Hans Koenigsmann

From Falcon 1 to the Kármán Line

Hosted by Jeff Ward · Former VP of Avionics & Software, SpaceX

Transcript has been lightly edited for readability — verbal fillers and stutters removed.

Jeff Ward   [0:06]

So today I'm excited because I actually get to talk to somebody who's been to space. Dr. Hans Koenigsmann is an OG SpaceX-er, a good friend, and a long-term colleague. He's built small satellites and rockets and space capsules and even his own airplane, and recently he flew on the New Shepard rocket to the Kármán line and the edge of space. I'm Jeff Ward and this is my podcast, It's Not Rocket Science.

So we could just start out, you tell us who you are and what you had for breakfast or how you met me.

Hans Koenigsmann   [0:44]

Yeah, Hans Koenigsmann let's see I have tea and a toast for breakfast. I drink tea not coffee, so I can't answer that question. How did you meet? We met when you replaced me as a VP of Avionics and SpaceX.

Jeff Ward   [0:59]

I think we must have met before.

Hans Koenigsmann   [1:01]

I think we met before too. Yeah. I did work for Surrey actually for a couple weeks in '96 I believe.

Jeff Ward   [1:09]

Yeah, and that's when we would have probably met and crossed paths.

Hans Koenigsmann   [1:12]

But then we crossed paths probably also at the Utah Small Satellite Conference. And I mean I was working on a small satellite in Germany and you were working on small satellites and in England, so obviously you must have crossed paths. Yeah.

Jeff Ward   [1:31]

Yeah, I certainly felt that when I got to SpaceX, I already knew you a little bit, like we weren't complete strangers by any means when I got there.

Hans Koenigsmann   [1:39]

Yeah.

Jeff Ward   [1:41]

And, yeah, I came into the avionics crew and tried to figure out what to do--or what Elon wanted me to do.

Hans Koenigsmann   [1:47]

Yeah, I think there's some stuff you should talk about too--what he wanted you to do or rather what he wanted me not to do or however you say this.

Jeff Ward   [1:57]

Well, certainly the way that I got it at that time was a growth issue. You know, he's always had his eyes set on rapid growth, and he wanted more ability to do that. And I guess what I was doing at Surrey, which was mainly not technical at that time, it was mainly corporate growth stuff, was why he brought me in there.

Hans Koenigsmann   [2:15]

I think, for my side I can tell you that I never had a double E, right? So, I actually don't know how to really build electronics, although I did build electronics. So, I think we got to the point where I think we wanted to be improving the Avionics on the technical side more than I was capable of, and that's how I interpreted that, and that's why I actually.

Jeff Ward   [2:41]

Right.

Hans Koenigsmann   [2:41]

I actually embraced it because I think, okay I'm kind of out of my water. So, um, I think that's a good thing, and I can focus on GNC and FTS.

Jeff Ward   [2:53]

Yeah, and those were things, GNC especially, and FTS, which we didn't have on satellites, which is what I'd been working on my whole life, were things I didn't know that much about. I knew the vocabulary, but not the mathematics. I always felt that you and I worked out a good solution to the whole thing. And the evidence seems to be that you were there for much longer than I was there.

Hans Koenigsmann   [3:13]

Well, it's also, I did, I kind of along the way when we launched Falcon 1, I mean, or tried to launch Falcon 1 in this misery of three failed launches I became more interested on the system and tried to make the system work.

Jeff Ward   [3:30]

Right.

Hans Koenigsmann   [3:31]

And so, in this launch chief engineering thing, and so I wasn't actually that much interested in the Avionics after that.

Jeff Ward   [3:39]

Right.

Hans Koenigsmann   [3:39]

And I think that was roughly the timing, right? You came in on flight…

Jeff Ward   [3:44]

Yeah, I came in just before Flight 3. Yeah. Or maybe just, yeah, or call it just after Flight 2. We were in the data analysis on Flight 2, and then I was down in Kwaj on Flight 3.

Hans Koenigsmann   [3:57]

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Ward   [3:58]

So, interestingly, how did you end up at SpaceX? Like, you mentioned that you worked on small satellites in Europe, and how did that eventually lead you to come to the States?

