Shotwell has rarely taken credit for any of this. “I try to run the company the way I think Elon would want me to run it,” she says. “He makes great decisions with good data. It’s irritating that he is right as often as he is.” That’s not to say he’s always right. Years earlier, Musk ordered Falcon Heavy canceled, forcing Shotwell, who’d been tipped off by another SpaceX employee, to sprint to a conference room and remind him that the U.S. Air Force, a critical customer, had already purchased a launch.
“Gwynne has been able to provide this constant, consistent, positive leadership for SpaceX,” says Lori Garver, a former deputy NASA administrator and the co-founder of the Brooke Owens Fellowship, which supports young women in aerospace careers and counts Shotwell as a mentor. “The public may not be as aware of her, but in the space community she is as big of a rock star as he is. If someone wants a keynote speaker or someone to testify at a congressional hearing, it’s always, ‘Let’s get Gwynne.’ ”
Musk’s strategy made Shotwell’s job crucial. She had to sell a rocket to satellite companies, even though the rocket had never actually flown, and she had to persuade NASA and the military to fund SpaceX’s demonstration flights.
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