SpaceX and Tesla chiefs on their way to series production > teslamag, de

Elon Musk would rather be a CEO than nothing — he’d rather spend more time “designing and engineering,” as he said recently, in a process that can only roughly translate as product development and implementation. But despite serving as several CEOs at Tesla and SpaceX, Musk also takes care of these aspects extensively at both companies. And on a long tour of SpaceX with the YouTuber rocket, the billionaire and entrepreneur has now revealed the five steps he’s taking.

Musk: bows and then fasts

The two-hour tour with Musk through SpaceX’s base in Boca Chica, Texas is worth watching anyway. Accompanied by YouTuber Timm Dodd, who watches the company’s every move as a daily astronaut, the CEO sometimes spoke about SpaceX, sometimes about Tesla and stated again that humanity only has a short time window to expand its formerly multiplanetar-bound Earth presence.

With the help of Tesla, he wants to raise the funds for thisMusk once said about it. The electric car company must be successful before it takes off to Mars, but SpaceX is also making money from satellite launches and transfers via the International Space Station. private face Starship’s new system for his space company Towards the end of the Starbase tour, the CEO (as well as the CTO) explained how he would approach development to chain production and beyond. Tesla produces much higher numbers, but SpaceX also wants to build rockets with as many engines as an assembly line. So the procedure should apply in one form or another to both companies – and may also be of interest to others.

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First, Musk assumes that requirements set for a new product are definitely “dumb.” You have to question them hard in any case, no matter who they belong to. Specific advice: the responsibility should lie with one person, and not with a department – otherwise the requirements that someone set years ago may persist and then forget.

The second principle of musk is omission. In general, there is a tendency to add more and more just to be on the safe side, but not all possibilities can be planned. Especially if you develop the first completely reusable rocket like SpaceX, you have to work with “narrow margins”, that is, take risks. Musk’s third step is to simplify and improve the remaining elements and processes. Repeat, you really have to ask if something should exist before you can improve it.

Wrong order on Tesla Model 3

The fourth step is about acceleration – what is required is just as certain for Musk as the stupidity of the first list of requirements. “You’re too slow, move faster!” The head of SpaceX and Tesla stated categorically. But here, too, he reminded you that this only makes sense if steps 1-3 have been followed beforehand. Because digging one’s grave faster and faster is of course not helpful.

The fifth and final step, according to Musk, is automation. By the way, he personally initially proceeded to the reverse order with the Tesla Model 3, he admitted. Specifically, he described the example of a battery pack, where an additional layer of insulation was initially provided, which wasn’t any circuit you really wanted when asked, but caused major problems in production. Instead of being resolved, it was eventually removed. Musk’s advice is also to delete if production is already running: it’s time to finish the ongoing tests of sub-processes, otherwise they can slow down the system as a whole.

Musk is on another mission

However, the fact that automation is only one of Musk’s five steps is misleading, as the bulk is waiting there. The production system requires 1,000 percent or even 10,000 percent more work than design (in this case it should be understood as construction, not as visual design), the SpaceX boss said with a view of the spacecraft. Most people don’t realize at all how hard production is, repeat point, who already mentioned him as CEO of Tesla. It is a mistake to think that design is difficult and that production is copied only en masse. Musk said he wanted to correct that — so it looks like he’s gone on another assignment.