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Book Notes > Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance > Flashcards

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance Flashcards

1
Q

He’s also wired like a scientist and suffers mental anguish at the sight of a factual error.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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2
Q

One thing that Musk holds in the highest regard is resolve, and he respects people who continue on after being told no.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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3
Q

Forget Steve Jobs. Musk is a sci-fi version of P. T. Barnum who has gotten extraordinarily rich by preying on people’s fear and self-hatred.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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4
Q

there’s a sense of purpose and pressure hanging over any conversation with the man. Musk doesn’t really shoot the shit.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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5
Q

Oddly enough, making Nothing appear to be Something took a lot of work.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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6
Q

Between Google and Apple’s introduction of the iPhone in 2007, there’s a wasteland of ho-hum companies.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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7
Q

While much of America’s infrastructure decays, Musk is building a futuristic end-to-end transportation system that would allow the United States to leapfrog the rest of the world.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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8
Q

What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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9
Q

Asked how he survives this schedule, Musk said, “I had a tough childhood, so maybe that was helpful.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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10
Q

The Lucent Dossier Experience—an avant-garde group of performers—were on the luxurious train, performing palm readings and acrobatics.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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11
Q

(A word of warning: There’s going to be a lot of “fuck” in this book. Musk adores the word, and so do most of the people in his inner circle.)

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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12
Q

In the two decades Musk has spent creating companies, he’s left behind a trail of people who either adore or despise him.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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13
Q

It seemed like one should try to make the world a better place because the inverse makes no sense.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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14
Q

“He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said. “Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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15
Q

ultralogical mission statement. “The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,” he said.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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16
Q

the white Afrikaner culture so prevalent in Pretoria and the surrounding areas. Hypermasculine behavior was celebrated and tough jocks were revered.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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17
Q

Haldeman seemed to have everything going for him when, in 1950, he decided to give it all away. The doctor-cum-politician had long railed against government interference in the lives of individuals and had come to see the Canadian bureaucracy as too meddlesome.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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18
Q

The perplexing thing was that Elon seemed to drift off into a trance at times. People spoke to him, but nothing got through when he had a certain, distant look in his eyes. This happened so often that Elon’s parents and doctors thought he might be deaf.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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19
Q

the very visual way in which Musk’s mind worked. He could see images in his mind’s eye with a clarity and detail that we might associate today with an engineering drawing produced by computer software.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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20
Q

“For images and numbers, I can process their interrelationships and algorithmic relationships,” Musk said. “Acceleration, momentum, kinetic energy—how those sorts of things will be affected by objects comes through very vividly.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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21
Q

The most striking part of Elon’s character as a young boy was his compulsion to read. From a very young age, he seemed to have a book in his hands at all times. “It was not unusual for him to read ten hours a day,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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22
Q

Elon, in fact, churned through two sets of encyclopedias—a feat that did little to help him make friends. The boy had a photographic memory, and the encyclopedias turned him into a fact factory. He came off as a classic know-it-all.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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23
Q

Elon’s constant yearning to correct people and his abrasive manner put off other kids and added to his feelings of isolation.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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24
Q

Errol has since been remarried, and Elon has two, younger half sisters of whom he’s quite protective. Elon and his siblings seem determined not to bad-mouth Errol publicly, so as not to upset the sisters.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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25
Q

“ultra-present and very intense.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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26
Q

He seemed to delight in being hard on the boys and sucked the fun out of common childhood diversions.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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27
Q

certainly be accurate to say that I did not have a good childhood,” he said. “It may sound good. It was not absent of good, but it was not a happy childhood. It was like misery. He’s good at making life miserable—that’s for sure. He can take any situation no matter how good it is and make it bad. He’s not a happy man. I don’t know . . . fuck . . . I don’t know how someone becomes like he is. It would just cause too much trouble to tell you any more.” Elon and Justine have vowed that their children will not be allowed to meet Errol.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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28
Q

It was part of an atypical upbringing—just this insane set of experiences that changes how you view risk. You don’t grow up thinking getting a job is the hard part. That’s not interesting enough.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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29
Q

“For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the shit out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well. It was just like nonstop horrible.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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30
Q

“Honestly, there were just no signs that he was going to be a billionaire,” said Gideon Fourie, another classmate. “He was never in a leadership position at school. I was rather surprised to see what has happened to him.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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31
Q

There needs to be a reason for a grade. I’d rather play video games, write software, and read books than try and get an A if there’s no point in getting an A.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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32
Q

‘If there was a way that I could not eat, so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal.’

