This is Eric Berger’s second book on SpaceX, the first being Liftoff. Liftoff was about the founding of SpaceX up to the successful launch of the Falcon 1. In this book, Berger covers the story of SpaceX up to the present.

The story covers a lot of ground. Falcon 1 was followed by Falcon 9, a much larger launch vehicle. Then came Falcon Heavy. Then came Dragon capsule. Then re-usable boosters, which at this point is the crown jewel of SpaceX accomplishments and, obviously, is the inspiration for the book’s title and cover.

Musk was very much the central character in Liftoff, but in these pages he is more in the background. Whereas in Liftoff he was the motor than made SpaceX run, here he sometimes seems to be getting in the way. He seems to lose his temper more often, so much so that ends up on the verge of firing his best people, and not so much because they made a blunder but because they said something that he didn’t like.

I respect what Musk has done, and you have to give him credit for doing it. But is he a boss that you’d want to work for?

For example, there’s an incident while SpaceXers are moving a booster cross-country via flatbed trailer. They have to detour into a small town and the trailer has to make a tight turn around a corner. Everyone is on their walkie-talkies, ready to inform the driver if the booster is in danger of brushing against the building. But since they’re inexperienced, it doesn’t occur to them that if they all shout a warning at once, the walkie talkie signals will interfere and cause squelch and the driver won’t hear anyone’s warning. And so the booster was damaged.

Musk accepts the mishap calmly (seemingly) but then one of the people at the scene makes a casual remark relating the incident to a similar incident while moving the Falcon 1 booster, and Musk goes ballistic when he learns about it and phones the supervisor, telling him to fire the guy. The supervisor is driving in his car at the time and the guy in question is sitting next to him. The supervisor hangs up and the guy asks him what Musk said. The supervisor says, “Nothing,” and doesn’t fire the guy, and Musk forgets about it.

The main problem with Musk’s management style is not so much that he fires people by whim but that he consistently drives them into quitting. Story after story in the book confirm that burn-out at SpaceX is a serious problem, and the main reason people stay on is not because of the money and status but because they believe Musk’s vision to colonize Mars, make humanity interplanetary, and ‘spread the light of consciousness throughout the universe.’

That latter goal sounds very poetic, but as many a philosopher has noted, “For happiness to be got, it has to be forgot.” We’re often happiest when we’re least self-aware, and while engineering work can be engrossing, burn-out makes us very conscious indeed — of pain.

If Musk can make Starship reusable, it will open up the solar system to exploration and colonization. No one else in the space business is even close, and most aren’t even focused on such a goal. Thus it seems that humanity has two modes: do-nothing or overwork. Work-life balance is not on the corporate agenda, which appears to be great for the bottom line (for now).

However, if we don’t have time for families, we aren’t going to have quality families, and human consciousness will extinguish because there won’t be human generations to perpetuate it.

I wonder if it’s possible to spread the light of consciousness throughout the universe on a forty-hour work week.