1 ELON'S WORLD
1马斯克的世界：跨领域创造
在硅谷，马斯克因其化腐朽为神奇的能力被奉为神人，连佩奇这样的CEO说起他时都是一脸虔诚的表情，而那些刚起步的创业者更是想成为“像埃隆一样”的人，就像很多年前仿效乔布斯的热潮。
DO YOU THINK I'M INSANE?”
“你觉得我疯了吗？”
This question came from Elon Musk near the very end of a long dinner we shared at a high-end seafood restaurant in Silicon Valley. I'd gotten to the restaurant first and settled down with a gin and tonic, knowing Musk would—as ever—be late. After about fifteen minutes, Musk showed up wearing leather shoes, designer jeans, and a plaid dress shirt. Musk stands six foot one but ask anyone who knows him and they'll confirm that he seems much bigger than that. He's absurdly broad-shouldered, sturdy, and thick. You'd figure he would use this frame to his advantage and perform an alpha-male strut when entering a room. Instead, he tends to be almost sheepish. It's head tilted slightly down while walking, a quick handshake hello after reaching the table, and then butt in seat. From there, Musk needs a few minutes before he warms up and looks at ease.
在一顿悠长的晚餐快结束时，埃隆·马斯克(ElonMusk)抛出了这个问题。这是硅谷一家高档海鲜餐厅。那天是我先到，我坐下之后来先点了杜松子酒和点心，因为我知道，马斯克将会一如既往地迟到。15分钟后，马斯克出现了，他穿着皮鞋、有型的牛仔裤和格子衬衫。他身高有6英尺1英寸(185.4厘米)，因为肩膀很宽，身体粗壮厚实，认识他的人都说他看起来块头还要更大些。别人会以为他这样的块头会像大哥大一样走进来，但实际上他走进来的时候头微微低着，看起来有点害羞。他一坐下来就和我握手寒暄，在椅子上坐了好几分钟才让自己进入状态并放松下来。
Musk asked me to dinner for a negotiation of sorts. Eighteen months earlier, I'd informed him of my plans to write a book about him, and he'd informed me of his plans not to cooperate. His rejection stung but thrust me into dogged reporter mode. If I had to do this book without him, so be it. Plenty of people had left Musk's companies, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and would talk, and I already knew a lot of his friends. The interviews followed one after another, month after month, and two hundred or so people into the process, I heard from Musk once again. He called me at home and declared that things could go one of two ways: he could make my life very difficult or he could help with the project after all. He'd be willing to cooperate if he could read the book before it went to publication, and could add footnotes throughout it. He would not meddle with my text, but he wanted the chance to set the record straight in spots that he deemed factually inaccurate. I understood where this was coming from. Musk wanted a measure of control over his life's story. He's also wired like a scientist and suffers mental anguish at the sight of a factual error. A mistake on a printed page would gnaw at his soul—forever. While I could understand his perspective, I could not let him read the book, for professional, personal, and practical reasons. Musk has his version of the truth, and it's not always the version of the truth that the rest of the world shares. He's prone to verbose answers to even the simplest of questions as well, and the thought of thirty-page footnotes seemed all too real. Still, we agreed to have dinner, chat all this out, and see where it left us.
马斯克邀请我吃晚餐是要商量些事情。18个月前，我告诉马斯克我正计划写一本关于他的书，但是他通知我说他并不打算配合。他的不合作态度很坚决，也迫使我采用了一个记者坚持不懈的报道模式。如果我必须在没有他配合的情况下写这本书，那就写吧。我知道很多人已经离开了马斯克的公司——特斯拉和SpaceX(太空探索技术公司)，他们愿意接受采访，另外我也认识他不少朋友。于是采访一个接一个，日积月累，大约有200多个人接受了我的采访。直到有一天，我再次收到马斯克的消息。他在家里给我打电话，给了我两个选择：他可以让我的生活陷入困境，也可以参与这个项目。他合作的条件是出版之前必须看过原稿，他会在上面加入注脚。他虽然不会插手内容，但会标出他认为与事实不符的地方。我知道他的想法。马斯克希望能够掌控关于他生活的故事。另外，他像一个科学家般严谨，事实错误会让他抓狂；那些印在纸上的错误会让他惦记一辈子。尽管我非常理解他，但是出于专业、个人和实际的原因，无论如何我都不会让他读到原稿。马斯克对于真相有着他自己的看法，但是这些看法跟世界上其他人的并不一样。他是那种很容易为简单的问题提供烦琐答案的人，他之后真的有可能给我一份长达45页的注脚。尽管如此，我还是同意和他共进晚餐，先开诚布公地探讨一番，再看看结果如何。
Our conversation began with a discussion of public-relations people. Musk burns through PR staffers notoriously fast, and Tesla was in the process of hunting for a new communications chief. “Who is the best PR person in the world?” he asked in a very Muskian fashion. Then we talked about mutual acquaintances, Howard Hughes, and the Tesla factory. When the waiter stopped by to take our order, Musk asked for suggestions that would work with his low-carb diet. He settled on chunks of fried lobster soaked in black squid ink. The negotiation hadn't begun, and Musk was already dishing. He opened up about the major fear keeping him up at night: namely that Google's cofounder and CEO Larry Page might well have been building a fleet of artificial-intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind. “I'm really worried about this,” Musk said. It didn't make Musk feel any better that he and Page were very close friends and that he felt Page was fundamentally a well-intentioned person and not Dr. Evil. In fact, that was sort of the problem. Page's nice-guy nature left him assuming that the machines would forever do our bidding. “I'm not as optimistic,” Musk said. “He could produce something evil by accident.” As the food arrived, Musk consumed it. That is, he didn't eat it as much as he made it disappear rapidly with a few gargantuan bites. Desperate to keep Musk happy and chatting, I handed him a big chunk of steak from my plate. The plan worked . . . for all of ninety seconds. Meat. Hunk. Gone.
我们的谈话从公关人员开始。众所周知，马斯克总是不停更换公关人员，而特斯拉现在正在物色新的公关负责人。“谁是这个世界上最棒的公关？”他问了一个极具马斯克风格的问题。之后我们聊到我们共同的熟人，还谈到霍华德·休斯(HowardHughes，商业大亨、飞行员)和特斯拉工厂。点菜的时候，马斯克让服务生推荐一份低碳水化合物的食物，最后要了一份上面浇了乌贼汁的炒龙虾。我们的谈判还没有开始，马斯克却打开了话匣子，聊起令他恐惧到睡不好觉的事情：谷歌的创始人和CEO(首席执行官)拉里·佩奇(LarryPage)正在建造的人工智能机器人大军有可能摧毁全人类。“我真的非常担心这件事。”马斯克说。尽管他和佩奇是好朋友，也知道佩奇本质上是好人，而不是什么邪恶博士，但这还是不能令他安心。天性纯良的佩奇总是认为机器会永远服务于人类，这正是问题所在。“我不像他那么乐观，”马斯克说，“他可能会不小心制造出邪恶的东西来。”服务生将食物端上来了，马斯克便大口吃起来，很快就吃完了。为了让马斯克保持这种高兴的聊天状态，我夹起一块牛排放到了他的盘子里。这招儿很快就见效了，只用了90秒的时间，整块肉就被他吃得干净。
It took awhile to get Musk off the artificial intelligence doom-and-gloom talk and to the subject at hand. Then, as we drifted toward the book, Musk started to feel me out, probing exactly why it was that I wanted to write about him and calculating my intentions. When the moment presented itself, I moved in and seized the conversation. Some adrenaline released and mixed with the gin, and I launched into what was meant to be a forty-five-minute sermon about all the reasons Musk should let me burrow deep into his life and do so while getting exactly none of the controls he wanted in return. The speech revolved around the inherent limitations of footnotes, Musk coming off like a control freak and my journalistic integrity being compromised. To my great surprise, Musk cut me off after a couple of minutes and simply said, “Okay.” One thing that Musk holds in the highest regard is resolve, and he respects people who continue on after being told no. Dozens of other journalists had asked him to help with a book before, but I'd been the only annoying asshole who continued on after Musk's initial rejection, and he seemed to like that.
