Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars

There's one interesting quote in the article:<p><i>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.</i><p>If your process/ideas are sufficiently complex, it reduces competition if you don't file a patent.

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 <i>gigantic mob</i> surrounding it at all times. People are seriously excited about space.

&#62; 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.<p>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.<p>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.

If you have't already seen it, Kevin Rose interviews Elon Musk: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8</a><p>Also, Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about if there was a space race with China the US would be on Mars in 18 months: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&#38;v=cVg-snQdrms" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&#38;v=c...</a><p>It would be truly amazing if a private company was the first to set foot on another planet.

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.<p>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 <i>still</i> the most efficient!<p>So credit where it's due eh Elon? The NK-33 was and still is a masterpiece.

Apologies for being somewhat off-topic, but does anybody know if there are citizenship requirements for working at a place like SpaceX?<p>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.

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

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).<p>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.

<p><pre><code> 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... </code></pre> If you are determined (you keep trying) <i>is</i> 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).<p>I think what stops people is aversion to the unfamiliar (whereas some people like it), and the <i>pain</i> 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).<p>After 3 rocket failures, Musk said something similar <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa</a> (at the end):<p><pre><code> 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. </code></pre> If you don't give up, success is inevitable.

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.

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

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

"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."<p>I nearly cried. This is my company, and it is so very disappointing.

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.

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

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

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>In a box, on a dead planet, for life.

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

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

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

He reminds me so much of Clive Sinclair.

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