During the chaos of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover in 2022, Nasa administrator Bill Nelson was beginning to fear.
He summoned Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief working officer of Musk’s rocket firm SpaceX, the company’s most necessary associate. “Tell me that the distraction that Elon may need on Twitter will not be going to have an effect on SpaceX,” he recalled asking.
Shotwell instructed him that he had nothing to fret about. “I hugged her with a smile on my face, as a result of I do know she is operating that factor,” he stated, including later that she was “one of the vital necessary choices [Musk] ever made”.
For 22 years, Shotwell has helped to information Musk’s moonshot venture to disrupt the area trade. This week, SpaceX grew to become the world’s largest personal start-up, valued at $350bn.
It has turn into so important to the US authorities that it’ll quickly be used to rescue two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station.
Donald Trump — to whom Musk donated over $250mn through the election marketing campaign — devoted a part of his presidential victory speech to SpaceX’s historic technical feat, when it caught the large Starship rocket booster utilizing its “mechazilla” robotic arms — “similar to you maintain your little child at night time”.
The firm has additionally launched a community of low-orbit satellites that would someday turn into the dominant manner by which the world accesses the web. If it goes public, or lists its broadband subsidiary Starlink, it’ll nearly definitely be the most important US IPO on document.
Shotwell has quietly been on the centre of all of those achievements, shunning the circus that swirls around the globe’s richest man. Now 61, she has additionally managed to spend 20 years beside the mercurial billionaire with out falling out or burning out, an achievement that’s “unprecedented,” in accordance with Eric Berger, who has written two books about SpaceX.
“She is a really blunt and direct particular person, not not like Elon, they share a number of traits. It is SpaceX versus the world they usually’ve been simpatico on that from day one,” he says. “She is a metal fist behind a velvet glove: a beautiful character, outgoing, humorous and laughs lots, however you’ll be able to’t push her round.”
Born Gwynne Rowley in Illinois in 1963, Shotwell grew up in Libertyville, a suburb of Chicago, the place she was a straight-A scholar and cheerleader. During her teenagers, her mom dragged her to a Society of Women Engineers convention — an occasion that modified her opinion on engineers as “nerds, social outcasts, nostril pickers”, she stated in a 2012 interview with the alumni journal for Northwestern University, the place she studied mechanical engineering and utilized arithmetic.
Her first skilled position was at Chrysler, earlier than becoming a member of The Aerospace Corporation after which rocket firm Microcosm. In 2002, an ex-colleague launched her to Musk, who supplied her a job the identical day. She joined because the seventh worker of SpaceX — one co-worker remembers her having the nickname “007” — hoping to galvanise area exploration out of a interval of “stagnation” and “constipated” paperwork.
Her husband shares an identical mission as an engineer at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The pair stay on a 1,000 acre ranch in Hamilton County, Texas. Shotwell has installed a Starlink Mini gadget on high of her automobile as a way to communicate to Musk with out interruption on her commute.
In 2008, she was promoted to president. She now oversees greater than 13,000 workers tasked with creating reusable rockets able to carrying people to Mars.
“If Elon is the visionary, she is the get-shit-done particular person,” says one worker. “She transforms imaginative and prescient into actuality, watches the underside line, manages the exec group and retains him away from regulators.”
As a foil to the unstable Musk, Shotwell’s diplomatic abilities are important for an organization that depends on $15bn of federal area and defence contracts, whereas dealing with quite a few regulatory probes and allegations of environmental violations.
“It’s laborious to quantify or separate SpaceX’s success from her — to not diminish Elon’s position — however Gwynne has been the chief on the federal government relations aspect for many years, and that may be a enormous, essential a part of their success,” says Lori Garver, a former deputy administrator of Nasa.
“People, particularly now, see the challenges she should undergo working with Elon. She is ready to put blinkers on,” Garver provides. “It makes a number of us really feel higher that somebody like Gwynne would keep that lengthy . . . Nasa would typically simply dismiss questions on Elon and say ‘we work with Gwynne’.”
Those keen to speak on the document are fulsome. But even they’re uncommon, such is the omertà amongst Musk’s lieutenants, workers and backers. Shotwell declined to be interviewed. A colleague says she is aware of how one can keep out of headlines.
After so lengthy at SpaceX, workers now wonder if she is perhaps able to attempt one thing new. As an early worker, she is nearly definitely a billionaire by way of pay and inventory choices. Some muse that she may make Nasa administrator.
This could be an adjustment. Over the years, Musk’s model has rubbed off on her. In 2018 she stated a SpaceX automobile referred to as BFR — Big Fucking Rocket — would blast 100 passengers half manner around the globe in half-hour “inside a decade, for certain”. “That’s Gwynne time”, she famous. “I’m certain Elon will need us to go sooner.”
stephen.morris@ft.com
