12 ms·

Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars

497 points by sravfeyn 14y ago

thinkingthings 14y ago
Elon Musk is a leader of our generation, with vision that most of us can only dream of.
- sho_hn 14y ago
  Lots of folks have a vision of a mission to mars. What counts is the execution.
  - indiecore 14y ago
    To be fair to those folks most of them aren't billionaires.
    - joering2 14y ago
      ok but how did Musk got to be a millionaire? hint: execution.
    - InclinedPlane 14y ago
      To be fair to Musk, some of them are billionaires (think about folks like George Lucas who have made billions through sci fi movies etc.)
      - indiecore 14y ago
        Extremely true
  - crooneys 14y ago
    I'd argue that vision implies the ability/willingness to execute, whereas dreaming is just that. Musk seems to have the execution down so far!
catch23 14y ago
There's one interesting quote in the article: Musk: I can’t tell you much. We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in China—if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book. If your process/ideas are sufficiently complex, it reduces competition if you don't file a patent.
- cobrausn 14y ago
  One of the supposed points of patents is that the inventor shares knowledge with the world in exchange for temporary monopoly. If the patent is not enforced (such as in China), then there is no incentive to file. It might be smarter, from a business standpoint, to just keep the knowledge to yourself.
  - davidw 14y ago
    As long as you can keep control over your organization. With anything significantly large enough, it's probably not too hard to slip a spy in.
- cletus 14y ago
  It's actually worse than that. Tech companies routinely use a combination of patents, trade secrets and copyright to make the shared knowledge (patents) basically useless but an exceptionally good defensive and offensive weapon. I recall this came up with Intel and other companies reverse-engineering the Netburst bus. EDIT: removed point about first-to-file as prior art would largely invalidate such attempts beyond a very narrow time frame.
  - statusgraph 14y ago
    My (limited) understanding is you can still argue prior art to invalidate the patent. First to file would only come up if both SpaceX and a Chinese company had patents and went to court. The wiki article expounds a little: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act#First_to_file_and_grace_period http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act...
libraryatnight 14y ago
I was telling my dad the other day this is a guy I could see my kids or grandkids using as a subject for a school report. Such an interesting person.
startupfounder 14y ago
If you have't already seen it, Kevin Rose interviews Elon Musk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8 Also, Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about if there was a space race with China the US would be on Mars in 18 months: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cVg-snQdrms http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c... It would be truly amazing if a private company was the first to set foot on another planet.
- TwistedWeasel 14y ago
  When (not if) we set foot on Mars, the achievement will be one of humanity. Private company, government, US, China, it doesn't matter. We'll be on Mars, a multi-planetary race. How the accomplishment was funded and by who will not matter (to me, anyway).
  - startupfounder 14y ago
    I totally agree, but what flag will be planted? Humans love to raise a flag from the geographic location known as a country they are a resident of. It would be amazing if we didn't need a flag this time around, just human accomplishment. But competition drives humans to do great things, look at the olympic records over time. If SpaceX received funding fromt he US government would there be a clause in the contract stating they have to raise an American Flag?
- simba-hiiipower 14y ago
  very cool; thanks for the links. and that would be absolutely amazing; though in some ways (and not to discount musk’s undertaking at all) i feel it speaks more so to a failure of governments (generally speaking) in investing to drive technological advance. it should be the public sector that leads in these types of endeavors. one of the most important functions of a state is its ability and willingness to invest in projects that would be otherwise unprofitable or far too long-term for any rational player in the private sector to take-on. these investments, while maybe unprofitable to a single entity, are what lay the foundation for significant productivity and standard of living gains down-the-line (which, in-turn, spur many future profitable companies). it’s how everything from highways spanning a continent and parks in the middle of crowded cities to the internet and atomic energy get developed; and it's so crucial to society.. it’s really quite sad to see this important economic function of government neglected, particularly in the us