
Recording of aerospace executive's speech leads to his resignation the next day - prostoalex
http://qz.com/641738/this-rocket-executive-pissed-off-everyone-in-space-and-lost-his-job-the-next-day/
======
fallingfrog
I'm actually sad that any hint of honesty is so quickly and severely punished
in the business world. This is why we get so used to hearing nothing but empty
platitudes and bald faced lies from business executives and government
officials alike. It does not make me hopeful.

~~~
cryptoz
He called one business partner a "rich girl", he called another one a "poor
girl" and seemed exasperated that his company has to keep buying gifts for its
"brides". He continued with ridiculous and derisive statements that insult
nearly everyone in the industry, especially key customers. This is not about
"honesty" \- it's about not being the most mean-spirited, bitter, vapid,
hateful VP you could imagine.

~~~
AndyNemmity
It is about honesty. This is the language that people use at the bar
discussing this stuff. This happens in all verticals, and all fields.

It just never gets recorded.

~~~
zepto
Honestly displaying misogyny seems like it should be discouraged.

~~~
AndyNemmity
I don't see the misogyny, and if I would have heard that at the bar I would
have clearly understood what his analogy was meaning.

I wouldn't have even noticed it. I'd never have used the terms he used, but I
don't have any real issue with the way it was framed.

I find it odd that would be the thing to pick out within the statements, but
perhaps I'm not as sensitive to the language as I should be?

Edit: I can't seem to reply to a level deep, so I will put some remarks here.

Re: over - In my view it was just an analogy, and had no deep insight into the
views of marriage. Just my impressions

Re: th0ma5 - Boys doesn't have any negative connotation, but I understand the
point you're making. I don't have much to add except that I didn't read it as
anything other than an analogy.

Re: zepto - I keep saying bar because that's often where you'll hear this sort
of language, but it isn't limited there. I respect your views that it isn't
appropriate, and again, I would never use that language to explain it.

But I don't take offense to it. Again, perhaps I should. I may not be as
enlightened as I should be.

~~~
th0ma5
No, it may be a common thing for _boys_ to not be sensitive to language, sure,
and all kinds of _boys_ in business will simply not see misogyny hardly at
all.

~~~
biot
If you flip the genders, is it misandry?

~~~
th0ma5
No

------
flatline
Too bad - as the article implies in several cases, this kind of stuff is all
common knowledge in government contracting. The USG has tried to revamp the
procurement processes repeatedly - and not without some success - but the
bottom line is that people in positions of power will often give money to
whomever they want to give it to, and by imposing more restrictions you just
force them to be more creative about how exactly they do this. The most common
form is careful phrasing about what exact capabilities are required, such that
only one contractor meets those criteria. There was a famous case a few years
ago[0] over the Interior Department's email systems in which the contract
required compatibility with Microsoft products - Google sued and ultimate won
the contract. Senators can blow their tops off all day about this guy's
statements but it won't change a thing about the opacity, nepotism, and
sometimes complete arbitrariness of the USG procurement process.

[0]
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487041411045755886...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704141104575588641430182832)

~~~
pyb
Common knowledge indeed, absolutely everybody inside the industry understand
that's just how things work. Perhaps this guy, after 30+ years in the
industry, just forgot that industry outsiders exist,and that they would be
quite surprised.

------
ufmace
What I found really baffling is that he apparently said all of these things to
an audience of college students at his alma mater. How could anybody make it
to a high-level position and be so clueless about what you can say to what
audience? This isn't like somebody snuck a recorded into a secret meeting,
this is a perfectly predictable consequence of discussing confidential
business details with random college students.

Especially when you're a C-level executive of a major corporation, there are
certain things you just don't ever discuss frankly other than behind closed
doors with a very select audience. Even if this hadn't been recorded, it would
have been felony stupid to say those things to that audience. The consequences
are entirely predictable and well-deserved.

~~~
roymurdock
I find it funny that he was basically bragging/venting about a lot of quasi-
illegal things in order to seem cool in front of some college kids. This kind
of stuff happens all the time between friends, but come on man, you don't need
them to validate whatever insecurities you have about not having a
cool/exciting job or whatever. You build rockets!

~~~
ufmace
The more I think about it, the more likely this explanation seems. Guy
definitely doesn't belong in an executive role if his desire to look cool in
front of a bunch of college kids trumps common sense about business
confidentiality.

------
Lazare
Definetly a gaffe by the Michael Kinsley definition: That is, when someone
accidentally tells the truth. :)

Most of what he said (and especially the stuff that people were angry about)
is, in fact, common knowledge. ULA can't compete on price, the trade
restrictions on Russian engines are politically motivated, most of the funding
decisions are made by congress explicitly to funnel spending to their
districts, and the procurement process is utterly broken.

And you can find industry experts and analysts who say all of this repeatedly
and noisily. But if you're speaking for one of the players, obviously you're
not allowed to admit any of it.

~~~
dtf
In the UK, we call that "doing a Ratner".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner)

------
sosuke
Are we heading for some science fiction future where no one speaks honestly?
It isn't a far stretch to imagine that everything is already recorded and what
might not be usable against you today could be usable tomorrow if the climate
changes. Frightening train of thought, I'll disembark now.

