Musk: From crossing hell to running to the sea of stars

I traveled through the whole hell of those years, and it all stemmed from an absurd idea, Musk recalled.

Musk sold PayPal in 1999 and cashed out $180 million.

At that time, he became a debauched and freedom-loving prodigal son, but the life of a luxury car and a beautiful woman made him feel extremely empty and lonely.

In 2001, an absurd idea popped into his head.

The idea is to send a greenhouse to Mars to see if life can survive on Mars.

It was this absurd idea that almost made him fall into the abyss.

Absurd dreams

Musk's execution is very strong, and he has an idea to put into practice, so he went to Moscow to buy rockets.

The Russians listened to his impassioned words and thought that he was either a neurotic or a psychopath.

The Russians very unceremoniously rejected him.

But Musk was not discouraged, and on the plane back to the United States, he suddenly announced to his colleagues that he was going to build his own rockets.

So Musk himself invested $100 million, and with the support of the wandering band, hurriedly set up Space X.

At this time, Musk's leadership temperament has been revealed.

A group of geek engineers quickly gathered around him and began a new journey of dreams.

But he never dreamed that the next 6 years would be so difficult.

In March 2006, after four years of hard work, Falcon 1 finally took to the launch pad, but it was greeted by a firework-like explosion.

For Musk's failure, the media is extremely cynical, after all, it seems easier to chew the root of the tongue than to cross the sea of stars.

A year later, Musk made a second launch, which still ended in failure.

The defeat seriously dampened the team's confidence, but Musk became more and more courageous.

In August 2008, Musk made his third launch.

Everything went well at first, and people were thrilled when they saw the rocket successfully lift off.

However, they were happy too soon.

In the blink of an eye, the first and second stage rockets failed when they separated, and failed again.

At this point, the whole team spread a kind of doomsday despair and exhaustion.

At that time, the financial crisis in the United States began to spread.

The team members knew their boss was running out of money.

That year, Musk was in an extreme financial difficulty.

In desperation, he and his wife lived in the basement of their parents' house.

The relationship between the husband and wife has also become worse and worse, and the wife has announced Musk's very unbearable side to the world.

During that time the whole world seemed to have abandoned Musk.

The former Silicon Valley tycoons are about to go to hell.

But Musk still refused to accept the order, he mortgaged all the assets and crowdfunded the company's employees.

Finally, once again, the cost of launching the rocket was met.

For Space X, this is the last launch.

On September 28, 2008, Falcon 1 received its fourth launch.

The effort paid off, and this time it fulfilled Musk.

This successful launch made Space X the first private company in the world to launch a spacecraft, and it got a 1.6 billion contract from NASA.

However, this only kicked off Musk and the Big Rockets.

Ladder

He wanted to drop a 10-story, tens-ton iron barrel precisely within 10 meters.

He's going to set a $500,000 ticket to Mars, turning the shuttle into a taxi for interstellar.

Don't think it's a fantasy, it's all happening at a speed that's visible to the naked eye.

In order to achieve this goal, Musk first aimed at the recovery of the first stage rocket.

From 2010 to 2015, Musk made test products with great enthusiasm while frantically exploding test products.

Looking at the dollars flying in the sky, Musk, who has been tempered by the fire of hell, is now incomparably firm.

On December 21, 2015, after Falcon 9 put 11 starlink satellites into orbit, the first stage rocket landed steadily on the surface of the sea.

This scene shocked countless young people and inspired more people to turn their attention to the sea of stars.

In addition, Musk also built a boat with a large net to recover the fairing of the rocket.

After that, he set his sights on the arrow body material, which used carbon fiber composite materials in the previous rocket, and the production cost was about $200 per kilogram.

Space X's ideal is to make launching rockets as cheap as flying airplanes, and materials that are too expensive are not enough.

So they went straight to stainless steel plates, and the purchase price was only three dollars per kilogram.

Not only is it cheap, but it can also reduce the requirements for thermal shielding when reaching Mars, and the disadvantage is heavy.

In this regard, it was necessary to improve the engine, so the performance beast Merlin engine, the raptor engine was born.

A Raptor engine with a combustion chamber pressure of 360 bar, before the strongest Russian engine 275 bar.

It can produce 310 tons of thrust, equivalent to 172 vehicles and an entire Boeing 747 aircraft.

Crazy Musk loaded seven of his starships.

Musk thought it wasn't strong enough, so he spliced a heavy thruster into the starship.

Heavy thrusters are responsible for pushing the star chain into space, and the starship ignites in the air and flies to Mars.

Musk installed 29 Raptors for heavy thrusters.

Densely packed as honeycomb coal engines, only the former Soviet Union tested during the Star Wars period.

However, after three explosions, no one dared to ask any more.

Musk envisions a 2024 effort to get humanity's Starfleet to rush out of Earth and into the vast expanse of space.

For this purpose, he became a man in a race against time.

To that end, he wanted to reduce the average cost of a launch to $2 million.

So he took out more than 20 starship testers to test in one go, and fireworks exploded almost once a month.

The shortest-lived test rig took only 15 days from construction to explosion.

The whole world can use rockets as fireworks, and he is the only one who does not change his face.

From the end of 2018, the testing of SN1 to SN15 was completed, and the vertical test was completed, which took less than two years.

Obviously, everything has been accelerated.

Musk's opponents today are only time.

He has more than once declared in the media that he will immigrate 1 million people to Mars by 2050.

This arrogant goal, now there is no second person on the earth besides Musk.

Once the starship test is successful, Musk will also use it for civil aviation.

The starship travels from New York to Shanghai in just 39 minutes and has a top speed of 27,000 km/h.

In this way, the world will enter the one-hour economic circle.