Hans Koenigsmann   [4:09]

You probably know Jim Wertz from Microcosm, right?. I worked with him, yeah, I worked with him a little bit. I actually organized some classes in Germany for him. And then and then he just made me an offer. You wanna come to the U. S. on an H1B visa for two years or so? is what he said. And, my wife in particular, Rita, liked it. And so it was, like an adventure to go to Los Angeles for two years. And then, the, Jim, the work at Microcosm was originally supposed to be writing a book, but ended up a lot more hardware because I'm just hardware-centric. And then, they had this Scorpius program, and I ended up working on the rocket, and I ended up basically doing the whole avionics system on the rocket. And, it wasn't very successful, but at the end of the day I learned a little bit more about rockets, and I kind of liked it. It was interesting, it was working in the field. And satellite work was always, like, a little bit, like you know, it goes there, and then you have this connection, but it's not totally hands-on.

Jeff Ward   [5:21]

You can't touch it.

Hans Koenigsmann   [5:23]

Correct. So I liked it. And then along the way I ran into Elon. He must have gotten my number from Chris Thompson, I believe. And then he called me up and asked me if I'm interested. And I wasn't really happy at the time. But that time I was still on my visa. I actually applied for a green card. And so, by that time I was really looking for other jobs and, so, to me, this was perfect. Because I knew he had enough money to survive at least three years.

Jeff Ward   [5:57]

Right.

Hans Koenigsmann   [5:58]

I think in the end it was actually six years. So, you don't, you didn't have to deal with this. But the one thing that really annoyed me ins my work previously, both, both in LA and also back in Breyman, is that you always had to find money.

Jeff Ward   [6:11]

Right.

Hans Koenigsmann   [6:11]

And it was just increasingly harder and harder to find research money, especially in Germany. Here it was much easier, but still, like, every time like a quarter or a third of your time is wasted on finding money. And

Jeff Ward   [6:27]

Yeah, that's interesting. It sounds like you guys, both in Germany and when you were with Microcosm, you were in the driver's seat in terms of doing the fundraising as well as doing the technology,

Hans Koenigsmann   [6:38]

yeah, I part of my motivation was actually to work at Microcosm because I wanted to learn the last things about attitude control that I hadn't. And then I just found out basically I was doing it myself anyways. Oh, so I was pretty much always self-sufficient. You tell me what to do and then I just do it. And I didn't need a lot of advice on do this or do that.

Jeff Ward   [7:03]

Which is kind of the perfect way to come into SpaceX, I think.

Hans Koenigsmann   [7:06]

Quite. But that's, I think that's why it worked so well and so long. Yeah. I mean, sometimes from my perspective, I actually wish somebody would have given me advice or taught me things better than what I already made up myself. But that just rarely happened.

Jeff Ward   [7:23]

Did you find that did happen at all at SpaceX once we started getting engaged with external players who knew what they were doing more than we did, maybe, or thought they knew more?

Hans Koenigsmann   [7:33]

No, I think it happened primarily with in the guidance and control field with Joe Juerger. Who was a consultant that we hired. And he was extremely, I think, productive in terms of teaching people how to do this. How to, how to build a guidance and control system for a rocket. So I learned a lot with that. I learned a lot on other stuff too. And I think just in general, we cooperated a lot more than I was used to from other jobs, much closer work together.

Jeff Ward   [8:06]

I think that's interesting. I felt that at SpaceX, we eventually did a good job of finding people who really knew a certain technology or a certain technique and inheriting from them as much as we could, as quickly as we could, and then mixing that in with the kind of SpaceX special sauce.

Hans Koenigsmann   [8:24]

I think that's later. I think you're right. We didn't we didn't have the specialists in the beginning. We had mostly all round people that could make things work and fill the gaps that they had I guess with sound judgment and reason. But they were, they weren't specialists. They were basically people that you can say they used duct tape and zip ties to make things work.

Jeff Ward   [8:50]

Certainly by the time I got there, the team was very strong. I got there in 2007 in the spring, and it wasn't big, but the people who were there, like yourself, Tim Buzza, Chris Thompson, of course, Tom, there were people who had deep knowledge and knew what they were doing.

Hans Koenigsmann   [9:10]

They were, they were always a very high performing team but yeah, there was just nobody who, who didn't know what they were doing. We all knew what you were doing.

Jeff Ward   [9:19]

Did you get into space originally when you were in Germany as a choice? Was that your first choice when you were a student, or was it something you drifted onto?

Hans Koenigsmann   [9:28]

No, it wasn't. It was airplanes. You know, I'm a handicapped pilot. My vision wasn't good enough for flying at that time. Now it's fixed. But so I think this was like, the second best choice was aircraft engineering, worked on airplanes and then I ran into Amnon Ginati.

Jeff Ward   [9:51]

from European Space Agency.

