it thanks a lot. it's 3:00 a.m. in london and he deserves a rest and i'm on the west coast were at 7:00. good to see you again and thanks everyone. >> thank you. it's been fun. >> welcome everyone. my namee is valerie koehler i'm the owner of a bookshop in houston texas.

people are joining us from all over the country. i'm thrilled to be here to introduce a icon of our staff and we are thrilled that they will be joining us tonight. i would like you to meet our guest author and his conversational hardener. eric berger is the space editor for spacex, naafa. eric is a former reporter and as we know we are so thrilled that he is here tonight. inon conversation is andrea reporter for "the houston chronicle" and being in a big city here we have a lot to talk about. i'm going to turn this over to eric and andrea. have a wonderful conversation

and i welcome back on for the question-and-answer period. welcome eric, welcome andrea and thank you for coming tonight. >> thanks valerie. >> eric it's very exciting about your book but i love how you started it off. right now i'm in texas and its you were like the cowboy days of the falcon one ftt i'm curious y you decided to write the book that way and what similarities you see between what's happening now back then. >> i wanted to help readers to understand why we should care about the spacex system the fonz 15 years ago. kind of ancient history sort of at the speed of which spacex moves but the reality is if they hadn't been successful at the

rocketed they finally launched in 2008 successfully it would have never gotten into orbit and it wouldn't exist today. the other thing that's important to understand the way spacex is today established back in this tempestuous period when they started the company and elon musk was hiring the people he thought would help them succeed in his? to build a rocket from scratch. so you know the fact that he's in boca chico building this crazy starship it would take people to mars is all down to what happened then and it's interesting, they launched in 2001 from the middle of nowhere basically in the central pacific ocean so he flies from l.a. to why a and flies the same distance again and i'm not

saying south texas is in the middle of nowhere but they do have a lot of freedom to operate in south texas like they had in quarterly and where they can do what they need to do and move it this video that elon musk likes to. move. >> yeah but they were such a small company in your book talks about people working out these hours and i know they still work very hard. they are bigger companies. how can they afford to keep doing thesese kind of iterative designs were they pass a test and fail and fix and test and fail and fix? how can they keep doing that? >> buthey have they are core business which is the talk and nine rocket and that is what they are launching humans on the third screw mission is coming up in the spring and so that rocket, they have gone through their teething pain and now it's

flown successful about seven student consecutive times. they want to have success with the dragon program but stargel they are putting people in that anytime soon. they are trying to get it to work. they are just testing it out and they want to figure out the engines and control them. they want to figure out that out andot so they built this factory in south texas to churn out vehicle after vehicle at a reluctantly low cost and fly them and they will learn from each mistake and move forward. >> have you talked to people in the early days when they were exploring and when you read the book it feels like it's hands-on building things and not one example where this guy's whole career was that.

they are doing this hands-on iterative design. >> it's really interesting the way he elon musk started the company was he hired her couple of senior vice presidents who had senior -- seniority in the field. they hired kids in their 20s just out of graduate school and they were aerospace engineers who were hungry. they would basically be willing to kill themselves in terms of working hard for the company and if you go downve and visit boca chico is the same kind of energy. there are more people, there are hundreds instead of dozens and the facilities are much bigger and the rockets are much bigger but it's still just people in their 20s. they are running around and screwing around and they don't wear 50 hats like the people in

the base once did. it is no less of a speed and that's the drive that elon musk has just push them forward as fast as they can go. >> i love the details in your book. different things stand out to you. i can just here he elon musk and i love that detail and they were outflanked in t out launched because they were working on the island so long. how many hours does it take and do you have a favorite one? >> i spent a long time, probably 20 hours at the line and just a setting and then each employer did a two-hour -- with questions and clarifications to get feedback from them and go

forward from there. just to make sure because someone would tell me a story and i crosscheck it was someone else and i'd say what you remember about this? garamendi fun anecdotes. this one is this incident from 2002 where musk and some of the engineers were flying to try to find someone to build heli-tankers two contained these -- and stayed at a holiday inn express one night and they got up and went down to the breakfast bar and i guess it was the first time in line heading countered pop tarts because according to the company in the breakfast room he like looked at it and stared at it and was fascinatededt by it and precedo toast it instead of putting them in vertically so they would pop