马斯克用了好长时间才摆脱人工智能的愁云并转到正题上来。当聊到这本书时，马斯克开始试探我，想了解我为什么想写一本关于他的书，并揣摩我写书的意图。我看到时机到了，便开始步步为营，切入主题。在肾上腺素和杜松子酒的共同作用下，我开始了长达45分钟的长篇大论，告诉马斯克为什么应该让我深入他的生活，并且作为对我的回报，在此期间他不能干涉我。我还说明了加入注脚的固有缺陷、如果这么做会令他看起来像个控制狂，而我作为记者的职业操守也会被质疑。令我感到惊讶的是，几分钟后，马斯克打断了我，简短地说出了一句话：“好的。”马斯克最关切的问题尘埃落定了。他尊敬那些被拒绝之后仍坚持不懈的人。之前有许多记者跟他说过出书的事情，我是其中唯一一个不顾他的初衷坚持己见的人，他似乎喜欢这样的人。
The dinner wound down with pleasant conversation and Musk laying waste to the low-carb diet. A waiter showed up with a giant yellow cotton candy desert sculpture, and Musk dug into it, ripping off handfuls of the sugary fluff. It was settled. Musk granted me access to the executives at his companies, his friends, and his family. He would meet me for dinner once a month for as long as it took. For the first time, Musk would let a reporter see the inner workings of his world. Two and a half hours after we started, Musk put his hands on the table, made a move to get up, and then paused, locked eyes with me, and busted out that incredible question: “Do you think I'm insane?” The oddity of the moment left me speechless for a beat, while my every synapse fired trying to figure out if this was some sort of riddle, and, if so, how it should be answered artfully. It was only after I'd spent lots of time with Musk that I realized the question was more for him than me. Nothing I said would have mattered. Musk was stopping one last time and wondering aloud if I could be trusted and then looking into my eyes to make his judgment. A split second later, we shook hands and Musk drove off in a red Tesla Model S sedan.
之后的时间里我们聊得很愉快，而马斯克也不再局限于他那份低碳水化合物食谱。服务生端上一份分量十足的黄色棉花糖甜点，马斯克立刻狼吞虎咽地吃起来，沾得满手都是糖汁。我们把事情谈妥了，马斯克允许我接近他的公司高管、朋友和家人；每个月他会和我吃一次没有时长限制的晚餐。这是马斯克第一次允许一个记者进入他的核心圈子。晚餐进行了两个半小时后，马斯克终于把手往桌子上一放，准备站起来走人，这时候他突然停下来，眼睛死死盯着我，抛出了这样一个令人不可思议的问题：“你觉得我疯了吗？”我尴尬得不知道说什么，拼命地思考这是不是一个谜语，我该怎么巧妙地回答这个问题。但和他相处久了之后我才意识到，这个问题是他提给自己的，而不是提给我的。我的回答其实并不重要。马斯克其实是渴望知道我是否值得信任，他望着我的眼睛，做出了最后的判断。几秒钟后，我们握手告别，马斯克驾驶着他的红色特斯拉ModelS轿车离开了。
ANY STUDY OF ELON MUSK
了解马斯克
ANY STUDY OF ELON MUSK must begin at the headquarters of SpaceX, in Hawthorne, California—a suburb of Los Angeles located a few miles from Los Angeles International Airport. It's there that visitors will find two giant posters of Mars hanging side by side on the wall leading up to Musk's cubicle. The poster to the left depicts Mars as it is today—a cold, barren red orb. The poster on the right shows a Mars with a humongous green landmass surrounded by oceans. The planet has been heated up and transformed to suit humans. Musk fully intends to try and make this happen. Turning humans into space colonizers is his stated life's purpose. “I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future,” he said. “If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multiplanetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet—to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness—then,” and here he paused for a moment, “I think that would be really good.”
对于马斯克的了解必须从位于加州霍桑(Hawthorne)的SpaceX总部开始。霍桑位于洛杉矶郊区，距洛杉矶国际机场只有几英里远。来到SpaceX总部的访客会看到通往马斯克办公室的走廊墙壁上挂着两幅巨型火星海报。左边海报上的图案是现在的火星地貌——寒冷荒芜的红色星球；右边海报上的火星地貌却是一片生机勃勃的景象，广阔的绿色陆地被海洋环绕着——这个星球上的温度升高了并且变得适合人类居住。移民火星是马斯克坚定不移的人生目标，他全力以赴要把它变为现实。“我始终相信，如果我们能解决再生能源的问题，并一步步把人类打造成跨星球的物种，在另一个星球上建立能够自给自足的文明，防止可能发生的人类灭绝危险，人类就会有一个光明的未来，那么，”他顿了一下说，“这样就太棒了。”
If some of the things that Musk says and does sound absurd, that's because on one level they very much are. On this occasion, for example, Musk's assistant had just handed him some cookies-and-cream ice cream with sprinkles on top, and he then talked earnestly about saving humanity while a blotch of the dessert hung from his lower lip.
如果马斯克所说的一些事情听起来很荒唐，我只能说，那是因为在某个种程度上的确如此。举例来说，马斯克的助手递给他一些上面沾了奶油冰激凌的饼干，当他一边吃饼干一边谈论着如何拯救人类时，嘴角下方还沾着一些饼干屑。
Musk's ready willingness to tackle impossible things has turned him into a deity in Silicon Valley, where fellow CEOs like Page speak of him in reverential awe, and budding entrepreneurs strive “to be like Elon” just as they had been striving in years past to mimic Steve Jobs. Silicon Valley, though, operates within a warped version of reality, and outside the confines of its shared fantasy, Musk often comes off as a much more polarizing figure. He's the guy with the electric cars, solar panels, and rockets peddling false hope. 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. Buy a Tesla. Forget about the mess you've made of the planet for a while.
在硅谷，马斯克因其化腐朽为神奇的能力被奉为神人，连佩奇这样的CEO说起他时都是一脸虔诚的表情，而那些刚起步的创业者更是想成为“像埃隆一样”的人，就像很多年前仿效乔布斯的热潮。虽然硅谷在扭曲的现实中运作，并且游离于其共同幻想之外，但马斯克给人们留下的印象却是一个极具争议的人物，他是用电动汽车、太阳能板和火箭来兜售虚假希望的骗子。忘记乔布斯吧，马斯克是科幻版的P·T·巴纳姆(P.T.Barnum，美国马戏团经纪人兼演出者，最有名的骗局是他编造了一个“黑女奴海斯”的故事，人为地制造社会轰动并借此大捞一笔)。巴纳姆利用人们的恐惧和自我仇恨让自己变得异常富有。买一辆特斯拉，可以让你暂时忘记你给这个星球制造的困扰。
I'd long been a subscriber to this latter camp. Musk had struck me as a well-intentioned dreamer—a card-carrying member of Silicon Valley's techno-utopian club. This group tends to be a mix of Ayn Rand devotees and engineer absolutists who see their hyperlogical worldviews as the Answer for everyone. If we'd just get out of their way, they'd fix all our problems. One day, soon enough, we'll be able to download our brains to a computer, relax, and let their algorithms take care of everything. Much of their ambition proves inspiring and their works helpful. But the techno-utopians do get tiresome with their platitudes and their ability to prattle on for hours without saying much of substance. More disconcerting is their underlying message that humans are flawed and our humanity is an annoying burden that needs to be dealt with in due course. When I'd caught Musk at Silicon Valley events, his highfalutin talk often sounded straight out of the techno-utopian playbook. And, most annoyingly, his world-saving companies didn't even seem to be doing all that well.
长期以来，我一直是后一种阵营的支持者。马斯克总是给我留下一种用心良苦的梦想家的印象——典型的硅谷“技术乌托邦俱乐部”成员。这种人就像艾茵·兰德(AynRand，哲理小说家)和工程师绝对论者的结合体——他们把自己对世界的理性看法当作普世真相。我们只要站在一边看着，让他们放手去做，他们就可以解决所有人类难题。不久的将来，我们可以把大脑中的记忆下载到电脑里，让算法解决一切问题，我们只需要享受生活。事实证明，他们的工作是令人振奋和卓有成效的，但有时候这些技术乌托邦的老生常谈也会让人厌烦，他们可以就没有任何实质性的内容吹嘘几个小时。更令人担心的是，他们的言外之意是，人类是有缺陷的物种，对于世界来说，是最终需要解决的负担。我在硅谷某活动上第一次跟马斯克交谈时，他冠冕堂皇的说辞听起来就像是技术版的乌托邦剧本；更令人讨厌的是，他所谓的改变世界的公司当时做得并不怎么样。
Yet, in the early part of 2012, the cynics like me had to take notice of what Musk was actually accomplishing. His once-beleaguered companies were succeeding at unprecedented things. SpaceX flew a supply capsule to the International Space Station and brought it safely back to Earth. Tesla Motors delivered the Model S, a beautiful, all-electric sedan that took the automotive industry's breath away and slapped Detroit sober. These two feats elevated Musk to the rarest heights among business titans. Only Steve Jobs could claim similar achievements in two such different industries, sometimes putting out a new Apple product and a blockbuster Pixar movie in the same year. And yet, Musk was not done. He was also the chairman and largest shareholder of SolarCity, a booming solar energy company poised to file for an initial public offering. Musk had somehow delivered the biggest advances the space, automotive, and energy industries had seen in decades in what felt like one fell swoop.
