19. Mr. Musk Goes to Washington

In Chap­ter 19 titled “Mr. Musk Goes to Wash­ing­ton,” the nar­ra­tive focus­es on Elon Musk’s rela­tion­ship with Gwynne Shotwell, the even­tu­al Pres­i­dent of SpaceX, and their efforts to estab­lish SpaceX as a lead­ing space explo­ration com­pa­ny. Shotwell, known for her direct­ness and con­fi­dence, had been with SpaceX since 2002, stand­ing out as one of Musk’s few suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­al part­ner­ships due to her abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly with him with­out caus­ing offense. Her back­ground is high­light­ed, from her inspi­ra­tion to pur­sue engi­neer­ing after attend­ing a pan­el of the Soci­ety of Women Engi­neers, through her roles at IBM, Chrysler, and Micro­cosm Inc., lead­ing to her meet­ing with Musk and sub­se­quent­ly join­ing SpaceX.

Shotwell’s suc­cess in man­ag­ing Musk’s unique per­son­al­i­ty, part­ly attrib­uted to her per­son­al expe­ri­ence with her hus­band’s Asperg­er’s syn­drome, allowed her to nav­i­gate Musk’s blunt com­mu­ni­ca­tion style and focus on the com­pa­ny’s mis­sion with­out dis­cour­ag­ing team dynam­ics. Her engi­neer­ing back­ground facil­i­tat­ed a mutu­al under­stand­ing and respect between her and Musk, enabling effec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Their efforts to pro­mote SpaceX includ­ed a sig­nif­i­cant trip to Wash­ing­ton in 2003 to secure a con­tract from the Defense Depart­ment for the launch of tac­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions satel­lites (Tac­Sat). Despite an unex­pect­ed mishap where Musk broke his tooth before their Pen­ta­gon meet­ing, their mis­sion proved suc­cess­ful, mark­ing SpaceX’s first major con­tract at $3.5 mil­lion. Fur­ther­more, their ini­tia­tive to boost pub­lic aware­ness of SpaceX cul­mi­nat­ed in Decem­ber 2003 with a pub­lic dis­play of the Fal­con 1 rock­et in Wash­ing­ton, impress­ing NASA’s offi­cials and con­tribut­ing to a piv­otal meet­ing with the agency. Despite ini­tial frus­tra­tion with NASA’s con­tract­ing prac­tices, Musk’s bold deci­sion to sue the agency over a con­tract award­ed to Kistler Aero­space ulti­mate­ly result­ed in SpaceX win­ning a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the con­tract after com­pet­i­tive bid­ding was man­dat­ed.

Shotwell’s influ­ence and strate­gic han­dling of Musk’s per­son­al­i­ty, com­bined with a strate­gic approach to nav­i­gat­ing the space indus­try’s polit­i­cal and com­pet­i­tive land­scape, laid the foun­da­tion for SpaceX’s suc­cess. The chap­ter con­cludes by high­light­ing the shift towards fixed-price con­tracts in the space indus­try, a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture from the tra­di­tion­al cost-plus con­tracts, under­scor­ing the impact of SpaceX’s legal vic­to­ry and its broad­er impli­ca­tions for the Amer­i­can space pro­gram.