i got a book, all the members, like 50, fispy instead of 50 and i was like this isn't how it done but i don't know, i learned that. >> is there anything else you want to tell the people find this book, all that went into it or anything they hope to get out ofof it? >> i would say a hell of a story, everything was on the line elon musk and spacex, they have had a profound impact on the space industry. it was reallyth touch and go, there were eight weeks betweenn the third and fourth flights where it was a crisis everyday

and they just really pulled together to make something special happen and it was super fun to tell that story. >> these are great stories. we have some questions and i'm just going to ask you, eric, one of the ones that i think is hilarious because you had some behind the scenes access, what is the funniest thing seen in somewhat blabber on their desk? >> there's a chief chair from his intern was kevin miller and around 2011, yvonne starting talking about heavy rocket, taking falcon ninth, 27 engines

and kevin miller on his desk, sometime back in 2012 or 13 had taken an early, he had written, retire before this happens, and engineering challenge but he is retired so that was funny. [laughter] another question from david, your favorite story you couldn't book. the >> i put in a lot of stuff that i thought -- i mean, everything i wanted to have in there about the falcon one was in the, i did cut some information about the falcon nine, the first couple of launches because i just wanted the book to be about falcon one so the last chapter i go there there was a large rupture for the falcon one and nine, it

really resonated tells how much, always looking, his eyes were never on the present, his eyes were on the future and there's an anecdote about the fact during the first launch of the falcon one, he gets aggressive with the watch conductor pressing him, 20 minutes before liftoff asking him about ordering aluminum for falcon five never ultimately got ... >> to the launch pad because there was an issue with the storm and the had been damaged and needed to be fixed. so they were driving back until about four inm the morning and elon was just his mind was onn

the future, like he wanted to talk about commanding the falcon nine and he wanted to talk about reusing them and it was just like,m to be him at the time, this huge record, falcon nine, told revolutionary mr. he was always just looking far beyond the next day to five or ten years down the future down the road is really interesting insight into his psyche. >> so we have a question. [inaudible]. i know on the chat are on this call because they said they were very proud. eric: thank you mom and dad. [laughter] and i would say that when i was a kid and this was like in 1970 or 1979. such as you, was road to nasa. and i guess it was in michigan

at the time and i'm interested in space. and they sent me back this envelope with pictures of like, taken by the voyagers. the planets in the solar system and theyut were beautiful like a by ten photos. with some press relief information about each that the voyager had discovered. i was like so cool so i opening. so i t think it speaks really to the power of nasa to really draw in people and like, it works for me. and i've had a lifelong interest in space ever since pretty. >> so the culture of space x, from other private companies and you mentioned their origin and. [inaudible]. and a lot of people want an answer to that pretty.

eric: so the culture of those two companies, is vastly different and itt is because it is drawn from musk, he sets the tone. it's extremely demanding and the phrasing is the book is that he was to make the impossible, possible. so he asks great from people but then he gives them the freedom to go out and do that in the moves really fast. and that is in direct contrast to a lot of the companies including origin. blue origin hundred ceo about three years ago, guy named bob smith, from aerospace the aerospace they just try to get him to come in as the company move from this hobby shop development company to actually operational company flying missions into space and nasa contracts and working with the department of defense reed smith is made the origin, a lot more

traditional aerospace company much more closer to going or others in space x. and it's interesting, the history and in 2006, elon musk hired his first ceo. a guy named jim mazer from lunch company partly owned by going. some traditional lunch company mazer was very much a traditional ceo so coming in front of the adults in the room, you go from start to a bigger company read and he lasted nine months predict he did not fit in with the culture. people on the former wearing shorts and flip-flops and elon doesn't care about. he just want to get your job done. in his essay, he and elon clashed. and it was gone pretty quickly.