Hans Koenigsmann   [9:52]

Exactly. Who became a good friend and through Amnon I basically got pulled over to the satellite technology department. Started working on attitude control. Was fascinated actually with gyros and the motion of that. And so I kind of like totally abandoned the airplanes and went over to the satellite and did that.

Jeff Ward   [10:13]

Then from satellites to the U. S. and attitude control, and then from that into SpaceX. It's interesting. One of the things that struck me as funny is you're coming to the U. S. for two years is like me going to England for a year .

Hans Koenigsmann   [10:29]

Yes.

Jeff Ward   [10:30]

Twenty years later, I came back to America. And here, like, what, 25 years later, you're still here. 30 years later.

Hans Koenigsmann   [10:38]

Actually in a month, it's exactly 30 years. And I don't see myself going back, actually.

Jeff Ward   [10:43]

You do travel back to Europe, though, don't you, from time to time?

Hans Koenigsmann   [10:46]

I do. I have old parents, yeah.

Jeff Ward   [10:50]

And when you got into SpaceX, you went directly into guidance navigation control. That's what Elon needed done?

Hans Koenigsmann   [11:00]

So we had Chris Thompson and Tom Müller, right? So it was, propulsion was covered, structures was covered. And then pretty much the rest of it, yeah other than the launch side was me. And because Avionics included software, if you remember that,

Jeff Ward   [11:19]

Yes. It's

Hans Koenigsmann   [11:20]

it included flight safety and it included guidance and control. So it was all four of them together in one.

Jeff Ward   [11:29]

a big portfolio. And I think

Hans Koenigsmann   [11:31]

Yeah.

Jeff Ward   [11:31]

the funny thing when I got there was to kind of describe it to people as everything that wasn't made out of metal and didn't make fire.

Hans Koenigsmann   [11:38]

Yeah, exactly. It just, it just, the way it came because of, Tim, Tom and Chris, before, before me basically.

Jeff Ward   [11:46]

I think it's also part of the question of rockets versus satellites. Satellites are kind of led by this electronics crowd and

Hans Koenigsmann   [11:55]

Yeah.

Jeff Ward   [11:55]

software. And then rockets were not led by that crowd at all. Rockets were led by people who made fire.

Hans Koenigsmann   [12:00]

Mostly, yes. If you, if I look back now, I think it's more like more like a systems kind of job. And it included those systems avionics, FTS, and so on and, um, flight termination, I should say. Software and guidance and control. And but we never called it systems anything.

Jeff Ward   [12:20]

Yeah, I think that's true, that the avionics touches everything, the software touches everything. And so you have to have the system overview of the vehicle. And that makes it more natural the way that your responsibilities changed over the course of time.

Hans Koenigsmann   [12:35]

The I think the responsibilities were also, they were also drawn by a little bit by personal preference. Like I owned the actuators on the engines initially. The TVC actuators. Because I built them at one point. The, or rather, you know, in my, within, within Avionics we built the second stage actuators. And electric actuators were pretty cool actually. And I understood the hydraulics pretty well. And it was, for me, it was part of GNC.

Jeff Ward   [13:08]

Right.

Hans Koenigsmann   [13:09]

so GNC had for me a hardware component and that was the hardware component. And so that's why we ended up doing that. It's not, that's not the case anymore. I think it changed. I think it changed, maybe with you that it moved over to propulsion. Is that possible?

Jeff Ward   [13:25]

think sometime during my tenure, it wasn't something that moved immediately. But I think sometime during that period it did move as the types of actuators and the sort of, the diversity of the actuators started to increase. I do think that reflects something of the small satellite ethos, though, is that you own the hardware that implements what you're trying to implement.

Jeff Ward   [13:48]

And that GNC didn't just outsource cameras and gyros and thrusters, GNC was an owner of those pieces of technology, so that you understood the control laws that would actually make things do what you wanted.

Hans Koenigsmann   [14:03]

you can also, I mean, there's, if you work otherwise in the system, you write specifications and then you add margin to it and you pass it on. Right. And then that person adds the margin to it and you end up with a much more constrained system than if you actually do the work yourself, then you know that if it's a sloppy gyro, you can probably compensate the GPS and you can probably compensate a sloppy thruster vector control with, I don't know, stability margin. So the trade is actually in your department and not just somewhere else.

Jeff Ward   [14:40]

Absolutely. I think the description that you just made of trading risk and passing risk down, which ultimately makes things less efficient, is one of the key insights that changed over the last 20 years in space engineering in the best companies. I don't know if it changed everywhere, but I think the best companies...

