This article comes from the WeChat public account:University of Chaos (ID: hundun-university) , the picture from: Visual China
Elon Musk made history.
At 3:22 am on May 31, Beijing time, the manned dragon spacecraft developed by SpaceX successfully launched on the 39A launch pad of the Kennedy Space Center in the United States through the Falcon 9 rocket.
After nearly a full day of flight, at 1:22 am on June 1, the two NASA astronauts boarding the US SpaceX manned dragon spacecraft finally entered the International Space Station, and officially met with the astronauts waiting there .
This heralds the arrival of the era of global commercial manned spaceflight.
SpaceX thus became the first private company to master manned spacecraft manufacturing and launch capabilities. Prior to this, this task was undertaken by the national team.
The man behind SpaceX is Elon Musk.
He founded the company in 2002. Only 10 years later, he can use the cargo dragon spacecraft to transport goods to NASA for the NASA; another eight years later, he sent the astronauts into space.
If the astronauts return successfully this time, then the Dragon spacecraft can transport people for the NASA space station in the future.
What seemed impossible at all was completed by Musk, the “Silicon Valley Iron Man”.
But this is not the most eye-catching and thrilling scene that Musk created for the first time. He has conducted many explorations in the aerospace field before. In addition, he has made Tesla the coolest selling pure electric luxury car in the world.
What can Musk do?
Musk’s way of thinking is inevitable, he has been using first principles to think about problems.
Musk’s unique way of thinking
Before SpaceX was founded, Musk’s entrepreneurial story was actually a bit old-fashioned – door-to-door sales, questioned, rejected, repeated defeats, repeated defeats, successively founded Zip2 and Internet financial services company. “.com”, the second company later developed into the now famous PayPal.
In short, it is all about entrepreneurship around the Internet. Although it is also very successful, it is not much different from other Internet entrepreneurs.
At that time, compared with other fields, Internet leadersEntrepreneurship in the domain is relatively easy. The investment community often says: “It is already outdated to be an industry, not to mention that it is so painful, or the Internet is good, and it is easy to get money.”
But soon, Musk jumped and jumped out of this comfort zone, which became unclear to many entrepreneurs.
At the age of 28, Musk sold his first Internet company for $300 million;
At the age of 31, Musk sold the second Internet company he co-founded with Peter Teal for $1.5 billion.
Since then, Musk has invested mainly in three areas: Aerospace, electric vehicles, solar energy.
People with a discerning eye can see that these three areas have a common feature: a high-tech industry that has been stagnant for a long time.
But Musk poured his brain on the wealth of his previous venture, which was considered by many to be a “suicide” venture.
At the most difficult time, both SpaceX and Tesla are facing the risk of failure.
SpaceX’s first rocket failed three previous launch attempts and was almost on the verge of bankruptcy. It was barely renewed until it received a NASA contract worth $1.6 billion to deliver supplies to the International Space Station;
Tesla has received more than 1,200 orders and tens of millions of dollars in deposits, but it can only hand over less than 50 electric vehicles.
Musk is even regarded as a liar selling false hopes.
Fortunately, all of his teeth clenched.
The three companies have also been made alive: SpaceX has become the most stable operator in the aerospace industry; Tesla is already the world’s coolest and best-selling pure electric luxury car; Sun City is currently The largest consumer commercial solar panel installation supplier.
It’s not about how much money Musk’s company has made, it’s about making products that really surprise the world.
After completing these seemingly impossible tasks, he has ambitiously begun to try to enable humans to emigrate to Mars for the next 10 years.
Driving Musk to complete these seemingly impossible tasks is definitely not fame and fortune, but a strong sense of mission and a lifetime of curiosity that can be preciously attached to very few people.
When asked why he chose Tesla as a product with a failure rate higher than the success rate, he thought that this was just what he felt was something he should do, and he didn’t want to wait for others to realize it.
When asked why SpaceX was founded, he thought it was to help him accumulate wealth and experience and achieve the goal of immigration to Mars.
These answers sound a bit sensational, and may even be criticized as “too pretending”.
However, if you understand the speeches and interviews before this maverick “Iron Man”, you will know that these words just condensed his “business ideas”. He knows how to create wealth, but he pays more attention to his purpose of creating wealth.
