[blizkreeg]

Clearly this man's intellect is through the roof. Reading this post and him explaining these concepts in such first-principle terms (despite not being a physicist/rocket engineer) indicates his in-depth understanding (nothing new there). I know he has a Bachelors in Physics but bear with me.

But, I'm just in awe and I keep thinking 'how does he do it?'.

He's running two intensely technical and risky companies. Yet he seems involved in and knowledgeable about every aspect of their operations and tech. And finds the time to write a post like this before what is an incredibly important and defining endeavor.

What can us, mere mortals learn from him? We can't change our baseline raw intelligence (which effects how quickly and deeply you can learn new things), but are there other patterns we can replicate in our lives?

[tedivm]

In most companies the "Posts from the CEO" are a group effort (at my last company I wrote multiple statements that were supposedly from our CEO). What you're attributing to a single person is actually the work of many.

This leads to your question:

> But, I'm just in awe and I keep thinking 'how does he do it?'. What can us, mere mortals learn from him? We can't change our baseline raw intelligence (which effects how quickly and deeply you can learn new things), but are there other patterns we can replicate in our lives?

Simply put, be willing to work hard enough to inspire people who are smarter than you to join your team.

[gozur88]

>In most companies the "Posts from the CEO" are a group effort (at my last company I wrote multiple statements that were supposedly from our CEO). What you're attributing to a single person is actually the work of many.

If it's a group effort he was being pretty deceptive by ending with "apologies for typos in the above," making it sound like he just dashed it off himself.

[yellowbeard]

Don't underestimate a good copywriter :) Christian Rudder's 'Dataclysm' has a funny example of someone who copy-pasted the same message to dozens of people on OK Cupid complete with an apology for spelling.

[JabavuAdams]

> Simply put, be willing to work hard enough to inspire people who are smarter than you to join your team.

This is what crops up again and again when looking at these performance outliers.

[sillysaurus3]

This hero worship is utterly stupid. It's also a disservice to children. We're teaching them that there are heroes, and then everyone else.

Bull. Work as hard as Elon did, and you'd make the same progress. It also required luck. No PayPal, no Elon. And there could only be one PayPal, at precisely that time in history.

A better question is, why did Carmack fail where Elon succeeded? Armadillo Aerospace was supposed to be SpaceX.

[sjburt]

Carmack invested about $2 million into Armadillo in its first 6 years. Elon invested $100 million in that time frame (actually, the first 4 years of SpaceX).

Armadillo did OK actually, they just were on a completely different trajectory. It was very much a hobby project for Carmack.

[derekp7]

Not only that, but wasn't Armadillo one of the "straight-up-to-100KM-and-return" (suborbital) designs? If so, then there is no money to be made in that (except for wealthy people that want a 20 minute thrill ride). It is the "lateral velocity of Mach 25" type of rocket that gets you satellite launch contracts.

[theodorton]

Tim Urban, who co-hosted the live coverage, has written four in-depth articles on Musk and SpaceX. In the last article he attempts to describe the reason behind his success. TL;DR: Thinks from first-principles instead of analogy, treats human brains like computers.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-se...

[ChuckMcM]

There is one school of thought that goes that SpaceX's mission to "Get people to Mars" requires so much more than simply putting things in orbit that people set their expectations that this is only the beginning. If you set your expectations that you just wanted to get to space and straight back down again, you don't invest in things which would be helpful to a Mars mission.

So while building a resuable booster for rockets might be the entire goal of some company, for SpaceX it was only the first step in a lot of bigger goals in order to make it feasible to go to Mars. And in so doing, and creating a capability that they can sell today to fund future development.

[ohitsdom]

Hero worship is stupid, but everyone is different. We all couldn't be Elon if we worked as hard as he does.

[tunesmith]

He's commented on this type of thing before and it seems like he thinks it isn't any great trick. The main thing is that if you're going to reason well from first principles, you have to learn from first principles. If you build your "tree of knowledge" efficiently, then adding on to it isn't so difficult because you have a good core. Contrast this with the hobbyist that tries to learn rocket science when they don't have a good handle on first-year physics.

[WalterBright]

> despite not being a physicist/rocket engineer

The article's description of newtonian mechanics of orbits and energy is freshman physics stuff, and every engineer should know it.

Nevertheless, Musk is an astonishing man and I suspect he'll go down in history as one of the greatest engineers. I wish I could buy a few shares of SpaceX and own a tiny morsel of the dream :-)

[Animats]

It's a response to Bezos's Blue Origins tweet. Getting to orbit takes far more energy than just getting to orbital altitude, which is the main point Musk is making.