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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33
Q

“You always knew it was Elon because the phone would never stop ringing. The man does not take no for an answer. You can’t blow him off. I do think of him as the Terminator. He locks his gaze on to something and says, ‘It shall be mine.’ Bit by bit, he won me over.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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34
Q

“We are the kinds of people that can be by ourselves at a party and not feel awkward,” Farooq said. “We can think to ourselves and not feel socially weird about it.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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35
Q

“When Elon gets into something, he develops just this different level of interest in it than other people. That is what differentiates Elon from the rest of humanity.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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36
Q

As Musk began to think more seriously about what he would do after college, he briefly considered getting into the videogame business. He’d been obsessed with video games since his childhood and had held a gaming internship.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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37
Q

for Musk, the distinction between stumbling into something and having intent is important.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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38
Q

Kimbal had been working as a franchisee for College Pro Painters

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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39
Q

Musk never seemed to leave the office. He slept, not unlike a dog, on a beanbag next to his desk. “Almost every day, I’d come in at seven thirty or eight A.M., and he’d be asleep right there on that bag,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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40
Q

“I think that’s what the VCs saw—that he was willing to stake his existence on building out this

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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41
Q

“My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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42
Q

“Really smart people sometimes don’t understand that not everyone can keep up with them or go as fast,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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43
Q

They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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44
Q

“If you asked Elon how long it would take to do something, there was never anything in his mind that would take more than an hour,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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45
Q

“Elon is not someone who would say, ‘I feel you. I see your point of view,’” said Justine. “Because he doesn’t have that ‘I feel you’ dimension there were things that seemed obvious to other people that weren’t that obvious to him.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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46
Q

I just think he comes at the world through strategy and intellect.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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47
Q

For Elon, the word no does not exist, and he expects that attitude from everyone around him.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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48
Q

That’s Elon. Do or die but don’t give up.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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49
Q

what are the things that affect how a team functions. The first obvious assumption would be that other people will behave like you. But that’s not true. Even if they would like to behave like you, they don’t necessarily have all the assumptions or information that you have in your mind.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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50
Q

All the bankers did was copy what everyone else did. If everyone else ran off a bloody cliff, they’d run right off a cliff with them. If there was a giant pile of gold sitting in the middle of the room and nobody was picking it up, they wouldn’t pick it up, either.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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51
Q

a throwback to Silicon Valley’s earlier days, when the founders of companies like Intel were willing to take huge gambles on themselves.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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52
Q

On the night before Thanksgiving in 1999, X.com went live to the public. “I was there until two A.M.,” Anderson said. “Then, I went home to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Elon called me a few hours later and asked me to come into the office to relieve some of the other engineers. Elon stayed there forty-eight straight hours, making sure things worked.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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53
Q

“He comes from the school of thought in the public relations world that you let no inaccuracy go uncorrected,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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54
Q

PayPal also came to represent one of the greatest assemblages of business and engineering talent in Silicon Valley history. Both Musk and Thiel had a keen eye for young, brilliant engineers.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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55
Q

This collection of super-bright employees has become known as the PayPal Mafia—more or less the current ruling class of Silicon Valley—and Musk is its most famous and successful member.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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56
Q

“We fought a lot, but when we weren’t fighting, there was a deep sense of compassion—a bond,” Justine said.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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57
Q

Musk often talked fondly about Alexander the Great,

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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58
Q

Musk also exuded a confidence and passion that made Justine think life with him would always be okay.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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59
Q

At their wedding reception, Justine encountered the other side of the conquering hero. Musk pulled Justine close while they danced, and informed her, “I am the alpha in this relationship.”3 Two months later, Justine signed a postnuptial financial agreement that would come back to haunt her and entered into an enduring power struggle. She described the situation years later in an article for Marie Claire, writing, “He was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. ‘I am your wife,’ I told him repeatedly, ‘not your employee.’ ‘If you were my employee,’ he said just as often, ‘I would fire you.’”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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60
Q

