Elon Musk is my ultimate role model as an entrepreneur.
This article, for me, is somewhat bittersweet. I look up to Elon Musk and what he's doing, because it's really making a difference in the world. That's what I aspire to do someday. But my day to day job is as the first engineer of an advertising startup, where we make boatloads of money helping compagnies better monetize and promote crappy mobile games. Sometimes I wonder if I'm creating any value in the world.
Hopefully this'll be a stepping stone towards financing a startup that'll be a little more meaningful.
> Sometimes I wonder if I'm creating any value in the world. ... Hopefully this'll be a stepping stone towards financing a startup that'll be a little more meaningful.
I think almost everyone thinks this, but y'know what?
It's a lie. People keep saying they'll do what really motivates and engages them real, real soon... just as soon as this obviously-must-be-done thing is done.
But life, life is a series of obviously-must-be-done things. At some point, you need to stop doing them and start doing what actually matters to you.
You can break away from the grinding routine in a responsible, steady way. Easiest way to start? Wake up 1-3 hours earlier, and spend your peak creative time on something incredibly meaningful to you. Could you do that?
I don't trust the future. Everyone says they're going to do things in the future, and most people don't do 90% of them. If you're really serious about changing the world, the best time to start is yesterday, but the second best time to start is right now.
Although I am probably not the intended audience of your message, I can't agree with the sentiment. Akrasia has to have a reason, even if it makes no rational sense, and all my believing in "stop doing [unimportant things] and start doing what actually matters" seems to do is make me feel guilty and worthless for being unable to find the motivation to do what actually matters to me. I know what I'd like to be doing, but I also know I'm not motivated to do it. What's a real solution?
> I know what I'd like to be doing, but I also know I'm not motivated to do it.
You just contradicted yourself. Being motivated to do something means wanting to do it.
The problem is that "What do I want to do" actually has two meanings. It means "What would I like to be doing each day" and it means "What do I want to have done". These are very different questions, and they have different answers. I'd like to have fed the poor, but I would not enjoy standing on the street asking for donations from passers-by. I want to be designing computer games, but I won't be particularly proud of writing Battlefield N+1.
I've spent years optimizing for how my life will look in retrospect. This came as a revelation to me, but if I look back at my fondest memories over the past few years, none of them have involved big goals. Instead, they've all been things that were fun to do, like gamejam and trapeze lessons. This year I've got a new plan: -Ofun. I might not change the world, but maybe if I'm enjoying myself a lot more that'll be ok.
Actions tend to follow emotions, not rational decisions. And connecting your long term plans to your present day emotions is nontrivial.
This is where Personal Development resources like Neuro Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, etc. can be very useful. I know it's not particularly scientific, but I, and several of my friends, have personally found visualization exercises to be extremely helpful in aligning my motivation with my long term goals. Here is a starting point that worked well for me: http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/5-steps-to-overcome-procr...
I'd like to reiterate that connecting emotions with rational, long term decisions is not especially easy, but it is by far one of the most useful skills I developed.
Elon's first startup was CMS software. Not all that sexy either. And he did that until he was 28. It's easy to think he's godlike, but he didn't get to work on space ships when he was 22.
Oh. 28. He really wasted the best part of his life on the CMS...</sarcasm> (But I suppose, life ends at 30 for many here, given the spin many VCs try to put on entrepreneurship)
The sarcasm makes no sense. I point out that he didn't start working on the really cool projects right away and that's supposed to support the notion that life ends at 30? I don't get it. The guy's clearly at the top of his game and he's 40.
The people who are revered here (justly or not) are people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Richard Branson. All in their 40s and 50s.
And yes, if you're going to do a startup you might as well do it in your 20s (all of the people above did!) because you have fewer responsibilities when you're young, and when you're older you often can't afford to put your life on hold.
I'm highly upset at this comment. I didn't realise hn had become downertown.
Many people enjoy this website and just because someone tried to add wind into someone else's sails don't mean it's your job to tell them to stop inventing and dreaming because they're not somewhere glorious.
I hope gizmo is the first person to land on Mars and I hope just to spite you they start after they're 30...
I think SpaceX's success had more to do with the military and space business needing a new public face. SpaceX's executive bios read like a who's who of the space industry. I think people seem to think that Musk reinvented rocketry in three years, which is unrealistic. It's a nice made for TV story, but most corporations probably couldn't swing hundreds of millions in fed contracts without some serious connections.
While not anyone has the luxury of bootstrapping a space company in their 20's.. I still think most startups have lots of other opportunities to tackle bigger problems. The problem is we hang out in tech, and aren't exposed to those problems. But if we hang out with biologists, doctors, teachers, etc.. they'll all tell you problems that need solving. Technology can't solve everything, but paired with the insight of someone from those other fields, it can make a dent.