where its proven so successful in generating wealth and societal good time-and-time again.. i mean would we have microsoft and apple around if it wasn’t for the development of the internet? (and google certainly wouldn’t exist). it’s also sad that the great focus that the nation apparently (long before i came to be) had in driving technological advance has stalled, and such investments have become issues of budgets and ‘big government’ (which i am not a fan of at all by the way). if governments are going to run ridiculous budget deficits anyways (even in years of economic growth) then there should at least be something to show for it at some point; that doesn’t seem to be the case these days.. fortunately there are irrational players in the private sector, like elon musk, who are able to fill the voids. unfortunately though, if (and most likely when) such endeavors prove unprofitable in the long-run, little may show for it.. you’d think more people would be interested (and economically incentivized) to have a government that covers the expensive research and development costs associated with spearheading technologies which they can one-day build-off of (and in incredibly profitable ways), but i guess economic self-preservation (and therefore political pressure) prevail over advance. with all that said, i really do hope he succeeds. (also, off topic, but i really wish i could afford a model s right now!)
Osmium 14y ago
Apologies for being somewhat off-topic, but does anybody know if there are citizenship requirements for working at a place like SpaceX? I have a solid background in materials science and metallurgy from a world-class university, and find what Musk is doing very inspirational. After I finish my PhD, I'd love to be a part of it, but I'm British and I know with some companies in the industry there're citizenship requirements for security reasons. As he mentions in the interview, they wouldn't want China stealing their ideas, for example. And I know a lot of the job postings on SpaceX list "US citizen or permanent resident" as a requirement, but I didn't know if this was a hard and fast rule, or whether exceptions are possible.
- misterbwong 14y ago
  Try applying and find out. You have nothing to lose but a little time.
  - Osmium 14y ago
    I won't be in a position to apply for another two years, but if I thought there was even a chance of being accepted there're things I could do in the meantime to make myself a much more attractive applicant.
    - ballooney 14y ago
      If you want potentially revolutionary, reusable space projects with some ninja materials science, there is a project rather closer to home for you, which you might be interested in: www.reactionengines.co.uk
      - Osmium 14y ago
        Thanks, the link's appreciated. I've heard of REL before, but I didn't realise they were doing quite so well at the moment!
    - skrebbel 14y ago
      Then ask them that. Really, competent potential hires showing early interest for that reason is the dream of every engineering/R&D HR person. They'll be very happy to tell you what you want to know if you're at all interesting for them as a potential hire. Spontaneous passionate applicants are usually much more interesting to a high tech company than nearly anyone a recruiter can come up with.
bengl3rt 14y ago
"It’s like something out of a movie or my old Tintin books. It’s the way space was supposed to be." Yes! Finally someone gets it! Motherfucking space! Is aspirational! We go to space not because it is easy, but because it is hard AND AWESOME.
flatline 14y ago
> The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative. Sounds like so many complaints about the enterprise software landscape, and has certainly proved to be true in my own experience. Codified processes usually start with the guise of open communications and education, either because someone wasn't thinking or because of a pressing need to get a few people on the same page. They are soon adopted and enforced as dogma by natural-born bureaucrats who crawl out of the woodwork from seemingly nowhere. It must be an incredible challenge to fight in any large organization, looking at it from the top down. So far, Musk appears to be doing an admirable job. These things tend to last only as long as a real visionary is at the helm. He is young so hopefully can keep at it for a while longer still, hopefully even long enough to get us to Mars. From this article, he didn't actually say to much about such plans. I wonder if it's just a judicious amount of prudence on his part or if even he fears it may not be feasible in his lifetime.
- minikites 14y ago
  This is something I've been struggling with. I see the two paths to success being mutually exclusive; throw out process and go big or channel process into success. See this link and the ensuing discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727045 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727045 This view is to cultivate habits and work consistently and methodically every day. Elon's view is to toss out process and dream big. What is the best way to reconcile these two opinions? Is it a matter of scale (i.e. personal process but enterprise chutzpah?)