Hans Koenigsmann   [14:58]

Yeah, I don't think it did. I think it changed that space. But I don't think I don't, I don't think anybody else changed it. anybody else just goes the traditional way of adding margin and then throwing it down over the fence.

Jeff Ward   [15:11]

I suspect that at the smaller companies, they start out that way with a more holistic approach to margin. And then they get corporatized as the management becomes more conservative and more systematic, and then you end up with the traditional groups within a company, selling things to one another, and acting like little companies rather than acting like members of an integrated systems team.

Hans Koenigsmann   [15:33]

Exactly.

Jeff Ward   [15:35]

I know that like me, you work directly for Elon, so your interactions with him were not occasional. They were pretty much constant. Did you have anything that sticks out in your mind as like, oh, when you met him or like the thing that defined him for you during those early years?

Hans Koenigsmann   [15:50]

Yeah. I thought about this. So the one thing that I have is when we talk, you know, I, and if you were to talk longer about this, you know, things would pop up and you would go, oh, yeah, I remember this one. I remember that one, right? So my, that's how my brain these days works a little bit.

But just out of the cold, the two things that are, remember, one, one thing was we had this meeting after flight three. And you might recall that too. Where he, Elon had said earlier that he's in for three flights. And after we basically crashed three rockets that kind of seemed to be the end of it, especially since we didn't have much money. And so he basically assembled everybody in the conference room, and then he basically said “okay you have [another] rocket, and you have six weeks to launch it.”

That's kind of what I remember from there. And that kind of really surprised me. because I was frustrated and almost giving up at that time. And he was just the opposite.

And then we flew that out and basically did a hail Mary with that rocket, by sending it with an airplane. And then just, by that time, we basically used the credit cards and figured out we pay this when we get this done, or we don't.

Jeff Ward   [17:14]

Sounds like that was the time that you saw that something that now is characteristic of him. He doesn't give things up.

Hans Koenigsmann   [17:21]

Yeah. He doesn't give, yeah, he doesn't give up, but he doubles he doubles down on things. In this case, the right thing. And we ended up, you know, flying that fourth one to orbit successfully.

The other thing I remember is totally different. It's like  Elon was at Kwajalein at one point. And, I don't think it was a trip where you were there.

Jeff Ward   [17:44]

I only went down there one time and it was before, it was when we didn't launch. I don't remember why not. We had intended to launch, but we didn't. And then I went back to LA.

Take a second to explain Kwajalein.

Hans Koenigsmann   [17:58]

Alright, sure. Okay. So Kwajalein is an atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands are roughly, when you go from LA to Hawaii and just continue the same direction, the same distance, halfway to Australia, there's like little, little spots on the map. And those are islands. And one of them is a whole atoll. It's pretty large actually. It's a hundred miles by sixty miles, or something like that, yeah. Has a weird form too. And Kwajalein is the lower island the, one of the biggest islands there. Has, has an airport is an army base, gets supported by the Marshallese. And then, we got an island there called Omelek where we launched from. It's in the middle of the ocean. You can't really damage anything when you crash a rocket. So it's a safe, safe place for flight testing. And it's hard to get there. It's tropical. It's nine degrees at the equator. It's very warm.

But the one thing that it really has that is really good there is diving. And it's excellent diving. So, we decided to take out Elon for diving. And, um, Sharon Hurst was the site director at the time. And she was also a dive master. And she basically put the put everything on Elon and then he ran in the water. And then she held his what's it called? The thing where you basically test the buoyancy. So up and down. So she was basically controlling Elon's, Elon's buoyancy and Elon was just paddling next to her. And it was hilarious. It was really funny. It was memorable also because there's this cliff and it goes down to, I don't know, a couple thousand feet. There's big fish.

Hans Koenigsmann   [19:49]

So, that's the other memory that I have, that I have.

Jeff Ward   [19:52]

it's the only time that I've been scuba diving was when I was down there and Sharon took a bunch of us out one day.

Hans Koenigsmann   [19:58]

Exactly. And I got back into scuba diving. I still did some here too. And but it's just hard to compare.

Jeff Ward   [20:05]

Yeah, there's nothing like being in the tropics.

You worked at SpaceX for how long?

Hans Koenigsmann   [20:13]

I worked 19 years and 19 and a half years, pretty much. Close to 20.

