The maiden voyage of the Falcon I is reset for tomorrow, with a launch window starting at 2 p.m. Eastern. Good luck to SpaceX!
The Daily Breeze has a lengthy article about SpaceX and Microcosm, which I recommend. I had to chuckle when reading the lead...
El Segundo rocket scientist James Wertz picked up the telephone in late 2002 to call Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk for a confrontation.
In a civil, yet serious, manner, Wertz told Musk to quit raiding his workers.
Musk recently had hired away at least two of Wertz's employees and three or four others who had just left Wertz's firm or were considering an offer from him.
"There's sort of a code of ethics (in the space industry) that is informal in which you can hire people from other companies as long as they come to you for a job," Wertz said recently in an interview recounting the incident.
If there is such a code of ethics and there are similar quaint practices in the space industry, the industry leaders are lambs about to be slaughtered by Elon Musk and friends. Raiding a competitor's prized workers is a basic tactic that has been used by technology companies for decades. I'm reminded of the recent pillaging that Google has been doing with Microsoft's senior scientists, for which Microsoft has sued Google.
It seems to me that some in the space industry give Boeing and Lockheed too much credit for their actions against potential competitors. SpaceX seems to be holding its own just fine, and Musk has been battle-tested in a business arena that is much tougher in many ways than aerospace. How can the status quo last long, if SpaceX is successful technically?
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