Teacher: A person who chases two rabbits,
catches neither.
Teacher: How many students agree with this?
Teacher: All of you? Hahaha!
Teacher: This might be true, unless you're
Elon Musk.
Student: But how Sir?
Teacher: Let me tell you a story
In August 2008, a company named SpaceX launched
its third flight of a rocket named Falcon 1.
It was a very big moment for everyone in
that company. The CEO of the company, Elon
Musk, had already announced in the press that
the money he had invested in the company would
get them only 3 attempts at a successful launch.
If they failed to successfully launch by the third flight,
they would have to close the company.
All the employees were tense. A failed launch
could end their dreams in a moment! The dreams
they had been cultivating for 6 long years.
The dreams that had inspired them to work for
80-90 hours per week till that time. Mentally
and physically exhausted, Elon and the employees
looked on.
Interviewer: You had that third failure in
a row?
Elon nods.
Interviewer: Did you think I need to pack this in?
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28th 1971
in Pretoria, South Africa. He saw the apartheid
struggle throughout his childhood, as South
Africa frequently witnessed events of tension
and violence. As a child, he loved to read.
From very early in his life, he was always
spotted with a book in his hands.
Sometimes, while his family went out for shopping, they used to discover that Elon had gone missing. Almost
always, they found him in the nearest bookstore,
sitting on the floor and reading a book.
He first came into the public eye in 1984 when
his sci-fi inspired space video game called
Blastar was published in a South African tech
magazine.
He always felt that something about the world
is awfully wrong. This belief of his always
got reconfirmed in his mind due to the situation
and surroundings in which he grew up. From
very early in his life, he kept thinking about
escaping from his surroundings and dreamt
of a place that would help him fulfil his
dreams. He saw America as the land of opportunity
and fulfilled dreams. He developed a deep
desire to go there someday.
He did not have a good childhood. He was bullied
and beaten up during a majority of his adolescent
years in school. The bullies even beat up
Elon's best friend in school until he stopped
interacting with him. Things were not well
at home as well. According to him, his divorced
father, with whom he lived, was not a very
pleasant man to live with.
Despite all this, he had very firm opinions
on things. Once, during a debate in his science
class, Elon favoured solar power and spoke
against the use of fossil fuels. He also failed
a few subjects in Class IV and V, until he
got to know that he would remain in the same
class if he did not pass. He never failed
in school after getting to know that.
In his quest to reach the United States of
America, a young, seventeen year old Elon
left South Africa for Canada. Living in a
youth hostel, he spent the next year doing
different odd and difficult jobs in Canada.
He completed his undergraduate study at the
University of Pennsylvania, Canada after a
2 year stint at Queen's University. In 1995,
Elon, now 25 years of age, moved to California
to begin a PhD in applied physics at Stanford
University. But he left the program after
2 days to conquer the web.
Immediately after that, he and his brother
started a web software company named Zip2
which created a searchable directory of businesses
and enabled navigation with maps. It helped
people to know the location of their closest
restaurant or real estate dealer or any other
business being searched for and the turn-by-turn
directions to get there. Even when no one
was buying the service, Elon did not give
up. Soon after, the company started to sell.
The efforts started paying dividends as the
company did not take long to become successful.
In February 1999, Compaq Computer bought Zip2
for $307 million. Elon received $22 million
for his stake in the company.
Elon had become rich. He was what most people
at that time wanted to be, a millionaire from
Silicon Valley, USA. But he was on a mission
to change the world. How could he stop? Immediately
in the next month, Elon invested $12 million
of his earnings and started X.com, an online
financial startup with a weird name. After
a small wait, this startup also started doing
well, having a large number of users registering
for the service. But the arrival of a fierce
direct competitor named PayPal, providing
the same kind of service resulted in both
X.com and PayPal spending a lot of money to
gain the trust of their users. Finally, in
2000, X.com and PayPal decided to integrate
rather than trying to make each other exit
the market. But the teams from both the startups
could not tolerate each other. In late 2000,
he lost his position as the CEO of the company.
But he did not get angry. He maintained his
calm and kept putting more money into the
company, increasing his stake in the company.
By July 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5
billion. Elon earned about $250 million because
of this. Now he had the required amount of
money to make all his so-called fancy and
crazy dreams possible.
After that, he moved to Los Angeles, USA because
he wanted to make an impact in the space industry.
Organizations like the U.S. Air Force, N.A.S.A.,
Boeing, etc. had carried out most of their
manufacturing and experimentation in and around
Los Angeles. When he talked about space, some
people thought he meant office space or property
deals. He and his team made trips to Russia
to find out about the cost of a rocket launch.
His close friends thought he had gone mad.
To save him from incurring a huge loss, they
showed him videos of rockets exploding and
tried to convince him not to waste his money
on space exploration. But nothing demotivated
him from trying it. After efforts to buy rockets
from Russians failed, a thought suddenly struck
him. He and his team could build the rockets
themselves. He immediately made a spreadsheet
which listed the detailed costs of the materials
needed to build, assemble, and launch a rocket.
According to his calculations, he could produce
a rocket of moderate size that would serve
the market that required to carry smaller
satellites and research payloads into space.
The rocket could be made at a fraction of
the cost of the rockets produced by existing
launch companies. When he showed his spreadsheets
to his team, they were astonished at the level
of detail. When they asked that how did he
gain so much knowledge about rockets, the
answer astonished them even more. He had spent
months reading different books to study the
space industry and the physics behind it.