One detail is obvious. In May 2014, he was invited to participate in the Geek Park Singularity Conference, making his debut in China.
When he was asked what he thought about the “sub-orbital tourism” that was hot at that time, why SpaceX did not participate in this seemingly profitable market, he scoffed, thinking that this was in addition to making some rich money. He has no substantial advancement in technology and human beings, and he has no interest in it.
Looking back at the companies established by Musk in the past ten years, we can find that they are all concentrated on three projects related to the long-term survival risks of human beings: Climate change, earth dependence, and human degradation.
Of course, neither a strong sense of mission nor extraordinary achievements come out of thin air. There must be a different way of thinking behind it.
If you ask Musk what his way of thinking is, he may tell you a keyword: First principles.
Why is first-principle so important?
Musk is very successful in different business fields, but he does not refine different methodologies for different fields, but applies the same underlying thinking to different fields.
For Musk, this underlying thinking is the first principle.
The first-principle way of thinking is to look at the world from a physics point of view, layering the appearance of things layer by layer, seeing the essence inside, and then going up layer by layer from the essence go.
In life, people always like to think by analogy. What others have done, we have to follow along. This is a herd effect.
How to break the herd effect? It is precisely the way of thinking in physics that allows us to return to the source of the problem and discover something counter-intuitive. Then dismantle the problem to achieve combined innovation.
Musk believes that If a thing is physically possible, it must be possible. If the middle is stuck, it can only be blocked by a physical limitation.
His early subordinate once ridiculed: “Elon will use a stopwatch to record the speed of his keyboard, divide it by the total amount of code, and then give us the task at this time.”
Don’t tell him about human weaknesses, regulatory restrictions, or social perceptions here. Musk feels the significance of all his subordinates is to help him remove these “non-physical” obstacles and get out if he can’t.
The “first-principle” seems too extreme, or too naive, and it violently removes the complexity of reality.
But this razor-sharp way of thinking can often grasp the essence from the mist, straight in, and simplify the goal.
In the dialogue between Tsinghua University and Professor Qian Yingyi, Musk described the first principles of physics.
Next, we can see how Musk has achieved commercial innovation by repeatedly applying the same first principles in different fields.
First, the mission was discovered using first principles.
As soon as the word mission is mentioned, we think it belongs to chicken soup, meaningless.
But what is different is that Musk started thinking about his mission at a very young age. It can be said that almost all of his life’s career was a by-product of his mission.
So how did he discover his mission? It is to dig down along the first-principle way of thinking.
He felt that he had always had a sense of crisis. When he was in college, he chose about five directions, which he believed would have the greatest impact on humanity’s future: Internet, renewable energy, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and restructuring gene.
You will be surprised to find that his mission really guides his career. These directions are what he was doing later.
What’s even more incredible is that all of the above are actually preparations for “Immigration to Mars”. When you see these four words, do you feel a bit like science fiction? You may think that his money may have nowhere to spend, just engage in a hobby.
However, as we saw earlier, he is doing the “Immigration to Mars” very seriously.
Why “Immigrate to Mars”?
His reasons are very interesting. He believes that in history, there have been five species extinctions on the earth, each time a large number of species extinction. There are as many as 2 billion species in history, but today there are few. According to historical deductions, it is likely that there will be another mass extinction of the earth in the next 50 million years.
He believes that in the face of this situation, we need to make a copy of the human species. Where is the best place to put it? Mars is where the eyes are. This is what he meant by immigration to Mars.
He also has a specific goal: 40 to 100 years later, to help 1 million immigrants to Mars.
Why is 1 million people?
Musk calculated that if one million people arrived on Mars, it would be enough to help humans multiply. Even if the earth was destroyed, those one million people could continue to live on Mars or continue to emigrate farther.
He said that I can do it, as long as I think of it, I can do anything.
So, when you use first principles to find your true mission, it will be unbreakable and have a long enough cycle.
Three stages of “Migrant Mars”
Next, Musk dismantled the big goal of “Migrant Mars” into three stages.
