Since its founding in 2002, SpaceX has sought to “revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”
In the meantime, the company aims to provide a work environment friendly to all backgrounds. And one group the company’s officials take great pride in including in their vision is military veterans.
“Our recruitment process asks prospective employees to demonstrate to us that they have the skills and drive to contribute to SpaceX’s mission of making humanity a multi-planetary species,” Brian Bjelde, SpaceX’s vice president of human resources, said in a statement. “Veterans are smart, passionate, and driven individuals who are committed to achieving that mission, and they bring a wide array of skills that can be deployed in so many of our roles.”
Out the 5,000 employees spread across the company’s various offices, 13 percent identify as veterans from all branches of the armed forces. But for SpaceX’s operations at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the percent of veterans on staff doubles to 25 percent.
The Sun sat down with five of those veterans to discuss what drew them to the globally renowned aerospace company and how it compared to their time serving in the armed forces.
“The amount of responsibility given to us in the military is pretty phenomenal,” said Nelson Valenzuela, 38, a-five year veteran with the U.S. Marines. Valenzuela is now a quality inspector for SpaceX. He makes sure equipment is up to snuff before it’s pieced together for a launch.
He said working for the aerospace company reminded him of his time serving.
“It’s very similar [working at SpaceX] where there are people’s lives at stake,” he added. “There’s hazardous things here. It’s a dangerous place, there are rockets.”
Sean Reilly is the senior manager for launch operations at SpaceX’s Vandenberg location. Before that, he spent 20 years in the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a space missile engineer, among other positions.
“There’s this sense of autonomy and sense of purpose we have and constant sense of getting better that has been a very nice transition from my Air Force life to this,” Reilly said. “I don’t think I could have done this without what I learned in the Air Force.”
Site Director Eric Krystkowiak, 46, spent 22 years in the Air Force, where he eventually became a program managing engineer and worked with space and launch satellite intelligence programs. He said the bonds forged among company employees between missile launches reminded him of the military.
“I never deployed, but the last year at SpaceX has felt like a deployment in some ways—in a very good way—in that it’s incredibly challenging and the camaraderie [working toward a successful launch], and the sense of accomplishment,” he added. “There’s also no such thing as just as a manager or supervisor in SpaceX—everyone is a doer—and that’s really cool. If you want to build on something you did in the military, it’s a great opportunity for veterans.”
That opportunity was one of the reasons Mission Manager Katie Burke joined the company.
“For me it was innovation and technology,” she said. “How do you bring some of those lessons [from the military] we learned into what we do here at SpaceX? You still need to push those boundaries. That’s what really appealed to me—I love it. We go 100 miles per hour here, and it reminds me of back in the day when we were second lieutenants [in the Air Force].”
Pace is important for a lot of SpaceX employees, especially for those who’ve served, according to Lead Launch Engineer Dan Taglialatela, 29, who spent eight years in the Air Force, largely as a crew chief aboard C-130 transport aircraft.
“That’s why I kind of looked for a job like this,” Taglialatela said. “It was something new, something challenging, something I was uncomfortable with. I don’t think there are very many experts here in the company because you are constantly pushed to do something new or do something different or something you’ve never done before.
“I was always outside my comfort zone in the military. I like that feeling,” he added.
Valenzuela added that employees could handle the pressures that come with working at SpaceX in part due to the pride they get from being a part of the company’s mission.
“It’s very humbling, if you run the numbers we are only a small percentage of the world population that can say they launch rockets,” he said. “We are pushing the envelope, making history every time we launch. So there’s that same pride there—the same you would have in the military.”
And that positive morale, Burke explained, runs companywide from top to bottom.
“You can ask anyone that works here, even the guys in the kitchen, everybody has pride and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a company like that,” she said.
Krystkowiak noted that prospective employees have to approach the job with at least some part of that dedication to be successful in the company.
“If you want to be ‘somebody’ or have some title, you should probably go somewhere else,” he said. “You want to actually do something in your second career, then there’s opportunity.”
After all, Senior Manager Reilly told the Sun, not even the sky’s the limit when it comes to SpaceX.
“There’s no upper cap on potential,” he said. “You can move up as fast as you want.”
Staff Writer Spencer Cole can be reached at scole@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 16-23, 2017.