YouSaid · the spoken record

Thomas Zurbuchen

lines on the record: 92
first: 2021-04-06
most recent: 2021-04-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thanks for your time and thanks for all you do. I've listened to your show many, many times kind of. I run every day. So often you're in my ear when I run.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the other one is that of course the laws that relate to export loss right we have legal boundaries on some things you know certain technologies we just can't we don't want to you know there's a legal boundary we're not going to cross but within those boundaries we are you know trying to stimulate innovation by driving forward by making information public we also it's very common that we create kind of agreements with companies to help them right so our goal is you know i mean elon himself has talked about a lot of stuff we learned from nasa in the crude thing that frankly we our great experts taught him it's not and that's what we want to do kind of and the next company can get the same service just the same way right so for us for us uh we want to hand off what we can so like you said we can focus on the edge”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we try wherever we can to make the information public, right? I mean, kind of whether it's the science data, how we do it, we actually encourage people to write publications that said, how did you do it? We just picked up a sample at Benu, you know, this asteroid using a new technology. How did we do it? Go read the publication. We wrote it, right? There are some elements that we want to respect, right? The first one is intellectual property of individuals and of companies. with your company develop a new technology i mean frankly i don't want to go stomp you out i want you to be able to lift use that to lift your company right that's good innovation needs to be supportive in that way so for me i need to learn standing back right of course as a as a government person i'm basically looking at you through the eyes of a taxpayer is it worth my money to pay for that license”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Customer not interested whatsoever to own that industry, but I want to be an anchor customer. And by the way, I'm going to take the risk. So what I did is I talked to every stakeholder, including those on the hill, and say, look, the likelihood of that is not 100%. You should think of it as a 50-50 shot on goal. So we need to, you know, like cocky, we need to take shots on goal to score. So for us, it's kind of being regular doing that is really important. So we have a team that is running that, that is kind of learning to dance on that stage. It's a very different thing than what we're doing to Mars or to the moon in the past, right? It's a very different company. And frankly, this has lifted. So it's both leaning forward on kind of new things, but also kind of learning how to hand off, even in places where we're not 100% sure yet that it works.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly what I want to do. Exactly right. That's exactly what I want to do. I want to focus on the things that a company cannot do because it's too crazy. It's too risky. So we have done things for that, right? James Webb Space Telescope I just talked about is one of those things. It's not possible to do in a private setting. But at this moment in time, but as we go forward, it may be also, I have a new program, the commercial lunar payload services program to the moon, in which I basically said, I'm buying at firm fixed price delivery services to the moon. Who wants to play? I did that after, you know, I came into NASA and I saw these Google X Prize companies that had been funded by venture capital and other sources, not government sources. I was like, okay, if you have a company that could do that, I want to be a customer. By the way, I don't want to be the owner.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think in general, actually, there's more excitement in space because of those partners. I actually don't believe that that somehow sucked the energy out of it. You know, the NASA brand remains one of the top brands in the world. And frankly, SpaceX added to that. They didn't subtract to it. And so for me, it has increased it. But what's also important, especially as we go to the leadership level, that we recognize that we need more arrows in the quiver in our leadership tools, right? We need to learn how to handle these environments and learn how to be agile, react to it, be learning organizations. And for me.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's no question about it. For us, the question is how do we enable that? There's mistakes we can make in the government that are really horrible. Like if a precede company pitches us for $100 million, we shouldn't just say yes because it's a precede company. See, the venture capital community, because if it's a pre-seed company, only invested $1 million in it. Why? Because they see a lot of issues that are there on team, market fit, and so forth. So we need to bring that knowledge to bear too, kind of supporting of commercial entities. Doesn't mean that we say yes all the time. It means that our reaction is appropriate to what these companies are and we become customers. We learn how to utilize these companies without owning them. I do not want to own these companies. I want to be a customer. And so for me, that's really the goal I'm after.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not the best at it. I know that I'm not the best. I know what I don't know, but I know have network over there. And so what's really critical to me is that I'm not the best in a room in NASA. And if they're not in the room, others are in a room who speak that language. Now, the good news is we're making progress and we're learning how to go forward. And of course, the proof of that is the crude private vehicles that are operating now. Basically, there were a lot of thought papers that said that can never happen. It's impossible. And it's not just because of spacex making enormous leaps forward. It's also the government making leaps forward. So I think it's going to be a struggle as we go forward. And it's a struggle that we need to recognize as such and basically make sure that we all do our work in a way to advance it. It is a strength for us to have commercial entities. It's not in any way threatening. This is the future we want.