然而，2012年年初，像我这样的愤世嫉俗者突然发现马斯克真的做出了一番成就。他经营的几家曾经陷入困境的公司纷纷取得了史无前例的胜利。SpaceX为国际空间站成功运送了一个补给舱并安全返回地球；而特斯拉则发布了新车型ModelS——一款漂亮的、纯电动轿车，让整个汽车业大为震惊，并扇了底特律(美国汽车工业的中心)一记响亮的耳光。这两大成就让马斯克跻身商业巨子之列。此前只有乔布斯曾在两个全然不同的领域同时取得如此成就，比如一款新型苹果产品和一部皮克斯电影同时上市。然而，马斯克还不止于此，他还是快速成长中的太阳能供应商太阳城公司(SolarCity)的董事长和最大股东，这家公司刚刚进行了首次公开募股(IPO)。马斯克使空间探索、汽车和清洁能源领域取得了近几十年来的最大进展，而这一切都像是在一瞬间完成的。
It was in 2012 that I decided to see what Musk was like firsthand and to write a cover story about him for Bloomberg Businessweek. At this point in Musk's life, everything ran through his assistant/loyal appendage Mary Beth Brown. She invited me to visit what I've come to refer to as Musk Land.
2012年，我决定亲自去拜访马斯克，看他究竟是怎样一个人，并且为《彭博商业周刊》写一篇关于他的封面报道。那时候，马斯克的生活起居都由他的忠实助手玛丽·贝思·布朗(MaryBethBrown)照料。她邀请我去参观被称作“马斯克之地”(MuskLand)的地方。
Anyone arriving at Musk Land for the first time will have the same head-scratching experience. You're told to park at One Rocket Road in Hawthorne, where SpaceX has its HQ. It seems impossible that anything good could call Hawthorne home. It's a bleak part of Los Angeles County in which groupings of rundown houses, run-down shops, and run-down eateries surround huge, industrial complexes that appear to have been built during some kind of architectural Boring Rectangle movement. Did Elon Musk really stick his company in the middle of this dreck? Then, okay, things start to make more sense when you see one 550,000-square-foot rectangle painted an ostentatious hue of “Unity of Body, Soul, and Mind” white. This is the main SpaceX building.
相信所有抵达“马斯克之地”的人都有过抓狂的体验。他们告诉你把车停到位于霍桑市火箭大道1号(OneRocketRoad)的SpaceX总部所在地。霍桑并不是个宜居的城市，它位处洛杉矶荒凉的郊区。一排排破败的房子、商店和餐馆被一片片大型工业园区所包围，这些园区看起来像是一场乏味的矩形建筑风潮时期留下的。难道马斯克真的把他的公司设在了一片废墟中间吗？好吧，当你看到SpaceX的主建筑时，你才会觉得说得过去了。这是一座占地55万平方英尺的矩形建筑，外面被刷上了华美的象征“身体、灵魂和思想统一”的白色。
It was only after going through the front doors of SpaceX that the grandeur of what this man had done became apparent. Musk had built an honest-to-God rocket factory in the middle of Los Angeles. And this factory was not making one rocket at a time. No. It was making many rockets—from scratch. The factory was a giant, shared work area. Near the back were massive delivery bays that allowed for the arrival of hunks of metal, which were transported to two-story-high welding machines. Over to one side were technicians in white coats making motherboards, radios, and other electronics. Other people were in a special, airtight glass chamber, building the capsules that rockets would take to the Space Station. Tattooed men in bandanas were blasting Van Halen and threading wires around rocket engines. There were completed bodies of rockets lined up one after the other ready to be placed on trucks. Still more rockets, in another part of the building, awaited coats of white paint. It was difficult to take in the entire factory at once. There were hundreds of bodies in constant motion whirring around a variety of bizarre machines.
只有当你走过SpaceX总部的正门时，你才会意识到这个男人所做事情有多么伟大。马斯克在洛杉矶的中心地带(这里指的是洛杉矶郡，洛杉矶市和霍桑市都属于洛杉矶郡)建造了一座向上帝致敬的火箭工厂。这座工厂不是一次只建造一枚火箭，而是同时建造多枚火箭——每一枚都是从无到有。这座工厂是一个巨大的一体化空间，其后方是一片巨大的装卸场，用来接收运来的大块金属材料。这些金属材料之后会被送到一座两层楼高的焊接设备那里待加工。工厂里随处可见穿着白色外套的技术人员，他们正在生产主板、无线电和其他电子器件；在一个特殊的密闭式玻璃空间里，另一群人正在建造将被送往国际空间站的太空舱；带着头巾、露出文身的男人们一边听着范·海伦乐队(VanHalen)的摇滚乐，一边给火箭引擎安装电线。组装完毕的火箭部件被摆成一排，等待卡车装运。在工厂的另一边还有很多火箭，正等待着工人为它们喷上白漆。一次把整个工厂逛完是很难的，一眼望去，几百个工人正围绕着各种奇形怪状的机器重复着相同的动作。
This is just building number one of Musk Land. SpaceX had acquired several buildings that used to be part of a Boeing factory, which made the fuselages for 747s. One of these buildings has a curved roof and looks like an airplane hangar. It serves as the research, development, and design studio for Tesla. This is where the company came up with the look for the Model S sedan and its follow-on, the Model X SUV. In the parking lot outside the studio, Tesla has built one of its recharging stations where Los Angeles drivers can top up with electricity for free. The charging center is easy enough to spot because Musk has installed a white and red obelisk branded with the Tesla logo that sits in the middle of an infinity pool.
这里只是“马斯克之地”的第一栋楼，SpaceX已经收购了波音(Boeing)公司的部分大楼，之前这里主要用于生产波音747客机的机身。其中一栋楼的屋顶呈弧形，看起来像一个飞机库，它是特斯拉的研发和设计中心。特斯拉ModelS型轿车及后来的ModelX型豪华电动SUV的外观设计均出自这里。特斯拉在设计中心的停车场建了一座充电站，供车主在此免费充电。这座充电站非常显眼，因为马斯克设置了一块红白相间印有特斯拉标志的方尖碑，而这个方尖碑建在一处宽阔的水池中央。
It was in my first interview with Musk, which took place at the design studio, that I began to get a sense of how he talked and operated. He's a confident guy, but does not always do a good job of displaying this. On initial encounter, Musk can come off as shy and borderline awkward. His South African accent remains present but fading, and the charm of it is not enough to offset the halting nature of Musk's speech pattern. Like many an engineer or physicist, Musk will pause while fishing around for exact phrasing, and he'll often go rumbling down an esoteric, scientific rabbit hole without providing any helping hands or simplified explanations along the way. Musk expects you to keep up. None of this is off-putting. Musk, in fact, will toss out plenty of jokes and can be downright charming. It's just that there's a sense of purpose and pressure hanging over any conversation with the man. Musk doesn't really shoot the shit. (It would end up taking about thirty hours of interviews for Musk to really loosen up and let me into a different, deeper level of his psyche and personality.)
在设计中心，我对马斯克进行了第一次采访，这次采访使我渐渐领悟到了他的谈话和做事风格。他是一个自信的人，但并不总能展现出来。在刚刚开始打交道时，马斯克总是表现得有些害羞，略显不自然。虽然他的南非口音已经没那么浓重了，但仍然听得出来，这并不足以淡化马斯克死气沉沉的谈话风格。同很多工程师或物理学家一样，马斯克总是会停顿一下，以便寻找准确的措辞；有时候他会突然聊到某个深奥的科学领域，但他却不会帮你简要地解释一下。马斯克总是指望你能够理解他所说的内容。这些都不会让人不舒服。事实上，马斯克常常会讲出许多笑话，让人觉得他非常有魅力。但是我能感觉到他所有的说辞都具有很强的目的性，并能让与之交谈的一方感受到压力。马斯克从来不会跟你废话。(我足足花了30个小时的采访时间才让马斯克彻底放松下来，让我了解他与众不同、更深层次的精神和人格世界。)
Most high-profile CEOs have handlers all around them. Musk mostly moves about Musk Land on his own. This is not the guy who slinks into the restaurant. It's the guy who owns the joint and strides about with authority. Musk and I talked, as he made his way around the design studio's main floor, inspecting prototype parts and vehicles. At each station, employees rushed up to Musk and disgorged information. He listened intently, processed it, and nodded when satisfied. The people moved away and Musk moved to the next information dump.