  - josh33 14y ago
    Process is not a replacement for thinking. It's a tool to be used as enabling repetitive tasks to be higher quality and allowing the doer to focus on higher thought.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    > What is the best way to reconcile these two opinions? Is it a matter of scale (i.e. personal process but enterprise chutzpah?) It's a matter of experience. Process is defined by the boundary at which things start to fray. You can only find that boundary by running into it a few times and recognizing where it is. It gets much, much more complex as you grow in size because the fraying can happen as part of how two individuals interact. The more individuals you have, the riskier it is to assume the boundary is farther out, and thus the safer it is to constrict using process; there are interpersonal boundaries on top of your personal comfort zones. If you don't need the habits and consistency, then you don't need them. Don't do that. Go big until you fail. Figure out why you failed. Account for it next time. That accounting is process. And probe your process occasionally to make sure it's still valid, too.
knes 14y ago
Elon Musk is such an inspiration. for him, nothing is impossible and that is what I admire the most in him.
mbrubeck 14y ago
I was at the University of Washington science and engineering career fair last month, recruiting for Mozilla. Our booth was reasonably busy, but the SpaceX booth had a gigantic mob surrounding it at all times. People are seriously excited about space.
- genystartup 14y ago
  I was actually at the same fair, I was tempted to leave my own booth a few times to go sign up. It does look promising.
- zacharycohn 14y ago
  Did you come to my Hacker News meetup last month? Chris Lewicki from Planetary Resources spoke, which was pretty awesome.
  - swohns 14y ago
    The Explorer's Club in New York had Space Exploration as a theme in 2010, it was amazing how excited people got, and entrepreneurs have really taken hold of space travel. People should also check out Richard Garriott's work in the area, he spoke at the dinner and is another awesome space entrepreneur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yiWoY36Ukc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yiWoY36Ukc
cowo8 14y ago
very interesting. he also made a clever move on the patents.
jamesrcole 14y ago
What I find amazing about this is how they could make such big technical advances leading to such big cost reductions by essentially being unencumbered by bureaucracy and bad incentive structures. (And that's of course not to deny their hard work and smarts - I'm really impressed by what they've done). I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise, but it's still hard to avoid naively thinking that surely there had been technical challenges holding up the technological progress in those areas for so long.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nikunjk 14y ago
Elon Musk is boss. He puts every other visionary out there to shame. What a guy!
jpxxx 14y ago
The complexity of getting to Mars is nothing compared to the complexity of creating a social unit that can survive and thrive on another planet. Specifically, an Antarctic planet covered in chlorinated brominated rusty dust with essentially no air pressure or atmospheric water, a dim sun, rotten weather, two ugly little moons, and 57,600,000 millisecond ping times. No chance to ever feel fresh air on your face, no chance to go swimming, never meeting a stranger until they're suddenly your neighbors for life, no chance to ever get away and start anew, and no chance to go back to Earth. In a box, on a dead planet, for life.
- eru 14y ago
  Exciting, isn't it?
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Honestly, yes. :3 I remember drawing habitations as a kid. But morally I feel this would have to be a two-way street: Mars cannot be a prison for either the first settlers or the native generations.
    - TeMPOraL 14y ago
      Or, as Lawrence Krauss suggested[0], just send older astronauts first, who can then live the rest of their lives on Mars, building the first habitat and thus paving the way for further generations to - maybe - travel both ways. [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_to_Stay#cite_ref-krauss_25-0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_to_Stay#cite_ref-krauss_25...
- mbrubeck 14y ago