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Iteration focus thing with failures, right? The first, you know, the first two SpaceX Falcon ones blew up, right? And frankly, Elon tells the story that he was on the final money, right? The one that worked. It needed to work because it was the end of the company. If it didn't, right? That's what he says. I don't know. So the question really is, how do we move forward with that? And it kind of, of course, of course, the answer needs to be that we actually bring people who speak that other language on the inside of the government, see diversity of thought is a really important criterion of team, whether it's in NASA or any other entity, right? And so for me, that's something I focused on, right? I've worked in a venture fund at GetOff as an advisor. I've kind of invested in venture things before, right? I've been on boards of companies. And so, you know, so I.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Small launch systems and it is true that in the government, right, that's where I work right now. It's a very difficult time in a following sense, right? We need to make sure that we're not putting hurls into the way, right? So it's in the following sense. So what happens is if I walk into a room at any place at NASA and I basically look at the leaders, significant fraction of those very good people grew up in one specific environment and they grew up in a place where, you know, after Apollo in which kind of NASA was the only game in town together with some contractors that also worked on with other agencies on big systems, but in a contracting relationship using a specific set of contracting mechanisms and so forth. Okay, so where we are now is we have that other vehicle, kind of a much more iterate.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is true that I remember I wrote an editorial something like twenty years ago or so in which I basically made a symbol point and that said, hey, the top talent right now works at SpaceX. And if they have enough runway, financial runway, they will be successful because they have the top talent right now. And I remember how much I got attacked over that. I was a university professor, and frankly, the way I got to that assertion is by just tracking students, right? Where are the three Sigma performers, right? And then I called MIT and I called other universities. They said the same for them. And I'm like, that's a pattern, right? And so, yes, I mean, of course, that time has come and gone, right? SpaceX is a force to be reckoned with. I think Blue Origin, you know, Jeff Bezos' company is right behind them. There's many others. Rocket Lab, a company out of New Zealand, I think is incredible innovation story.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it helps them thrive on this changing planet. We already know that, right? So the question is, how are we going? So for me, that is really a useful tool.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are some elements of kind of NIH research that have a similar National Institute of Health research that have similar type of prioritization scheme. I would argue that, especially with NASA and kind of the space research, we have a better kind of consensus building process than many of the other disciplines and it has really served us because it creates a constancy of purpose. So it's not so much like I know if somebody comes in and says, hey, look, we want to focus on earth science. What are the next missions? They are not questions about me starting about this. I already know what they are because for the last decade, frankly, I've built that strategy and we're working on it. The only lever here is speed, right? So how fast are we doing that? Because we know the Earth is a connected system. We need to focus on it, right? We know about global change. Now the question is, how do we bring that data to the community?”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we use our national academies, the thought leaders in the domains, to say, what is the most urgent question that we should address right now? So what's the best, most important question, but what's the most urgent question? And that sets the priority. So actually don't go argue with them. Should we go to Europa, you know, the moon there?”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's actually a really interesting question. And if I just want to tell you of all agencies in the United States, NASA is perhaps the one that's the least partisan. So basically it's kind of interesting that if you look, I came in under the Obama administration. I worked in the Trump administration. And if you really looked at the priorities, they did not, for example, in the science program substantially change, right? We are, of course, part of a human exploration campaign to the moon and then to Mars, of which science is part. But if you look at, take the Mars sample return, kind of the mission, the web mission, they are there. And the reason for that is that actually the person who's in charge of choosing the highest priority signs is actually not me. And I'm really glad for that. The process that we have built in the United States and other countries have different processes.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't need to be in touch. For the highest missions, I meet with them. I meet with the leadership team. I have the leader on speed dial. I know problems before. It comes to me because we're transparent about it. So that's what I do. So it's really, again, replace the creative before and after. If you're in that much trouble, replace that. But then really recognize you're not going to solve the problem and create the environment for that.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I frankly had a team. I basically replaced in my reporting structure everybody. And the simple reason for that is I wanted to basically create a before and after. I wanted to make sure that the after is one that we are together and we are one, we are locking ours. And frankly, I observe, I do that often in reviews. I push against one person and see whether the other one comes to rescue them. I want to know like do they let them sink? I mean, frankly, I put more edge against one person. Sometimes I apologize at the end. Sometimes it's exactly the appropriate thing to do. But I want to see whether that partner helps. Are they helping each other not against me, but together as a team to come do that? For me, also staying in touch was important. I mean, I cannot stay in touch with all missions. In most cases, I delegate. Small missions, I delegate.