Jeff Ward   [20:20]

So it's probably difficult across 20 years to pick out an incident that defines the organization for you. But I did give you a heads up on the question. I'm wondering if there's anything that stands out in your mind as being your quintessential SpaceX experience of a certain era. Of course each era is different

Hans Koenigsmann   [20:39]

I mean, I it's, it's hard to say. So I definitely changed, right? I mean, I was the, like, skeptical German coming into this organization that is very innovation driven, very unusual. Very little hierarchy, at least, and the employees. And so, a lot of things were very different from Germany. I think, over the years, I changed a lot with that. But, the one thing that I think sticks out with me a little bit, into what I changed is in the remember the peer review guidelines? There's one sentence in there that always fascinated me because I thought it actually hits the nail lines on the head. It says, "is resilient and unfazed by ambiguity or changes in strategic direction?", and that, to me, summarizes a lot of the space, SpaceX talents. They have resilience they're unfazed when, when there is, like, unclear direction. They just sorted it out, they figure it out. And they don't get threatened by changes in strategic direction, because sometimes you just have to do that. And, that's something, to do that, is something that I definitely learned doing at SpaceX.

Jeff Ward   [21:53]

to roll with whatever came up.

Hans Koenigsmann   [21:55]

You can, yes, you can say it in a way that it actually doesn't sound good, but actually what it means is just make the best out of what you have.

Jeff Ward   [22:05]

Yeah, I think the ability to make those changes is definitional for organizations that are agile for one thing and especially agile with a strong focus. I feel that the focus on going to Mars was always there, but what we were doing tactically on any particular day could shift. The tactical goal was always something that was up for change.

Hans Koenigsmann   [22:34]

Definitely. And it's part of Elon's strategy too to push something with a very narrow focus. And then, if it doesn't work abandon it and push something else with a very narrow focus. And just following that was something that people had to learn at SpaceX sometimes.

Jeff Ward   [22:51]

Yeah, that's true. And I think that is part of the definition of why I ended up not there is that the narrow focuses were shifting and I wasn't necessarily shifting fast enough with the focuses to satisfy the people that I was working for. And working for two people was always difficult. Did you feel like you worked for two people or did you feel like you worked for one or none?

Hans Koenigsmann   [23:10]

I mean, yeah, I guess, in the end, you do work for two people, but, and you're right, I mean, there is a filter in there, right? You, sometimes, sometimes you have to filter or translate what Elon tells you to do, so that people can embrace that and go in the right direction. The raw message was often, it would take people by surprise, it didn’t come with an explanation. And so you had to basically frame it to say, here's why we do this, huh? To get people motivated in the right direction.

Jeff Ward   [23:45]

I like that. I think that was the job of leadership at SpaceX for certain kinds of leaders was to be a little bit of a low pass filter and a translator

Hans Koenigsmann   [23:55]

Exactly.

Jeff Ward   [23:55]

for the team so that the team could focus long enough to get something done.

Hans Koenigsmann   [23:59]

Yeah. Yeah. So, the other thing that was a little bit different was I knew Gwen before SpaceX, yeah? And I was,

Jeff Ward   [24:08]

Because you guys work together at Microcosm, right? Gwen Shotwell and you.

Hans Koenigsmann   [24:11]

Correct. And I interviewed her at Microcosm she was supposed to be my boss, yeah? And so I kind of had a word there for that. I'm actually grateful for that, but so I interviewed her at Microcosm, and then, when I left she was a little bit upset, I think, when I left. But, and I couldn't, I couldn't really bring her along right away, because we had somebody else working business development, right? And when that person didn't didn't “take the opportunity to work at SpaceX,” let's say this way then I called Gwen as soon as I knew this, and that, told her, you gotta come over here. And she did. And I think there was Gwen was always a friend, so for me, this was, she was excellent in what she did, and she was a great friend, and she is a great friend. And so, to me, this was totally natural. I didn't even think about this. But then, it changes your relationship to your boss, basically, right? I could tell, thanks to Gwen, that other people probably could not say.

Jeff Ward   [25:26]

And actually, I think that she deserves a lot of credit for what we see now at SpaceX for the longevity of the company and its ability to make the transitions that it's made. I don't usually see her in the headlines and that's probably a good thing, but I do see her fingerprints all over it.

Hans Koenigsmann   [25:44]

Uh-huh.

Jeff Ward   [25:47]

How long ago did you leave SpaceX

Hans Koenigsmann   [25:50]

well, September it's four years and three months.

Jeff Ward   [25:56]

and what led you to move on?

Hans Koenigsmann   [25:58]

So I did do FAA work part of my job in flight reliability. I think it was also partly because I just had the connections to the FAA and so on and so forth. Um, Elon and I pretty much disagreed on a, on an accident investigation, and then he basically suggested, "Why don't you retire?" And I did. I didn't, I didn't actually do this right away and we agreed to that, too. I worked another half year. I kind of phased it down. I mean, I had, by that time, I had everything set up. I had a successor there, Bill Gerstenmaier. I had the team was running well.