Nissan and Chevy are already shipping electric cars. There are other private companies pursuing private space flight. Elon gets the love from the Valley because he's from here, but he's an entrepreneur just trying to make money on what's hot. There's nothing wrong with that, but let's hold off on the deification.
SpaceX is far beyond the competition (Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic), with successful launches and signed contracts.
Tesla started less than a decade ago and has sold out of both the Roadster and the Model S. That's pretty incredible for such a young car company.
I don't think Elon is just "making money on what's hot." Building a car company isn't in fashion, and an energy revolution is a pretty clear vertical right now (see Khosla's invetments). Likewise, building a rocket company isn't very fashionable. If you look at his vision--he's playing a 20-year game--the true market for SpaceX doesn't even exist yet.
I'm in the space business, and there are no other organizations in the world doing space the way Elon is with SpaceX. The framework is entirely different, which is far more important than you might give credit. None of his competitors are doing business in a way that will credibly open up space as an entrepreneurial frontier like we have here in the valley.
Can you elaborate? I used to work in the space industry, but it's been some time.
I spent some time at Orbital at a time when they were trying to launch ORBCOMM. What they were doing seems similar in feel to SpaceX. I also noted that ORBCOMM is one of the first scheduled launches for SpaceX.
Interestingly, Orbital was started by an entrepreneur with a vision of small launch vehicles and he managed to actually pull it off- it was not some huge spinoff of an existing giant. I wonder how much the two are talking.
Friends of mine who worked on the early days of Orbital's Pegasus described a situation that sounded very startup-like to me. (I worked there in the late 90's, but on Hubble, not Orbital's commercial projects).
Orbital had modest success (if an IPO can be considered modest). So it seems not only plausible, but likely that a new approach is what is needed here. Perhaps SpaceX is the next iteration of a leaner approach that will actually scale to the meet the grand vision.
In the quickest summary, SpaceX is structuring their business in such a way as to grow fast, get profitable, and remove the need for external funding. They are using COTS (government funding) in much the same way as a silicon valley company would use a VC to provide capital needed for rapid growth. They've been using that money coming in the door to create a non-government market and to make their technology very cost effective in order to grow the space market. Orbital has structured their COTS approach in such a way that they will be able to meet objectives and stay profitable, but it is not an evolutionary path towards a general space architecture.
You are right. There are other companies working on the same problems as Elon Musk. However, what really impresses me about him is that he invested all the cash he made off of PayPal into the companies he's working on now. He could have stopped after PayPal, but he didn't.
He could have stopped before PayPal after he sold Zip2 for over $300 million in 1999. Elon's incredible and the next 50 years will be amazing because of people like him.
I've been reading about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. I don't know if that's a bunch of pop-psychology but I would bet he has much of the former. I wish I could summon those kinds of energies.
Elon Musk will be one of the most influential people in the world for the next 20-30 years, not just directly from his companies but also from others in the industries he's pushing.
Let's not forget Elon is also Chairman of the Board for SolarCity as well, which is leading the distributed solar PV market.
He's pushing the human race forward in many areas, all at the same time. Pretty remarkable
The problem with Elon Musk is this... no one will ever live on mars for extended periods of time because mars is not suitable for human life for the following reasons:
1. weak magnetic field
2. 1/3 of earth's gravity
3. about 100 other reasons that just make the first 2 harder to deal with.
Mars is not somewhere to live, it's somewhere to explore.
What I'm most looking forward to is Tesla's third and fourth generation platform. I'm really curious to see how low they can bring the prices and how high the driving range will be at those mainstream prices.
As for SpaceX, I think they're doing amazing work and it was about time the private sector got into this field with ambitious goals.
If I dare ask, why does the human race want to leave the earth? There's no reason or benefit. There are more interesting, more pressing issues having mostly to do with our biology.
There are at least a couple reasons:
1) A lot of the conflict that destroys so many lives is motivated by limited resources such as land. Getting off this planet could make that kind of conflict disappear (eventually).
2) Diversification. If climate change/oil scarcity/nano/GE get out of hand, it'd be good to have someplace else to go. Even if you're sceptical about the environmental risks from climate change and oil scarcity, GE and nano pose big risks. The easier nano and GE get, the more likely some bio-/nano-hacker somewhere creates an irreversible problem for us (whether accidentally or intentionally).
But none of these scenarios seem particularly pressing. 1) Population growth rates fall as living standards improve, the UN predicts a rise up to 9 billion humans followed by a drop to more or less back to 7bil. 2) It would be easier to work on reversing climate change than finding a planet that supports life.
The way i see it we 're still in 'space exploration' not colonization. Perhaps if we master biology, life and intelligence first, we 'll have our drones do that for us.
