Someday is today, Starship Launch & Tesla's Q1 results.
On how a book is transforming my life and how SpaceX and Tesla are on their courses to change the world. Or should I say, the worlds?
SpaceX lesson (an expensive one!)
On Thursday, April 20th, we were witnesses to an amazing event. Well, many people were, but…
Let’s start from two days before that. I was extremely excited for Monday, April 18th's launch, which in the end got delayed due to frozen valve. The countdown was stopped and after a little while it was clear spacecraft will stay on ground that day.
Statement from SpaceX after the try was profound:
With a test such as this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship.
SpaceX Twitter profile
Continuous improvement at its best and a stellar example for entrepreneurs and makers of things.
The next try was after very short changeover, only two days later. Due to work commitments, I missed it. I did not have bandwidth to even remember it’s happening. What a disappointment!
I watched the start only approximately one hour after the launch. I was able to cut to the chase and start from when the countdown stopped at 40 seconds, just to be restarted soon after. And then it flew.
Seeing the footage of Starship and Super Heavy lift off the ground was an amazing feeling. This is because it is just one, but very important step, towards a vision of humanity, which is reaching out to Mars. The flight was abruptly ended shortly after having reached altitude of 39 kilometers, as the two vehicles did not separate as intended and ended up in rapid unscheduled disassembly, or at least that is what the commentator on the live stream said.
My initial coverage was following:
I had not seen nor read proper explanation of the aim before the launch and seeing the rocket blow up was a bit disturbing. It seems though getting off the ground and then getting through so called max Q point, the point at which the vehicle gets maximum stress, is a great win with again, a lot of data gathered for further trials.
(...) this vehicle will get to orbit and this is the vehicle that's going to take us to Mars. So today's the day that all of the hard-working people at SpaceX accomplished a goal of making the human race space fairing. When we look back in history, I believe this will be the day when you mark the technological development that we broke through and built a vehicle that could actually go to Mars (...)
Antonio Gracias, SpaceX board member at The All-In Podcast E125
SpaceX is already lining up new Starships, which already have improvements compared to the one launched on April 20th, as well as launch pad cooling system in the making and now a lot of data from the trial for further changes. Fail fast and move on from there is what SpaceX lives by and has a shorter turnaround time in the heavy hardware business than most of the software defined companies, in which it takes years to iterate.
Operational Starships have tangible benefits. If you compare cost to payload ratio to current technology, Starship is planned to provide approximately 50x improvement. This is deemed to enable much cheaper deployment of satellites and anything into orbit and beyond. On the other it should be cheaper than current cargo airplanes on very long hauls.
Someday Is Today.
One of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read - and so should you!
Matthew Dick's "Someday Is Today" moved me so much emotionally with its first chapters that, after listening to the audiobook for 49 minutes, I got up in the middle of the night to give a firsthand account of what I felt.
"Someday is today" reminds us that our life may end at any time. Once we have only minutes left, what do we regret if we look back? Is it the Netflix series we didn't watch?
The book aims to bring hope to its readers and inspire them to pursue their dreams. "I wish I had taken more risks" and "I wish I had lived my own dream" are the two most common deathbed regrets.
Remember, "Someday" is a wish that is never fulfilled. Live your dreams today, get up, write a few sentences. Create. Have fun. Whatever it is that you wish you had done, do it today.
There are productivity hacks in the book which have already changed the way I approach my creative endeavors. I have always been inclined towards optimizing everything - the way I walk, put things aside, aiming to automate and streamline to get more done. The thing I have always been victim of - I used to make mental accounting that if something piled up to be done, I assumed I need to set aside significant amount of time to get through that. Tactics presented by the author are the complete opposite - we should always use the minutes available to get ahead, even by a bit, rather than wait for the perfect place, moment and big enough block of time. This works, as now I am progressing my writing in short time boxes instead of waiting for Saturday night and Sunday morning to go through whole article (and be overwhelmed by it).
Furthermore, my creative endeavors have usually been handicapped by constant overthinking and fear of not being good enough. Learning the phrase ‘better is the enemy of good’ was helpful to a point. Matthew goes one step further in his suggestions. According to him, we should allow ourselves to create terrible things. That’s how things come into being. Whenever we allow ourselves to create something terrible, we’ve made more than most of the people, as most of them never start. Next time will be better.
