9 LIFTOFF

9 腾飞：被颠覆的航空业

SpaceX的做事原则是全情投入你的工作并把事情搞定。等待指导或详细指示的人将会举步维艰。习惯得到反馈意见的员工也是一样。而最严重的错误，就是告诉马斯克他的要求是无法实现的。

THE FALCON 9 HAS BECOME SPACEX'S WORKHORSE. The rocket looks—let's face it—like a giant white phallus. It stands 224.4 feet tall, is 12 feet across, and weighs 1.1 million pounds. The rocket is powered by nine engines arranged in an “octaweb” pattern at its base with one engine in the center and eight others encircling it. The engines connect to the first stage, or the main body of the rocket, which bears the blue SpaceX insignia and an American flag. The shorter second stage of the rocket sits on top of the first and is the one that actually ends up doing things in space. It can be outfitted with a rounded container for carrying satellites or a capsule capable of transporting humans. By design, there's nothing particularly flashy about the Falcon 9's outward appearance. It's the spaceship equivalent of an Apple laptop or a Braun kettle—an elegant, purposeful machine stripped of frivolity and waste.

“猎鹰9号”已经成为SpaceX的主力。说实在话，火箭看起来就像一个巨大的、白色的男性生殖器。它高224.4英尺、宽12英尺、重110万磅，由9个引擎供电。一个引擎在中间，另外八个环绕着它，呈八边形排列。引擎连接着一级箭体，也就是上面画着蓝色SpaceX徽章和美国国旗的火箭主体。较短的二级箭体在一级箭体上方，也就是最终会飞上太空完成任务的那部分。它可以配备一个用于携带卫星的圆柱形容器，或者能够载人的太空舱。在设计上，“猎鹰9号”没有浮夸的外观。它是航天领域的“苹果笔记本电脑”或者“博朗电水壶”——一台外形优雅、功能明确的机器，没有丝毫浮夸和浪费。

SpaceX sometimes uses Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California to send up these Falcon 9 rockets. Were it not owned by the military, the base would be a resort. The Pacific Ocean runs for miles along its border, and its grounds have wide-open shrubby fields dotted by green hills. Nestled into one hilly spot just at the ocean's edge are a handful of launchpads. On launch days, the white Falcon 9 breaks up the blue and green landscape, pointing skyward and leaving no doubt about its intentions.

SpaceX公司有时会使用位于南加州的范登堡空军基地进行“猎鹰9号”火箭的发射。如果不是由军方所有，该基地会成为一个度假胜地。基地紧邻太平洋，延绵数英里，基地内开阔的陆地上长满了灌木，零星地点缀着几座翠绿的丘陵。几个发射台坐落在海岸边的一个丘陵上。在发射日，白色的“猎鹰9号”直入云霄，将蓝色和绿色的风景线留在身后，一往无前地飞往目的地。

About four hours before a launch, the Falcon 9 starts getting filled with an immense amount of liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene. Some of the liquid oxygen vents out of the rocket as it awaits launch and is kept so cold that it boils off on contact with the metal and air, forming white plumes that stream down the rocket's sides. This gives the impression of the Falcon 9 huffing and puffing as it limbers up before the journey. The engineers inside of SpaceX's mission control monitor these fuel systems and all manner of other items. They chat back and forth through headsets and begin cycling through their launch checklist, consumed by what people in the business call “go fever” as they move from one approval to the next. Ten minutes before launch, the humans step out of the way and leave the remaining processes up to automated machines. Everything goes quiet, and the tension builds until right before the main event. That's when, out of nowhere, the Falcon 9 breaks the silence by letting out a loud gasp.

发射前大约4小时，工程师们开始将“猎鹰9号”填满液态氧和火箭级煤油。在等待发射的时候，由于温度极低，一些液氧在与金属和空气接触后发生了气化，从通风口泄漏出来，产生的白色气体顺着火箭侧身流下来。这让“猎鹰9号”看上去像是在深呼吸，为发射做准备一样。工程师在SpaceX的任务控制中心内监控着这些燃料系统及所有其他部件的状态。他们通过耳机和话筒保持通话，然后开始逐一检查发射清单上的项目，在确认通过检查项目的过程中，人们陷入了一种业内人士所谓的“发烧”状态。发射前10分钟，所有人员离开，剩下的步骤由自动化机器完成。一切都安静下来，直到“猎鹰9号”打破寂静，轰鸣升空，紧张的气氛仍在持续。