Rockets were invented in the first phase. He has never done rockets, and no one believes he can do rockets, so at first he could only spend his own money, but that money was used to launch rockets.
So the rocket in his first stage was very small, and the load capacity of Falcon One was only one ton.
The second stage is to achieve space travel. At this time, he needs to develop heavier rockets, such as “Falcon Nine”, “Dragon Spaceship” and “Heavy Falcon”.
The third stage is immigration to Mars.
In the process of implementing this “three-step” plan, Musk encountered many difficulties, but the first-principle thinking method based on physics helped him to resurrect many times.
Before starting SpaceX, everyone advised him that the cost of rockets is too high for startups to afford.
Musk’s first thought was to find a contractor to buy a rocket. He and his friends visited the American McDonnell Douglas Company and the European Ariane Space Company, but the quotation given by the other party was hundreds of millions of dollars, which greatly exceeded his Tolerable range.
Later, it was introduced that Russia has an intercontinental missile that can be used as a rocket after being modified. The cost only costs a few million dollars, and Musk killed Russia in the first place.
When dealing with Russians, it would be impossible not to drink alcohol. Musk went through baptisms of vodka spirits, but the business was still unsuccessful. The reason is simple: the Russians are sitting on the ground and raising prices.
Musk is very angry, he is going to build his own rocket.
You know, when he made this decision, his knowledge about the rocket was zero, so what did he do?
He borrowed all professional books related to rockets and propellers, such as “Principles of Rocket Propulsion”, “Basics of Celestial Dynamics”, “Aerodynamics of Gas Turbines and Rocket Propulsion,” from his friends. Digestion and absorption.
Then the dismantling method was used to look at the cost distribution of manufacturing rockets, and found that the raw materials were actually not much, and the cost of launching fuel was only about 2%, so the biggest cost of rockets is the rocket itself.
Musk also used this formula when manufacturing TeslaAfter tracing the source, the biggest cost of electric vehicles came from battery components. When the R&D team made reference to the market value of battery modules on the market and estimated that the cost was US$600/kW, Musk thought through “first-principles” to disassemble the battery into various metal elements and other components, and then to produce battery modules. Process, origin, supply chain, etc. combined innovation and continuous iterative optimization, he finally found that the purchase of raw materials for lithium battery packs from the London Metal Exchange, combined together, only needs 80 US dollars / kWh.
Before Musk, almost everyone thought that the rocket was exploded and exploded as a matter of course, but Musk believed that cars can be reused and ships can be reused. Why can’t the rocket be reused?
A private enterprise actually put forward a new concept-recyclable rocket. After this concept is realized and realized, the launch cost of SpaceX rocket is 1/5 of the industry standard, and it will drop to 1/10 in the next few years, which is lower than the launch cost of the rockets of the United States, Russia and China.
Previously, the cost of rocket immigration was estimated in the Bush era. Musk thought it would be too expensive if he sent a person to Mars. He wanted to reduce the price to $200,000 per trip.
How does he do it?
It is also a combined innovation, dismantling the basic elements into fuel that can be reused, refueling in orbit, and producing fuel on Mars.
Based on the above decomposition, it is necessary to find a raw material, which is available on Earth and Mars, and can also be used as a raw material for rocket transportation.
What can’t be done? Musk said that as long as there is a goal, even if I don’t know how to do it now, I can definitely find a solution.
Must-have way of thinking for future innovators
However, behind the first-principles approach is extreme loneliness. Because if you really believe in the first principle, you will stick to your own direction, which will only bring extreme loneliness.
Because The human brain does not operate according to the first-principle way of thinking. Hou Shida, a master of cognitive science, has always believed that the brain understands the world according to an analogy, not according to the logic of the machine. Using the human brain for first-principle thinking is like running a windows system on a macbook.
Unless, you are not a person, but an AI. Or, you train yourself to think like an AI.
Musk consciously trained this kind of thinking the day after tomorrow, and his subordinates found that the more faced with the pressure, the more Musk can refine his rational spirit to the extreme, without any “non-physical” Factors confuse your decision, even if you only sleep 4 hours a day.
Musk can achieve nano-level management in SpaceX, what is nano-level management? As thin as each screw, the material and model are well known.