~~~
mikeash
This honesty reveals a lot of problematic stuff about this person. Just taking
one random example, if he _honestly_ believes that SES-9 required 100,000
pounds of fuel to make its landing attempt, should he really be part of the
upper management of a rocket company? If he thinks their most threatening
competitor is "doing nothing," does that maybe suggest he's unsuitable for his
position?

~~~
michaelkeenan
> if he honestly believes that SES-9 required 100,000 pounds of fuel to make
> its landing attempt, should he really be part of the upper management of a
> rocket company?

What is the correct amount of fuel used to make the landing attempt? I just
googled and didn't quickly find it, though I did find this speculation at
StackExchange[0] talking about reserving 15% of the fuel, or 66 tons, for the
landing. 66 tons is 132,000 pounds, so 100,000 pounds seems a reasonable
rounding - what am I missing? (I don't know anything about rockets.)

[0] [http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/4466/how-is-
spacex-...](http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/4466/how-is-spacex-going-
to-land-their-falcon-first-stage)

~~~
mikeash
First, a quick overview on how the landing works. After the first stage
separates, it executes a "boostback burn," using the engines to get it moving
toward the landing site. Sometime later, it fires the engines again as part of
the "reentry burn," which is used to soften the blow of hitting the atmosphere
at Mach Whatever. Apparently the rocket exhaust acts a little bit like an ad
hoc heat shield, plus it helps slow the thing down. Finally, right as it
approaches the landing site, it fires the center engine a final time to,
hopefully, bring the rocket to a stop at zero altitude.

The amount of fuel used varies a lot, because they can land in different
places. At one extreme, you have a landing at the launch site, which uses the
most fuel in order to get the first stage turned around and coming back. Barge
landings use less fuel, because they can be positioned under the flight path
so the rocket doesn't have to maneuver as much.

SES-9 was at the other extreme. It reserved the bare minimum of fuel for the
landing attempt because of its heavy, high-performance payload. That meant no
maneuvering boostback burn, no or minimal reentry burn, and the landing burn
itself was done with _three_ engines instead of the typical one. That saves
fuel because the rocket decelerates faster and spends less time fighting
gravity, but of course the control challenge is magnified, which is probably
why it went all explodey.

Putting some numbers on it, I found some estimates here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2vuy1v/how_much_fue...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2vuy1v/how_much_fuel_do_the_boost_back_reentry_and/)

According to that, landing at the launch site would require about 38 tons of
fuel, and a (normal) barge landing would require about 20 tons. SES-9's barge
landing would have been even less.

I believe the 15% from your StackExchange link is confused, and someone
mistook the payload penalty (about 15% for a barge landing) for the amount of
fuel required.

~~~
TrevorJ
38 tons for RTLS is 76,000 pounds, so the figure isn't really all that
exaggerated for the worst case.

In any case, the fuel is cheap relative to everything else so as long as they
can put the payload on orbit expending almost any amount of fuel to recover
the rocket is perfectly reasonable. Not sure why the ULA guy thought spending
100,000 of fuel to recover a 15 million dollar core would be a bad thing.

~~~
mikeash
He was specifically referring to SES-9, which was the absolute minimum fuel
usage. Probably a bit beyond minimum, given that it cratered.

And yeah, even if it was 100,000 pounds, what's the point?

------
Animats
Most of what he said has already appeared in Aviation Leak.

"ULA did not seriously consider Aeroject-Rocketdyne bid"[1]

ULA's problems with using Russian engines are well known.[2]

ULA's cost-competitiveness comes from a bulk buy deal with the USAF.[3]

None of this is surprising.

ULA's big problems are cost and dependence on Russian engines. Space-X's big
problem is that they keep having launch delays and can't launch often enough.
They're about a year behind schedule and no longer even publish a projected
launch manifest with dates. They have angry customers whose launch schedules
are not being met.[4]

[1] [http://aviationweek.com/space/ula-did-not-seriously-
consider...](http://aviationweek.com/space/ula-did-not-seriously-consider-
aerojet-rocketdyne-bid) [2] [http://aviationweek.com/space/usaf-cost-
rd-180-termination-u...](http://aviationweek.com/space/usaf-cost-
rd-180-termination-uncertain) [3]
[http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/boosters_bits/2014/05...](http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/boosters_bits/2014/05/ulas-
per-launch-costs-rival-spacex-and-its-a.html) [4]
[http://spacenews.com/delays-in-spacex-falcon-9-upgrade-
sched...](http://spacenews.com/delays-in-spacex-falcon-9-upgrade-schedule-
raises-concerns/)

------
mikeash
I'm noticing a lot of politics in non-political threads lately.

Some story is posted which has both political element and a non-political
element, and the comments focus entirely on the political side.

Case in point: Spike Lee posts his movie list. Roughly 5% of the comment
thread is dedicated to talking about the movies. 95% of the thread is about
how terrible it was for people to criticize Spike Lee for not including any
female directors.

Here: there's lots of fascinating discussion to be had about the current state
of the space launch industry, how legacy players will respond to upstarts,
rocket reusability, etc. But the whole discussion is about how terrible it was
that this guy was fired for what he said.

Could everybody cut it out? It's annoying!

~~~
rdiddly
Be the change mikeash, be the change.

~~~
mikeash
Yeah, but that's less fun than complaining! You're right, though.

------
mfoy_
Very insightful comments... apparently just a little too insightful.

------
jinushaun
Oh to be a fly on the wall in closed door meetings at Booz, Deloitte, BAE,
Lockheed, Boeing, etc. The procurement process is busted and I'm glad SpaceX
is shining a light on it.

------
vermontdevil
This was originally posted on Facebook SpaceX public group.

Was surprised the executive would be this candid and never imagined it would
spread this fast!

------
bsder
Congratulations, Mr. Generation Text. You remember bitching about how all your
college speakers are boring squares? You have just ensured that no speaker
will ever tell you anything interesting ever again.

Enjoy your milquetoast.