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can't do it any slower. It's not safer to go slower. You need to find kind of the speed of attention, the speed of learning, the speed of find that right speed, kind of allow the team to get there, but insist on the right mechanisms being in place. For example, what was really important, you know, I mean, one of the reasons airborne travel is so safe is because of the mechanisms that are put in place. Any pilot can say we almost made a mistake. For me, that almost made a mistake mechanism is so important for big projects. Talk about the almost mistakes because they surely will be mistakes if you don't fix them. What can we learn from almost mistakes? Also talk about the mistakes. And so for me, the question was, how do we do that? I actually met up with the leaders, met with the team to say we got your back. We need to get better.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. So for me, remember I'm the guy who sits in Washington, right? I am not going to solve this problem. But what my job is. To create the environment in which the problem is solved and to hold the leaders accountable for solving it. So what is absolutely critical is all the relevant leaders all the way to the CEO of the company agree on what the key priorities are. For example, the first priority is mission success. Yes, we want to launch as soon as possible. The first priority is mission success. We will not rush and make stupid mistakes because every one of these mistakes in that environment costs us hundreds of millions of dollars. So saving a day and having six months to fix a mistake is just a bad thing. So it's really aligning that getting together, also recognizing is there needs to be a stride we find. There's the right speed at doing. So in other words, if you, you know, like it's like biking, you teach your kid biking. It's like, you know, there's that the right speed of doing.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just did not know how to get after it. In the meantime, of course, I stay connected with all parts of it, right? And frankly, I have the best team I've ever had. And as we're getting ready for the launch next year, right, that we're going to do so because the team got a chance to actually fix itself. But I could have given that chance a year, one and a half years earlier.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“loose sleep over one ear from now. If you're not watching it and it's not that you divert attention from the critical path, but you also need to focus off the critical path and pattern match. Go figure out, get to know about this team. I only focused on it a year later. I basically asked, I basically gave up the red flag version of space is you ask for an independent review team. I basically put the flag down and says, I lost trust. I did an independent review team that basically came back and says we need $800 or million dollars to fix those mistakes and bring it together. And we add a horrible time on the Capitol Hill kind of explaining that to the disappointed science community that we did. And it was because of my mistake as a leader, not following my gut. I have in my notebooks that I had the mistake pecked.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now I have 12 of those engines to that I now have to cut out. I have to replenish the kind of valves that are kind of seals that were etched away by the wrong solvent and all that happened as nobody is focusing on it. And so for me, over focus, I tell you, is that, you know, we're focusing on this because it's on the critical path. It's such a horrible mistake that people are making. It's like, you know, don't look at a chart like an MBA and I know you have an MBA, so no offense to MBAs. We need them. We love them. But kind of look at them as a leader, right? And of course, they shouldn't be. They shouldn't be in contradiction, but just go with the thing. Don't look at the chart and say, I'm fine because my critical path moves. And that's what I learned in some book is okay. Everything off the critical path is what you could.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the right thing to do, and I'm sure that was being said because it always is said the technician knows. Well, but the team was broken enough that in that state that that information did not lead to action. We went to acoustic tests, the balls start flying off. It's one of the most embarrassing things. The engines that are there, 12 engines were flushed out with the wrong chemical. Instead of actually checking, the person who flushes it out, they try to clean it. That's exactly what they should do. They need to use the right chemical. Instead of checking with the supplier, a small company in upstate New York who did nothing wrong. Instead of checking with them, they flushed with the wrong chemical. Now, the problem is they didn't.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“During that time, as well as the year before, this team was such challenges that it was making mistakes that cost the taxpayer of the United States eight hundred million dollars. The mistakes themselves cost six hundred million dollars because of lack of focus, because of lack of cohesion in the team, stupid mistakes of the type that, frankly, I would have kicked out undergrads out of my university lab if they made them. For example, They did not tighten bolts the right way. It's like, how can you have a $10 billion asset and not tighten bolts in a way that the faster catches? Of course, it's a long story that tried to solve another problem. You know, and I'm 100% sure, Shane, that there's a technician who, by the way, thousands of those bolts. There's a technician up there who's timing it's like, these things are not. Catching.