“He’s built like a tank,” she said. “He has a level of stamina and an ability to deal with levels of stress that I’ve never seen in anyone else.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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61
Q

It took Musk six months to recover. He lost forty-five pounds over the course of the illness and had a closet full of clothes that no longer fit. “I came very close to dying,” Musk said. “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: vacations will kill you.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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62
Q

The start-up life, which Musk described as akin to “eating glass and staring into the abyss,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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63
Q

Musk’s entire life had been about chasing a bigger stage,

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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64
Q

The average person might see space exploration as a waste of time and effort and rib him for talking about the subject, but Musk thought about interplanetary travel in a very earnest way. He wanted to inspire the masses and reinvigorate their passion for science, conquest, and the promise of technology.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

65
Q

Musk believed that the very idea of America was intertwined with humanity’s desire to explore.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

66
Q

He has this belief that he is the guy who can change the world.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

67
Q

The men were heading to Russia at the height of its freewheeling post-Soviet days when rich guys could apparently buy space missiles on the open market.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

68
Q

The Russians, who often skip breakfast, would ask to meet around 11 A.M. at their offices for an early lunch.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

69
Q

The somber mood lingered all the way to the plane, until the drink cart arrived. “You always feel particularly good when the wheels lift off in Moscow,” Cantrell said. “It’s like, ‘My God. I made it.’

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

70
Q

At a time when the cost of sending a 550-pound payload started at $30 million, he promised that the Falcon 1 would be able to carry a 1,400-pound payload for $6.9 million.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

71
Q

This was Musk the logical, naïve optimist tabulating how long it should take people physically to perform all of this work. It’s the baseline he expects of himself and one that his employees, with their human foibles, are in a never-ending struggle to match.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

72
Q

Justine had given birth to a son—Nevada Alexander Musk. He was ten weeks old when, just as the eBay deal was announced, he died. The Musks had tucked Nevada in for a nap and placed the boy on his back as parents are taught to do. When they returned to check on him, he was no longer breathing and had suffered from what the doctors would term a sudden infant death syndrome–related incident.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

73
Q

Justine chalked up Musk’s reaction to a defense mechanism that he’d learned from years of suffering as a kid. “He doesn’t do well in dark places,” she told Esquire magazine. “He’s forward-moving, and I think it’s a survival thing with him.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

74
Q

“I’m not sure why I’d want to talk about extremely sad events. It does no good for the future.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

75
Q

If someone needed to request permission to buy a big-ticket item, they would stop for a moment in front of Brown and wait for a nod to go see Musk or the shake-off to go away because Musk was having a bad day. This system of nods and shakes became particularly important during periods of romantic strife for Musk, when his nerves were on edge more than usual.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

76
Q

Throughout the first year at SpaceX, one or two new employees joined almost every week.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

77
Q

the trek from California to the test site became known as the Texas Cattle Haul.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

78
Q

What Musk would not tolerate were excuses or the lack of a clear plan of attack.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

79
Q

I thought it was more important to let him know quickly what happened, but I learned it was more important to have all the information.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

80
Q

“He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty,” Mueller said. “He’s out there with his nice Italian shoes and clothes and has epoxy all over him. They were there all night

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

81
Q

Musk—playing under the handle Random9—often won the games, talking trash and blasting away his employees without mercy.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

82
Q

“Elon can be very demanding, but he’ll make sure the obstacles in your way are removed,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

83
Q

Musk was always looking for brainy engineers who had not just done well at school but had done something exceptional with their talents.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

84
Q

“There was always this feeling that we were facing a sort of insurmountable challenge and that we had to band together to fight the good fight.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

85
Q

Musk never relented in asking his employees to do more and be better, whether it was at the office or during extracurricular activities.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

86
Q

“He had a way of looking at you—a glare—and would keep looking at you until you understood him.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

87
Q

He was doing the standard relationship-building exercise practiced by salespeople for centuries. Show up. Speak for a while. Feel each other out. Then, start doing business down the road. Musk was having none of it. “The guy comes in, and Elon asks him why they’re meeting,” Spikes said. “He said, ‘To develop a relationship.’ Elon replied, ‘Okay. Nice to meet you,’ which basically meant, ‘Get the fuck out of my office.’ This guy had spent four hours traveling for what ended up as a two-minute meeting. Elon just has no tolerance for that kind of stuff.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