Just by reading books and studying the space
industry as an outsider, he had gained so
much knowledge about it. Along with a small
group of very talented and skilled professionals
in the space industry, Elon started Space
Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in June
2002 in an old warehouse. SpaceX used to manufacture
its own engines and then buy the other components
of the rocket from different suppliers. The
company aimed to gain an edge over the competition
by building a better, cheaper engine and by
fine-tuning the assembly process to make rockets
faster and cheaper than anyone else.
While he was busy and totally engrossed in
SpaceX, his first son Nevada Alexander Musk
died of infant death syndrome while he was
just 10 weeks old. After the incident, he
did not talk about the event publicly and
engrossed himself even more in SpaceX, rapidly
expanding the company's goals.
A company named Tesla Motors, started by two
engineers in July 2003, needed a lead investor
who would invest the $7 million needed to
make a test vehicle. That would be their first
achievement and give them something physical
to show off, which could help them get a second
round of funding. The engineers running the
company had the name Elon Musk in mind as
a lead investor, as they knew he was always
interested in sustainable energy. So they
met him in Los Angeles over lunch. After questioning
them about the details for a long time, he
eventually agreed to invest. With an investment
of $6.5 million, he became the largest shareholder
of Tesla and the chairman of the company.
Over the next few years also, he kept investing
in Tesla. But the team at Tesla was having a
tough time handling the costs, and modifying
the batteries for performance and fire prevention.
In the midst of the operational crisis, managerial
crisis also kicked in as the company changed
its CEO during that period, without any success.
Leading into 2008, Tesla was running out of
money. The cost incurred by the company was
much more compared to the cost that was assumed
in 2004. At the same time, even SpaceX was
sucking in a lot of money to prepare for the
3rd launch of Falcon 1. To save the skin of
both his companies, Elon started selling his
prized possessions like his McLaren car and
started overseeing all significant purchases
at both companies personally. At the very
same time, he and his wife divorced, causing
even more trouble in times which were already
tough.
As the next month after the divorce arrived,
Elon could see that he had just enough cash
on hand to somehow crawl through to the end
of the year. Both SpaceX and Tesla would need
money to be input at some point to pay the
employees. But it was unclear where that money
would come from. The global financial crisis
of 2008, which was the worst financial crisis
after the Great Depression in the 1930s, caused
the investors to hold their investments. This
made raising money even more difficult for
Elon.
But when the going gets tough, the tough get
going. Elon went into Superman mode, getting
hyper about cutting costs and increasing efficiency.
At Tesla, where there was an issue with the
car's body, Musk dealt with it directly.
He flew to England in his jet to pick up some
new manufacturing tools for the body and personally
delivered them to a factory in France to ensure
that the car being manufactured stayed on
its production schedule. He ordered his team
at Tesla to work on Saturdays and Sundays
and sleep under desks until work got done.
He also announced that he would not tolerate
any ambiguity around manufacturing costs.
He had been directly controlling things at
SpaceX like this since its inception.
Days and weeks passed by like this and soon,
it was August 2nd 2008. Finally, the day came
for the 3rd launch of the Falcon 1 vehicle.
Interviewer: You had that third failure in a row?
Elon nods.
Interviewer: Did you think I need to pack
this in?
Elon: Never!
Interviewer: Why not?
Elon: I don't ever give up. I mean, I'd
have to be dead or completely incapacitated.
Elon quickly prepared for the possibility
of an issue with the flight by taking on a
significant investment providing SpaceX with
ample financial resources to attempt one more
launch.
Now there was a real problem at hand. If they
failed to solve the problem on earlier flights,
or any random issue occurred, then game over.
SpaceX simply did not have enough money to
try a fifth flight. A failed 4th flight would
put an end to Elon's hard earned fortune
of $100 million, and the dreams of about 400
employees. If, however, SpaceX could successfully
launch the 4th flight, it would instill confidence
on the part of the U.S. government and possible
commercial customers, paving the way for even
more ambitious space projects.
This time Elon and his team of engineers at
SpaceX were too excited and desperate to wait
for transporting the rocket to the launch
site, the island, via the ocean. He rented
a military cargo plane to fly the rocket body
to the island. The SpaceX engineers forgot
to consider that the pressurized plane would
cause damage to the body of the rocket. As
the plane started its journey, the team started
hearing strange noises coming from the cargo
hold. The air pressure pushed against the
sides of the rocket, making it buckle. They
only had about thirty minutes to do something
about the problem before they would need to
land. They pulled out their pocket knives
and cut away the shrink wrap that held the
rocket's body tight. Then they found a maintenance
kit on the plane and used wrenches to open
up some nuts on the rocket that would allow
its internal pressure to match that of the
plane.
When the plane landed, the engineers divided
up the duties of calling SpaceX's top executives
to tell them about the catastrophe. It was
3 A.M. Los Angeles time, and one of the executives
volunteered to deliver the horrific news to
Elon. The thinking at the time was that it
would take three months to repair the damage.
The body of the rocket had caved in in several
places, baffles placed inside the fuel tank
to stop the sloshing problem had broken, and
an assortment of other issues had appeared.
Elon ordered the team to continue on to the
island and sent in a reinforcement team with
repair parts. With some heroic efforts by
the team, the rocket had been fixed inside
of the makeshift hangar in two weeks.
Narrator: 8 weeks later, Musk bet the company
on another flight.
We have lift off!
Narrator: And this time around, everything worked.
Perfect!
This was always going to be hard, it is after all, rocket science
