David Senra

That is what the book is about.

While the book is still in progress, I've been writing an introduction essay as a way to work through the central question.

Why did SpaceX succeed in ways no one else has been able to replicate?

And more importantly, is any of it learnable?

The practices that made SpaceX dominant aren't unique to rockets.

They're a blueprint for building anything hard.

That's the introduction to this introduction essay of this book.

So the introduction essay is called Atoms are Cheap, Process is Pricey, What SpaceX Teaches Us About Building Hard Things.

It is written by Max Olson, who is writing that book called SpaceX Foundation.

I've read this essay three times.

I think it's really good.

So I want to go through some of the main ideas with you.

And so the essay starts like this.

SpaceX has been remarkably open about how they operate.

They've been succeeding in public for more than 15 years now, and yet no one has replicated the results.

Competitors know their strategy.

The engineering philosophy gets explained in interviews, tweets, and factory tours.

Many of the ideas aren't even new.

Lockheed Skunk Works ran similar approaches 60 years ago.

Founder Kelly Johnson's 14 rules read like a SpaceX operations manual.