88
Q

‘The longer you wait to fire someone the longer it has been since you should have fired them,’”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

89
Q

The kiss of death was proving Elon wrong about something.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

90
Q

it was never ‘if we fail, we’re done for.’ He was very optimistic.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

91
Q

what’s known as a mule or a prototype vehicle.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

92
Q

The venture capitalists were impressed enough to overlook the fact that engineers sometimes had to manually fan the car to cool it down in between test drives and were now starting to grasp Tesla’s long-term potential.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

93
Q

the Roadsters. The vehicles were so fragile that only Straubel and a couple of other trusted hands knew how to run them, and they were swapped out every five minutes to avoid overheating.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

94
Q

“They weren’t actually allowed to sell cars yet, though, so we joined their club. It cost one hundred thousand dollars, but one of the benefits of membership was that you’d get a free car.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

95
Q

There’s brake and traction testing track in northern Sweden near the Arctic Circle where cars get tuned on large plains of ice.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

96
Q

Another testing procedure required that the Roadsters go into a special cooling chamber to check how they would respond to frigid temperatures. Not wanting to pay the exorbitant costs to use one of these chambers, the Tesla engineers opted to rent an ice cream delivery truck with a large refrigerated trailer. Someone would drive a Roadster into the truck, and the engineers would don parkas and work on the car.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

97
Q

Throughout these early years, the engineers credited Eberhard with making quick, crisp decisions. Rarely did Tesla get hung up overanalyzing a situation.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

98
Q

The company would pick a plan of attack, and when it failed at something, it failed fast and then tried a new approach.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

99
Q

“Everyone knew that the person who starts a company is not necessarily the right person to lead it in the long term, but whenever that is the case, it’s not easy.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

100
Q

He also put in some basic rules like making sure that people all showed up at work at the same time to establish a baseline of productivity—a tricky ask in Silicon Valley’s work anywhere, anytime culture.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

101
Q

Instead of doing the fashionable Silicon Valley thing of “pivoting” toward a new idea or plan, Musk would dig in deeper.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

102
Q

Elon has a mind that’s a bit like a calculator. If you put a number on the projector that does not make sense, he will spot it. He doesn’t miss details.” Popple found Musk’s style aggressive, but he liked that Musk would listen to a well-argued, analytical point and often change his mind if given a good enough reason.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

103
Q

Marketing people who made grammatical mistakes in e-mails were let go, as were other people who hadn’t done anything “awesome” in recent memory. “He can be incredibly intimidating at times but doesn’t have a real sense for just how imposing he can be,” said one former Tesla executive.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

104
Q

“We’d have these meetings and take bets on who was going to get bloodied and bruised. If you told him that you made a particular choice because ‘it was the standard way things had always been done,’ he’d kick you out of a meeting fast.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

105
Q

He just destroys you and, if you survive, he determines if he can trust you. He has to understand that you’re as crazy as he is.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

106
Q

Like so many people privy to these performances, Lyons came away with no illusions about Musk’s personality but with the utmost respect for his vision and drive to execute.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

107
Q

Musk likes to place one-dollar wagers on all manner of things—Can

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

108
Q

The press had picked up on the fact that Musk tended to talk a huge game and then struggle to deliver on his promises in time, but they didn’t much care. The game he talked was so much bigger than anyone else’s that reporters were comfortable giving Musk leeway.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

109
Q

a quotation from Moby without any additional context: “There’s no such thing as a well-adjusted public figure. If they were well adjusted they wouldn’t try to be a public figure.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

110
Q

experienced a baptism by fire.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

111
Q

“It was like the worst fucking day ever. You don’t usually see grown-ups weeping, but there they were. We were tired and broken emotionally.” Musk addressed the workers right away and encouraged them to get back to work. “He said, ‘Look. We are going to do this. It’s going to be okay. Don’t freak out,’” Singh recalled. “It was like magic. Everyone chilled out immediately and started to focus on figuring out what just happened and how to fix it. It went from despair to hope and focus.” Musk put up a positive front to the public as well.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

112
Q

And, finally, around nine minutes into its journey, the Falcon 1 shut down just as planned and reached orbit, making it the first privately built machine to accomplish such a feat. It took six years—about four and half more than Musk had once planned—and five hundred people to make this miracle of modern science and business happen.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

113
Q

There are only a handful of countries on Earth that have done this. It’s normally a country thing, not a company thing. . .

