Recently, Elon. Musk is "doing things" again.
On April 25, Musk officially announced that he had bought Twitter for a total of $44 billion.
A few days ago, when Musk proposed to buy Twitter for $43 billion, Twitter also implemented the "Poison Pill" program to try to block the acquisition. But in the next few days, the world's richest man with 83 million followers on Twitter won the world-class social platform in the English language.
To interject a digression, Musk also vividly interpreted what is "having money is doing whatever you want." Of the $44 billion, Musk himself took out as much as $13.8 billion in cash to complete the deal, an amount of 8 percent of his net worth, according to Musk's filing with the SEC. Some people have calculated that if the 13.8 billion yuan is burned, Musk will be the richest person in the world.
Musk himself is a "man with a story", and he and his pioneer companies, each of which is individually brought out and said to be a good play.
But in recent years, the highlight has been his SpaceX.
In early April, Netflix released a documentary about Musk and his SpaceX, "Return to Space." The husband-and-wife documentary, oscar-winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vassarelli and Kim Kwok-wai (director of "Freehand Rock Climbing"), tells the story of SpaceX's inspiring rise and Elon Musk's 20-year efforts to reinvigorate America's space travel ambitions.
I thought it was a commercially awkward documentary, but I didn't expect to cry when I saw it.
As part of the 7.9 billion people on Earth, my yearning and excitement at seeing the possibility of all of us roaming space and moving to Mars in the future is indescribable.
But more importantly, the documentary isn't just singing the praises of a great company, but through the lens, you can see how much spaceX has paid, cost and failed in every inch of space in those 20 years.
"Following the original intention, embracing failure, and nurturing opportunities from action" are the three points that move me the most in this documentary.
"The earth is the cradle of mankind,
But you can't stay in the cradle forever."
In February 2002, Elon Musk and three other people went to Russia to try to buy 3 rockets, but failed to do so. In May of the same year, Musk and rocket engine genius Tom Muller (SpaceX Employee No. 0001) founded SpaceX in a warehouse in Elgundo, California, to prepare to develop rockets themselves.
The film begins with Musk's establishment of Space Exploration Technologies 20 years ago.
Every year, Musk browses NASA's website in the hope of seeing a plan or date that will send humans to Mars.
Unfortunately, this date has never appeared. So, he decided to take care of it himself.
Why is Musk so obsessed with space exploration, establishing bases on the moon, and relocating humans to Mars?
You know, rockets are ruthless. Any small oversight has the potential to lead to its worst-case scenario – an explosion. On February 1, 2003, all seven astronauts on board were killed in an accident during the re-entry of the Space Shuttle Columbia.
Rocket launch failures are bad, but when a rocket carrying astronauts fails to launch or return, the losses are no longer measurable by money. Twenty years later, the shadow of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster still lingers.
Moreover, exploring space is not only extremely risky, but also expensive.
In July 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis flew its last manned mission, which was also the last mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle, because of the high cost.
It's not easy to succeed, the risk is extremely high, and it's also extremely expensive, so why would Musk do this?
This is related to his original intention.
The earth, our homeland is beautiful, but it cannot protect us forever.
Modern people's departure from Africa and domination of the world has happened in less than 100,000 years. It took us at least 5 million years for humanity to evolve into a higher civilization. But this hard-won human civilization is like a small candle, and extreme climate change, the occurrence of events such as the Third World War can easily make it disappear.
Therefore, we need to become a multi-planetary species that extends life beyond Earth to protect humanity's hard-won consciousness and civilization.
As Musk says in the film, "The earth is the cradle of humanity, but you can't stay in the cradle forever." It's time to move forward, to travel between the stars, to expand the scope and scale of human consciousness. ”
This is Musk's consideration and original intention, he hopes to become a pioneer, a pioneer.
In order to leave the cradle, a crucial technical problem needs to be solved, that is, having a reliable means of transportation – a low-cost and reusable rocket.
Since the Apollo program in the 1970s, the United States has spent about $350 billion on human spaceflight in decades. The money sent 350 American astronauts into space, and the average cost per person is about $1 billion.
If you want to migrate to Mars one day, this is obviously too expensive, in order to improve the cost performance, you must rely on space technology companies like SpaceX to commercialize rocket manned technology and reduce costs.
This is not only Musk's original intention - let him give almost all his wealth to follow 20 years ago, but also the dream of all SpaceX employees and partners NASA.
For example, the astronaut ship Bob and Doug. They were the first astronauts to fly in space on the Dragon spacecraft, enter the space station, and perform spacewalks. (The Dragon Spacecraft, spaceX Dragon, a spaceship developed by SpaceX, is the first spacecraft developed by a private company and launched into low-Earth orbit and back to Earth.)
