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Book Review: When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance

Success almost always follows the same pattern: Enjoy your work, be curious, work hard, learn a lot, don’t be satisfied with “okay” or “good”, have an internal drive to perfectionism and to produce great work.

Both founders and employees of rocket startups become consumed by their job. Peter Beck, founder of Rocket Lab, seemed to be exceptionally obsessed. He came in at 7am, and didn’t leave before 10pm, sometimes staying until past midnight. His work ethic was a role model for his employees. The founder outworked everyone.

“…we’d be working on a problem, and he would go home at night and make something in his home workshop and prove the theory wrong or right.”

Will Marshall, co-founder of Planet Labs, is exceptionally rigorous in all aspects of his life. He made spreadsheets for everything. When he discussed philosophical ideas about space with his house-mates, he made a spreadsheet where he kept track of the ideas and ranked them according to their originality. Similarly, he made a spreadsheet for evaluating the problems to work on (this inspired me to make my own open-source spreadsheet, where I list all kinds of problems in the world that you could work on):

“…Marshall developed a spreadsheet system for quantifying various aspects of his life, which his friends called the Marshall Matrix. The prime motivation for the spreadsheets came from Marshall’s desire to analyze which of his actions would have the most impact on the world and the betterment of all people. He literally wrote an algorithm designed to result in a meaningful life. As he described it, ’”Basically, you list your goals. You list each project and say, ‘How does this project help goal number one, how does it help goal number two?’Then ’What’s your probability of success? How much money and time will it take?’ You divide by that factor, then you multiply by a series of other factors. “I tried to factor in things that you usually miss, like your abilities as compared to other people or, say, difference in participation. Like, is someone else going to do this anyway even if you don’t? If so, you should reduce the weight of that project. There were other things like your level of interest or how much work something would be.” (p. 79)

People working in space companies are space addicts. They talk about space nonstop, not just at work:

“…but at night they pondered those questions with friends at the Rainbow Mansion. Marshall, being Marshall, tried to add some rigor to the pondering by creating a spreadsheet that collected and ranked people’s ideas.” (p.97)

“As on most days, they talked about aerospace nonstop – not really because they were in the midst of trying to launch a rocket but because they were aerospace obsessives.” j^ —

When we have a business idea, a common doubt ruins the mood: “Big corp X has way more money, talent, and experience. Why shouldn’t it build innovative product Y? I could never compete against the big guys with infinite resources.”

Most big corps become lethargic. Over time, layers of bureaucratic processes stack up, until it becomes impossible to move fast and innovate. Only when a new technology threatens their core business model, big corps begin to move. And at that point, it is often too late.

Apparently, lethargy does not stop at what we think of technologically advanced organizations like NASA. NASA, despite being full of incredibly smart engineers, stacked up layers of bureacratic processes that made them loose their capability to innovate. Innovations in the New Space industry are developed by startups like SpaceX, Planet Labs, Rocket Lab, Astra, and Firefly – not by NASA.

“NASA was meant to be so many steps beyond anything else, and it just wasn’t. People were complaining that they didn’t have decent computers.”

“The problem was, however, that the cutting edge didn’t seem to exist. Whether at a company or even NASA, everyone did things the same old way, and these people doing things the same old way didn’t seem to have much passion. No one really appeared to have new ideas or want to advance aerospace technology.”

“Beck felt more and more convinced that the aerospace industry had become complacent and fearful as the decades had passed.A small team with limited resources could accomplish an awful lot if it just thought about problems in inventive ways.”

Peter Beck, the founder of New Zealand’s rocket startup Rocket Lab:

“Beck enjoyed his job so much that Fisher & Paykel could not keep him out of the building. He’d clock in early in the morning and often not leave unil 3:00 a.m.”

“Ever the engineer, he broke down what he needed to do next into a series of steps: Start a company. Raise some money. Build something small first. Gain confidence. Then build something bigger. Raise more money. Just having a plan erased Beck’s anguish and pumped him to the brim with enthusiuasm.” (When the Heavens went on Sale, p.176)

“Looking to perfect his rocket engine technology, Beck read the classics of the field, like Rocket Propulsion Elements by George P. Sutton and Oscar Biblarz. He also mined the internet for scientific papers and took advantage of NASA’s rather generous archives of technical documentation and manuals. The more he read and the more he experimented with the propellants, the more comfortable Beck became with the idea of making something real.” (When the Heavens went on Sale, p.162)

“Like a man posessed, Beck began building his first rocket. The project required that he once again experiment with propellants. This time around it was not so much about refining the chemicals as finding the right recipe of explosives to combine. Knowing almost nothing about chemistry, he read books on the subject and sought advice from anyone who could help, including scientists working down the hallway.” (When the Heavens went on Sale, p.181)

“But with Pete [Peter Beck], we’d be working on a problem, and he would go home at night and make something in his home workshop and prove the theory wrong or right.”

[Peter Beck:] “I’ve since learned that I should times everything by pi. The amount of time and cost is usually about 3.14 times what you think it will be.”

Rockets are not supercomplicated. If it looks complicated, it’s because you haven’t broken it down into enough chunks yet. The key to building a rocket is breaking it into tiny little chunks (p. 313)

There is so much BS in the space. Hundreds of space companies. Yet most of them are scam. Space is a business that looses money 99% of the time. Max Polyakov bought a pre-existing (!) rocket startup and burned $150M cash in order to make the first flight attempt (it was semi-successful). For most investors, space is a hobby, a passion project, rather than a serious business.

„That said, there are fifty-six companies saying they’re going to build small rockets right now. I know most of them. I would say Stealth Space is the most legit in the US.“ (p. 293)

After seeing SpaceX engineers in T-shirts, working hands-on on the rocket:

“At some point, it just clicked to me that, man, there’s a whole world about pretending that you’re doing things, and then there’s a world about really doing things.”

I often feel the same. I think most people do. At some point, everyone doubts the purpose of their daily job. Especially large corporations create lots of “Bullshit Jobs”.

If you work on Space, you must be a dreamer. Rationality kills you. Max Polyakov, the investor of Firefly, said to his employees:

“If things are not going well at the company, and you’re becoming too rational, you can email me.”

I find that very interesting. That is very American. Space has the ultimate American spirit. Americans have dreams, we have doubts. Richard David Precht said something in those lines in a recent podcast:

“Jemand der etwas erreichen will, sucht sich Ziele und jemand der etwas verhindern will, sucht sich Gründe. […] Jemand der für etwas ist, macht sich angreifbar. Jemand der gegen etwas ist nicht.” (Lanz & Precht Podcast, Episode #100)

All rocket startups have a similar goal, yet approach that goal with a different culture.