I was not, I was not ready to go to work on Starship. I was just not, I felt that was too much for me. so that was clear, too. We had, we just had flown Bob and Doug successfully as, you know, human space flight, which I think was awesome. To get that. Yeah. And so I felt it was the right time anyways, yeah. So I went half time at SpaceX as a senior advisor, whatever that means. And actually worked the other half time at Sling Aircraft on my airplane. And it was a, it was an awesome, it was an awesome mix, because I literally worked three days at Sling and two days at SpaceX.

Jeff Ward   [27:28]

you say worked on your airplane, explain,

Hans Koenigsmann   [27:30]

It's an experimental airplane, and there's a build center and they help you building it. But you can work as much as you want on your own, on your own airplane, and they supervise you and help you, basically. And that's a, it's a very good thing if you want to build an experimental airplane and you're not sure you have the skills for that. So I bought this kit, basically, and, they put it at the build center. I worked on it. They taught me how to do some things, and they fixed, fixed everything I did when I wasn't there. And then the other half of the week, basically, I worked at SpaceX, and it was a really good transition.

Jeff Ward   [28:11]

it sounds like it. Do you fly your plane a lot?

Hans Koenigsmann   [28:14]

I wish I flew a lot the first two years I'm flying less now, but it's also winter here, so, yeah.

Jeff Ward   [28:21]

And what other things have you done since you left there? I know you've done some senior advisor roles at other places.

Hans Koenigsmann   [28:26]

I think one of the first people that came to me after that was Jed McCaleb, who founded VAST. And it was kind of like a similar situation like SpaceX he has a lot of money put some money on the table. Was to build it in something that has, like, a long-term future, but no immediate or, the difficult immediate economic situation Space Station. So I'm, I'm an advisor for VAST space, for the Space Station there.

And then this, the second thing that happened is, OHB in Germany reached out to me Marco Fuchs, and, I became a board member on the supervisory board. And I used to work with his father and with, OHB, and when I was still working in Germany. So, those two things basically happened pretty early.

Then I became an advisor to Stoke Space. They built a reusable upper stage. They actually built the whole rocket, but the reusable upper stage is the thing that kind of tilted me towards them. Because I thought that was actually something that is one step further than SpaceX. I'm a board member now at Stoke.

Then, last not least, I worked on, I started working on a company called AstroForge.

Jeff Ward   [29:47]

What does AstroForge do?

Hans Koenigsmann   [29:49]

They built interplanetary spacecraft for mining. Asteroid mining, basically. There's many companies, or not many, but there's, there's a few companies that do that, but most of them actually make paper. They actually built a spacecraft and they're actually trying to get out to the Asteroid trying to rendezvous with it. And then they're trying to mine things and eventually get it back. So, it's, it's a pretty crazy concept in general, but I find it really refreshing that they're actually trying to do this.

Jeff Ward   [30:18]

It sounds like you've been involved in a number of these startups that are still kind of exciting and that you retain some excitement about what's going on in space. Is that safe to say?

Hans Koenigsmann   [30:27]

Yeah, that's safe to say.

Jeff Ward   [30:29]

And you think that there's still, I guess that I came from a satellite position. I'm looking at what's happening in satellites and I look at Starlink. They're building hundreds of these things every day, launching thousands of them a year. Okay, problem solved. But you're looking at space and seeing that there's still exciting problems ongoing and you're trying to contribute to that.

Hans Koenigsmann   [30:53]

Yeah, I hope so, at least. Talking about Starlink, I mean, this whole thing goes to Starlink. I have Starlink here at the house, so.

Jeff Ward   [31:00]

I don't yet. Possibly my first interview via Starlink.

Jeff Ward   [31:04]

I still have my cable and it's still working, so I haven't gone for Starlink yet. But it has been an amazing kind of technology to watch it advance, especially coming from groups like we did that sort of hand-built satellites.

Hans Koenigsmann   [31:18]

it just works. I mean, it's just like you put it up on the roof one day and connect it and it works. And I haven't touched it since then. I'm doing knock on wood just to work fine.

Jeff Ward   [31:32]

That was certainly my experience of what I took it out to a cabin that had no electricity and no running water and no internet, and you throw it outside on the porch and you have internet.

And how did you end up, like, I almost forgot, how did you end up doing what you did a couple weeks ago, going to space?