Bob Banken (left) Doug Hurley (right)
The hardships of daily training needless to say.
More crucially, in this undertaking that risks a huge risk to their lives, how do they get the understanding and support of their families?
Fortunately, Bob and Doug's other half are also astronauts.
The same dreams and experiences allow wives to fully understand their husbands' choices.
Even so, it is extremely difficult for a partner who stays on Earth to wait for her husband to return.
Doug's wife, Karen
There is a scene in the film that makes it easy for parents to cry.
When the Dragon spacecraft was first prepared to fly, due to the unsatisfactory weather, it waited for a long time without success, and could only set another time to fly again. Doug's son was devastated. Because he had already plucked up the courage to say goodbye to his father once, and now he had to say goodbye again. That's too cruel for a teenage kid.
When the dream you want to achieve is "above" (space), but everything you know and love is "below" (Earth), the biggest wish for astronauts at this time is that everything will go well, and they can return to Earth and meet their families.
Perhaps, that's the price that follows your heart.
The Dougs wanted their children to understand that some things are risky in our lives. But if this thing leads to a better world, the adventure is worth it.
In addition to the astronauts, other technicians are also under great pressure for the dream of "getting out of the cradle".
For example, the "risk controller" Bala, who is responsible for assessing the overall environment on the day of the flight and ensuring that it is released for launch. Barra must have excellent determination and a will of steel. Because when he says the phrase "launch it," if he is not fully prepared, the whole project may be ruined.
And Hans, who is vice president of SpaceX.
Hans and Musk met at a rocket enthusiast launch party in 2002, and the two had a heated conversation about the rocket's technical problems, and then Musk asked Hans, would you like to work for a company that makes rockets to Go to Mars?
Such an unreliable verbal offer, Hans took ten milliseconds to agree.
Because of the common ideal and original intention, a group of people have been condensed. These people understand and obey their own humanity and inner calling. They like it, they think it's important, so they're willing to keep doing it, rather than finish it, and when they get paid, it's over.
What they want to take is not to ring the bell and go public and join the rich list, but a road of stars and seas, to complete one adventure after another, waiting for one challenge after another. They enjoy the whole process, although it is full of pain. This is probably to follow the original intention of the heart and the strength of the heart.
Think of Musk, although his primary identity is a businessman, "businessman heavy profits over separation", but he can completely live a luxurious rich life before creating Space X. It's just that he didn't stop there, but chose to devote himself to his ideals and create value. Without absolute love, you cannot reach the other shore.
"You will never understand your system,
Unless you push it to the extreme and make it collapse."
Can you do things with a purpose, a follow your heart, and a passion?
Of course not! One of the biggest difficulties is that you have to accept failure, failure, and countless failures, and train yourself to be able to embrace failure.
One of SpaceX's greatest achievements was getting the rocket to land, enabling the reuse of the rocket. How hard is this? It is equivalent to landing a heavy 30-ton thing at high speed and accurately on a small area in the middle of the sea. Because offshore platform landing can save more fuel.
For a long time, the inability to aim and then lead to explosions, almost all rockets when recycled. SpaceX, the world's first private company to achieve the first reuse of an orbital-stage rocket, revolutionized space technology.
Some people say that SpaceX is a company that "learns from the explosion", they are not afraid of failure, embrace failure, find problems in the explosion, and then correct, improve, and ultimately succeed.
"You'll never understand your system unless you push it to the limit and let it crash." This is SpaceX's strategy for doing things.
These words are beautiful and easy, but do Musk and his employees have a king kong that is not bad, and can easily resist and dissolve failure?
Of course not! They are also mortal bodies, and the taste of failure is just as painful for them.
Hans said that after the first failure, he returned home without speaking much for two months, and it took a long time to come out of the shadow of failure and then continue his research in preparation for the second launch.
As for Musk, he did not have much confidence in the success of the launch and the success of the recovery from the beginning, but he still gambled on his entire wealth at that time to do it. He told everyone that we only had three chances, and after three times, the money was burned out, so let's stop this matter.
So, when the third launch also ended in failure, it was the darkest moment of Musk's life, and he was on the verge of collapse.
Musk called everyone into the conference room, and he didn't hold them accountable, but only made a request, hoping that everyone would fix everything and launch another rocket as quickly as possible.
Seeing this, I really admire him.
The old Chinese saying goes: Victory or defeat is a common affair for soldiers. Marching to fight, two armies against each other may be so, but challenge yourself to try something unprecedented, defeat, is the common thing, victory, almost a faint candlelight.