大多数著名的CEO总是被各种助手簇拥着。但马斯克大部分时间都在“马斯克之地”亲力亲为。他很高调，会摆着权威的架子四处巡查。马斯克和我一边聊天一边走到设计工作室，开始检查零件和汽车样品。无论走到哪里，员工都会冲到马斯克面前汇报大量信息。他会专注地倾听和思考，并在满意的时候点点头，然后聆听下一位员工的汇报。
At one point, Tesla's design chief, Franz von Holzhausen, wanted Musk's take on some new tires and rims that had come in for the Model S and on the seating arrangements for the Model X. They spoke, and then they went into a back room where executives from a seller of high-end graphics software had prepared a presentation for Musk. They wanted to show off new 3-D rendering technology that would allow Tesla to tweak the finish of a virtual Model S and see in great detail how things like shadows and streetlights played off the car's body. Tesla's engineers really wanted the computing systems and needed Musk's sign-off. The men did their best to sell Musk on the idea while the sound of drills and giant industrial fans drowned out their shtick. Musk, wearing leather shoes, designer jeans, and a black T-shirt, which is essentially his work uniform, had to don 3-D goggles for the demonstration and seemed unmoved. He told them he'd think about it and then walked toward the source of the loudest noise—a workshop deep in the design studio where Tesla engineers were building the scaffolding for the thirty-foot decorative towers that go outside the charging stations. “That thing looks like it could survive a Category Five hurricane,” Musk said. “Let's thin it up a bit.” Musk and I eventually hop into his car—a black Model S—and zip back to the main SpaceX building. “I think there are probably too many smart people pursuing Internet stuff, finance, and law,” Musk said on the way. “That is part of the reason why we haven't seen as much innovation.”
有一次，特斯拉的设计总监弗朗茨·冯·霍兹豪森(Franzvon Holzhausen)希望了解马斯克对于ModelS型轿车的新轮胎和轮辋，以及ModelX型SUV(运动型多用途汽车)座位安排的看法。一番交谈之后，他们一起走到后面的屋子里，一家高端制图计算机销售公司的高管们正在那里等着马斯克。这些高管为马斯克准备了一个产品演示。他们展示了引以为豪的3D(三维)渲染技术，这项技术可以让特斯拉通过调整虚拟的ModelS模型来查看很多细节——比如阴影和路灯打在车身上的效果。特斯拉的工程师非常想要这套系统，但需要经过马斯克的批准。伴随着钻床和工业风扇的巨大噪声，那几位高管尽其所能地游说马斯克。当时的马斯克穿着他的工作标配——皮鞋、设计师牛仔裤和黑色T恤，还戴着观看演示时用的3D眼镜。但他似乎不为所动。他告诉对方他会考虑一下，然后快步走向最大的噪声源——设计工作室最里面的一个车间。特斯拉的工程师正在那里建造放在充电站外面的基架，这些用于装饰塔的基架高达30英尺。“那东西看上去连5级飓风都奈何不了，”马斯克说。“把它弄得薄一点吧。”马斯克最终和我坐进他的车里——一辆黑色的ModelS，沿着蜿蜒的公路开回了SpaceX的总部大楼。我认为现在有非常多的聪明人都在致力于互联网、金融和法律，”马斯克在路上说，“这是我们没能看到更多创新的部分原因。”
MUSK LAND WAS A REVELATION.
马斯克之地启示录
I'd come to Silicon Valley in 2000 and ended up living in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. It's the one part of the city that locals will implore you to avoid. Without trying very hard, you can find someone pulling down his pants and pooping in between parked cars or encounter some deranged sort bashing his head into the side of a bus stop. At dive bars near the local strip clubs, transvestites hit on curious businessmen and drunks fall asleep on couches and soil themselves as part of their lazy Sunday ritual. It's the gritty, knife-stabby part of San Francisco and turned out to be a great place to watch the dotcom dream die.
我在2000年来到硅谷，最后定居在了旧金山的犯罪率高发区。当地人会警告你要尽量避开这一区域。你随处可见有人在两辆停泊的汽车中间随地大小便，或者神经错乱的人把自己的脑袋使劲儿往车站站牌上撞。在当地脱衣舞俱乐部附近的酒吧里，奇装异服者挑逗着好奇的西装革履的商务人士；身上沾满污物的醉鬼们醉倒在沙发上，这是慵懒周末的常见景象。旧金山展现出这里艰辛和残酷的一面，使它成为观看互联网梦想之火熄灭的最佳场所。
San Francisco has an enduring history with greed. It became a city on the back of the gold rush, and not even a catastrophic earthquake could slow San Francisco's economic lust for long. Don't let the granola vibes fool you. Booms and busts are the rhythm of this place. And, in 2000, San Francisco had been overtaken by the boom of all booms and consumed by avarice. It was a wonderful time to be alive with just about the entire populace giving in to a fantasy—a get-rich-quick, Internet madness. The pulses of energy from this shared delusion were palpable, producing a constant buzz that vibrated across the city. And here I was in the center of the most depraved part of San Francisco, watching just how high and low people get when consumed by excess.
旧金山长久以来与贪婪息息相关。它是在淘金热背后应运而生的一座城市，甚至连灾难性的地震都没有长期抑制住旧金山的经济发展欲望。不要让这里的嬉皮士气息欺骗了你，繁荣和萧条的交替才是这里的节奏。2000年，旧金山的经济空前繁荣，同时也被贪婪所吞没。这是一段普罗大众都生活于幻想之中的美好时光——疯狂的互联网让人迅速致富。这座海市蜃楼释放的脉冲能量是显而易见的，它产生出持续不断的嗡嗡声，带动整个城市振动。此时此刻，我就在旧金山最堕落的中心地带，观察那些深陷其中的人们起起伏伏的人生。
Stories tracking the insanity of business in these times are well-known. You no longer had to make something that other people wanted to buy in order to start a booming company. You just had to have an idea for some sort of Internet thing and announce it to the world in order for eager investors to fund your thought experiment. The whole goal was to make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time because everyone knew on at least a subconscious level that reality had to set in eventually.
那时候疯狂的商业故事比比皆是。不需要做出像样的、别人想买的产品，就可以成立一家蓬勃发展的公司。你只需要找到一个跟互联网相关的点子，昭告天下，然后就会有迫不及待的投资人为你的试验掏钱。唯一的目标就是在最短的时间内赚到尽可能多的钱，或许至少在潜意识里，每个人都相信现实最终都会破灭。
Valley denizens took very literally the cliché of working as hard as you play. People in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties were expected to pull all-nighters. Cubicles were turned into temporary homes, and personal hygiene was abandoned. Oddly enough, making Nothing appear to be Something took a lot of work. But when the time to decompress arrived, there were plenty of options for total debauchery. The hot companies and media powers of the time seemed locked in a struggle to outdo each other with ever-fancier parties. Old-line companies trying to look “with it” would regularly buy space at a concert venue and then order up some dancers, acrobats, open bars, and the Barenaked Ladies. Young technologists would show up to pound their free Jack and Cokes and snort their cocaine in porta-potties. Greed and self-interest were the only things that made any sense back then.
硅谷的人们非常相信诸如“努力工作”、“努力玩耍”这样的陈词滥调。人们在20、30、40、50这几个年龄段都在通宵达旦地工作。办公室隔间变成了临时的家，在这里连个人卫生都不讲究了。奇怪的是，没有实际产出，却需要做大量的工作；但是当放松的时间到了，就有许多方法来放纵。当时的热门公司和媒体都在互相攀比谁的派对更时髦，并陷入了恶性循环。不想掉队的传统公司也经常租用演唱会的场地举行派对，请来一些舞者、杂技演员和穿着暴露的女郎，并源源不断地提供酒水。年轻的工程师喝着兑着可乐的免费威士忌，或躲在厕所里吸食可卡因。贪婪和自私是当时唯一合理的选择。
While the good times have been well chronicled, the subsequent bad times have been—unsurprisingly—ignored. It's more fun to reminiscence on irrational exuberance than the mess that gets left behind.
好日子总是被铭记，而接下来的坏日子却被遗忘了，这一点都不奇怪。缅怀非理性的繁荣比追想遗留下的烂摊子有趣得多。
Let it be said for the record, then, that the implosion of the get-rich-quick Internet fantasy left San Francisco and Silicon Valley in a deep depression. The endless parties ended. The prostitutes no longer roamed the streets of the Tenderloin at 6 A.M. offering pre-commute love. (“Come on, honey. It's better than coffee!”) Instead of the Barenaked Ladies, you got the occasional Neil Diamond tribute band at a trade show, some free T-shirts, and a lump of shame.
这场载入史册的互联网致富幻想破灭，让旧金山和硅谷陷入深深的低迷。无穷无尽的派对结束了。妓女不再早上6点就在田德隆区的街道上游荡，提供上班前的性服务。(“快来吧，宝贝，它比咖啡更提神”。)衣着暴露的女郎消失了，取而代之的是展销会，偶尔有翻唱尼尔·戴蒙德(NeilDiamond)的乐队，人们从这里可以得到免费T恤，并会略感羞愧。
The technology industry had no idea what to do with itself. The dumb venture capitalists who had been taken during the bubble didn't want to look any dumber, so they stopped funding new ventures altogether. Entrepreneurs' big ideas were replaced by the smallest of notions. It was as if Silicon Valley had entered rehab en masse. It sounds melodramatic, but it's true. A populace of millions of clever people came to believe that they were inventing the future. Then . . . poof! Playing it safe suddenly became the fashionable thing to do.