This also implies we should not dwell on little things but look from a perspective. Though creativity requires attention to detail, it also requires focusing on productive things. Many of the things we do in life are not and doing them efficiently is still not being effective. Author goes as far as asking the reader to be a criminal - test the world, if the rules we follow and things we’re asked to do - actually make sense. It is likely they are not and fulfilling them with the minimum effort possible is the way to go. This is for an obedient rule follower as me, a stretch, but many of the anecdotes presented are eye openers for me.
If we want to make things happen, we sometimes need to be criminals. We sometimes need to break the rules, doge regulation, defy the norms and be daring.
From Someday Is Today by Matthew Dicks.
You can also find a take on a silly interview question people tend to ask in the interviews. When I was at my first corporate job, I was in awe the HR folk had five-year plans for people. I thought everyone but me could plan their life five years ahead. I still cannot, it is just now I know planning that far out is ridiculous. Asking interviewee about their five-year plan is plainly stupid.
Matthew suggests making plans for next quarter or two instead. He is also setting yearly goals for himself but allows them to be ambitious enough and as many, that his usual completion rate is a bit over 50%. Those goals need to be tied to what we can do without someone else’s input or approval, but are not professional only. They include meeting friends, writing letters, attending events. Anything we find valuable in life, which will make our life memorable, once we look back on it, when it will be nearing its end.
I am already using many of the suggestions provided in the book and I recommend it to friends and family. If you’d like to get a copy of the book, you can find it on Amazon: Someday Is Today (affiliate link).
Girls in ICT day
April 27th is international Girls in ICT day. Shout out to all the girls in STEM professions. You rock!
I am a father of two girls and being ‘in tech’ it is very important for me that, as a parent, I allow kids to test waters and pursue whatever path they want to follow. In our society, girls are being told from as early as 4 years old, when they go to kindergarten, they should play with toys designed for them. Those do not include anything tech related. Let your daughters play with cars, lego, build things, destroy them and create things using technology. Minecraft would do, but I have discovered Microsoft’s MakeCode Arcade and this is both fun and useful for my daughter and myself. Give it a try!
Tesla Q1 2023 results.
The earnings report showed automotive gross margin went down to about 19%, and stock price went down after the earnings report. This means if you wanted to buy Tesla, it’s now at a discount compared to where it was before the earnings report.
I am a Tesla investor and I have huge confidence in Tesla as automotive manufacturer with software defined cars. I also have a view that investing is not about speculating on the short-term fluctuations of stock price but buying business for long term based on business intrinsic value.
If you are investing and if you haven’t read it yet, it’s good to familiarize yourself with The Inteligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. A short quote for a start:
A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.
From The Inteligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.
Whether Tesla is cheap or expensive compared to its value for investors, that’s what each one of us needs to determine before making investment decision. This will likely depend on a number of factors.
Firstly, will they be able to register as fully autonomous and remove the driver from the equation and be able to send the car somewhere on its own. My take on this is yes and in my use case I could reduce from 2 cars to 1 by using it more. So instead of having two cars from legacy car manufactures I’d have one from Tesla. Time it takes to get there though might be not good enough for Wall Street to appreciate.
Secondly, how well legacy car manufacturers will handle the transition to electric vehicles. Some are saying they can simply leverage their hundreds of years of ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicle production know-how and simply switch over, others claim they are already late and the lag will cause them to collapse once ICE sales cash dries up.
Producing affordable EVs, profitably and at scale, is hard. Ford recently disclosed they are selling their EVs at a loss. GM just announced they will stop producing their best-selling EV - Bolt. There were reasons provided, but my take on it is they have been also selling it with negative margin.
Furthermore, you need to take into account investment horizon. For me, to consider something an investment, this needs to be a substantial amount of time. Contrary to what Wall Street view, which does not go further than a few quarters out.
Last but not least, cars are powered by software and delivering good software and continuous, rapid improvement is nearly impossible in the interdependence chain that legacy automakers are running with AUTOSAR framework. There are countless suppliers involved, each responsible for a small bit of software. Even though everyone follows Scrum to deliver that software, the whole setup is driven by vague or outdated requirements, distorted similarly to supply chain’s demand signal bullwhip effect. This gets it as far from being agile as possible.
Contrary to that, Tesla is completely agile in its software development. It is taking what used to be Toyota’s lean manufacturing and continuous improvement methodology, which then paved way for agility in software development, to a next level.
Is this worth paying $162 per share remains to be an open question.
My Weekly Media Roundup.
The Ratio-ing of Governor Hochul Proved Our Economy is Made of Schrodinger’s Avocado Toast