But in order to seize this faint candlelight, Musk blocked almost all of his wealth and carried the doubts and ridicule of the outside world. It is rare and common for ordinary people to have collapsed or anger subordinates. And he just gathered his emotions, continued to bury his head in things, and strived to complete the goal.
Fortunately, everyone did not give up.
On September 28, just two months after the failure of the third launch, the fourth Falcon I was put on the launch pad, this time, SpaceX was favored by the goddess of luck, about 3 minutes after the launch, the first and second stages were successfully separated, and about six minutes after the launch, they successfully entered orbit.
Although we can generally blame the success of the fourth time as "lucky", in fact, this is the inevitable result of the accumulation of the first three failures and the improvement of the improvement.
SpaceX learned a lot from the previous three catastrophic launches, which were successful because they upgraded their engines to allow the fourth Falcon 1 mission to reach orbit and stay on the water.
In December of the same year, SpaceX won a huge contract from NASA for up to $1.5 billion in international space station freight.
Since then, SpaceX has developed like an open and hanging, successfully launching many times, realizing space cargo transportation, successfully launching satellites...
In the history of spaceflight to date, there have been only four feats of putting the capsule into orbit and successfully returning to Earth: the United States, Russia, China, and Elon Musk. Musk.
"Musk's great thing is that he understands that failure is part of development," Hans said.
Musk's original intention and love is the source of his perseverance, but what is more valuable is that he fully recognizes the indispensable failures and eliminations that he will experience in the development process.
After countless failures, questions, and desperate situations, SpaceX, which finally did not give up, went down in history.
Good luck,
It is born out of action
In 2002, the space exploration company was established; in 2013, the rocket recovery technology was realized; and the star chain with 2200 stars in 2022... SpaceX upended the industry's traditional practices in just 20 years, launching rockets at what was once one-tenth of NASA's cost.
Musk believes that such achievements are largely due to luck, saying, "Luck is the greatest superpower."
It is undeniable that "luck" plays an important role in the success of things, but I prefer to attribute the "luck" in Musk's mouth to the opportunities that are bred by super-forced power, and then they seize the opportunities and push things to success.
Why did NASA invest a lot of time, money, and manpower to do what it wanted to do, but was made by SpaceX?
NASA Chief Scientist Jim M. Green said NASA is solving all the problems on paper, verifying it with a pen, and then putting it into action. SpaceX's approach is very different, they keep building things, seeing what breakthroughs there are, and then iterating from there.
It is this super power of action that has made SpaceX history time and time again.
When astronauts Bob and Doug successfully entered the International Space Station and began to walk in space, they captured our home, the earth in the universe,
The beautiful sunrise and sunset, the alternating black and white, and the endless extension of the surrounding area will make you realize that our world is wonderful and precious, and everyone should be grateful to be born in the home of the earth.
From drinking blood to stepping into space, we humans rely on down-to-earth action. Without those who are extremely mobile behind us, we cannot see the infinity of the universe, we cannot realize our own smallness and crisis, and we cannot get closer to the ideal of space home step by step.
After astronaut Bob returns from space, his wife, Megan, will be in space the following year as the second cosmonaut to fly into space on a dragon spacecraft.
This time she was going to be on the space station for six months. Every rocket launch, into space, docking with the space station, and returning to Earth are full of huge risks, which may be a "journey" with no return, and as an astronaut husband and wife, this risk is doubled.
But even so, Megan wanted her son to understand that "it's important to explore and push the limits of what we can reach."
"Exploring and pushing your limits" is the best test of action. Not only do astronauts have it, but their mobility is also the DNA of Musk, the helmsman.
At the end of the film, Musk says something like this:
"It's important to realize that this (progress) isn't necessary, and when people think that technology will improve automatically, then they're wrong, technology doesn't improve automatically.
If you look at great civilizations like ancient Egypt and see that they were able to build pyramids before, but they now forget how to do it; and Rome, they built those incredible ditches before, but they forgot how to do it. In 1969, we were able to send people to the moon, and then we forgot how to do it.
The window of opportunity is open now, but we cannot expect it to be open for long, and we need to take advantage of it while it is still open. ”
Schopenhauer once said that "life is like a pendulum, oscillating between pain and fatigue." Musk's pendulum does not slide toward "burnout" when it swings toward "pain," and he knows all too well that there is no word "easy" on the way to picking the fruits of success. Therefore, he uses the original intention, never back down, and acts well to increase the weight of his own success.
In the end, he won!
![2 years ago, the US Air Force admiral asked: How to defeat China militarily? Musk answered to the point[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)