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I look at the schedule performance and they're losing schedule. You basically take that scheduled performance and like, oh, we're doing fine, we're doing fine. And we're so far off the critical path. I go talk to the director. He does the same kind of evasive maneuver. And I did not know yet how to do that. It's one of those things I learned in the last five years. I knew after a month this is going to be my problem. What I didn't know, it's one of the biggest lessons of my life.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The second one is the spacecraft bus. The spacecraft bus is just, you know, the power, the communication. It goes behind the telescope and just attach it. And it's also that sunshield deployment. And I came in like a good MBA. You look at it, the critical pass goes through the telescope and all these other things are off the critical path by months. I'm like I listened for a couple weeks to the updates and I said, You're never talking about the bus. Can I ask you about the schedule performance on the bus? I'm learning, right? I feel very inadequate, right? They're all much better than me, which is a feeling you have to get used to in my job. I'm not the smartest guy in the room by a long shot many times, but I'm there listening, right? It's like, well, tell me about the bus.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“James Wout telescopes telescope for 20 years. We've been working on it. It's one of the most difficult stories that we have in NASA, the international community. Canada built an instrument on it so did Europeans, right? It's basically a $10 billion investment. It's the most complex mission ever done. It's basically a telescope six and a half meter mirror protected by five tennis court sizes, kind of sun protection shields. It's really hard. The hardest thing to do is to telescope and the instruments. When I came in, that was integration and test and everybody focused on that. While their two more swim lanes, one of them is the software operations piece.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Challenge. So everybody focuses on schedule. Like, oh, schedule, schedule, schedule, schedule. And it took me a long time. And I could tell you a story about the James Webb telescope. It's that story. I knew when I joined the job a month in where the problem's going to be.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've never got to the end. There are some people two questions deep back at them, right? And it's like, okay, there are two questions kind of person. There's the other one that's, I've never found the end. After six questions, he's still going, right? It's like, like, and, you know, I mean, I'm like, okay, don't worry about him, you know, or her, by the way. The same is true with our managers, the same is true with our money people. Now tell me how, you know, and I go after, and again, I want to know what you're not focusing on. And, you know, as a team. And so that's where, so again, be dishonest. Red flag number one or kind of over exaggerate your comfort. And the second one is be blind, right? You know, forget of you're not seeing that part of your trade space kind of overfocusing, I would argue, is my biggest.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Year or two years from now to Mars, for example. Because just Mars doesn't line up with the Earth the right way. So I can go there. So for me, I listen carefully for the white spaces on my chart or in my mental image of the entire collection of the mission. What are you not talking about? And that's where I'm going to go, right? So I sit there. I prepare. I look at every chart deck, every information ahead. Frankly, I block my schedule to do that in a very aggressive fashion. I take a lot of preparation time and I come in and now I listen really carefully and I tick off the jart. Are you talking about this? Are you really comprehensively doing that? And I may take one of those things and I drive like five questions into depth. And, you know, I want to see whether you can go, go, go, go, go, go until you're finally, you know, and there's some people I've never.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are you talking about technical? What are your things that you're dealing with? We just talked about that. Are you worrying about it? Are you moving them forward? And what are your top worries? I want to know what they are. Then I want to know about your team. I want to know what do you talk about your team. How is your team doing under pressure as they are? Are they making mistakes? Are they almost mistakes you caught? Like, you know, like, how are you making sure your team is cohesive, motivated, excited? The relevant unit of innovation is a team. It's not an individual, right? So for me, I want to hear you talk about the team. I want to hear you talk about cost. You've thought about it. You've linked those things together. I want to hear you talk about schedule so often for planetary missions. Schedule is the most important variable because the planets need to be in the right place in the sky. So I can't take longer. I can only either go this.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I go into a meeting. I actually have a chart. I'm not sharing with people, generally speaking. But on that chart, there's technical schedule, cost, team thing. You know, like key topics. And I listen carefully.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly right. So I look at those red flags and I look really, I listen really carefully to what's not being talked about.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Leadership weakness did not be able to carry worries with them and those worries pulling them down. So, you know, that the whole organization behaves in a way that they never bring a worry to you. You still have them, but you don't know them, right? So you get surprised, you know, and I'm like, no, no, no, I won't. I need you to be worried more than me, then I'm feeling comfortable. I don't want you to be calm. I need you to be worried. That's what I want.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It and I ask people to do it, but I just want to tell you it's a question on my mind that I'm currently thinking about. You know, I just am not, and that reason I'm saying it, it's like I see some of the same mistakes over and over again. It's like, no, no, I don't want, like for me, what I really hate, if you really want to tick me off, come show up and tell me everything is low risk. That makes me believe you haven't understood your job, right? Don't make me feel good. Make me feel scared and then make me feel comfortable because you're dealing with all the risks. Don't come and say it's all row risk. It is not low risk. It's rocket science. They have their histories, their leaders, you know, like some leaders don't sleep well if they have problems. So they have pain aversion. It's a big leader.