  Why "for life"? Even if a permanent base is established, what would stop people from traveling there to work for a year or so and then returning home? I know health concerns related to radiation and gravity may impose some constraints, but would a round-trip journey be out of the question? Musk's explicit goal is to make and use fully-reusable rockets, so obviously he intends them to travel both directions. If you're talking about an eventual permanent colony, it will definitely need some brave souls willing to make a one-way trip -- but so have many colonies in Earth history. And the colonists needn't be as cut off as you say if they could have visitors from Earth coming and going regularly. The round-trip radio delay between Mars and Earth is anywhere from 7 minutes to 45 minutes (I think your "ping time" was off by an order of magnitute or two), which is far shorter than the delay for, say, European colonists in 18th-century America or Africa to write to their friends back home. By the time we are thinking about raising children on another planet, we might even be able to build them an indoor swimming pool. :)
themstheones 14y ago
He reminds me so much of Clive Sinclair.
Finster 14y ago
I've read rumors that the reason Jeff Bezos started Amazon was to fund his dreams of space exploration.
- analogj 14y ago
  Your talking about Blue Origin http://www.blueorigin.com/ http://www.blueorigin.com/ http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Amazon_Founder_Recruiting_For_Private_Space_Program_999.html http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Amazon_Founder_Recruiting_...
easy_rider 14y ago
Thans it, i'm making a shrine for Elon. He's close to a demi-god as you can get. Officially my new hero. Just think about the shear amount of time he puts into Tesla motors alone. And Elon just says fuck it. Lets go to Mars. Humanity doen't want to live up to their potential? So I will.. god speed Leon.
rnernento 14y ago
Great read, makes me want to quit my job and start building a rocketship... I love that this brilliant guy is talking about interplanetary space travel as the obvious future.
pwniekins 14y ago
"Musk: The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative." I nearly cried. This is my company, and it is so very disappointing.
srlake 14y ago
Imagine the world when the 10 next Elon Musk's lurking HN see their own successes.
6ren 14y ago
Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren’t more risk- tolerant than non-entrepreneurs. They just have an extraordinary ability to believe in their own visions, so much so that they think what they’re embarking on isn’t really that risky. They’re wrong, of course... If you are determined (you keep trying) is it actually that risky? For example, if there's a 1 in 10 chance of success, and you try 10 times, it becomes a 65% chance (1-.9^10). Plus, of course, you will learn a tremendous amount from each attempt; gather more resources; ask others; change your approach; even modify your goal (perhaps to something more audacious). I think what stops people is aversion to the unfamiliar (whereas some people like it), and the pain of each failure. People like Edison fail a thousand times, and keep going (even if you hate him, you have to admit that takes a certain courage). After 3 rocket failures, Musk said something similar http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa (at the end): Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work. If you don't give up, success is inevitable.
- Someone 14y ago
  Tip: do not start a career in Russian Roulette. Let's say you can 'win' by playing it 100 times. Then, if enough people do not give up, success is inevitable. However, there is no guarantee that you will be the one that is successful.
tjmc 14y ago
I'm an Elon fan, but his comment about the old Russian engines his competitors are using deserves some scrutiny. He's talking about the NK-33 which has a thrust to weight ratio of 137. That's better than any current SpaceX engines though the Merlin 1D under development is apparently aiming for a ratio of 150. As for the engines being in a warehouse in Siberia since the 60s - that part is basically true. There was an Equinox (UK) documentary called "the engines that came in from the cold" about it. When the cold war was over the Americans finally found out about these engines that were left over from the space race, 20 years old (at the time) and better than anything they'd developed since. Now they're over 40 years old and still the most efficient! So credit where it's due eh Elon? The NK-33 was and still is a masterpiece.
- mbell 14y ago
  > The NK-33 was and still is a masterpiece. Its a bit aggressive to label this engine a masterpiece when it has never actually launched successfully. I don't even think there has been an attempted launch with the NK-33, just ground tests for the N-1F rocket which was cancelled. Interesting note - the second attempted launch of the N-1 rocket, which used the original version of the NK-33 (NK-15) resulted in the largest non-nuclear explosion of all time. There is more to an engine than power to weight ratio, such as actually successfully putting a rocket in space.
  - mkl 14y ago
    Here is more on the N-1 and the explosion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)#Launch_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)#Launch_history
elmusk 14y ago
I'm open to any additional questions you guys might have; well for another hour or two at least.