A white latticed support structure pulls away from its body. The T-minus-ten-seconds countdown begins. Nothing much happens from ten down to four. At the count of three, however, the engines ignite, and the computers conduct a last, oh-so-rapid, health check. Four enormous metal clamps hold the rocket down, as computing systems evaluate all nine engines and measure if there's sufficient downward force being produced. By the time zero arrives, the rocket has decided that all is well enough to go through with its mission, and the clamps release. The rocket goes to war with inertia, and then, with flames surrounding its base and snow-thick plumes of the liquid oxygen filling the air, it shoots up. Seeing something so large hold so straight and steady while suspended in midair is hard for the brain to register. It is foreign, inexplicable. About twenty seconds after liftoff, the spectators placed safely a few miles away catch the first faceful of the Falcon 9's rumble. It's a distinct sound—a sort of staccato crackling that arises from chemicals whipped into a violent frenzy. Pant legs vibrate from shock waves produced by a stream of sonic booms coming out of the Falcon 9's exhaust. The white rocket climbs higher and higher with impressive stamina. After about a minute, it's just a red spot in the sky, and then—poof—it's gone. Only a cynical dullard could come away from witnessing this feeling anything other than wonder at what man can accomplish.

白色的网格状支撑结构从箭体抽离。10秒倒计时开始。10秒到4秒之间什么都没发生。但在数到3时，发动机点燃了，由计算机进行最后一次快速检查。4个巨大的金属夹子夹住火箭，与此同时，计算机系统评估全部9个引擎，计算是否有足够的向下压力。当数到零时，火箭万事俱备，完成使命的时刻来临，夹子松开了。火箭开始与惯性作战，它的基部环绕着熊熊燃烧的火焰，空气中充满液氧产生的白色气体，像厚厚的积雪。火箭离开了地面。目击如此巨大的怪物，又直又稳地悬停在半空中，会让大脑突然短路——这是如此陌生又令人费解的体验。升空后约20秒，“猎鹰9号”的轰鸣声传到了几英里外被妥善安置的观众那里。这是一种独特的声音——一种像化学物质发生剧烈反应时发出的那种断断续续的噼噼啪啪的声音。“猎鹰9号”的尾气产生了声震，冲击波使现场观众的裤脚随之震动。白色的火箭升得越来越高，后劲儿足得令人惊叹。大约过了一分钟，它变成了天空中的一个红点，然后消失于天际。除了愤世嫉俗的傻瓜，所有人看见此情此景都会敬佩于人类完成的壮举。

For Elon Musk, this spectacle has turned into a familiar experience. SpaceX has metamorphosed from the joke of the aeronautics industry into one of its most consistent operators. SpaceX sends a rocket up about once a month, carrying satellites for companies and nations and supplies to the International Space Station. Where the Falcon 1 blasting off from Kwajalein was the work of a start-up, the Falcon 9 taking off from Vandenberg is the work of an aerospace superpower. SpaceX can undercut its U.S. competitors—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital Sciences—on price by a ridiculous margin. It also offers U.S. customers a peace of mind that its rivals can't. Where these competitors rely on Russian and other foreign suppliers, SpaceX makes all of its machines from scratch in the United States. Because of its low costs, SpaceX has once again made the United States a player in the worldwide commercial launch market. Its $60 million per launch cost is much less than what Europe and Japan charge and trumps even the relative bargains offered by the Russians and Chinese, who have the added benefit of decades of sunk government investment into their space programs as well as cheap labor.

对于埃隆·马斯克来说，这种场面已经司空见惯。SpaceX公司已经从航空业的笑柄变成最稳定的运营商之一。SpaceX大约每月发射一次火箭，为某家公司或者某个国家运载卫星；或为国际空间站补充供给。如果说“猎鹰1号”从夸贾林发射升空时，SpaceX还是一个初创公司，那么，当“猎鹰9号”从范登堡空军基地升空时，SpaceX已经可以称得上是航天业的巨头了。SpaceX能以令人咋舌的低价打败它的美国对手们——波音公司、洛克希德·马丁公司、轨道科技公司；此外，它还能向美国客户提供别的竞争对手不能给予的安全感——这些竞争对手过去都依赖于俄罗斯和其他外国供应商，而SpaceX的所有机器零件都是在美国从无到有生产出来的。得益于低廉的成本，SpaceX使美国重新回到国际商用发射市场的舞台。SpaceX每次的发射费用为6 000万美元，比欧洲和日本的收费低得多，甚至比俄罗斯和中国的收费还要低，尤其是这两个国家还具有额外的优势：两国政府数十年对航空项目的投资和本国廉价的劳动力。