Hans Koenigsmann   [31:51]

Oh!

Jeff Ward   [31:51]

Right.

Hans Koenigsmann   [31:51]

I'm going to space. Ha, ha, ha. Totally random actually. I flew with Michi Benthaus. I met her, I don't know, like, maybe two years ago. I think when I started at OHB. She contacted me and asked me, hey, I'm doing the Zero-G flight, I need funds for travel. And so I see you’re on the board. Can you help me maybe that OHB contributes? And I just wanted to test OHB a little bit. And I just sent that over and say, hey, here's somebody. Can you guys help her? And they did, actually. And I was actually proud of them. So they did. And she, and she remembered that. Um, and it's, let's see. What was, oh, I met her later on and then she asked me. Oh, I forgot to say, she sits in the wheelchair. So she's paraplegic and can't walk. And then she asked me, can she be an astronaut, theoretically? And then I said, well, no, let me check and see. And, um, technically you don't need the legs very much, at least. And so I kind of got into this thing. And then at one point I just thought, well, um, sometimes we just have to do things. And to show that it actually works. And that's, that's what, when I decided we do this.

Jeff Ward   [33:12]

That's a great genesis. I love the attitude as well. Sometimes you just have to do it.

Hans Koenigsmann   [33:16]

Right, exactly. I mean, it's like everything is there. Theoretically it should work. I have the ability to do this. I can do this. And so why don't I do that? I mean, and so that's how we ended up doing this. So Michi has, um, we worked, I worked with her basically a year until we flew. Um, so I worked with her and with Blue. We went, um, twice to, um, Blue Origin and Vandenburg. Um, we figured out how she gets into the cabin, um, how she gets out of the cabin. My job was basically, if something goes wrong, I have to somehow drag her out.

Jeff Ward   [33:50]

How was it trusting yourself to somebody else's rocket after having spent so many years, building rockets, and then doing manned space flight? How did that feel?

Hans Koenigsmann   [34:01]

Um, a little bit weird. And I, the other thing was also, I couldn't really ask point blank questions. Right. Um, I didn't want to be rude and, um, I also had a lot of cooperation from them. And I didn't want to risk that by asking how the hell did you do that? And so it was a little bit weird, um, that I kind of sometimes, um, just looked at them with a question mark in my eyes, I guess, I think they really tried to answer my question in terms of reliability and so on and so forth. And I did ask some questions. Ask, um, how, how is, how does this work? What happens when that fails? And they answered them all right. I mean, they answered them all in the right answer. And so I felt pretty comfortable, um, after a while. Yeah. It's a, it's a real thing, right? You know,

Jeff Ward   [34:53]

I'm sure. And

Hans Koenigsmann   [34:54]

but on the other side, I also know that this whole thing has nothing to do with what what you feel and what you do. It's, it's really rockets have their own personality.

Jeff Ward   [35:06]

Could you sense enough of the personality of that rocket? I mean, obviously you could. It seemed like you felt confident.

Hans Koenigsmann   [35:12]

Yeah. I did. I did. And it was okay. It was good. No, it was amazing. Yeah. So, yeah. Reliability-wise I had enough information to sit in there and to go and I felt safe.

Jeff Ward   [35:25]

And what was the experience for you? I think that, you know, I don't necessarily expect much more than a Germanic answer. You know, it was a very amazing flight. But did you hear people who are utterly transformed by it. And I'm not necessarily expecting that was your experience, but what was your experience of going to space?

Hans Koenigsmann   [35:46]

So, it was definitely, it was wilder than I thought. Um, I'd say it this way, um, it was definitely a, like an elevator that doesn't end. Um, it's pretty, it's brute force. Um, it goes up and it doesn't end for like, you know, several minutes. And, um, and then all the transitions, like, the way the engine stops, stage separation, everything is pyros. So  it's with a boom and  there's a lot of noise and you feel it. Some of it is harsh. Like and then this particular rocket goes straight up 105 kilometers and comes straight down. Right. So on the way up, I think it feels like an orbital flight too. Same thing. What fascinates me is like  at one point the sky goes from blue to black and it's, it's pretty quick actually. And you look outside and suddenly it's black and it was blue before. So that's kind of like an amazing thing to see. Obviously the view is awesome. You see this, the Earth is a sphere. The Earth is a sphere and it's not, it's not the window that makes you see the sphere.

And then you have the zero G phase and everybody floats around and does certain things.

