So a few weeks ago, I made this episode called How SpaceX Works.
And while I was reading about the way SpaceX operates, I came across this very interesting sentence.
I'm going to read this to you.
It says, many of these ideas are not even new.
Lockheed Skunk Works ran similar approaches 60 years ago.
Founder Kelly Johnson's 14 Rules reads like a SpaceX operations manual.
So that made me want to read Kelly Johnson's autobiography, which is called More Than My Share of It All.
He wrote it when he was 75 years old.
And the first thing I want to tell you about in the book, I actually want to jump towards the end of the book.
It's one of the last chapters.
The chapter is called It's No Secret, and it breaks down how he built and how he ran Skunk Works.
But before I jump into the book.
There's this list of 20 ideas.
I want to give you an overview of basically how he ran this operation.
I think telling you this list of 20 ideas up front will make it easy to remember
and understand everything that comes after.
So number one, a breakthrough program is an organization before it's a design.
So this is one of maybe the greatest designer of aircrafts of all time.
In the case of the plane, the SR-71, which Kelly designed all the way back in the 1960s,
it still holds to this day, 60 years later, it still holds the record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft.