The Leaning Factories 280
The surroundings may be welcoming, but almost no
one is, for 1 Rocket Road belongs to SpaceX. The security
around the area is high to avoid industrial espionage.
SpaceX has a policy not to apply for patents, simply because
they believe a competitor will copy these patents. “Our
primary long-term competition is in China,” Elon said. “If
we published patents, it would be farcical, because the
Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.”^305
Before SpaceX moved to 1 Rocket Road, they looked at
Howard Hughes’s old compound in Playa Vista. Famous
from the movieThe Aviator, Hughes had a vision as large
as Elon’s when he designed a giant aircraft made entirely
of wood. “It will invite comparisons. I better not pee in a jar
or grow my fingernails long,” Elon said. He didn’t want to
be compared with Hughes, who displayed signs of mental
illness when he became obsessed with the size of peas and
sorted them by size with a special fork.^301
The entire US space industry involves almost 500 000
people across 50 states. In comparison, the entire SpaceX
is in one building – except for the tasks that must be
performed in a more remote place. Steve Jobs thought the
right kind of building could do great things for a culture. If
everyone works in the same building, the creativity will
increase. “There’s a temptation in our networked age to
think that ideas can be developed by e-mail and iChat,” Jobs
said. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous
meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone,
you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon
you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”^3