科技行业一时间变得手足无措。在互联网泡沫破灭后，那些愚蠢的风险投资家为了不让自己看起来更愚蠢，已经停止向新项目注资。创业者们的伟大理想被那些狭隘的观念所取代，好像硅谷进入了休眠期。这听起来极不可思议，但却是真实发生的。上百万的天才一度相信他们是在创造未来，但突然间，谨慎行事变成了最普遍的做法。
The evidence of this malaise is in the companies and ideas formed during this period. Google had appeared and really started to thrive around 2002, but it was an outlier. Between Google and Apple's introduction of the iPhone in 2007, there's a wasteland of ho-hum companies. And the hot new things that were just starting out—Facebook and Twitter—certainly did not look like their predecessors—Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Sun Microsystems—that made physical products and employed tens of thousands of people in the process. In the years that followed, the goal went from taking huge risks to create new industries and grand new ideas, to chasing easier money by entertaining consumers and pumping out simple apps and advertisements. “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” Jeff Hammerbacher, an early Facebook engineer, told me. “That sucks.” Silicon Valley began to look an awful lot like Hollywood. Meanwhile, the consumers it served had turned inward, obsessed with their virtual lives.
这段时期，这种莫名不安的现象在公司内部显现，并逐渐深入人心。谷歌当时已经出现，并在2002年左右迅速崛起，但它是一个特例。从谷歌崛起到2007年苹果公司推出iPhone(苹果手机)的那段时期，硅谷像是一片企业荒地，乏善可陈。刚刚出现的热门公司——Facebook(脸书)和Twitter(推特)，并不像他们的前辈——惠普、英特尔、太阳微电子公司那样，制造实体产品，能够在生产过程中雇用上万人。在接下来的几年，人们的目标已经从冒险创造全新的行业和伟大想法，变成通过取悦消费者，以及批量生产简单应用和广告来赚快钱。“我们这代人中最聪明的大脑都在思考如何让人们点击广告，”Facebook早期工程师杰夫·汉默巴彻(Jeff Hammerbacher)对我说，“这太糟糕了。”硅谷越来越像好莱坞。与此同时，那些消费者已逐渐转向内心世界，醉心于自己的虚拟人生。
One of the first people to suggest that this lull in innovation could signal a much larger problem was Jonathan Huebner, a physicist who works at the Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. Huebner is the Leave It to Beaver version of a merchant of death. Middle-aged, thin, and balding, he likes to wear a dirt-inspired ensemble of khaki pants, a brown-striped shirt, and a canvas khaki jacket. He has designed weapons systems since 1985, gaining direct insight into the latest and greatest technology around materials, energy, and software. Following the dot-com bust, he became miffed at the ho-hum nature of the supposed innovations crossing his desk. In 2005, Huebner delivered a paper, “A Possible Declining Trend in Worldwide Innovation,” which was either an indictment of Silicon Valley or at least an ominous warning.
乔纳森·许布纳(Jonathan Huebner)是位于加州中国湖(China Lake)美国国防部海空作战中心(Naval Air Warfare Center)的一名物理学家，他是最早指出缺乏创新将预示着更严重危机的人之一。许布纳就像电影《天才小麻烦》(Leave It To Beaver)里的那个中年军火商，清瘦，秃顶，喜欢穿沾满污垢的卡其布裤子、棕色的条纹衫和卡其色帆布外套。自1985年以来，专门设计武器系统的经历让他获得了直接洞察最新和最酷科技的机会，这些技术涉及材料、能源和软件等领域。互联网泡沫破灭后，他开始对办公桌上乏味的创新感到不满。2005年，许布纳发表了一篇题为“全球创新可能呈现下降趋势”(A Possible DecliningTrendin Worldwide Innovation)的论文，它像是对硅谷的控诉，抑或是一种不祥的警告。
Huebner opted to use a tree metaphor to describe what he saw as the state of innovation. Man has already climbed past the trunk of the tree and gone out on its major limbs, mining most of the really big, game-changing ideas—the wheel, electricity, the airplane, the telephone, the transistor. Now we're left dangling near the end of the branches at the top of the tree and mostly just refining past inventions. To back up his point in the paper, Huebner showed that the frequency of life-changing inventions had started to slow. He also used data to prove that the number of patents filed per person had declined over time. “I think the probability of us discovering another top-one-hundred-type invention gets smaller and smaller,” Huebner told me in an interview. “Innovation is a finite resource.”
许布纳用一棵树来比喻他所看到的创新状态。人类已经爬过了树干和主要的枝干，将那些改变游戏规则的想法挖掘一空——轮子、电力、飞机、电话、晶体管。现在我们只能在顶端的树枝周围晃来晃去，大多只是对过去的发明加以改进。为了支持他论文中的观点，许布纳指出，改变人类生活的创新频率已经放缓。他还用数据证明人均提交的专利数正在下降。“我认为我们发现另一百项伟大发明的可能性会越来越小，”许布纳在一次采访中告诉我，“创新是一种有限的资源。”
Huebner predicted that it would take people about five years to catch on to his thinking, and this forecast proved almost exactly right. Around 2010, Peter Thiel, the PayPal cofounder and early Facebook investor, began promoting the idea that the technology industry had let people down. “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters” became the tagline of his venture capital firm Founders Fund. In an essay called “What Happened to the Future,” Thiel and his cohorts described how Twitter, its 140-character messages, and similar inventions have let the public down. He argued that science fiction, which once celebrated the future, has turned dystopian because people no longer have an optimistic view of technology's ability to change the world.
许布纳预计人们需要5年时间才能领会他的思想，事实证明，他的推测几乎是完全正确的。2010年前后，彼得·蒂尔——PayPal(贝宝)的联合创始人、Facebook早期投资者——提出他关于技术让人们失望的主张。“我们想要会飞的汽车，而不是140个字符。”这句话成为他的风险投资公司创始人基金(Founders Fund)的宣传口号。在一篇名为“未来发生了什么”的文章中，蒂尔和他的同伴描述了Twitter——这种140个字符的产品，以及类似的发明是如何让公众失望的。他认为，那些曾经为未来高唱赞歌的科幻小说，已经变得反乌托邦，因为人们不再乐观地相信技术可以改变世界。
I'd subscribed to a lot of this type of thinking until that first visit to Musk Land. While Musk had been anything but shy about what he was up to, few people outside of his companies got to see the factories, the R&D centers, the machine shops, and to witness the scope of what he was doing firsthand. Here was a guy who had taken much of the Silicon Valley ethic behind moving quickly and running organizations free of bureaucratic hierarchies and applied it to improving big, fantastic machines and chasing things that had the potential to be the real breakthroughs we'd been missing.
我曾对这种观念深信不疑，直到第一次来到“马斯克之地”才有所改观。尽管马斯克从不隐瞒自己在做的事情，但只有少数外人能参观工厂、研发中心和机器车间，并从他所做事情的第一手资料中见证他的事业版图。他正是那个坚守硅谷精神的人——如快速行动、在组织内部废除官僚等级制度，并且持续改进那些梦幻般的机器，追逐我们错失的那些真正具有突破性的成就。
By rights, Musk should have been part of the malaise. He jumped right into dot-com mania in 1995, when, fresh out of college, he founded a company called Zip2—a primitive Google Maps meets Yelp. That first venture ended up a big, quick hit. Compaq bought Zip2 in 1999 for $307 million. Musk made $22 million from the deal and poured almost all of it into his next venture, a start-up that would morph into PayPal. As the largest shareholder in PayPal, Musk became fantastically well-to-do when eBay acquired the company for $1.5 billion in 2002.
按理说，马斯克应该受到互联网泡沫破灭的影响。他在1995年投身于互联网热潮，大学刚毕业就创办了一家名为Zip2的公司——相当于原始版的谷歌地图和点评网站Yelp的结合体。第一次创业就大获成功。康柏在1999年以3.07亿美元的价格收购了Zip2，马斯克从这笔交易中赚取了2200万美元，之后便把这些钱几乎全部投入他的下一家初创企业——这家初创公司逐渐演变成今天的PayPal。2002年，eBay(易贝)以15亿美元收购PayPal，作为PayPal最大的股东，马斯克变得非常富有。
Instead of hanging around Silicon Valley and falling into the same funk as his peers, however, Musk decamped to Los Angeles. The conventional wisdom of the time said to take a deep breath and wait for the next big thing to arrive in due course. Musk rejected that logic by throwing $100 million into SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla, and $10 million into SolarCity. Short of building an actual money-crushing machine, Musk could not have picked a faster way to destroy his fortune. He became a one-man, ultra-risk-taking venture capital shop and doubled down on making super-complex physical goods in two of the most expensive places in the world, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. Whenever possible, Musk's companies would make things from scratch and try to rethink much that the aerospace, automotive, and solar industries had accepted as convention.