The United States continues to take great pride in having Boeing compete against Airbus and other foreign aircraft makers. For some reason, though, government leaders and the public have been willing to concede much of the commercial launch market. It's a disheartening and shortsighted position. The total market for satellites, related services, and the rocket launches needed to carry them to space has exploded over the past decade from about $60 billion per year to more than $200 billion. A number of countries pay to send up their own spy, communication, and weather satellites. Companies then turn to space for television, Internet, radio, weather, navigation, and imaging services. The machines in space supply the fabric of modern life, and they're going to become more capable and interesting at a rapid pace. A whole new breed of satellite makers has just appeared on the scene with the ability to answer Google-like queries about our planet. These satellites can zoom in on Iowa and determine when cornfields are at peak yields and ready to harvest, and they can count cars in Wal-Mart parking lots throughout California to calculate shopping demand during the holiday season. The start-ups making these types of innovative machines must often turn to the Russians to get them into space, but SpaceX intends to change that.

美国一如既往地自豪于拥有可抗衡“空中客车”^(Airbus)等国外飞机制造商的波音公司。不过出于某种原因，政府领导人和公众在提到商用发射市场时却愿意拱手相让。这是令人沮丧并且短视的态度。卫星制造和卫星相关服务，以及将卫星送入太空的火箭发射服务市场，在过去10年中呈现爆炸式增长，市场规模从每年600多亿美元增至2 000多亿美元。很多国家花钱将他们的侦察、通信和气象卫星送入太空；一些公司则转向太空领域提供电视、网络、广播、气象、导航和影像服务。这些在太空中的机器为现代生活提供了基础框架，而且它们将迅速成长，变得功能更强大，也更有趣。一种全新的卫星制造商刚刚出现，能够让我们像利用Google搜索那样查询有关地球的诸多问题。这些卫星可以定位并放大艾奥瓦州的玉米田，还能确定产量什么时候处于高峰期并准备收割；可以计算出加州所有沃尔玛停车场上的汽车数量，并以此算出节日期间的购物需求。新兴的卫星制造商往往需要向俄罗斯人求助，帮他们将卫星送入太空，而SpaceX的崛起将会改变这种状况。

The United States has remained competitive in the most lucrative parts of the space industry, building the actual satellites and complementary systems and services to run them. Each year, the United States makes about one-third of all satellites and takes about 60 percent of the global satellite revenue. The majority of this revenue comes from business done with the U.S. government. China, Europe, and Russia account for almost all of the remaining satellite sales and launches. It's expected that China's role in the space industry will increase, while Russia has vowed to spend $50 billion on revitalizing its space program. This leaves the United States dealing with two of its least-favored nations in space matters and doing so without much leverage. Case in point: 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. At present, SpaceX looks like the best hope of breaking this cycle and giving back to America its ability to take people into space.

航天工业中最赚钱的部分，是制造卫星以及提供与其配套的系统和服务，美国在这方面一直保持着竞争力。每年，美国制造的卫星大约占全世界的1/3，卫星营收占全球的60%左右。这笔收入的大部分来自于与美国政府有关的业务。剩下40%的卫星和发射营收几乎全由中国、欧洲和俄罗斯创造。预计中国在航天领域的重要性将逐渐增强；与此同时，俄罗斯也誓言要投入500亿美元振兴太空项目。这让美国不得不在太空领域和它最不喜欢的两个国家打交道，而且无处借力。举个例子：航天飞机的退役，迫使美国完全依赖俄罗斯将宇航员送入国际空间站。俄罗斯可以每人收取7 000万美元；并且在双方发生政治分歧时，它会找到合适的时机将美国剔除在外。目前，SpaceX似乎是打破这个怪圈，让美国重拾载人航天能力的希望所在。