>> space travel and. [inaudible]. and why isy that. eric: i think the one thing about spacelike is that it can be a very unifying experience in at the outset it was clearly cold war type thing. it was the soviets in the united states where will try to show the supremacy of our greatest forms of government. lessons 1990s, many early 1980s with the soviets in the russians in space and so it has been a unifying adventure. over the last decade is our relationship with russia has grown worse, nasa has gone ride-a-longg with the international space station and working with russia. closely. the last decade obviously coming americans but it is space on

russian vehicles. so i would agree that it could be aon competition but also his way to bring us together there's some hope that we do end up in a mission to mars, then it would be a global endeavor. it would be united states and traditional course and also russians and potentially even china. and that would be a pretty nice counterpoint to the traditions that we could all come together to do something greater and humanity which is to step foot on another world. >> that leads me to the next question. our u.s. astronauts returning to the moon on nasa or space x. eric: is a great question. space x will play a role in architecture one way or another getting humans back to the moon made it to the late 2020s. my guess would be that they

would want on space x rocket and nasa has been building this extensive apical called space launch which back when i was covering this seven or eight years ago, is in competition with the falcon, like which rocket would launch first predict and heavy launch in 2018 were still waiting for the and the rocket attract tesla market now the competition is between sls and much larger rocket in a very much open question now the starship will reach orbit before sls and i has a pretty good chance. and that rocket is bigger much cheaper and reusable and all the things the sls vehicle is not. so if starship is successful, can see that be the baseline printed that's going to be determined at the biden and ministration is looking at this and not even a new nasa administrator in place so we will seek.

>> i have a question from croatia item marla is asking us technical, who has the final say in approval, the faa, icr, you know, oh osa, or colonization. sue and so the question is, if elon space x once a settlement of people to mars, who gets permission for that. the fact of the matter is it would be the u.s. government. so the faa would probably launch or license the launch in the un would probably not have much say in all in that, and the other discovers the transfer of u.s. secrets and technology other countries so that r we really would a role. the fact of the matter is

licensing human launch to mars not really for geopolitical reasons though that could beol a factor. it would be more along the lines of his or her life and mars currently underground that we, don't know about, small microbes not martians but like life and to the ground. where was their past life and with sitting humans there sort of interfere with whatever merchant ecosystem there is. planetary protections is what that is called. space x has an elon musk, he really doesn't care. like, if life is underground, he doesn't think that people on this in the school district that even if they did he would say gorgeous microbes and humans need to be going out in the cosmos inserting on cars and with the problem. the real people and scientists said environmentalists who would

raise very serious concerns about that. tso think that ultimately, if space x is immersed with a window and had witha nasa which would help them addressm some of those issues like planetary protections. >> we have a question from somebody, dwight. [laughter] you both know him. how do you think space x when r responding to a disaster where there is lost life of the astronauts. and how would elon musk and faa play out w pretty. eric: i think the issues would not be with faa would be with nasa and u.s. congress which would it be deep in the knickers with a space x if were to happen printed that would be a terrible tragedy. and certainly something possible, there are no guarantees with human space points whatsoever. there are some pretty good

safety precautions with the falcon nine rocket which has an excellent record in terms of t getting to orbit and the newest version has never failed. after about 70 attempts. and it does fail unlike shuttle, is launch escape system so something went wrong in the space shuttle on a descent, and there was way for the group to safely get back to earth really. with dragon, there's launch escape system that if something goes wrong with the rocket within a fraction of a second, is pressures that could push it away so theoretically, the crew probabilities is about one and 240 missions. so it's not zero the space shuttle bus crew and about 135 so theoretically at least, is low in the space and that would be an extremely serious issue. i would raise all sorts of questions about commercial space and so there's a lot of effort

being taken didn't to protect against that for many reasons that being one of them. >> i a lot of questions here, i know people, as time goes on, ik want to take up too much of his time, so aaron is asking, what lessons if any should note larger aerospace industry take from space x. eric: henri and andrea to and for her thoughts asry well. in a conversation last december about this and we were talking about the fact that what they're doing now in south texas really is remarkable in terms of how fast the movie. is unprecedented to building two build a rocket ship every two weeks which is what they're doing every two weeks and wanting them frequently during this test t program. i said we figured it these

industries when and she just said, look, were not trying to show anybody up. but we think that the space committee deserves better. june wait ten or 15 years my rocket to be developed. should happen faster so there trying to show different and better way. so think their leading by example. and they have had an incredible function on the industry over the last decade. following the u.s. but rocket groups in europe, china, japan, and were scrambling in terms of cost and feasibility as well. >> can you repeat the first part of this. >> the question is and i will get back to it here but what about space x what is a teach the larger aerospace industry.

