When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance

Author:Ashlee Vance [Vance, Ashlee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Chris Kemp on Chris Kemp, Spring 2017

After I’d spent my first few months with Stealth Space, it became clear to me that I’d stumbled into a special opportunity. Kemp, London, and the rest of the company had not fibbed. They really were going to let me observe their every move and record their every conversation. I would get to experience the struggle of building a rocket and a company right alongside them.

The more time I spent with them, the more I wanted to convey to you, dear reader, how they talked and thought about the space business and how they solved problems. To that end, I’m going to put you next to the engineers both when things go right and when they go horribly wrong, and also simply let you hang out with the engineers and technicians as they chat to get a real feel for them. In a number of the following chapters, you’ll be hearing much of the story directly from their mouths. It’s a slightly unusual approach, but these were unusual circumstances. You’re going to see the religion of space engineering and the religion of Silicon Valley in unvarnished form.

Chris Kemp provided his own unique brand of surprises. Though I pride myself on being a decent writer, I started to wonder if anyone would believe my descriptions of how he talked and thought unless they experienced it for themselves. With that, I present to you Chris Kemp discussing Chris Kemp as only he could.

KEMP: I was born in upstate New York. And when I was a baby, my father, who’s a neurobiologist, was given an opportunity to come down to Birmingham, Alabama, and set up a lab. So I spent most of the time growing up in the suburbs of Birmingham. At the time, though, we were just south of Huntsville, Alabama, where they have the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Space Camp, which I attended.

My dad was a professor and taught and did a lot of research. He worked on papers around how neurons communicate with each other. I remember going to his lab as a kid, and he would have all these experiments running around sequencing DNA.

He was a very multifaceted person. He built race cars in the garage and drove them. As a kid, I grew up working on the cars with him. We had about ten cars and a huge garage. He was also a violinist and played in an orchestra. I picked up the violin and still play as a way to unwind. Oh, and he also played tennis quite seriously. Something of a Renaissance man.

My dad was very serious and intense. Whatever he did, he took it very seriously, and I grew up with that focus and intensity modeled for me as a kid.

My mother was a teacher and a pilot. She taught classes at a private school and also flew private planes. But she gave a lot of that up when my parents had kids. She became a dedicated mom for me and my sister.

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