up he put the man horizontally and he had to stick his hands and to pull them out and he burned himself and said some nice -- not nice words at a holiday inn in wisconsin back in 2002.or another story i heard about was one shot while who's the president of the company now hired on as vice president of sales in 2002 and she was insurmountable to the company's success on number of levels but in flight for she was in scotland at the space conference andd she was, it was after midnight. she was w sitting in the bathrom watching on a laptop and she had gone there to actually explain to customers the third failure and why the rocket had failed so this was the super uplifting moment as she's watching this screaming in the bathroom.

she told me now before we launched she writes -- and puts in it in her shoes as she standing over scotland when the rocket blew up. i thought i was a nice touch. >> it is a nice touch. they had a bunch of 20-year-olds who worked very hard and it's a reason why it's so successful. you are talking to elon musk. how would you describe him? all the other employers describe him on how he made them work real hard. when you talk to elon musk does he see himself that way? >> yeah, for sure he 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 that whatever he is doing and the rare gift that he gives them is the ability to really make a difference because you can be someone who really does fly the first rocket privately. you can build a spaceship that's going to go to mars. it's not like you were going there and waiting forre governmt contract to come through or -- the program is going to be canceled because congress changed it. he has a track record of getting things done so is one of the engineers who left said, look i gave 15 years, the best years of my life and it was the trade i was going to make for thehe opportunity.

so he realizes that but he also expects it. i don't want to say he uses people but i mean he expects people to give their all. >> yeah and early on in the book you talk about that he went head-to-head with nasa and a couple of other authorities so how did that fearlessness in the beginning help?ut >> before they launched their first rocket spacex had sued northrop-grumman and lockheed and boeing and the u.s. aerospace industry. they protested nasasp and the government at their own expense. this is someone who is breaking some eggs on the way to space and that is just how he acts.

if he feels like he has been wronged you will fight back and it doesn't always help him because he comes across as brash and angers potential customers and for some people it makes among comfortable to work with but in the end he kept -- typically does deliver and this protest of the nasa contract in 2004 that ultimately would -- the company. this was a contract called kistler that began to develop this transportation system to the international space station. he talked to glenn and he said no this is not right we have got to do it and they ended up doing

right because that protest basically forced nasa to withdraw the award was told the competition and then eventually led to a commercial crew and it was one of those contracts if they got in 2008 that saved the company from bankruptcy. you take the good and the bad with the line. he's a fighter and he will fight if he thinks he has right on his side he will fight you. >> when i was in the book and i was like okay this is the one, this is the one. i forget the term it was. when you are hearing these stories and begin oh my god they

could have. >> i think they probably felt that way. it is interesting, i mean the book is framed around the four launches. the three failures and the moments of success. each of the failures are really interesting because they tell you something about the company and the people who worked there and elon himself who make mistakes. they had been exposed in this tropical garment for t so long d in retrospect it was obviously kind of a rookie mistake you might say and then the second vehicle they were aware of the potential problemhe with the second stage but that fix would have required a lot of time and they were running up against performance limits and they needed to try again in the third issue was heartbreaking because

they had tested the engine a newer merlin engine and it had this bit of rest they came out at the end of the burn and that's when i got them and yeah there was lots of drama and it i thought,oj wonder fares away to beat told about the stoppelman when i got into it is just fascinating to get the people involved in it and what they went through to get that rocket to orbit is a heck of a story. i haveng to know the turkey goulash come visit delicious? >> i would highly recommend it to someone in the book is from turkey and so this group of people were living on the tiny

island where the rocket was being assembled and they would cook. they would cook steaks or whatever and they resist turkish goulash in one of the things i love to tout that i found out later on when he left the company in 2015 on the last day in the cafeteria he made that recipe and i thought that was so cool. i asked i could make a reference in the book any said yeah shared. >> when you went through the process of interviewing writing this book what was that like? whatst was it like taking not 50 words and -- >> honestly was a lot of fun andrea because i can say that i