497 points by sravfeyn 14y ago

thinkingthings 14y ago

Elon Musk is a leader of our generation, with vision that most of us can only dream of.

sho_hn 14y ago
Lots of folks have a vision of a mission to mars. What counts is the execution.
- indiecore 14y ago
  To be fair to those folks most of them aren't billionaires.
  - joering2 14y ago
    ok but how did Musk got to be a millionaire? hint: execution.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    To be fair to Musk, some of them are billionaires (think about folks like George Lucas who have made billions through sci fi movies etc.)
    - indiecore 14y ago
      Extremely true
- crooneys 14y ago
  I'd argue that vision implies the ability/willingness to execute, whereas dreaming is just that. Musk seems to have the execution down so far!

catch23 14y ago

There's one interesting quote in the article: Musk: I can’t tell you much. We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in China—if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book. If your process/ideas are sufficiently complex, it reduces competition if you don't file a patent.

cobrausn 14y ago
One of the supposed points of patents is that the inventor shares knowledge with the world in exchange for temporary monopoly. If the patent is not enforced (such as in China), then there is no incentive to file. It might be smarter, from a business standpoint, to just keep the knowledge to yourself.
- davidw 14y ago
  As long as you can keep control over your organization. With anything significantly large enough, it's probably not too hard to slip a spy in.
cletus 14y ago
It's actually worse than that. Tech companies routinely use a combination of patents, trade secrets and copyright to make the shared knowledge (patents) basically useless but an exceptionally good defensive and offensive weapon. I recall this came up with Intel and other companies reverse-engineering the Netburst bus. EDIT: removed point about first-to-file as prior art would largely invalidate such attempts beyond a very narrow time frame.
- statusgraph 14y ago
  My (limited) understanding is you can still argue prior art to invalidate the patent. First to file would only come up if both SpaceX and a Chinese company had patents and went to court. The wiki article expounds a little: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act#First_to_file_and_grace_period http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act...

libraryatnight 14y ago

I was telling my dad the other day this is a guy I could see my kids or grandkids using as a subject for a school report. Such an interesting person.

startupfounder 14y ago

If you have't already seen it, Kevin Rose interviews Elon Musk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8 Also, Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about if there was a space race with China the US would be on Mars in 18 months: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cVg-snQdrms http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c... It would be truly amazing if a private company was the first to set foot on another planet.

TwistedWeasel 14y ago
When (not if) we set foot on Mars, the achievement will be one of humanity. Private company, government, US, China, it doesn't matter. We'll be on Mars, a multi-planetary race. How the accomplishment was funded and by who will not matter (to me, anyway).
- startupfounder 14y ago
  I totally agree, but what flag will be planted? Humans love to raise a flag from the geographic location known as a country they are a resident of. It would be amazing if we didn't need a flag this time around, just human accomplishment. But competition drives humans to do great things, look at the olympic records over time. If SpaceX received funding fromt he US government would there be a clause in the contract stating they have to raise an American Flag?
simba-hiiipower 14y ago
very cool; thanks for the links. and that would be absolutely amazing; though in some ways (and not to discount musk’s undertaking at all) i feel it speaks more so to a failure of governments (generally speaking) in investing to drive technological advance. it should be the public sector that leads in these types of endeavors. one of the most important functions of a state is its ability and willingness to invest in projects that would be otherwise unprofitable or far too long-term for any rational player in the private sector to take-on. these investments, while maybe unprofitable to a single entity, are what lay the foundation for significant productivity and standard of living gains down-the-line (which, in-turn, spur many future profitable companies). it’s how everything from highways spanning a continent and parks in the middle of crowded cities to the internet and atomic energy get developed; and it's so crucial to society.. it’s really quite sad to see this important economic function of government neglected, particularly in the us where its proven so successful in generating wealth and societal good time-and-time again.. i mean would we have microsoft and apple around if it wasn’t for the development of the internet? (and google certainly wouldn’t exist). it’s also sad that the great focus that the nation apparently (long before i came to be) had in driving technological advance has stalled, and such investments have become issues of budgets and ‘big government’ (which i am not a fan of at all by the way). if governments are going to run ridiculous budget deficits anyways (even in years of economic growth) then there should at least be something to show for it at some point; that doesn’t seem to be the case these days.. fortunately there are irrational players in the private sector, like elon musk, who are able to fill the voids. unfortunately though, if (and most likely when) such endeavors prove unprofitable in the long-run, little may show for it.. you’d think more people would be interested (and economically incentivized) to have a government that covers the expensive research and development costs associated with spearheading technologies which they can one-day build-off of (and in incredibly profitable ways), but i guess economic self-preservation (and therefore political pressure) prevail over advance. with all that said, i really do hope he succeeds. (also, off topic, but i really wish i could afford a model s right now!)