Tesla has yet to accomplish anything notable except for getting a half billion dollars from the government. Hopefully they are successful in producing and supporting their Model S.
I believe they have quite some involvement with Toyota with regard to transmissions / battery packs or something along those lines. Commercially it seemed a successful deal for them.
The article says "in addition to reducing carbon emissions" in regard to the Tesla. I can't see how electric cars actually reduce pollution/emissions of any kind.
Typical coal -> electricity is 33% efficient, but can be up to 50% [1], electricty to battery is 75% [2], and electric motors are about 92% [3]. The typical efficiency will be .33 * .75 * .92 = 23%, with a maximum of 35%. Gasoline engine efficiency is 25 - 30% [4], so we aren't really improving pollution much with electric cars, until wind/solar makes up a substantial part of our grid.
Now it will certainly _move_ the pollution from the cars in the cities to the power plants elsewhere (which is a good thing), but it really isn't preventing pollution.
You're counting all the deficiencies of electricity through the life cycle of how it gets into your car, but not for how oil gets turned into gas and then into your tank.
Less than half of electricity in the US is from coal. Also, because of how power plants / grids work, there is excess capacity available that electric cars can use (overnight charging) without increasing power generation.
1-Coal is not the only power source there is
2-Batteries are not the only energy storage device there is
3-It is difficult to upgrade a whole fleet, as we can see by the difficulty of changing it to be a electric-only fleet. Power plants are much easier to upgrade by comparison - all cars are then instantly more efficient.
4-Electric engines do not have to be kept running while the car is stopped (heavy traffic, or traffic lights). This benefits them greatly in heavily populated urban centers.
5-You can have regenerative breaking and recover some of the lost energy. However small, this is something gas engines cannot do.
6-Several components are not needed. Electric engines do not have the same lubrication requirements of internal combustion engines. So no oil, no heat sinks and water pumps (except in some implementations, to cool batteries while charging), electric generator (unless hybrid), exhaust pipes, fuel catalysts, spark plugs (and no high-voltage coils), fuel pumps.. the list goes on and on. In some implementations you could even get rid of the differential transmission and drive the wheels independently. Some do not even need to shift gears, as electric motors can reach very high RPMs (and have a large power to weight ratio).
7-Less sound pollution
Points 4, 6, and 7 are a pretty compelling argument for electric cars, at least in cities (plus the shifting of exhaust outside the city).
I just find it difficult to believe that converting three times (electricity source -> electricty -> storage -> mechanical energy) is going to be more efficient than converting once (gasoline -> mechanical).
- As you said, pollution from power plants have less effect on humans, because of distance and filters
- You are comparing vehicle best case efficiency with Electrical worst case
- Electrical power can be produced from clean sources, gasoline can't be used without creating pollution
- Electric can potentially be smaller and lighter because of a very simple mechanism compared to the gasoline engine and all the components around it. (But batteries efficiency must be improved to really reduce weight)
Don't most large power plants in the Western world have 'scrubbers' and other measures that limit the amount of carbon/other pollutants that they actually release into the air?
If not now, is that a technology that's moving forward fast enough to be a partial solution in the future?
Efficiency isn't the same carbon/NO2/whatever emissions. A lot of inefficiency comes from waste heat and mechanical losses (that's true both in electrical generation AND gas/diesel engines of course) and even then fossil fuels only make up 75% of US power.
Now that said the overall win is still probably smaller than marketing would be willing to admit.
I was going to simply counter your "meh" with another "meh" regarding battery vaporware, but unless that site is straight up lying those are some impressive stats. I've always been more a fan of battery replacement stations instead of batter charging, but with a 20min charge and 150km range who cares.
POWER: 1088 hp
MOTOR TORQUE: 3.800 Nm
BATTERY CAPACITY: 92 kWh
RANGE: 600 km
ACCELERATION 0-100 kph: 2,8 sec.
TOP SPEED: 305 kph
The battery capacity for the Tesla Roadster is 53kWh, weights 450kg and is advertised to last 350km on a charge (and Roadster's world record at 500km). 92x350/53 magically gives us 600km. It also gives us a little short of 800kg of batteries (although they're LiPo instead of Li-ion as in the Roadster, but that should not change the weight much) and the x-ray renderings indeed show batteries take a good deal of the volume of the car. Note that weight, critical for a sports car, is not mentioned. The complete car will probably end up around 2t, and with 1000hp this makes a contender for Veyron class cars.
For reference the one in Model S is 42kWh and the Nissan Leaf has a 24kWh unit. This is expected given the audience, which requires a practical car, so volume has to be surrendered by the batteries to the passengers and the boot.
All in all it's not groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination and you can safely "meh" the GP on the distance-on-a-charge ground. By saying so I'm not downplaying the most important fact here and that's each one of those cars show a nascent market expanding both ends, and I'm looking forward to that.