不同于那些陷入不安的同行，马斯克没有继续待在硅谷，而是搬到了洛杉矶。当时人们普遍认为，明智的选择是——深呼吸，耐心等待下一个重大机遇到来时伺机而动。马斯克抛弃了这一逻辑，而是向SpaceX投资1亿美元，向特斯拉投资7000万美元，并向太阳城投资3000万美元。除非制造出金钱粉碎机，马斯克再也找不到一个更快的方法来毁灭自己财富。他变成了一个独行侠、高风险投资家，在世界上成本最昂贵的两个地方——洛杉矶和硅谷，打造极度复杂的实体产品。马斯克的这些公司尽可能从零开始，尝试重新思考航空航天、汽车和太阳能产业那些约定俗成的做法。
With SpaceX, Musk is battling the giants of the U.S. military-industrial complex, including Lockheed Martin and Boeing. He's also battling nations—most notably Russia and China.
马斯克的SpaceX不光要对抗像洛克希德·马丁公司(LockheedMartin)和波音公司这样的美国军工业巨头，还要与诸如俄罗斯和中国这样的国家竞争。
SpaceX has made a name for itself as the low-cost supplier in the industry. But that, in and of itself, is not really good enough to win. The space business requires dealing with a mess of politics, back-scratching, and protectionism that undermines the fundamentals of capitalism. Steve Jobs faced similar forces when he went up against the recording industry to bring the iPod and iTunes to market. The crotchety Luddites in the music industry were a pleasure to deal with compared to Musk's foes who build weapons and countries for a living. SpaceX has been testing reusable rockets that can carry payloads to space and land back on Earth, on their launchpads, with precision. If the company can perfect this technology, it will deal a devastating blow to all of its competitors and almost assuredly push some mainstays of the rocket industry out of business while establishing the United States as the world leader for taking cargo and humans to space. It's a threat that Musk figures has earned him plenty of fierce enemies. “The list of people that would not mind if I was gone is growing,” Musk said. “My family fears that the Russians will assassinate me.”
SpaceX在行业内以成本低廉而闻名。但仅仅靠这一点还无法取得胜利。航天领域的生意还需要打理其他方面的事情，比如说政治、利益交换和有违资本主义基本原则的保护主义。乔布斯推出iPod(多功能数字媒体播放器)和iTune(音乐播放器)挑战传统唱片行业时，也遭遇过类似的阻力，但和马斯克那些以制造武器为生的敌人比起来，与音乐行业那些惧怕科技的老腐朽们打交道简直称得上是有趣。SpaceX正在实验可重复利用的火箭——可以携带货物飞上太空，然后再重新回到地面，准确降落在发射台上。如果SpaceX可以完善这项技术，将会给所有竞争对手带来毁灭性的打击，必将令火箭行业的某些巨头破产，并确立美国在太空载人载物领域的世界领袖地位。这令马斯克树敌众多。“想让我消失的人在不断增多，”马斯克说，“我的家人都担心我会被俄国人暗杀。”
With Tesla Motors, Musk has tried to revamp the way cars are manufactured and sold, while building out a worldwide fuel distribution network at the same time. Instead of hybrids, which in Musk lingo are suboptimal compromises, Tesla strives to make all-electric cars that people lust after and that push the limits of technology. Tesla does not sell these cars through dealers; it sells them on the Web and in Apple-like galleries located in high-end shopping centers. Tesla also does not anticipate making lots of money from servicing its vehicles, since electric cars do not require the oil changes and other maintenance procedures of traditional cars. The direct sales model embraced by Tesla stands as a major affront to car dealers used to haggling with their customers and making their profits from exorbitant maintenance fees. Tesla's recharging stations now run alongside many of the major highways in the United States, Europe, and Asia and can add hundreds of miles of oomph back to a car in about twenty minutes. These so-called supercharging stations are solar-powered, and Tesla owners pay nothing to refuel. 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. Musk's vision, and, of late, execution seem to combine the best of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller.
特斯拉在打造世界级燃料分销网络的同时，还试图重塑汽车的生产和销售方式。特斯拉竭力制造人们渴望的纯电动汽车，而不是“混合动力车”——马斯克称之为“不理想的妥协方案”。这将触及技术所能达到的巅峰。特斯拉不通过经销商销售，而是通过互联网和高端购物中心里像苹果专卖店一样的展示厅来销售汽车。特斯拉也没有指望靠卖车来赚大钱，因为电动车不像传统汽车那样需要更换机油以及其他汽车维修操作。特斯拉所采用的直接销售模式，相当于公然与传统的汽车经销商为敌——他们可以和客户商议价格，然后通过收取高昂的维修费来盈利。美国、欧洲和亚洲的很多主要高速公路上都设置了特斯拉的充电站，可以在短短20分钟之内，为汽车补充行驶数百英里的续航能力。这种所谓的“超级充电站”使用太阳能，而且特斯拉车主可以免费充电。尽管美国的大部分基础建设投资都在衰退，但马斯克正在建造的这个点对点的未来交通系统将使美国超越其他国家。马斯克与时俱进的视野和执行力结合了亨利·福特和约翰·洛克菲勒最好的特质。
With SolarCity, Musk has funded the largest installer and financer of solar panels for consumers and businesses. Musk helped come up with the idea for SolarCity and serves as its chairman, while his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive run the company. SolarCity has managed to undercut dozens of utilities and become a large utility in its own right. During a time in which clean-tech businesses have gone bankrupt with alarming regularity, Musk has built two of the most successful clean-tech companies in the world. The Musk Co. empire of factories, tens of thousands of workers, and industrial might has incumbents on the run and has turned Musk into one of the richest men in the world, with a net worth around $10 billion.
太阳城现在已经成为最大的面向消费者和企业用户的商用太阳能电池板安装商和出资人。马斯克不仅是太阳城的主要投资人，还参与了创建太阳城的设想，并出任公司董事长，而他的表兄弟林登·赖夫(Lyndon Rive)和彼得·赖夫(Peter Rive)负责经营公司。太阳城采用价格战打败了几十家电力公司，凭借自身力量把自己打造成了一家大型公用事业公司。在清洁能源公司频繁破产、监管情况令人担忧的时期，马斯克打造出世界上最成功的两家清洁能源技术公司。他的工厂帝国拥有好几座大型工厂、数以万计的工人，以及强大的产量影响力。马斯克身家超过100亿美元，成为世界超级富豪之一。
The visit to Musk Land started to make a few things clear about how Musk had pulled all this off. While the “putting man on Mars” talk can strike some people as loopy, it gave Musk a unique rallying cry for his companies. It's the sweeping goal that forms a unifying principle over everything he does. Employees at all three companies are well aware of this and well aware that they're trying to achieve the impossible day in and day out. When Musk sets unrealistic goals, verbally abuses employees, and works them to the bone, it's understood to be—on some level—part of the Mars agenda. Some employees love him for this. Others loathe him but remain oddly loyal out of respect for his drive and mission. What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview. He's the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. He's less a CEO chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to . . . well . . . save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation.
对马斯克之地的造访，开始让我明白马斯克为什么能取得上述成就。尽管“把人类送上火星”的言论给人愚不可及的感觉，但却赋予马斯克的工业帝国一句独特的战斗口号。这三家公司的员工都深知这一点，并清楚地知道，他们日复一日地努力，就是为了实现这个看似不可能的目标。所以马斯克提出不切实际的目标，拼命压榨员工，并对他们恶语相向，就很好理解了——某种程度上来说，这是火星使命的一部分。有些员工喜欢他这一点。其他人即使讨厌他，也因敬佩和认同他的动机和使命而对他忠心耿耿。马斯克所具备的世界观，同时也是硅谷很多创业者所缺乏的。他是拥有远大抱负的天才。与其说他是追求财富的CEO，不如说他是指挥军队取得胜利的将军。当扎克伯格希望帮助你分享宝宝照片的时候，马斯克则是希望将人类从自我毁灭和意外灾难中拯救出来。
The life that Musk has created to manage all of these endeavors is preposterous. A typical week starts at his mansion in Bel Air. On Monday, he works the entire day at SpaceX. On Tuesday, he begins at SpaceX, then hops onto his jet and flies to Silicon Valley. He spends a couple of days working at Tesla, which has its offices in Palo Alto and factory in Fremont. Musk does not own a home in Northern California and ends up staying at the luxe Rosewood hotel or at friends' houses. To arrange the stays with friends, Musk's assistant will send an e-mail asking, “Room for one?” and if the friend says, “Yes,” Musk turns up at the door late at night. Most often he stays in a guest room, but he's also been known to crash on the couch after winding down with some video games. Then it's back to Los Angeles and SpaceX on Thursday. He shares custody of his five young boys—twins and triplets—with his ex-wife, Justine, and has them four days a week. Each year, Musk tabulates the amount of flight time he endures per week to help him get a sense of just how out of hand things are getting. Asked how he survives this schedule, Musk said, “I had a tough childhood, so maybe that was helpful.”