Osmium 14y ago

Apologies for being somewhat off-topic, but does anybody know if there are citizenship requirements for working at a place like SpaceX? I have a solid background in materials science and metallurgy from a world-class university, and find what Musk is doing very inspirational. After I finish my PhD, I'd love to be a part of it, but I'm British and I know with some companies in the industry there're citizenship requirements for security reasons. As he mentions in the interview, they wouldn't want China stealing their ideas, for example. And I know a lot of the job postings on SpaceX list "US citizen or permanent resident" as a requirement, but I didn't know if this was a hard and fast rule, or whether exceptions are possible.

misterbwong 14y ago
Try applying and find out. You have nothing to lose but a little time.
- Osmium 14y ago
  I won't be in a position to apply for another two years, but if I thought there was even a chance of being accepted there're things I could do in the meantime to make myself a much more attractive applicant.
  - ballooney 14y ago
    If you want potentially revolutionary, reusable space projects with some ninja materials science, there is a project rather closer to home for you, which you might be interested in: www.reactionengines.co.uk
    - Osmium 14y ago
      Thanks, the link's appreciated. I've heard of REL before, but I didn't realise they were doing quite so well at the moment!
  - skrebbel 14y ago
    Then ask them that. Really, competent potential hires showing early interest for that reason is the dream of every engineering/R&D HR person. They'll be very happy to tell you what you want to know if you're at all interesting for them as a potential hire. Spontaneous passionate applicants are usually much more interesting to a high tech company than nearly anyone a recruiter can come up with.

bengl3rt 14y ago

"It’s like something out of a movie or my old Tintin books. It’s the way space was supposed to be." Yes! Finally someone gets it! Motherfucking space! Is aspirational! We go to space not because it is easy, but because it is hard AND AWESOME.

flatline 14y ago

> The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative. Sounds like so many complaints about the enterprise software landscape, and has certainly proved to be true in my own experience. Codified processes usually start with the guise of open communications and education, either because someone wasn't thinking or because of a pressing need to get a few people on the same page. They are soon adopted and enforced as dogma by natural-born bureaucrats who crawl out of the woodwork from seemingly nowhere. It must be an incredible challenge to fight in any large organization, looking at it from the top down. So far, Musk appears to be doing an admirable job. These things tend to last only as long as a real visionary is at the helm. He is young so hopefully can keep at it for a while longer still, hopefully even long enough to get us to Mars. From this article, he didn't actually say to much about such plans. I wonder if it's just a judicious amount of prudence on his part or if even he fears it may not be feasible in his lifetime.

