During the chaos of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022, NASA administrator Bill Nelson was starting to worry.
He summoned Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, the agency’s largest partner. “Tell me that the distraction that Elon may have on Twitter is not going to affect SpaceX,” he recalled asking.
Shotwell told him he had nothing to worry about. “I hugged her with a smile on my face, because I know she’s running that thing,” he said, later adding that she was “one of the biggest decisions.” [Musk] never done.”
For 22 years, Shotwell has helped guide Musk’s moonshot project to revolutionize the space industry. This week, SpaceX became the largest private startup in the world. valued at 350 billion dollars.
It has become so essential to the United States government that it will soon be used to rescue Two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station.
Donald Trump, to whom Musk donated more than $250 million during the election campaign, dedicated part of his presidential victory speech to SpaceX. historic technical featwhen he caught the massive Starship rocket booster using his “mechazilla” robotic arms, “just like you hold your little baby at night.”
The company also launched a network of low-orbit satellites that could one day become the dominant way the world accesses the Internet. If its Starlink broadband subsidiary goes public or listed, it will almost certainly be the largest US initial public offering ever recorded.
shooting pit He has been quietly at the center of all these achievements, avoiding the circus that revolves around the richest man in the world. Now 61, he has also managed to spend two decades at the mercurial billionaire’s side without falling over or burning out, an achievement that is unprecedented, according to Eric Berger, who has written two books about SpaceX.
“She is a very frank and direct person, like Elon, they share many traits. “It’s SpaceX against the world and they’ve been understanding about that from day one,” he says. “She’s an iron fist behind a velvet glove: a charming personality, outgoing, funny and laughs a lot, but you can’t put pressure on her.”
Shotwell, born Gwynne Rowley in Illinois in 1963, grew up in Libertyville, a Chicago suburb, where she was a straight-A student and cheerleader. During her teens, her mother dragged her to a Society of Women Engineers conference, an event that changed her opinion of engineers as “nerds, social outcasts, finicky,” she said in a interview 2012 with the Northwestern University alumni magazine, where he studied mechanical engineering and applied mathematics.
His first professional position was at Chrysler, before joining The Aerospace Corporation and then the rocket company Microcosm. In 2002, a former colleague introduced him to Musk, who offered him a job that same day. She joined as SpaceX’s seventh employee (a co-worker remembers she had the nickname “007”), hoping to push space exploration through a period of “stagnation” and “constipated” bureaucracy.
Her husband shares a similar mission as an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The couple lives on a 1,000-acre ranch in Hamilton County, Texas. Shotwell has installed a Starlink Mini device on top of his car so he can talk to Musk without interruptions to his trip.
In 2008 she was promoted to president. He now oversees more than 13,000 people tasked with developing reusable rockets capable of transporting humans to Mars.
“If Elon is the visionary, she’s the person who gets shit done,” says one employee. “She transforms vision into reality, monitors results, manages the executive team and keeps them away from regulators.”
To counter the volatile Musk, Shotwell’s diplomatic skills are essential for a company that relies on $15 billion in federal space and defense contracts, while facing numerous regulatory investigations and accusations of environmental violations.
“It’s difficult to quantify or separate SpaceX’s success from hers, so as not to diminish Elon’s role, but Gwynne has been the leader on the government relations side for decades, and that is a huge and critical part of her success.” says Lori Garver, a former NASA deputy administrator.
“People, especially now, see the challenges you have to go through working with Elon. “She’s able to put on blinders,” Garver adds. “It makes a lot of us feel better that someone like Gwynne is sticking around for so long. . . NASA often simply dismissed questions about Elon and said ‘we worked with Gwynne.’”
Those who are willing to speak officially are exaggerated. But even they are rare, such is the omertà among Musk’s lieutenants, staff and backers. Shotwell declined to be interviewed. A colleague says she knows how to stay out of the headlines.
After so much time at SpaceX, staff now wonder if she might be ready to try something new. As an early employee, she’s almost certainly a billionaire through salaries and stock options. Someone thinks she could be a good NASA administrator.
This would be an adjustment. Over the years, Musk’s style has rubbed off on him. In 2018, he said a SpaceX vehicle called BFR (Big Fucking Rocket) would fly 100 passengers to the other side of the world in 30 minutes “within a decade, for sure.” “That’s Gwynne’s moment,” he noted. “I’m sure Elon will want us to go faster.”