为了管理公司事务，马斯克那段时期的生活对很多人来说都是不可思议的。他的一周开始于洛杉矶贝莱尔的豪宅。周一，他一整天都在SpaceX；周二，他先在SpaceX上班，然后乘坐私人飞机飞往硅谷——他会分别在特斯拉位于帕洛阿尔托的办公室和弗里蒙特的工厂工作几天。马斯克在北加州没有自己的房子，而是住在豪华的瑰丽酒店(Rosewood Hotel)或者朋友家里。为了安排他在朋友家住宿，马斯克的助手会发邮件询问，“有单人房吗？”如果朋友回答“有”，马斯克就会在深夜出现在那位朋友的家门口。他大多数时候待在客房里，有时候玩一会视频游戏就窝在沙发上睡着了。周四他又回到洛杉矶和SpaceX工作。他同前妻贾斯汀共同抚养5个男孩儿——是双胞胎和三胞胎，每周有4天时间跟他们在一起。每年马斯克都以表格的形式列出每周的飞行时间，让自己知道情况的失控程度。当被问到他如何应付如此紧张的工作节奏时，马斯克说：”我有一个艰辛的童年，或许这段经历帮助了我。”
During one visit to Musk Land, he had to squeeze our interview in before heading off for a camping trip at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. It was almost 8 P.M. on a Friday, so Musk would soon be piling his boys and nannies into his private jet and then meeting drivers who would take him to his friends at the campsite; the friends would then help the Musk clan unpack and complete their pitch-black arrival. There would be a bit of hiking over the weekend. Then the relaxation would end. Musk would fly with the boys back to Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon. Then, he would take off on his own that evening for New York. Sleep. Hit the morning talk shows on Monday. Meetings. E-mail. Sleep. Fly back to Los Angeles Tuesday morning. Work at SpaceX. Fly to San Jose Tuesday afternoon to visit the Tesla Motors factory. Fly to Washington, D.C., that night and see President Obama. Fly back to Los Angeles Wednesday night. Spend a couple of days working at SpaceX. Then go to a weekend conference held by Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt, in Yellowstone. At this time, Musk had just split from his second wife, the actress Talulah Riley, and was trying to calculate if he could mix a personal life into all of this. “I think the time allocated to the businesses and the kids is going fine,” Musk said. “I would like to allocate more time to dating, though. I need to find a girlfriend. That's why I need to carve out just a little more time. I think maybe even another five to ten—how much time does a woman want a week? Maybe ten hours? That's kind of the minimum? I don't know.”
有一次，我前去“马斯克之地”采访，他挤出时间接受了这次采访，之后便前往俄勒冈州的火山口湖国家公园(Crater Lake National Park)露营。结束采访时已经是周五晚上8点了，马斯克带着孩子们和保姆坐上私人飞机，落地后再跟司机碰头，司机会把他们带到露营地与朋友碰面，朋友则会把马斯克一大家子在深夜安顿下来。周末他会选择徒步，然后放松时间就结束了。周日下午马斯克和孩子们飞回洛杉矶。而当天晚上他还要一个人飞到纽约。睡觉。早晨起来参加周一的电视台脱口秀节目、开会、发邮件、睡觉；周二早晨他要飞回洛杉矶去SpaceX上班；周二下午飞往圣何塞去特斯拉工厂；当晚飞往华盛顿和奥巴马总统见面；周三晚上飞回洛杉矶；在SpaceX工作几天；然后再去黄石公园，参加谷歌董事长埃里克·施密特(Eric Schmidt)主持的一个周末会议。当时马斯克刚刚跟他的第二任妻子——女演员妲露拉·莱莉(Talulah Riley)离婚，正考虑将自己的私生活融入这忙碌的时间表里。“我认为我分配给工作和孩子的时间是足够的，”马斯克说，“但我想安排更多的时间来约会，我需要找一个女朋友。这就是为什么我要挤出更多时间。我想也许一周需要再多出5~10个小时——女人一周需要多少时间陪伴？也许10个小时？这是最低要求吧？我不知道。”
Musk rarely finds time to decompress, but when he does, the festivities are just as dramatic as the rest of his life. On his thirtieth birthday, Musk rented out a castle in England for about twenty people. From 2 A.M. until 6 A.M., they played a variation of hide-and-seek called sardines in which one person runs off and hides and everyone else looks for him. Another party occurred in Paris. Musk, his brother, and cousins found themselves awake at midnight and decided to bicycle through the city until 6 A.M. They slept all day and then boarded the Orient Express in the evening. Once again, they stayed up all night. The Lucent Dossier Experience—an avant-garde group of performers—were on the luxurious train, performing palm readings and acrobatics. When the train arrived in Venice the next day, Musk's family had dinner and then hung out on the patio of their hotel overlooking the Grand Canal until 9 A.M. Musk loves costume parties as well, and turned up at one dressed like a knight and using a parasol to duel a midget wearing a Darth Vader costume.
马斯克很少有时间去放松，但是当他放松的时候，那些庆祝活动如同他人生一样充满戏剧性。在他30岁生日时，马斯克在英格兰租了一座城堡，邀请了20多个人。从凌晨两点到六点，他们玩了一个类似于捉迷藏的游戏——沙丁鱼：一个人跑掉藏起来，然后其余的人去找他。另一个派对在巴黎举行。马斯克、他的弟弟和表兄妹在半夜醒来，决定骑单车横穿巴黎直到凌晨六点。之后他们睡了一整天，于傍晚登上了东方列车(Orient Express)。在车上他们再一次熬了通宵。光束马戏团(Lucent Dossier Experience)的一群先锋派演员在这辆豪华列车上表演看手相和杂技。第二天，当火车到达威尼斯后，马斯克一群人吃过晚餐，然后就在酒店露台上俯瞰大运河，一直待到早上九点。马斯克也喜欢化装舞会，他曾在一次派对上装扮成骑士，并用遮阳伞和一个装扮成黑武士的侏儒进行决斗。
For one of his most recent birthdays, Musk invited fifty people to a castle—or at least the United States' best approximation of a castle—in Tarrytown, New York. This party had a Japanese steampunk theme, which is sort of like a sci-fi lover's wet dream—a mix of corsets, leather, and machine worship. Musk dressed as a samurai.
在最近一次生日聚会上，马斯克邀请了50人来到位于纽约州塔里敦(Tarrytown)的一座城堡，或至少是美国最近似城堡的建筑。这次派对的主题是日本蒸汽朋克，有点像是科幻爱好者们的春梦——紧身衣、皮革和机器崇拜混合在一起。马斯克则打扮成了武士。
The festivities included a performance of The Mikado, a Victorian comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan set in Japan, at a small theater in the heart of town. “I am not sure the Americans got it,” said Riley, whom Musk remarried after his ten-hour-a-week dating plan failed. The Americans and everyone else did enjoy what followed. Back at the castle, Musk donned a blindfold, got pushed up against a wall, and held balloons in each hand and another between his legs. The knife thrower then went to work. “I'd seen him before, but did worry that maybe he could have an off day,” Musk said. “Still, I thought, he would maybe hit one gonad but not both.” The onlookers were stunned and frightened for Musk's safety. “That was bizarre,” said Bill Lee, a technology investor and one of Musk's good friends. “But Elon believes in the science of things.” One of the world's top sumo wrestlers showed up at the party along with some of his compatriots. A ring had been set up at the castle, and Musk faced off against the champion. “He was three hundred and fifty pounds, and they were not jiggly pounds,” Musk said. “I went full adrenaline rush and managed to lift the guy off the ground. He let me win that first round and then beat me. I think my back is still screwed up.”
这场盛会的节目还包括在小镇中心的小剧院上演的喜剧《日本天皇》(The Mikado)，这是一部由吉尔伯特和奥沙利文创作，以日本为背景的维多利亚时期的喜剧。“我不确定美国人看懂了这部戏。”莱莉(马斯克在他的一周10小时约会计划失败后与她复婚)说道。不过，这些美国人和其他人都很享受接下来的节目。回到城堡后，马斯克戴上眼罩，被推到墙上，两手各抓着一个气球，腿中间也夹着一个。然后掷刀手上场了。“我虽然以前见识过，但还是担心他今天不在状态，”马斯克说，“不过，我想他即使会射中一个睾丸，也绝不可能两个都射中。”现场的旁观者都惊呆了，担忧马斯克的安全。“真的非常离谱儿，”马斯克的一个密友比尔·李(Bill Lee)说道，“但是埃隆相信万物遵循科学。”一位世界顶级相扑选手和他的朋友也来了。城堡里架起了相扑台，马斯克对战相扑冠军。“冠军大概有350磅，而且身上不是颤动的肥肉，”马斯克说道，“我的肾上腺素飙升，设法将那家伙抬离地面，他让我赢了第一局，不过接下来就打败了我。我觉得我的背伤到现在都没好。”
Riley turned planning these types of parties for Musk into an art. She met Musk back in 2008, when his companies were collapsing. She watched him lose his entire fortune and get ridiculed by the press. She knows that the sting of these years remains and has combined with the other traumas in Musk's life—the tragic loss of an infant son and a brutal upbringing in South Africa—to create a tortured soul. Riley has gone to great lengths to make sure Musk's escapes from work and this past leave him feeling refreshed if not healed. “I try to think of fun things he has not done before where he can relax,” Riley said. “We're trying to make up for his miserable childhood now.”