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

114
Q

Musk no longer flew his jet back and forth between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. He took Southwest.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

115
Q

“Maybe they’re used to a CEO buckling, but Elon doesn’t do that.” Instead, Musk took another huge risk.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

116
Q

“He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias said. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn’t just survive. He kept working and stayed focused.” That ability to stay focused in the midst of a crisis stands as one of Musk’s main advantages over other executives and competitors.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

117
Q

The harder it gets, the better he gets.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

118
Q

the retirement of the space shuttle made the United States totally dependent on the Russians to get astronauts to the ISS. Russia gets to charge $70 million per person for the trip and to cut the United States off as it sees fit during political rifts.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

119
Q

Zip2, PayPal, Tesla, SolarCity—they are all expressions of Musk. SpaceX is Musk.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

120
Q

the Cult of Musk. Employees fear Musk. They adore Musk. They give up their lives for Musk, and they usually do all of this simultaneously. Musk’s demanding management style can only flourish because of the otherworldly—in a literal sense—aspirations of the company.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

121
Q

SpaceX is the hip, forward-thinking place that’s brought the perks of Silicon Valley—namely frozen yogurt, stock options, speedy decision making, and a flat corporate structure—to a staid industry.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

122
Q

The object is to find individuals who ooze passion, can work well as part of a team, and have real-world experience bending metal.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

123
Q

Coders who expect to pass through standard challenges have rude awakenings. Companies will typically challenge software developers on the spot by asking them to solve problems that require a couple of dozen lines of code. The standard SpaceX problem requires five hundred or more lines of code. All potential employees who make their way to the end of the interview process then handle one more task. They’re asked to write an essay for Musk about why they want to work at SpaceX.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

124
Q

Each employee receives a warning before going to meet with Musk. The interview, he or she is told, could last anywhere from thirty seconds to fifteen minutes. Elon will likely keep on writing e-mails and working during the initial part of the interview and not speak much. Don’t panic. That’s normal. Eventually, he will turn around in his chair to face you. Even then, though, he might not make actual eye contact with you or fully acknowledge your presence. Don’t panic. That’s normal. In due course, he will speak to you.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

125
Q

He tends to care less about whether or not the person gets the answer than about how they describe the problem and their approach to solving it.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

126
Q

Many of them would quit within the first few months because of the ninety-plus-hour workweeks. Others quit because they could not handle just how direct Musk and the other executives were during meetings. “Elon doesn’t know about you and he hasn’t thought through whether or not something is going to hurt your feelings,” Singh said. “He just knows what the fuck he wants done. People who did not normalize to his communication style did not do well.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

127
Q

“Blue Origin does these surgical strikes on specialized talent* offering like double their salaries. I think it’s unnecessary and a bit rude,” Musk said. Within SpaceX, Blue Origin is mockingly referred to as BO and at one point the company created an e-mail filter to detect messages with “blue” and “origin” to block the poaching. The relationship between Musk and Bezos has soured, and they no longer chat about their shared ambition of getting to Mars.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

128
Q

“I do think Bezos has an insatiable desire to be King Bezos,” Musk said. “He has a relentless work ethic and wants to kill everything in e-commerce. But he’s not the most fun guy, honestly.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

129
Q

“Then I realized he was trying to learn things. He would quiz you until he learned ninety percent of what you know.” People who have spent significant time with Musk will attest to his abilities to absorb incredible quantities of information with near-flawless recall. It’s one of his most impressive and intimidating skills and seems to work just as well in the present day as it did when he was a child vacuuming books into his brain.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

130
Q

Musk wants day-by-day and hour-by-hour forecasts and sometimes even minute-by-minute countdowns, and the fallout from missed schedules is severe. “You had to put in when you would go to the bathroom,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

131
Q

Musk has mastered the art of getting the most out of his employees.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

132
Q

Where a typical manager may set the deadline for the employee, Musk guides his engineers into taking ownership of their own delivery dates. “He doesn’t say, ‘You have to do this by Friday at two P.M.,’” Brogan said. “He says, ‘I need the impossible done by Friday at two P.M. Can you do it?’ Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. You’re working hard for yourself. It’s a distinction you can feel. You have signed up to do your own work.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