wasn't even aware of spacex when they launched in the falcon ix rocket. people in houston will remember september of 2008 not for falcon ix but for hurricane ike and what i remember about that storm as we saw it coming more than two weeks before it made landfall. they were just days and days and i would do forecasting and i was tracking that storm every day, made landfall in mid-september and it had this devastating storm surge andat ty were like, i was done i was exhausted. and it just wore me out. september 2008 is a complete alert. writing the book was a lot of fun because i knew a lot about spacex from 2010 to the present day but i knew almost nothing about 2002 to 2008. for me it was really kind of an

inspiration to go back and find that out just like a reader would soak things that were new and interesting to me i figure would be new and interesting to other people. and a lot of people who were familiar with the story, i was able to talk to people who had never talked like this before. and gett their story on the detail and stuff that had never been told before. one thing that's never been with reported an intern came to the army base in quadra lien. >> and you talk about how easy was to tell the story in the early years. why was that? was that? >> the engineers and technicians who pulled this off are incredibly proud of their achievements because it really was against all odds. the amount of money the

brand-new technology andy being operated from where you thought you would launch in california to the central civic and although physical challenges that. firstt of all i think they felt it was time to tell the story and elon when i approached him in early 2019 basically said okay i need time to tell the story but he basically said the green light to people that was okay to talk now. >> in they have to ask how did you feel about using the oxford? spirit after having not use the oxford, for years i had it beat into my head and i was used to

it. one i got the book back all the numbers like 50 were spelled out instead of 50. this isn't how it's done but i learned that. >> is there anything else you want to tell the readers of the person buyingo this look or is t everything you hope they get out of that? >> i would say it's a of a story. it's like everything was on the line for elon musk and for spacex and they had a profound impact on space. it was really touch and go. there is in a week period where there was a crisis every day and theyy just really pulled togethr

to make something special happened and it was really fun to tell s that story. >> guizar great, great stories. we have some questions and i'm just going to ask you, eric one of the ones that i think that is glaring that has a lott' of life is because you had the behind-the-scenes access what's the funniest thing you've seen in someone's lap or on their desk? >> kevin millar at spacex around 2011 elon started talking about the falcon that was taking. falcon nines and had 27 engines and kevin millar sometime back

in 2012ac or 2013 was taking one of the early schematic drawings of that and have written on their retiring before this happens. but he didn't retire so was funny. >> so question from david. your favorite story from the book? >> boy, you know i've put in a lot of stuff and everything i wanted to have in their was in there. i did cut some information about the falcon ix and the first few launches of that because i really wanted to vote to be about 2001 so the last chapter i did. the lunch truck your are the falcon ix told me a funny story which really resonated.

tells how musk, his eyes are never on anything but the future. there is an antic that in the book that during the first launch adopted one he gets very aggressive with the lunch conduct your canvas was 20 minutes before liftoff asking him about ordering aluminum for the falcon five. he had never launched a rocket before and this was crunch time and here he was and so on the night before the first falcon ix launch in 2010 he and bos had gone out to the launch pad because there was an issue with the storm in the rocket had been damaged and it needed to sog be fixed so they were driving back at about 4:00 in the morning. elon was just, his mind was on the future and he wanted to talk about landing the falcon ix.

he wanted to talk about reusing them and at the time this huge rocket docket nine with a huge booster and he was looking far beyond the next day five or 10 years down t the future which gives you insight into his psyche. >> with the question from greg. where did your love of rockets come from and i know your parents -- parents are on this call because they said they were very proud of you. >> thanks mom and dad. i would say when i was a kid and this would have been 1978 or 79 on the playground and i don't know if it was a project in class but we wrote to nasa and i guess it was johnson space space center in iowa lived in michigan

at the time.ce it was interested in space and learning more and they sent me back this envelope at these pictures taken by the voyager's of the planets in the solar system and that there were 8 x 10 photos with press to release information about each of the planets of thatad the voyagers discovered and that was just so cool. i think it speaks really to the power of nasa to really draw in people and it worked for me. i'd have a liking for astronomy and space ever since. >> does the culture of spacex differ from other product testie origin's and apply the people want to know your answer to that. >> the cultures of those two