Blue Origin isn't a serious competitor, though. United Launch Alliance (Lockheed-Martin and Boeing) is the real competitor. It's amazing that they're still using Atlas/Centaur, which, although there have been major redesigns and upgrades, first flew started in the 1950s. (Yes, the current Atlas is really a new design, using Russian engines. The Centaur upper stage hasn't changed as much; it still has the 1950s Rocketdyne engines.)

Space-X still wants the capability of landing on the barge, so they don't have to expend so much fuel to kill the horizontal vector and get back near the launch point. They may end up going with expendable boosters when lifting to geosync orbit. But they may be able to reuse ones recovered from previous low orbit missions.

[skybrian]

It's well written and I'm glad he takes the time to write things like this. But I think you might be a bit biased by hero worship. Don't you think the rocket engineers explained it to him in about the same way? And there's probably not a lot else for the boss to do while waiting for liftoff.

[facetube]

In his interviews with Tim Urban from Wait But Why, there's a bit of detail about what he read leading up to his founding of SpaceX. They're all hard science texts – Rocket Propulsion Elements (Sutton), Aerothermodynamics of Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion (Oates), Fundamentals of Astrodynamics (Bate). From everything I've heard, he's well-versed in the material in a way that not many CEOs are.

[jonknee]

No, I think he is a rocket scientist himself (in knowledge, not degree). It is impressive.

[JabavuAdams]

I know at least a few people who seem as smart as Elon. Past a certain point, it's not raw intelligence, but the whole mix.

Also, he does have an undergrad degree in physics, and was accepted to a physics PhD program at Stanford.

The guy's incredibly impressive, but there are many almost-Elons. It's not like he's an alien or a superhuman.

[jacquesm]

The main difference between Elon Musk and 'the rest of us' is that he set himself a bunch of ambitious goals and applies each and every bit of his funds and intellect towards achieving those goals and inspires a large number of very smart people around him to share his dreams. It's a tough act to follow, but if you really wanted to you probably could. Whether or not you're prepared to pay the price is another matter.

[elmar]

“My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcR7OHXgSAs

[Joeri]

He works stupendously hard. Growing up my dad was always working, and it factored heavily into my decision to not pursue a career of long hours, it's a trade-off I wasn't willing to make. As a consequence, I won't have the financial resources he has. The amount of dedication that it takes to run businesses like tesla and spacex well is intimidating. To quote princess bride, it leaves no room for dilly-dallying.

Another take-away I get from musk's achievements is that the best software businesses are about applied software. Paypal is software applied to finance, tesla is software applied to cars, spacex is software applied to rockets. Combine great software with great hardware, and you get companies like apple, tesla, spacex, companies that change the world.

[the_economist]

He has a reputation for being an extremely hard worker.

[marktangotango]

Indeed, I'd wager that raw intelligence is highly overrated. Hard work trumps intelligence. Hard work and intelligence are an unbeatable combination.

>> What can us, mere mortals learn from him? We can't change our baseline raw intelligence (which effects how quickly and deeply you can learn new things), but are there other patterns we can replicate in our lives?

Become an autodidact, and study, study, study.

[madaxe_again]

Intelligence undermines hard work all too often. I wasted years of my life coasting, as coming top of the class in everything was easy, and only actually started applying myself after university, when it rapidly became clear that intelligence alone doesn't cut it.

You've gotta be smart, you've gotta be prepared to work insane and thankless hours, you've gotta be tough as nails to hear but ignore the naysayers, you've gotta be willing to lose everything, and above all, you've gotta believe in yourself.

Only when you put all of those together (with krazy glue, of course), only when you are leading yourself, can you hope to lead others.

[pinkrooftop]

Try explaining to someone an easy to understand version of your life's work, it probably comes out pretty easy. Same thing here. The impressive part is Elons explanation about the science is not typical CEO material

[WalterBright]

The analogy of the membrane with weights placed on it is pretty standard, I encountered it in the 1970's, and have seen it on episodes of Nova.

[jupiter90000]

Are you sure he writes these? I don't know enough about what he actually does. I'm pretty sure some C-level people have someone else write something about what they wanted to say (like an assistant or someone on the marketing team). Then maybe they review it and sign off. Just a thought.

[Retric]

"Bachelor of Science degree in physics at Penn's College of Arts and Sciences." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

Sure, he does not have a MS or PHD but he was trained in physics.

[leonroy]

> We can't change our baseline raw intelligence.

Hmm. I used to believe this until a book recommendation by Bill Gates no less opened my mind a little to the thought that intelligence isn't a fixed or capped (to any level most of us hit anyways) attribute.

I would strongly recommend at least a read of Gates' book review and at best purchasing a copy of the book and applying it. Certainly one of the best books I've read of late.

http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-o...

[manigandham]

Learn to stop thinking that everyone else are just "mere mortals".

We're all humans here. Productivity is a complicated output of intelligence, ambition, application, luck and financial fortune.

[serge2k]

Is hacker news just the church of Elon now?