Even so, any new rocket launch requires more than 10 failures to be successful. Sure enough, the first launch of SpaceX failed in 2006, the second launch failed in 2007, and the third launch failed in 2008. Musk’s money immediately disappeared. No one believed him, no one could. Give him money.
Under extreme pressure, Musk took a look at the plan, and the fourth launch three months later finally succeeded.
Musk is actually an extremely bad person. His temperament makes people around him very painful, and his love is not very smooth. Several wives leave him. Once when a reporter interviewed him, he cried and said, “Can you introduce me to my girlfriend?” Because he was very pregnant and thought deeply, he was extremely lonely.
So, if you really think like Musk, you will be on a path of extreme loneliness. No one can really help you, no one can really understand you, you only have to do the thing itself, all emotions talk to it.
If you ask Musk today if “Immigration to Mars” will succeed, it really doesn’t matter at all. As Copernicus said, the sun is the center of the universe, is that correct? Of course it is wrong, but this error is not important at all. The important thing is that it reminds us that the earth is only a small part of the universe. We should look out. This thinking is particularly important. As long as you look out, you will soon know that the sun is not the center of the universe.
The narrow door was opened, and the person who opened it was actually the most amazing.
Why is Musk so powerful?
Our education often says that to become a world-class expert, you need to dig deep in a field. And Musk broke this criterion, he studied two majors in business: business and physics, and then went to study rocket science, engineering, physics, artificial intelligence, solar energy, energy and other fields.
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He has a transfer-based learning method—disassembling knowledge to the level of basic principles to transfer, even learning is a first-principle learning method, as long as it is removed to a sufficient foundation, it can be transferred to a new one Go inside the realm.
So he applied the same first-principles in different fields and founded PayPal, the largest online payment company in the Internet world; SolarCity, a house-sharing energy company in the energy industry; Tesla in the automotive industry; and the aviation industry. SpaceX; OpenAI, which founded open AI in the technology world…
Only by applying the first-principle principle and being transferable, can we enter so many fields.
Learning does not necessarily need to learn the details, but you must learn the most basic principles.
A question in “A Brief History of Mankind”, why did the scientific revolution appear in Europe? The scientific revolution began in Western Europe and Great Britain. Human history never felt how important it was before. Before that time, China’s technological level was much higher than that of Europe. In 1775, China accounted for 1/3 of the world’s total economy. Before the Tang and Song Dynasties, China accounted for about 60% of the world’s technological inventions. Since the modern world’s scientific revolution, there have been 6,000 basic scientific theorems of law. The original contribution is less than 1%.
Then there was the famous “Question of Joseph Needle”-Europe did not have any technological advantages in facing China in 1770. Why did the next 100 years open such a big gap?
Herali’s answer is Traditional China is actually not lacking in the technology of making steam engines, but the most revolutionary philosophy and scientific way of thinking in the West.
Eastern civilization is a technical thinking, trial and error method of operation, practice operation first, experience summed up later, induction thinking.
The experience induction model is figurative thinking, the advantage is fast, and the disadvantage is that it does not have domain transferability. For example, gunpowder, we invented firecrackers, but we cannot transfer this technology to guns. If we want to migrate to guns, we must sink to the subject of mathematics, physical chemistry.
The modern West is philosophical thinking, logical trial and error method, theoretical assumptions first, practical experience second, deductive thinking.
The disadvantage of abstract thinking is slow, and the advantage is the transferability. Once a common abstract concept is logically derived, all the figurative problems related to this are resolved at once. For example, Newtonian mechanics solvedAll the problems in the field of classical mechanics, engineers applied it to industry, which directly triggered the industrial revolution.
So, The future innovator should be a scientist+philosopher+entrepreneur, with a scientific way of thinking, a philosophical way of thinking, and a business way of thinking.
If we have a unique first-principle like Musk, everything will start from the essence, and then push back from the essence layer by layer, and can transfer the essence to different fields. If you have such a way of thinking, you will not lose information about the result because of temporary difficulties, and you will not make vain efforts because you are so high-because you know your goal very well, it is derived from the “first principles” The inevitable result.
This kind of rational thinking is especially worth learning.