minikites 14y ago
This is something I've been struggling with. I see the two paths to success being mutually exclusive; throw out process and go big or channel process into success. See this link and the ensuing discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727045 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727045 This view is to cultivate habits and work consistently and methodically every day. Elon's view is to toss out process and dream big. What is the best way to reconcile these two opinions? Is it a matter of scale (i.e. personal process but enterprise chutzpah?)
- josh33 14y ago
  Process is not a replacement for thinking. It's a tool to be used as enabling repetitive tasks to be higher quality and allowing the doer to focus on higher thought.
- saraid216 14y ago
  > What is the best way to reconcile these two opinions? Is it a matter of scale (i.e. personal process but enterprise chutzpah?) It's a matter of experience. Process is defined by the boundary at which things start to fray. You can only find that boundary by running into it a few times and recognizing where it is. It gets much, much more complex as you grow in size because the fraying can happen as part of how two individuals interact. The more individuals you have, the riskier it is to assume the boundary is farther out, and thus the safer it is to constrict using process; there are interpersonal boundaries on top of your personal comfort zones. If you don't need the habits and consistency, then you don't need them. Don't do that. Go big until you fail. Figure out why you failed. Account for it next time. That accounting is process. And probe your process occasionally to make sure it's still valid, too.

knes 14y ago

Elon Musk is such an inspiration. for him, nothing is impossible and that is what I admire the most in him.

mbrubeck 14y ago

I was at the University of Washington science and engineering career fair last month, recruiting for Mozilla. Our booth was reasonably busy, but the SpaceX booth had a gigantic mob surrounding it at all times. People are seriously excited about space.

genystartup 14y ago
I was actually at the same fair, I was tempted to leave my own booth a few times to go sign up. It does look promising.
zacharycohn 14y ago
Did you come to my Hacker News meetup last month? Chris Lewicki from Planetary Resources spoke, which was pretty awesome.
- swohns 14y ago
  The Explorer's Club in New York had Space Exploration as a theme in 2010, it was amazing how excited people got, and entrepreneurs have really taken hold of space travel. People should also check out Richard Garriott's work in the area, he spoke at the dinner and is another awesome space entrepreneur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yiWoY36Ukc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yiWoY36Ukc

cowo8 14y ago

very interesting. he also made a clever move on the patents.

jamesrcole 14y ago

What I find amazing about this is how they could make such big technical advances leading to such big cost reductions by essentially being unencumbered by bureaucracy and bad incentive structures. (And that's of course not to deny their hard work and smarts - I'm really impressed by what they've done). I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise, but it's still hard to avoid naively thinking that surely there had been technical challenges holding up the technological progress in those areas for so long.

deleted 14y ago

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nikunjk 14y ago

Elon Musk is boss. He puts every other visionary out there to shame. What a guy!

jpxxx 14y ago

The complexity of getting to Mars is nothing compared to the complexity of creating a social unit that can survive and thrive on another planet. Specifically, an Antarctic planet covered in chlorinated brominated rusty dust with essentially no air pressure or atmospheric water, a dim sun, rotten weather, two ugly little moons, and 57,600,000 millisecond ping times. No chance to ever feel fresh air on your face, no chance to go swimming, never meeting a stranger until they're suddenly your neighbors for life, no chance to ever get away and start anew, and no chance to go back to Earth. In a box, on a dead planet, for life.

eru 14y ago
Exciting, isn't it?
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Honestly, yes. :3 I remember drawing habitations as a kid. But morally I feel this would have to be a two-way street: Mars cannot be a prison for either the first settlers or the native generations.
  - TeMPOraL 14y ago
    Or, as Lawrence Krauss suggested[0], just send older astronauts first, who can then live the rest of their lives on Mars, building the first habitat and thus paving the way for further generations to - maybe - travel both ways. [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_to_Stay#cite_ref-krauss_25-0 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_to_Stay#cite_ref-krauss_25...
mbrubeck 14y ago
Why "for life"? Even if a permanent base is established, what would stop people from traveling there to work for a year or so and then returning home? I know health concerns related to radiation and gravity may impose some constraints, but would a round-trip journey be out of the question? Musk's explicit goal is to make and use fully-reusable rockets, so obviously he intends them to travel both directions. If you're talking about an eventual permanent colony, it will definitely need some brave souls willing to make a one-way trip -- but so have many colonies in Earth history. And the colonists needn't be as cut off as you say if they could have visitors from Earth coming and going regularly. The round-trip radio delay between Mars and Earth is anywhere from 7 minutes to 45 minutes (I think your "ping time" was off by an order of magnitute or two), which is far shorter than the delay for, say, European colonists in 18th-century America or Africa to write to their friends back home. By the time we are thinking about raising children on another planet, we might even be able to build them an indoor swimming pool. :)

themstheones 14y ago

He reminds me so much of Clive Sinclair.