When you come back, the re-entry is pretty harsh. It's 5G because it's a belly flop. It goes straight in. There's no flat path angle like what you normally have. And that increases the G loads. But makes it also pretty short. And 5G you feel that on your chest. It's like somebody sitting on your chest. And keeps you from breathing. But it's, it's short. So it's, it's really not that much.

And then comes the parachute pretty late as always. I mean, same, same for everybody. Parachutes need the thick air to work. And so they come out pretty late. And the landing is kind of rougher than I thought too. It’s okay, but it's still on the land. There's a system that dampens it, like a thruster system that's going off at the same time, but it's still a pretty harsh event. I mean, all in all, it’s short, but you get a glance into something that is way bigger than you thought.

Jeff Ward   [38:01]

I like that. Makes sense. Would it make you want to do it again?

Hans Koenigsmann   [38:04]

Yes. I mean, it, pretty much everybody has that response when you come out, I want to do this again. It was short. Would I do it again? I would, I'd be interested in more basically. I can do this for maybe, maybe a day. Something like that. Um, so that sounds, but at the same time, I mean it's also expensive.

Jeff Ward   [38:33]

Has there been a demand for you to answer these same questions for a lot of people? Did you turn into a celebrity after going to orbit?

Hans Koenigsmann   [38:40]

No. I mean, I, some people reached out, but actually I sit pretty much in the background. The one that got hammered with like requests everything was Michi. And that's kind of what I wanted, actually. Oh, I didn't want her to work that much on that, but I did want to stay a little bit in the background and not make this about me, but about her, actually.

Jeff Ward   [39:02]

I really respect that. I thought that showed up immediately from the mission patch, which as far as I could tell, did not carry any iconic Hans Koenigsmann icons.

Hans Koenigsmann   [39:13]

Yup. I was thinking about the clover, but it was too late.

Jeff Ward   [39:18]

The Lucky Clover.

Hans Koenigsmann   [39:19]

Right.

Jeff Ward   [39:21]

Well, I'm really glad that you got an opportunity to do that. I think it's an excellent piece of punctuation on your career building rockets.

Hans Koenigsmann   [39:31]

And then the other thing is also on satellites. You trust the rocket and everything's fine. But if you have somebody on there that,you know, right, you go, is this really, really, really good. You're just asking things three times and not just once or twice.

Jeff Ward   [39:48]

I can imagine. And then making that transition to going on somebody else's rocket and not really being able to ask those questions so deeply. I feel that you've had a very good set of experiences there. What are you thinking about doing next? Just flying your plane more, continuing your advisory roles, or do you have something else up your sleeve?

Hans Koenigsmann   [40:08]

Nothing immediately. And I have a lot of energy still left. And I do want to enjoy both my life and at the same time contribute to space, humanity, and all these things. So I see what I do. We have to talk probably again.

Jeff Ward   [40:25]

I hope we'll talk again. I think that I was going to ask the quick round of questions. And one of them is, do you think we can help humanity?

Hans Koenigsmann   [40:32]

I think we can .It's not totally clear how, and it's often the things where you take a risk

Jeff Ward   [40:41]

I agree. And what would you give as advice to younger people who are starting out their careers who want to get into this kind of high-tech pressure cooker?

Hans Koenigsmann   [40:49]

By no means settle in your comfort zone. Jst do, do something on purpose to get out of your comfort zone.

Jeff Ward   [40:55]

And did you have a soundbite of what your biggest lesson from SpaceX was?

Hans Koenigsmann   [40:58]

The SpaceX lesson is really complex, right? There's, there's so much into it because there's on one side. A lot of self-doubt is actually a good thing. But at the same time, it's back to basics, back to physics, try to really understand, really, really understand. It's always like, um, asking questions. And so my thing was basically what I come back with is always the questions more important than the answer. Yeah. If you, if you have the right questions, you pretty much solve the problem.

Jeff Ward   [41:33]

Hey, I really appreciate you taking the time. You know, we go a long way back. Like we said, it feels like it goes back to the 1980s or the early 90s. And it's always good to catch up with you. And I think people are going to be very interested to hear what you had to say. And thank you so much for taking the time.

Hans Koenigsmann   [41:51]

Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for having me.

Jeff Ward   [41:54]

You're welcome. And we will come back and do it again.

I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Hans. If anyone's qualified to say that rockets have personalities, it's him.

And I'm pleased to say that for the first time since I started this podcast, I actually have a couple more episodes recorded and they're being edited right now. In the coming weeks, you'll hear interesting discussions with both OG and newer generation SpaceXers.

Thanks for listening to It's Not Rocket Science.

It's Not Rocket Science · itsnotrocketsciencepodcast.com