companies is vastly different because it's drawn from musk and he sets the tone. m it's at extremely demanding workplace and he wants to make the impossible possible. so he gives them the freedom to do that. he moves really fast. he brought contracts to allow the companies includinge blue origin. blue origin -- jeff smith, jeff bezoss hired him for flying missions into space and winning nasa contracts and working with the department of defense and smithh had made blue origin a lt more of a traditional aerospace

company. there are parallels in history. in 2006 elon musk hired its first ceo a guy named jim mazer from a lunch company partly and boeing. a traditional lunch company and he was very much a traditional ceo coming in and developing a broom that you go through startups of yourhe company. andy. it he lasted nine months because he didn't fit in with the culture. people on the floor wearing shorts and t-shirts and flip-flops which elon doesn't care about. anything that gets the job done and he and elon clashed and he was gone pretty quickly. >> our world is deeply divided

today and space travel and stories inspire us. why is that? >> well i think the one thing about spaceflight is it can be a very unifying experience. at the outset it was a cold war type thing. it was the soviets in united states and we were trying to show the supremacy of our various forms ofma government. this was in the 1980s that we worked w with the soviets and te russians in space so we have been a unifying adventure critter last decade as a relationship with russia has grown worse nasa has gone right along tracking with all the international space station's with russia very closely. obviously americans got into space with russians. i agree that it can be a

competition but it's also a way of bringing together and there's some hope if we end up doing a human mission to mars there would be the united states and europe's traditional partners but also russia and china. that would be a pretty nice counterpoint if we could all come together a to do something greater. >> that leads us to the next question that michael asks are you more likely to return to their fund nasa or spacex? >> they are great question. and spacex is going to play a role in that architecture one way or another and getting humans back to the moon mid-to late 2020s. my guess would be that they would launch on a spacex

rocket. nasa has an expensive vehicle called -- which back when i was covering this several years ago there was a competition with the falcon heavy like which rocket would launch first and falcon heavy launched in 2010 we are still waiting for the other rocket for now the competition is between sli and starship. spacex has a much larger rocket and the question is whether starship will reach our bit -- orbit and i think starship has a pretty good chance. that rocket is bigger and much cheaper and usable all the things the ls vehicle is not. the starship is successful it can see it becoming the architecture. the biden administration is looking at this and there isn't even a new nasa administrator in place so we will see.

>> a question from croatia. >> who has the final say of approvalnt the faa, icr uh-oh essay or colonization? >> the question is, if elon spacex wants to take people to mars who gives permission for that and the fact of the matter is it would be the u.s. government. the faa would probably give the license to launch for the u.n. at publicly not have much say it all and that. i tried to discover the transfer of u.s. technology to other countries and that s really wouldn't play a role. the fact of the matter is licensing a human launch to mars is going to be a tricky endeavor

and it's not really for political reasons although that could be a factor. with the more along the lines of is there live on mars currentlyi underground d and we are talking about martians but real life on the ground and would sending humans there interfere with whatever martian ecosystem there is? it's called planetary protection and spacex, he really doesn't care. if life is underground he doesn't think that humans are going to serve it and he feels like they are just microbes and we are starting with mars. there are people and scientists and there are environmentalists who would have concerns about that. they think ultimately spacex

does go to mars it would go hand-in-hand with nasa which would help them address some of those issues like planetary production. >> we have. question from somebody you believe you know famous dwight. i think you both know him. how do you think spacex will respond with what was life like for the astronauts and how would the faa play out? >> i would not be an issue with the faa but it would be an issue with nasa and u.s. congress which would be deep in if that happened. that would be a b terrible tragy and there are no guarantees with human spaceflight whatsoever. there are some pretty good safety precautions with the

falcon ix rocket which has an excellent record. the newest version has never failed and that's after 70 attempts. if it does fail unless it's a space shuttle if something went wrong for the space shuttle there was no way for the crew to safely get back to earth. withth dragon there is a launch escape system such that if something goes wrong with the racket with -- rocco within a fraction of the second a powerful force can move it away. it's definitely not zero but space shuttle loss of crew was two and 135 so if he radically at least it's a good ratio but that would be an extremely serious issue and it's a question about whether the promises of commercial space really are coming through. there is a lot of effort