133
Q

The ideal SpaceX employee is someone like Steve Davis, the director of advanced projects at SpaceX. “He’s been working sixteen hours a day every day for years,” Brogan said. “He gets more done than eleven people working together.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

134
Q

One of my favorite things about Elon is his ability to make enormous decisions very quickly. That is still how it works today.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

135
Q

If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction. He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

136
Q

I don’t want to be the person who ever has to compete with Elon. You might as well leave the business and find something else fun to do. He will outmaneuver you, outthink you, and out-execute you.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

137
Q

Employees have since dubbed the acronym policy the ASS Rule.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

138
Q

The guiding principle at SpaceX is to embrace your work and get stuff done. People who await guidance or detailed instructions languish. The same goes for workers who crave feedback.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

139
Q

“What’s crazy is that Elon actually does it. Every time he’s fired someone and taken their job, he’s delivered on whatever the project was.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

140
Q

“There is a fundamental problem with regulators. If a regulator agrees to change a rule and something bad happens, they could easily lose their career. Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they don’t even get a reward.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

141
Q

“Life with Elon is like being in a very intimate married couple. He can be so gentle and loyal and then really hard on people when it isn’t necessary.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

142
Q

Aeronautics experts will point out that twenty years after the Wright brothers started their experiments, air travel had become routine.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

143
Q

“For the most part, the global commercial market is dominated by Arianespace [Europe], Long March [China] or Russian vehicles,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

144
Q

Musk essentially asks employees to do the impossible on top of the impossible.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

145
Q

Elon is still mad. He gets twice as much as anyone else out of people.” There’s a degree to which it’s just never enough for Musk, no matter what it is.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

146
Q

Tesla had transformed the car into a gadget—a device that actually got better after you bought it.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

147
Q

“It changes everything about transportation. It’s a computer on wheels.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

148
Q

America had not seen a successful car company since Chrysler emerged in 1925. Silicon Valley had done little of note in the automotive industry. Musk had never run a car factory before and was considered arrogant and amateurish by Detroit. Yet, one year after the Model S went on sale, Tesla had posted a profit, hit $562 million in quarterly revenue, raised its sales forecast, and become as valuable as Mazda Motor. Elon Musk had built the automotive equivalent of the iPhone.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

149
Q

Tesla was, in effect, willed into existence by Musk and reflects his personality as much as Intel, Microsoft, and Apple reflect the personalities of their founders.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

150
Q

Ideally, you want heavy parts like the engine as close as possible to the car’s center of gravity, which is why the engines of race cars tend to be near the middle of the vehicle. Traditional cars are a mess on this metric, with the bulky engine up front, passengers in the middle, and gasoline sloshing around the rear.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

151
Q

“The mantra was that one great engineer will replace three medium ones,”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

152
Q

“Elon’s mind was always way beyond the present moment,” he said. “You could see that he was a step or three ahead of everyone else and one hundred percent committed to what we were doing.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

153
Q

Drivers would tap on this screen for every task except for opening the glove box and turning on the emergency lights—jobs required by law to be performed with physical buttons.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

154
Q

“As I talked with them and studied and researched, I realized that even in peacetime, so many of our assets were employed to support the economic pipeline around oil.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

155
Q

You don’t tell Elon you can’t do something. That will get you kicked out of the room. You need everything lined up. After we presented the plan, he said, ‘Okay, thanks.’ Everyone was like, ‘Holy shit, he didn’t fire you.’”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

156
Q

Since Musk never writes anything down, he held all the alterations in his head and would run down the checklist week by week to see what the engineers had fixed.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

157
Q

As he sees it, all of the design and technology choices should be directed toward the goal of making a car as close to perfect as possible. To the extent that rival automakers haven’t, that’s what Musk is judging. It’s almost a binary experience for him. Either you’re trying to make something spectacular with no compromises or you’re not. And if you’re not, Musk considers you a failure. This position can look unreasonable or foolish to outsiders, but the philosophy works for Musk and constantly pushes him and those around him to their limits.

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

158
Q

“I may have been optimistic with respect to the timing on some of these things, but I didn’t over-promise on the outcome,” Musk told me during an interview after the Model S launch. “I have done everything I said I was going to do.”

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Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

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