the larger, no maybe just the rocket industry. this question seems to be the larger space. andrea: i thank you so the ability and that's really what brought down cost and will talk more and more about debris in space. being able to reuse something instead of just living it up there. as you something that is been focused on in a lot of different fields so i think that reusability is more than space x has push and being considered pretty broadly. also, at the start of this year, multiple announcements of human spaceflight missions involve nasa but everybody knows about the space x rocket and starship and watching people. so i also think that is obviously still not really affordable or attainable to mosr of us must 11 ticket.

i also think there pushing the boundaries to bring poor people into space. we not seen this from a long time ago. maybe seven people or something like that i also think that space is this agenda forward but it will be a while to bring down the cost definitely put reusability in a broader level. eric: andrea raises a very good point that for a lot of these entities things like tourists in orbit in space hotels and doing things with private space stations. love that can happen until you have at a lower way to get people up there. $50 million or whatever space x is charging for, commercial customers is not cheap. but with the space shuttle that

opportunity was not there. you can get one tour at a time, on dragon you can like for people up they can stay up there for three or four months predict if a customer to space station. this is opening up opportunitied that did not exist i frankly have been surprised already the number of commercial tourism missions that have been announced and suggest me that there are more on the way and again, that is all down to sort having this lower-cost system in place. >> one more question there's just somebody and i don't know which to choose from. i think it will go back up to this - i don't think the masses predict okay no we have not ask this question. without space x, do youou thinke

would've had these other launch companies. in five-point because space x launched in the early 2000 pretty. eric: so yes, one of the first thing to space x has done for the industry, is they have shown other investments in investors but life in space and it makes a lot easier than if you're a startup company and you can sort of say hey, were the next space x because of xy and z. a similar growth plan, this is our vision, access to space and were going to revolutionize whatever. and so if you look since like about 2010, the first falcon success and the first falcon nine success, the amount of funding going into an equity or space companies, is gone up a lot. space x has shown in terms of just want companies, name shown

to be successful with a commercial vehicle predict the rocket lab has followed and literally dozens of other coming trying to doth the same thing. many will fail but some will succeed. and in the backs of space x. >> i really appreciate everyone's questions and also andrea and eric and in the background or coordinator. [inaudible]. in 1969 when it the first one landed on the moon pretty. >> team is just amazing what is happening and eric you have brought it to life for us. emily also when hoping that everybody will appreciate his like you said, some of these erthings were happening when otr major things were happening. and now you're bringing it back in history of it and hoping is

kind of form a base for how to go forward enough meetings and andrea we really appreciate all of the work that you do. reporting on the space industry, that means so much was here printed and eric it, is going to be back and the rest of his book so he does, 19 just one oh partf the story. oh my gosh, is been such a thrill to meet both of you in a talk with both of you. and eric, press rather, we can't live without this. and, i'm just so thrilled with the both of you were here tonight and i think you for taking the time to talk to all of the people and have enjoyed answering all of these questions. and hopefully you'll be able to contact them onon social media d ask questions. so yes, you are a rock star and

i believe that predict andea enr you thank you so much and eric thank you so much we appreciated it from our blue willow bookshop. thank you predict. >> tonight in book tv, technology and e-commerce, we start with the author of a biography of amazon founder. and then center josh on his book, the tyranny of big tech and also conversation on the winners and losers from e-commerce with the author of the book, fulfillment. otb is tonight starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern on "c-span2" the longest serving nassau flying to director reflect on his life and career during this conversation of the 2021, tucson festival of books. wrote several houston life in the center seat of mission control. >> twenty is for today is paul, and for decades of aviation