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, a really good question, and I struggle with it. And basically, what happens to me on a given day, I make multiple decisions, right? And for me, what I've started to do Sit down and talk people through the desertion. Kind of it's almost like see what I'm seeing. This is what, you know, and really create that rigor in the organization and kind of show where how the decision path goes, right? asking questions out loud and talking through it. And so that's what I'm sharing in the leadership team. I worry sometimes just because NASA is so hierarchical, right? Because of the fact that only one signature matters, you know, kind of my schedule is oversubscribed by a factor of 10 every week, right? So I say no a lot more than yes relative to my time. That's my most important good, right? So for me, the question I'm asking, I'm spending enough time to actually disseminate things into the organizations because it would be helpful for them to actually know this is the scrutiny we're putting on it. I try to do it.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the first one was let's fire, even though everybody opposed it. The second was let's not fire because even though some of the technical people said we could do it, but we put enough scrutiny together that basically, again, I was wrong on the first decision. I'm sure somebody says like, well, you could have just not fired and we're exactly where we are. It's like, no, that's exactly the right scrutiny because in a congressional hearing, I could actually now explain to you how I cautiously cautiously spent that extra 50 million dollars. It's not because I just, I'm not handling the pressure. Well, we actually learned something that really matters. Learning is an important part of innovation.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once you learn that, it's like you don't fire. So ultimately, we ended up not firing because we did the scrutiny in the first and the second decision. We set ourselves up in a way that actually made the science way better because we actually had, I had asked him to bring yesterday's opportunity cost, but tell me what you can do extra science that you weren't able to do. So we actually moved it up. So by failing in my first decision, we enhanced the mission significantly.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We prepared for this exact, but what I believe is the exact right decision, we actually realized that we couldn't do because now we would have to fire the engine. So I made a second decision. We would have to fire the engine in a state that it had never been tested. Now, a half a billion dollar asset that's basically working. And I need to take a risk. Is it worth that risk? So actually the second decision had to reverse the first decision to fire. I actually decided not to fire because of the kind of enhanced and unknown risk. We thought that the ancient people said we could probably do that. We just have never done it. And there has never been a burn that long in that configuration in any test environment. Okay, that's crazy, right? You don't, I mean, of course, I'm boiling it down to the quintessential 30 seconds of the meeting, right?”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Need 20 flybys. It costs a taxpayer $50 more million dollars to just stay where you are. The principal investigator, everybody's like, let's just leave it where we are. There's risk. We want the minimum risk. And I'm like, well, what's the opportunity cost? You're spending 50 more million dollars to do the science. And so what I had to do is unentangle that kind of natural inclination, which I understand because I was in his role before from the actual technical question is it important. So in that room, there were very few people who wanted to fire the engine, but I took the decision to fire the engine. And then we prepared for it. And as we prepared for it, all of a sudden we realized that the engine had a problem. It had a leak. It was something was wrong with it. And frankly, what we need to do is basically look at, you know,”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I'll talk about two of the sessions. The first one is one of the first decisions I made was a billion dollar assets. It's the June omission. I was in orbit or is in orbit around Jupiter. And so we were in an orbit of a 50-day orbit and we wanted to drop that, fire the engine and drop it down to a 15 day orbit. What that does, and I may have to date slightly wrong, but you get the point I wanted to get, you have over 100 missions. So sometimes I mix up dates. I did not want to think we're going to talk about this. But anyway, I wanted to kind of increase the frequency of encounters by a factor of three. That's what I wanted to do. The question was, do we want to do that? So the entire team, look at them from their point of view. They're frankly perfectly fine in a slow orbit. They say we...”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Speaking. So we take that risk, right? So just that itself. I will never, one of the things I really believe in is don't get pushed. If I'm not sure, I don't mind being the only guy who is not comfortable and I will back off. I basically said thanks for stopping the meeting. I appreciate that. If anybody has anything that has not been said, I will not make a decision for 24 hours. Send it to me by email. And I will go back. And if I find that there's more information, I can gain that really is relevant. I'll do that. If I find, you know, like you get into a place where more information actually doesn't help you because it adds ambiguity to the team.