SpaceX has become the free radical trying to upend everything about this industry. It doesn't want to handle a few launches per year or to rely on government contracts for survival. Musk's goal is to use manufacturing breakthroughs and launchpad advances to create a drastic drop in the cost of getting things to space. Most significant, he's been testing rockets that can push their payload to space and then return to Earth and land with supreme accuracy on a pad floating at sea or even their original launchpad. Instead of having its rockets break apart after crashing into the sea, SpaceX will use reverse thrusters to lower them down softly and reuse them. Within the next few years, SpaceX expects to cut its price to at least one-tenth that of its rivals. Reusing its rockets will drive the bulk of this reduction and SpaceX's competitive advantage. Imagine one airline that flies the same plane over and over again, competing against others that dispose of their planes after every flight.* Through its cost advantages, SpaceX hopes to take over the majority of the world's commercial launches, and there's evidence that the company is on its way toward doing just that. To date, it has flown satellites for Canadian, European, and Asian customers and completed about two dozen launches. Its public launch manifest stretches out for a number of years, and SpaceX has more than fifty flights planned, which are all together worth more than $5 billion. The company remains privately owned with Musk as the largest shareholder alongside outside investors including venture capital firms like the Founders Fund and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, giving it a competitive ethos its rivals lack. Since getting past its near-death experience in 2008, SpaceX has been profitable and is estimated to be worth $12 billion.

SpaceX逐渐成为自由派激进分子，试图颠覆传统太空行业的一切。它不满足于一年几次发射或者依赖政府合同生存。马斯克的目标是通过制造业的突破，以及发射台技术的进步，使得太空发射成本急剧下降。最重要的是，他一直在测试可重复使用的火箭，可以把负载运上太空，然后返回地球，这要求火箭极为精准地降落在漂浮的海上平台上，甚至落回原来的发射台。为了不让火箭坠海损毁，SpaceX会应用反向推进器，使火箭缓缓下落，然后回收。在未来的几年内，SpaceX预计将价格降至对手的1/10。火箭可回收是价格得以降低的主要原因，同时也将使SpaceX形成强大的竞争优势。试想一下，一家航空公司可以使用同一架飞机执行多次飞行任务，而其竞争对手的飞机每次飞行结束就报废了。^[1]凭借其成本优势，SpaceX有望承揽全世界大部分的商用发射任务，而且有证据表明，公司正在朝这个目标挺进。迄今为止，它已为加拿大、欧洲和亚洲的客户完成了18次卫星发射任务。SpaceX的发射计划已经排到了若干年以后，预计会有超过50次的发射任务，总价值超过50亿美元。公司继续保持私有制，马斯克是最大的股东，同时有若干外部投资人，包括创始人基金^{(Founder Fund)}和德丰杰风险投资公司之类的风险投资公司，这赋予SpaceX其他对手所不具备的竞争精神。在经历过2008年的濒死体验后，现在SpaceX已经开始盈利，估值为50亿~100亿美元。

Zip2, PayPal, Tesla, SolarCity—they are all expressions of Musk. SpaceX is Musk. Its foibles emanate directly from him, as do its successes. Part of this comes from Musk's maniacal attention to detail and involvement in every SpaceX endeavor. He's hands-on to a degree that would make Hugh Hefner feel inadequate. Part of it stems from SpaceX being the apotheosis of the Cult of Musk. Employees fear Musk. They adore Musk. The give up their lives for Musk, and they usually do all of this simultaneously.

Zip2、PayPal、特斯拉、SolarCity，都是马斯克能力的一体表现，而SpaceX则是对马斯克最好的证明，它的成败直接取决于他。一方面是因为马斯克对细节要求严格，并亲自参与SpaceX的每一次尝试。他的亲自参与程度足以让休·海夫纳感到无所适从。另一方面是因为SpaceX公司内部对马斯克的神化——他们畏惧马斯克、崇拜马斯克，甚至愿意为马斯克献出生命，而他们中当很多人三者兼备。

Musk's demanding management style can only flourish because of the otherworldly—in a literal sense—aspirations of the company. While the rest of the aerospace industry has been content to keep sending what look like relics from the 1960s into space, SpaceX has made a point of doing just the opposite. Its reusable rockets and reusable spaceships look like true twenty-first-century machines. The modernization of the equipment is not just for show. It reflects SpaceX's constant push to advance its technology and change the economics of the industry. Musk does not simply want to lower the cost of deploying satellites and resupplying the space station. He wants to lower the cost of launches to the point that it becomes economical and practical to fly thousands upon thousands of supply trips to Mars and start a colony. Musk wants to conquer the solar system, and, as it stands, there's just one company where you can work if that sort of quest gets you out of bed in the morning.