The sheepish feeling about app development made me think of Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth:
"For every 100,000 employed in research and development, or just plain thinking, one probably will make a breakthrough that will more than pay for the other 99,999 fellowships".
What does "definite" mean? Greater than zero? That's useless here. Either you made it to orbit or you didn't. Either you're pregnant or you're not. Either you are alive or you are dead. There is quite a lot of binary stuff happening in the universe, and none of it relies on things like "0.24% likelihood". SpaceX's record is abysmal, and you forgot a few facts.
1) Soyuz is a government project with the pride of a nation at stake. SpaceX is a personal project with the pride of an egomaniac at stake. If SpaceX fails, it's merely another startup gone bad. If Soyuz fails, it's quite a lot more.
2) Did Musk spend any of his billions on purchasing any of that hard-earned Soyuz flight data from Russia? If not, then he does not care to learn from history, which means that the long-term failure rate of SpaceX vehicles will likely be higher than that of Soyuz.
3) If I am right about #2, then the fatality rate for humans under SpaceX will be higher than 2%, and even 2% of a million people is already quite high, especially when you consider that most of them will not be trained to the levels of the people who have already gone up.
4) If Musk was grounded in reality, he would shoot for the moon, then Mars. Risking fewer people, closer to Earth, is certainly a much better strategy than what he has announced. If something goes wrong on the moon, help is a few days away. That might still not be good enough, but it's far better than the stretch of time required to wait for help on Mars.
5) Musk has very little experience building rockets, and none at all when it comes to building habitats for extreme environments. Take the full documentation (parts, computers, software, maintenance, and whatnot) of the latest Boeing jet, multiply that by about 100, and you might have what it takes to successfully fly to Mars and live there. This kind of endeavor will require a deep rethink of how we handle big projects. SpaceX does not have this ability.
A few years ago, we had the era when Google could do no wrong, and any criticism of Google would not be tolerated by its many fans. Now, that same mindset applies to Musk, except this time, people will die.
> What does "definite" mean? ... Either you made it to orbit or you didn't
The difficulty of defining what probability is is not a defense.
People are able to calculate a value called "probability of launch success" and use this number for useful things like pricing the insurance of the satellites being carried. I assure you that no one involved expects part of a satellite to go up.
> SpaceX's record is abysmal, and you forgot a few facts.
Your facts seem to be (angry) critiques of Musk/SpaceX, but none of them address the original point of discussion i.e. that a new rocket platform had launch failures.
Let me skip to what seems to be the important bit...
> A few years ago, we had the era when Google could do no wrong, and any criticism of Google would not be tolerated by its many fans. Now, that same mindset applies to Musk, except this time, people will die.
If that's what bugs you, here's my criticism:
- Electric cars: can't take off until there's a breakthrough in battery tech. Oh, and the breakthrough can't use elements which are rare/expensive.
- Mars: we don't have enough energy and raw materials to send more than a handful of people.
I still admire Musk for his combination of genius & entrepreneurship. He's attempting, rethinking and achieving way more than most people.
If you don't try to do things differently, there will be no innovation. The current system (NASA, et. al.) does not scale up to what is needed, so different strategies are required. It's really as simple as that.
Will he succeed? Highly unlikely. But I'm glad he's trying, and anyone who kills themselves on one of his rockets will know what they're getting into. Flying in space is inherently dangerous.
Musk is in a unique position of responsibility. If he fails, and particularly if he does so in a spectacular fashion, public sentiment may turn and go in the other direction, saying that such big projects really should be done by governments, because they are the only entities powerful enough to make grand goals happen. I am not against him or SpaceX or settling Mars, but it is quite irresponsible for him to say that he will put 10,000 people on Mars in only 10 to 20 years. Anyone with two neurons to rub together should be alarmed at such a statement, and should think twice about getting into a rocket built by him. Put 10 people on the moon, and have them survive for a year. Then, and only then, make some cautious, speculative statements about Mars. A space entrepreneur grounded in reality is more likely to succeed, but if he fails, said grounding will give those who follow a greater likelihood of success, rather than having their opportunity snatched away by a government riding on a new-found wave of public fear.
Elon Musk is pretty badass. It's awesome that he takes such a big role in the technical design and development at Tesla and SpaceX rather than just "running the company" like most CEOs.
This article, for me, is somewhat bittersweet. I look up to Elon Musk and what he's doing, because it's really making a difference in the world. That's what I aspire to do someday. But my day to day job is as the first engineer of an advertising startup, where we make boatloads of money helping compagnies better monetize and promote crappy mobile games. Sometimes I wonder if I'm creating any value in the world.
Hopefully this'll be a stepping stone towards financing a startup that'll be a little more meaningful.