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In many cases I'm in a room with other people, but if I'm not sure I will take a break and I think well when I run, I think well in a shower in the morning. So, I mean, there are kind of points of clarity. If I'm not sure I will never push into a decision, I mean, the way I always go is I go backwards, right? Suppose I'm sitting in the congressional hearing and I just blew up X and Y. Can I explain how I made the decision in a way that it made sense there? Space is hard. And by the way, every once in a while, we will fail. And I remind everybody of that. If you want to not fail, you're in that safe space over here. That's irrelevant. That's not how NASA got to where it is. It's not because people played it safe. It's because we do take risks. We do leave the launch pad, even though we know it's dangerous. With 1.5 to 3% likelihood, it will not make it out of the Earth's gravity statistics.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For most of these missions is mine, right? Because I take the accountability, but I will be a fool to not listen to the others. So for me, you really get to know with big decisions. I actually spend a lot of time meeting the teams. I've built space hardware. I can sense how good I listen to the team. I listen to the things that are not said. I listen to I basically figure out whether they're scrutinizing each other, whether we have elite that squashes opposition. You know, those are all warning signs to see whether I look at mistakes people are making. By the way, I don't care if they make a mistake. But are they making stupid mistakes? And over and over again, are they disciplined, right? So all that stuff kind of, it's years of work that come together to that decision where I said, yes, relaunch.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have an engineering organization, just the way we build NASA over decades, that we have an engineer organization that talks about just engineering without any other encumbrances, right? The question just is, will it work? What's the likelihood for it to work? There's one that talks about safety just that way. Is it going to be safe, right? No other if-ten, that's their focus. And so you basically, the way you make the decision is you bring together that kind of, of course, you work, you recognize, by the way, the most important thing is to empower the team, right? I mean, frankly, I'm not the most important guy in this. I'm just making a decision to live with it. And I'm the guy in the congressional hearing, right? If something goes wrong. So everybody knows that, right? So I will make the decision. And it's one, it's not a vote. It's one decision by one signature. The only signature that matters there.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So first of all, you recognize that the launch is irreversible decision, right? And of the moment I say go, it's done. You don't get it back. It is over, right? So it's irreversible. So basically, whenever you make a decision like that, and many people do that in the business world too, right? Kind of these kind of one-way doors, I think, as others call you, you only go through it once. The way you do it, I believe, is you recognize that you want to make the decision well informed. And with all the scrutiny up front. So the way I make that decision is, first of all, I don't make it alone. I put in a room the people, the best people that I know, kind of from the engineers, but also the policy people. And, you know, and I actually have people who don't report to each other.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Push that edge at the maximum speed viable that requires that you learn how to fail. Every once in a while drop down this way and drop down that way. And to, you know, what you really have to do, especially the ones that fail because they went too early, you want to protect them. You want to protect your innovators, right? Because that's important. So for me, the hardest part is really to set the program at the right speed of innovation and allow for experimentation, for iteration, as opposed to kind of being that colossal kind of slow organization that just wants to make everything safe, which of course we want to be safe, right? That has to live in our brain too, because when we make an investment of $3 billion 2020 perseverance. If we make that investment, we want to do what we can to do that. So that's the hardest part, I would argue.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the hardest part of research is always to find that edge, right? So if you really look at the best research, I think of it like I'm a mountain guy. Think of it as like walking in a mountains on that ridge on the one side. It's the irrelevant We've already proven that it's easy to do research there. It's safe. You know, you get tenure in every professor, you know, is fine doing it, kind of twiddling around. And you can make a lot of money there. The other side is the impossible, right? research questions don't only need frankly the right question but the right time for that question and and the hardest part is is to build programs that are programs that have that”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of gold and I bring it back and I land, do I make or lose money? And the answer is we're starting to make money because launch is so much cheaper now than it was. That is in part because of that commercial force. But it's not by enough yet, right? So you want to make sure that you upside rare earth metals, by the way, are actually worth more, as you know, as gold, right?”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It depends on the size of the asteroid, right? Kind of the energy that it takes to redirect this, depending on the size and the orbit that it has, is almost infinity, right? Relative to what we have. If you look at psyche, it would be the former model, like landing and extracting and bringing back. And of course, that puts into the value chain everything from launch to extraction to the whole risk you have to offset from the uncertainty and all the way down to the investors wanting to make money from it. So it's a really tough business model. You could do an experiment right now and basically say, suppose I took one of those big rockets, you know, take a biggest rocket we have and suppose by whatever miracle I go to that asteroid and I fill, I mean, I can go there. I pay for the rocket and forget the physics. I just go there and I fill the whole thing.”
2021-04-06 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #108 Thomas Zurbuchen: Adventures in Astrophysics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT