SpaceX’s Gwynne Shotwell says we’ll be on Mars within 10 years
Corner Office from Marketplace
Marketplace
4.8 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2018
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
SpaceX may be the face of the private space industry now, but it wasn’t always that way. In the 16 years since its founding, the company went from curious newcomer to leading the sector. And the reason? It’s made a business out of building and launching affordable, reusable rockets, attracting clients like NASA who use SpaceX rockets to get their devices into space. Elon Musk may be the company’s founder and CEO, but Gwynne Shotwell has been the company’s chief operating officer for over a decade and is the person running the company day to day. Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal took a tour with Shotwell of SpaceX’s flagship manufacturing facility, where they talked about the state of the commercial space industry, what it’s like to run a rocket company and the plan to put people on Mars within 10 years.
Editor’s note (Dec. 12, 2018): The headline has been updated.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Kai Rizdahl. Thanks for downloading this special episode of the corner office podcast. |
| 0:10.5 | This time around, we are going inside an actual rocket factory. We took a quick drive the other day out toward L.A.X, the airport, to the headquarters in the main factory of SpaceX, the most well-known private rocket |
| 0:21.2 | company in the world. |
| 0:22.9 | Elon Musk is, of course, the founder and CEO, but Gwen Shotwell, the company's chief |
| 0:27.3 | operating officer, is the one running things day to day. |
| 0:30.0 | And as you'll hear, as we walk through the main factory floor of a rocket factory, |
| 0:33.8 | let me say that again, things are plenty busy. |
| 0:35.8 | So here you go, Gwen Shotwell, the C-O-O of SpaceX. |
| 0:40.4 | We're expecting you. Won't you have a seat? |
| 0:42.9 | Ready to go to work? |
| 0:46.3 | Tell me what your day is. Seriously, what's your day like? |
| 0:49.9 | Okay, so I wake up and do email. |
| 0:54.0 | Yeah. Roll over doing email. What time you get out of bed in the morning? It depends. It varies anywhere between 5 and 545. All right. Then I walk. I do a walk. Like for exercise? It's for exercise. Yes. My husband is younger than I am, so I have to make sure. You got to keep up. Is that where we are? Yeah. |
| 1:12.1 | Okay, so this is the first time you've been in the factory, right? |
| 1:14.1 | No, I was here with Elon about six or seven years ago, maybe eight years ago. Okay. All right. Well, it looks a little different. Well, it does, because, I mean, just looking right up here, there's a flown capsule right there. That is the first. I was here before any of that happened. |
| 1:26.0 | Okay. |
| 1:26.4 | Right? |
| 1:26.7 | So this one is special then. |
| 1:28.1 | This is the first capsule that we flew, orbited, and re-entered. This is the first time a private company was ever able to do that. And so we have it hanging here on our ceiling. It's like our corporate teddy bear. It's a thing we look to. It's a little bit like the air in Space Museum, actually. |
| 1:44.5 | A little bit. |
| 1:46.0 | Let's slide down this way a little bit. |
| 1:52.9 | And I want to get back to your day, right? Because great, you do exercise and that's all really well and good. |
... |
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