obviously being taken to protect against that for many reasons and that ain't one of them. >> i know people as the time goes on we don't want take up too much time. aaron is asking what should the larger aerospace industries stats take? >> i'm going to mention andrea and get her thoughts on this. i had an interesting conversation with glenn shotwell last summer calling about boca chico and how it's really d remarkable. it is unprecedented to be building a rocketship every two weeks which is what they are doing there and launching them frequently in a test program. iam said you know what you think the rest of the industry thinks

about this win and she just said look we are trying to show anybody up but we think space ?deserves better. you should wait 10 or 15 years harakah toea be developed. it should happen faster and they are trying to show a better and different way. so i think them leading by example and they have had an incredible force on the industry over the last decade. not only in the u.s. but rocket groups in europe, china japan are scrambling to catch up in terms of cost and usability as well. >> can repeat the first private question? >> the question is, it's what can spacex teach the largest aerospace industries and the

larger and not just the rocket listers butdu this question seed to be -- [inaudible] >> that is what is brought down the cost and we talked more and more about debris in space and justng leaving it up there. it's something that's been focused on a lot of different fields. i think usability is an aspect which is an important part of the agenda that's been considered broadly and also there've been concerns multiple announcements ofs human spaceflight missions that are involved with nasa but everyone around a spacex rocket or a spacex capsule. so i also think obviously it's not affordable to get one of those tickets but i have so think they are pushing the boundaries to bring more people

into the space. we saw that on the soyuz along time ago. i think it's something like that. isthey also think is driving ths agenda forward but it's going to be a while. it's deftly put feasibility at a broader level. >> andrzej raises a great point that for a lot of these activities things like tourists in orbit space hotels and doing interesting thing with private space stations. none of that could happen until you had lower cost reliable ways to get people up there. and $50 million as seed or whatever spacex is charging is not cheap but the fact of the matter is with the space shuttle that opportunity wasn't there. with soy used to think it went

to rest up for the time and i'm dragging you can find -- fly for people in autonomously. tithis is opening up opportunits that didn't exist and i frankly have been surprised by already the number of commercial tourism, commercial missions that have been m announced. there are more on the way and again that's all coming down to having a a lower-cost system. >> i'm going to ask one more question and there are so many that i don't know which toto choose from. i think i will go back. i don't think we have answered this. i know we haven't asked this. without spacex do you think we would have these other private

launch companies active in the pipeline because spacex launched theirs in early 2000's. >> one of the beneficial thingss that spacex has done to the industry as they have shown investors that things might be made in space so it takes it easier to start a company or pitch that if you can say hey we are the next spacex because of xyz. we have a similar web planted this is our vision and we are going to revolutionized whateve. if you look since 2010 and the first falcon one success of the first falcon ix success the amount of funding going into private equity for space companies have gone up a lot. and spacex has shown in terms of just launch companies they have shown you can be successful with a commercial vehicle.

rocket lab followed and there are dozens of other companies trying to do the same thing. many of which will fail on the backs of spacex. >> these havee been fed those questions andti i appreciate everyone joining in tonight. andrea eric and arafat i coordinator who is not too far from where i was. it's amazing what has happened and eric you have brought it to life for us. and really also what you done and i was hoping everyone would appreciate this is like you said of these things were happening and maybe we didn't pay close attention but now they are ringing c it back and helpig us form a base for how to move forward in our reading and

andrea we appreciate all the work that you do in reporting on the space industry and appearing in the t greater houston area. eric is going to keep at it so by the rest of his books people. all my gosh this has been such a thrill tonight to meet both of you had to talk to both of you and assisted in the morning with can't live without it and i'm just so thrilled that is if you are here and thank you for taking the time to talk to the people who asked questions. hopefully you'll be able to contact them onr social media afterwards. it says you're a rock star and i believe it andrea thank you so much and eric thank you so much.

i am from blue willow bookshop in houston, texas. snag joining us today is paul dye.