Aerospace Best Quotes

When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the first popular spin-offs of the aerospace program: the ballpoint pen. They were developed for comber navigators in the war because fountain pens would squirt all over your leather bomber jacket at altitude. (I have a cherished example of the next generation ballpoint, a pressurized Space Pen cleverly designed to work in weightlessness, given to me by Spider Robinson. At least, I cherish it when I can find it. It is also cleverly designed to seek out the lowest point of your desk, roll off, then find the lowest point on the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. That's because it is cylindrical and lacks a pocket clip to keep it from rolling. In space, I presume it would float out of your pocket and find a forgotten corner of your spacecraft to hide in. NASA spent $3 million developing it. Good job, guys. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.)

Dontchev was born in Bulgaria and emigrated to America as a young kid when his father, a mathematician, took a job at the University of Michigan. He got an undergraduate and graduate degree in aerospace engineering, which led to what he thought was his dream opportunity: an internship at Boeing. But he quickly became disenchanted and decided to visit a friend who was working at SpaceX. “I will never forget walking the floor that day,” he says. “All the young engineers working their asses off and wearing T-shirts and sporting tattoos and being really badass about getting things done. I thought, ‘These are my people.’ It was nothing like the buttoned-up deadly vibe at Boeing.” That summer, he made a presentation to a VP at Boeing about how SpaceX was enabling the younger engineers to innovate. “If Boeing doesn’t change,” he said, “you’re going to lose out on the top talent.” The VP replied that Boeing was not looking for disrupters. “Maybe we want the people who aren’t the best, but who will stick around longer.” Dontchev quit. At a conference in Utah, he went to a party thrown by SpaceX and, after a couple of drinks, worked up the nerve to corner Gwynne Shotwell. He pulled a crumpled résumé out of his pocket and showed her a picture of the satellite hardware he had worked on. “I can make things happen,” he told her. Shotwell was amused. “Anyone who is brave enough to come up to me with a crumpled-up résumé might be a good candidate,” she said. She invited him to SpaceX for interviews. He was scheduled to see Musk, who was still interviewing every engineer hired, at 3 p.m. As usual, Musk got backed up, and Dontchev was told he would have to come back another day. Instead, Dontchev sat outside Musk’s cubicle for five hours. When he finally got in to see Musk at 8 p.m., Dontchev took the opportunity to unload about how his gung-ho approach wasn’t valued at Boeing. When hiring or promoting, Musk made a point of prioritizing attitude over résumé skills. And his definition of a good attitude was a desire to work maniacally hard. Musk hired Dontchev on the spot.

If you can’t fit your house in an airplane, you could try putting it on one. That’s how NASA transported the Space Shuttles across the country using a specialized Boeing 747 which carried the Shuttle on its back. To carry the Space Shuttle orbiter, the carrier aircraft has a special mount that protrudes from the top of the fuselage. This mount fits into a socket in the belly of the Shuttle orbiter. Next to the mount is an instructional plaque, which features the single best joke in the history of the aerospace industry: ATTACH ORBITER HERE NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN

Not surprisingly, Musk offered Shotwell a promotion that fall. He had gone with a conventional hire for the company’s first president two years earlier, choosing the seasoned aerospace leader Jim Maser. That experiment had failed. Perhaps, Musk reasoned, the best person for the job already worked for him. So he asked Shotwell if she wanted to manage more than just business development and legal affairs. And in December of that year, she became president of SpaceX.

Next to the mount is an instructional plaque, which features the single best joke in the history of the aerospace industry: ATTACH ORBITER HERE NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN

To carry the Space Shuttle orbiter, the carrier aircraft has a special mount that protrudes from the top of the fuselage. This mount fits into a socket in the belly of the Shuttle orbiter. Next to the mount is an instructional plaque, which features the single best joke in the history of the aerospace industry: ATTACH ORBITER HERE NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN