(bright music)
- To say that SpaceX wouldn't exist today
without Gwynn Shotwell
is an understatement.
While there are a lot of other people
to thank for SpaceX's success,
Shotwell has been the steady
hand on the wheel steering
the company to prosperity,
as well as reigning-in
the high stakes gambles
of her boss, Elon Musk,
and it hasn't been easy.
Starting a private space
company is not a new idea,
but making one grow and be
profitable is another story.
(bright music)
Shotwell has the unique skillset
of being a fierce business woman
as well as an aerospace engineer.
She is the peacekeeper at SpaceX.
When Musk rubs outsiders the wrong way
with a random Tweet or statement,
Shotwell's there to hop
on the phone with clients,
to smooth things over with them
and reassure them that
everything is under control,
that she is in control.
Shotwell was born in Chicago,
she's the child of an
artist and a brain surgeon
and the self-admitted
hands-on kid of the family.
Per her mother, she wanted
her to become an engineer,
but Shotwell thought those
people just drove trains,
so in order to help her daughter
understand what they do,
her mother took her to a society
of women engineers' event.
For the first time,
she met women engineers
and decided she wanted to
become a mechanical engineer.
So, she later went to Northwestern
to study mechanical engineering
with the minor in economics,
as well as a master's degree
in applied mathematics.
- And plus you're a woman.
- What?
- No, I just mean we would absolutely love
to have a strong woman working here.
- I'm not a woman
engineer, I'm an engineer.
- Shotwell originally planned
to work in the automotive industry
and started working for
Chrysler Corporation
in engine research, but became frustrated
with the multiple levels
of approvals and rules
which limited productivity and innovation.
She then moved to
Aerospace Corp for 10 years
to learn the business
of Defense Contractors,
where she was a thermal
engineer and project manager.
She wasn't getting the
hands-on experience she wanted,
she felt like she was just writing papers.
In an effort to get
more hands-on experience
building and designing rockets,
she moved to Microcosm,
a small space start-up
whose mission was to design
and build low-cost rockets and parts.
This is the place where
she learned possibly
the most important lessons that
would benefit her later at SpaceX.
On the fly, she learned how
to lead a team of people,
but possibly most important,
she's learned how to
sell Aerospace products
to the government and to large companies.
This is also known as
business development.
Using her straight talk,
smarts and confidence,
she developed a reputation
as a strong sales woman.
Parallel to this,
Elon Musk was in the
early stages developing
a revolutionary company soon to be known
as Space Exploration Technologies.
In order to drum up cash
for his new start-up,
he seriously needed a
business development talent
who knew what they were
doing as an engineer.
Early SpaceX employee, Hans Koenigsmann,
knew his former colleague, Gwynn Shotwell,
wanted to work for a
company that would actually
do something to revolutionize
a space launch industry.
He saw it as a match made in heaven.
So, he set up a meeting
between the two innovators.
She soon became employee
number seven at SpaceX
as the head of business development
and was immediately tasked with
going to sell some rockets.
Even though those rockets did not exist,
had not flown before and
now she had a new boss
who constantly made
promises and predictions
that would be impossible to achieve,
so Gwynn only had the
potential of SpaceX to sell,
which proved to be tricky.
In any event, she began
to pull some old strings,
and began meeting with the
U.S. government agencies
and satellite companies
to begin to persuade them
to book launches on their
still unflown Falcon 1 rocket.
After getting several nos,
she was able to convince
the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency,
also known as DARPA, and a
Malaysian satellite start-up,
to invest in their early
Falcon 1 development flights.
They were eager to see if
this tiny rocket company
could deliver on their price promise.
On top of those deals,
she was able to get NASA
to award SpaceX a $278 million contract
to start developing a larger vehicle
that would ferry supplies to the ISS.
She also booked around
a dozen Falcon 1 flights
to other clients, all this happened
prior to it every reaching orbit.
The first three launches
of Falcon 1 weren't great.
But, every launch saw progress
and Shotwell continued to
provide encouraging communication
with her new clients
that SpaceX was so close.
Shotwell was quickly becoming
Musk's closest confidant
as she was generating extensive revenue
and was taking on more of a
leadership role in the company.
She was keeping the company alive.
So, Musk promoted her to president
and chief operating
officer at the company.
In 2008, the fourth launch of
the Falcon 1 was a success,
and a huge boost in confidence for SpaceX.
So much in fact that NASA awarded
them one of the commercial crew contracts
that paid SpaceX $1.6 billion to develop
a crew rated vehicle to
dock with the Space Station,
along with a dozen resupply missions.
This was the shot in the arm SpaceX needed
to allow them to invest
in their own technology,
that eventually standardized the idea
of re-usability in the space industry.
Shotwell has been at the helm
of SpaceX for over 10 years,
being the bridge between
Musk and his staff,
all while earning the
reputation as the person
who can translate Musk's
ambitious goals into reality.
She makes the tough day-to-day decisions
that dictate the future of the company.
As the field general for SpaceX,
she gets the troops where they need to be,
when they need to be there, efficiently.
The now vice president
of Mission Assurance,
Hans Koenigsmann, once stated,
"Elon says let's go to Mars, and she says,
"okay, what do we need to
do to actually get to Mars?"
SpaceX has seen their
greatest achievements
under her steady hand, and
this is only the beginning.
(bright music)
Thanks a lot for watching.
I hope you guys learned something
about the badass secret weapon
at SpaceX, Gwynn Shotwell.
I'm wearing a pretty special shirt today
it's by this guy named Michael,
he's the designer of these shirts,
he does a lot of really cool designs.
He reached out to me and asked if I wanted
to have my own shop on his store
and could help raise some
money for my channel?
I said absolutely, but I don't wanna make
any money from this, I
wanted all the proceeds
of my shirt sales to go to a nonprofit
that's close to my heart,
and that's the Iraq and
Afghanistan Veterans of America,
basically fight for
legislation that helps benefit
the lives of veterans
all over the country.
So go there, buy some shirts,
I don't make a penny from this.
So if you like sweet space tee shirts,
and you wanna support
veterans, this is a win-win.
So, go buy a shirt and
go hug a veteran for me,
or shake their hand, do
something, I don't know.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the video,
please subscribe to my channel
and I have a couple fun
videos already shot,
I just need to get them edited and out,
so, here's to a big 2019.
Okay, bye everybody.