Finster 14y ago

I've read rumors that the reason Jeff Bezos started Amazon was to fund his dreams of space exploration.

analogj 14y ago
Your talking about Blue Origin http://www.blueorigin.com/ http://www.blueorigin.com/ http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Amazon_Founder_Recruiting_For_Private_Space_Program_999.html http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Amazon_Founder_Recruiting_...

easy_rider 14y ago

Thans it, i'm making a shrine for Elon. He's close to a demi-god as you can get. Officially my new hero. Just think about the shear amount of time he puts into Tesla motors alone. And Elon just says fuck it. Lets go to Mars. Humanity doen't want to live up to their potential? So I will.. god speed Leon.

rnernento 14y ago

Great read, makes me want to quit my job and start building a rocketship... I love that this brilliant guy is talking about interplanetary space travel as the obvious future.

pwniekins 14y ago

"Musk: The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative." I nearly cried. This is my company, and it is so very disappointing.

srlake 14y ago

Imagine the world when the 10 next Elon Musk's lurking HN see their own successes.

6ren 14y ago

Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren’t more risk- tolerant than non-entrepreneurs. They just have an extraordinary ability to believe in their own visions, so much so that they think what they’re embarking on isn’t really that risky. They’re wrong, of course... If you are determined (you keep trying) is it actually that risky? For example, if there's a 1 in 10 chance of success, and you try 10 times, it becomes a 65% chance (1-.9^10). Plus, of course, you will learn a tremendous amount from each attempt; gather more resources; ask others; change your approach; even modify your goal (perhaps to something more audacious). I think what stops people is aversion to the unfamiliar (whereas some people like it), and the pain of each failure. People like Edison fail a thousand times, and keep going (even if you hate him, you have to admit that takes a certain courage). After 3 rocket failures, Musk said something similar http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa (at the end): Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work. If you don't give up, success is inevitable.

Someone 14y ago
Tip: do not start a career in Russian Roulette. Let's say you can 'win' by playing it 100 times. Then, if enough people do not give up, success is inevitable. However, there is no guarantee that you will be the one that is successful.

tjmc 14y ago

I'm an Elon fan, but his comment about the old Russian engines his competitors are using deserves some scrutiny. He's talking about the NK-33 which has a thrust to weight ratio of 137. That's better than any current SpaceX engines though the Merlin 1D under development is apparently aiming for a ratio of 150. As for the engines being in a warehouse in Siberia since the 60s - that part is basically true. There was an Equinox (UK) documentary called "the engines that came in from the cold" about it. When the cold war was over the Americans finally found out about these engines that were left over from the space race, 20 years old (at the time) and better than anything they'd developed since. Now they're over 40 years old and still the most efficient! So credit where it's due eh Elon? The NK-33 was and still is a masterpiece.

mbell 14y ago
> The NK-33 was and still is a masterpiece. Its a bit aggressive to label this engine a masterpiece when it has never actually launched successfully. I don't even think there has been an attempted launch with the NK-33, just ground tests for the N-1F rocket which was cancelled. Interesting note - the second attempted launch of the N-1 rocket, which used the original version of the NK-33 (NK-15) resulted in the largest non-nuclear explosion of all time. There is more to an engine than power to weight ratio, such as actually successfully putting a rocket in space.
- mkl 14y ago
  Here is more on the N-1 and the explosion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)#Launch_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)#Launch_history

elmusk 14y ago

I'm open to any additional questions you guys might have; well for another hour or two at least.