Visiting SpaceX & Meeting Elon Musk [Munro Clip]
Why Hacker News recommends it
Used as a neutral outsider's first-hand account of SpaceX's fast engineering culture and Musk's hands-on role.
What it is
A clip of Sandy Munro, a veteran automotive engineer, describing his visit to a SpaceX Starship design review and meeting Elon Musk. He says he was struck by how deeply Musk is involved in engineering.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2021 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Cites sitkack · 2021-02 · on “How I started believing in Cycle Time over Estimation”
This aligned perfectly with the thread, [this video] I went on a tour of Blue Origin, I learned next to nothing. It looked like a the rich kids house that had a coleco and a neo geo. The picture they paint of spacex is one of being in continuous flow vs cautious pessimism.
Cites Geee · 2021-03 · on “Tesla's “full self driving” beta is potentially dangerous”
Sandy Munro was invited to SpaceX design review session, so he has some first-hand comments about that on this video (@6:17): [this video]
Cites nickik · 2021-03 · on “Tesla's “full self driving” beta is potentially dangerous”
Sandy Munro (former Chief Engineer at Ford and worked on lots of Aerospace projects) was invited to SpaceX design review session (@6:17): [this video]
Cites simondotau · 2021-05 · on “Elon Musk, master promoter”
Elon spends nearly as much time at SpaceX as he does Tesla. There's no question that Elon mucks in at the lowest levels of engineering at SpaceX. If you want evidence from a reasonably neutral observer, take Sandy Munro (himself an engineer who has worked on everything from cars to aeroplanes). He recently interviewed Elon, ostensibly about Tesla but the interview was in a meeting room at SpaceX. After the interview he was invited to a two hour design review meeting and was "blown away" at Elon's depth of involvement. [this video] (6:10 to 8:45)
Cites simondotau · 2021-06 · on ““It's a truck full of traffic lights””
Elon spends nearly as much time at SpaceX as he does Tesla. There's no question that Elon regularly mucks in at the lowest levels of engineering at SpaceX. If you want evidence from a reasonably neutral observer, take Sandy Munro (himself an engineer who has worked on everything from cars to aeroplanes). He recently interviewed Elon, ostensibly about Tesla but the interview was in a meeting room at SpaceX. After the interview he was invited to a two hour design review meeting and was "blown away" at Elon's depth of involvement. [this video] (6:10 to 8:45)
Cites Geee · 2021-06 · on ““It's a truck full of traffic lights””
He is very much involved at actual day-to-day engineering at SpaceX. He is the CEO and the chief engineer there. Sources: [LINK] [this video]
Cites tokipin · 2021-07 · on “SpaceX will soon fire up its Super Heavy booster for the first time”
Here's a video from someone who observed a design review for Starship[1]. From the sound of it, Elon is in the thick of it in the R&D engineering. [1] [this video]