莱莉已经把为马斯克筹划这类派对变成了一门艺术。2008年，两人于马斯克的公司即将垮掉时相识。莱莉亲眼见证了他沦为穷光蛋，并被舆论嘲讽。她知道在马斯克的生活中，那些年的伤痛还在，并且还夹杂着其他创伤——一个襁褓中的儿子夭折，在南非的残酷成长经历。这一切共同造就了一个备受折磨的灵魂。莱莉竭尽所能帮助马斯克逃离工作和过去的经历，即使不能治愈他，也能使他焕然一新。“我尽力安排一些他没有做过的有趣的事情，让他可以放松下来，”莱莉说。“我们现在正在努力弥补他悲惨的童年。”
Genuine as Riley's efforts might have been, they were not entirely effective. Not long after the Sumo party, I found Musk back at work at the Tesla headquarters in Palo Alto. It was a Saturday, and the parking lot was full of cars. Inside of the Tesla offices, hundreds of young men were at work—some of them designing car parts on computers and others conducting experiments with electronics equipment on their desks. Musk's uproarious laugh would erupt every few minutes and carry through the entire floor. When Musk came into the meeting room where I'd been waiting, I noted how impressive it was for so many people to turn up on a Saturday. Musk saw the situation in a different light, complaining that fewer and fewer people had been working weekends of late. “We've grown fucking soft,” Musk replied. “I was just going to send out an e-mail. We're fucking soft.” (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.)
无论莱莉多么用心，这些努力并不总是奏效。那次相扑派对结束后不久，我发现马斯克回到特斯拉位于帕洛阿尔托的总部工作。那天是周六，停车场却停满了车。在特斯拉的办公室里，几百名年轻人正在工作——有些人在电脑上设计汽车部件，另一些人则在用自己办公桌上的电子设备做实验。每隔几分钟就能听到马斯克爆发出响亮的笑声，响彻整个楼层。当马斯克走进我等候的会议室时，我对他说看到这么多人在周六上班很令人惊叹。马斯克却对此不以为然，抱怨说最近周末工作的人越来越少。“我们变得越来越散漫，”马斯克回复道，“我刚刚正准备发封邮件。我们太散漫了。”
This kind of declaration seems to fit with our impressions of other visionaries. It's not hard to imagine Howard Hughes or Steve Jobs chastising their workforce in a similar way. Building things—especially big things—is a messy business. In the two decades Musk has spent creating companies, he's left behind a trail of people who either adore or despise him. During the course of my reporting, these people lined up to give me their take on Musk and the gory details of how he and his businesses operate.
这样的言语似乎和我们对其他梦想家的印象相符合。我们可以很容易想象霍华德·休斯(Howard Hughes)或史蒂夫·乔布斯用同样的方式鞭策他们的员工。创造——尤其是创造伟大的产品——是复杂的。在过去的20年里，马斯克一直在创建公司，他遭遇了一系列或崇拜或鄙夷他的人。就在我做这篇报道的当下，这些人排着队向我提供他们对马斯克的看法，以及关于马斯克本人和他公司种种骇人听闻的详情。
My dinners with Musk and periodic trips to Musk Land revealed a different set of possible truths about the man. He's set about building something that has the potential to be much grander than anything Hughes or Jobs produced. Musk has taken industries like aerospace and automotive that America seemed to have given up on and recast them as something new and fantastic. At the heart of this transformation are Musk's skills as a software maker and his ability to apply them to machines. He's merged atoms and bits in ways that few people thought possible, and the results have been spectacular. It's true enough that Musk has yet to have a consumer hit on the order of the iPhone or to touch more than one billion people like Facebook. For the moment, he's still making rich people's toys, and his budding empire could be an exploded rocket or massive Tesla recall away from collapse. On the other hand, Musk's companies have already accomplished far more than his loudest detractors thought possible, and the promise of what's to come has to leave hardened types feeling optimistic during their weaker moments. “To me, Elon is the shining example of how Silicon Valley might be able to reinvent itself and be more relevant than chasing these quick IPOs and focusing on getting incremental products out,” said Edward Jung, a famed software engineer and inventor. “Those things are important, but they are not enough. We need to look at different models of how to do things that are longer term in nature and where the technology is more integrated.” The integration mentioned by Jung—the harmonious melding of software, electronics, advanced materials, and computing horsepower—appears to be Musk's gift. Squint ever so slightly, and it looks like Musk could be using his skills to pave the way toward an age of astonishing machines and science fiction dreams made manifest.
与马斯克共进晚餐和对马斯克之地的定期造访，让我了解了这个人与众不同的方方面面。他野心勃勃着手创造的产品，具有远远超越休斯或乔布斯所创造过的任何产品的潜力。马斯克染指的产业如航天和汽车业，似乎已经被美国所放弃，然而他却将它们重塑得耳目一新且无与伦比。这个重塑成功的关键在于马斯克作为软件设计者的技能，以及将之应用于机械上能力。他将原子和比特融为一体的方式几乎无人相信，而结果确是无与伦比的。尽管马斯克尚未有一款产品像iPhone那样在消费者中获得巨大成功，也没有像Facebook一样连接了超过10亿用户。就当下而言，他还在给有钱人制造玩具，他正在萌芽的帝国既有可能像点燃的火箭一样一飞冲天，也有可能因为大规模特斯拉召回事件而万劫不复。另外，马斯克的公司已经取得了巨大的成就——远远超过那些喋喋不休的诋毁者的想象，而他对未来的承诺也能让最执着的顽固派在某些瞬间变得温和乐观。“在我看来，埃隆是个光辉的典范，展示了硅谷未来的另一种面貌——比追逐快速上市和不断增加产品更有意义，”著名的软件专家和发明家爱德华·荣格(Edward Jung)这样说道，“这些事情很重要，但还不够。我们需要评估不同的模式，了解如何制定长期规划，并将不同的技术领域加以整合。”荣格所指出的技术整合——天衣无缝地整合软件、电子、先进的材料科学和计算能力——似乎正是马斯克的天赋所在。眺望前方，似乎可以看到马斯克正竭尽所能，为通向未来科幻般的机器时代铺平道路。
In that sense, Musk comes off much more like Thomas Edison than Howard Hughes. He's an inventor, celebrity businessman, and industrialist able to take big ideas and turn them into big products. He's employing thousands of people to forge metal in American factories at a time when this was thought to be impossible. Born in South Africa, Musk now looks like America's most innovative industrialist and outlandish thinker and the person most likely to set Silicon Valley on a more ambitious course. Because of Musk, Americans could wake up in ten years with the most modern highway in the world: a transit system run by thousands of solar-powered charging stations and traversed by electric cars. By that time, SpaceX may well be sending up rockets every day, taking people and things to dozens of habitats and making preparations for longer treks to Mars. These advances are simultaneously difficult to fathom and seemingly inevitable if Musk can simply buy enough time to make them work. As his ex-wife, Justine, put it, “He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. It's Elon's world, and the rest of us live in it.”
从这个意义上说，马斯克更像是汤姆斯·爱迪生而非爱德华·休斯。他是个可以把伟大想法变为伟大产品的明星发明家、企业家和实业家。他雇用了成千上万的人来到位于美国的工厂里锻造金属——这在当下几乎是不可能实现的。尽管出生在南非，马斯克现在无疑是美国最富有革新精神的实业家、独树一帜的思想家和最有可能让硅谷重新变得雄心勃勃的人。因为马斯克，美国人10年后可能会拥有世界上最现代的高速公路：一个由上千座太阳能充电站和往来行驶的电动车组成的交通系统。到那时，SpaceX可能每天都在发射火箭升空，将人和货物运往几十个太空基地，为未来的火星移民做准备。这些展望在难以预估的同时又似乎必将发生——只要马斯克拥有足够的时间去实现它们。正如他的前妻贾斯汀所说：“他随心所欲地做他想做的事，并为之不懈努力。这就是埃隆的世界，而我们其他所有人都与之息息相关。”