马斯克严苛的管理风格源自于他超凡脱俗的企业愿景。当航空领域的其他人满足于现状，不断将20世纪60年代古董般的东西送入太空时，SpaceX却在做截然相反的事情。它研发的可回收火箭和可回收宇宙飞船似乎才是真正属于21世纪的机器。现代化的设备不仅仅是为了作秀，它也反映了SpaceX不断完善技术和革新航天产业的努力。马斯克不仅仅想降低运载卫星和空间站供给的成本，他还希望通过降低发射成本，使人类能够以更加经济实惠的方式无数次向火星运送补给，并在那里定居。马斯克想征服太阳系——如果这也是你的梦想，目前而言这家公司是你的唯一去处。

It seems unfathomable, but the rest of the space industry has made space boring. The Russians, who dominate much of the business of sending things and people to space, do so with decades-old equipment. The cramped Soyuz capsule that takes people to the space station has mechanical knobs and computer screens that appear unchanged from its inaugural 1966 flight. Countries new to the space race have mimicked the antiquated Russian and American equipment with maddening accuracy. When young people get into the aerospace industry, they're forced to either laugh or cry at the state of the machines. Nothing sucks the fun out of working on a spaceship like controlling it with mechanisms last seen in a 1960s laundromat. And the actual work environment is as outmoded as the machines. Hotshot college graduates have historically been forced to pick between a variety of slow-moving military contractors and interesting but ineffectual start-ups.

说起来令人匪夷所思，但航天业内的其他人正把神秘莫测的太空变得乏味无比。俄罗斯在载人载物航天业务中占有重要地位，却还在使用几十年前的旧设备。他们用于前往国际空间站的“联盟”号载人太空舱，体积狭小，其机械旋钮和电脑屏幕自1966年首次飞行以来从未更换过。新加入太空竞赛的国家却精确地模仿了俄罗斯和美国的旧设备。航天业的现状令进入该领域的年轻人啼笑皆非，而实际的工作环境也如同那些机器一般古板陈旧。一直以来，那些能力出众的大学毕业生不得不在慢节奏的军工承包商和有趣但缺乏影响力的初创企业之间做出艰难抉择。

Musk has managed to take these negatives surrounding the aerospace business and turn them into gains for SpaceX. He's presented the company as anything but another aerospace contractor. 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. People who know Musk well tend to describe him more as a general than a CEO, and this is apt. He's built an engineering army by having the pick of just about anyone in the business that SpaceX wants.

马斯克想方设法改变这些航天产业的消极因素，并将它们转变成SpaceX的累累硕果。根据他的介绍，SpaceX和传统的航天承包商完全不同，这是一家时髦又极具远见的公司，而且为古板的航天产业带来了硅谷创业公司的精华——酸奶冰激凌、股票期权、快速决策和扁平化的公司结构。认识马斯克的人都认为他更像一位将军，而不是一个CEO，这个形容恰如其分。他几乎招募了SpaceX必需的所有的行业精英，打造出了一支工程师大军。

The SpaceX hiring model places some emphasis on getting top marks at top schools. But most of the attention goes toward spotting engineers who have exhibited type A personality traits over the course of their lives. The company's recruiters look for people who might excel at robot-building competitions or who are car-racing hobbyists who have built unusual vehicles. The object is to find individuals who ooze passion, can work well as part of a team, and have real-world experience bending metal. “Even if you're someone who writes code for your job, you need to understand how mechanical things work,” said Dolly Singh, who spent five years as the head of talent acquisition at SpaceX. “We were looking for people that had been building things since they were little.”

SpaceX倾向于招聘顶尖院校的尖子生，但更看重那些在日常生活中表现出A型人格特质的工程师。公司的招聘人员寻找的是机器人比赛中的优胜者，或是制造出非同寻常汽车的赛车爱好者——目的是找出充满热情、具有团队协作精神，并且具有动手能力的候选者。“即使你的工作是编写代码，你也需要懂得机械的工作原理，”曾在SpaceX担任了5年招聘经理的多莉·辛格说，“我们寻找的是那些从小就喜欢动手做一些物件的人。”

Sometimes these people walked through the front door. Other times, Singh relied on a handful of enterprising techniques to find them. She became famous for trawling through academic papers to find engineers with very specific skills, cold-calling researchers at labs and plucking possessed engineers out of college. At trade shows and conferences, SpaceX recruiters wooed interesting candidates they had spotted with a cloak-and-dagger shtick. They would hand out blank envelopes that contained invitations to meet at a specific time and place, usually a bar or restaurant near the event, for an initial interview. The candidates that showed up would discover they were among only a handful of people who been anointed out of all the conference attendees. They were immediately made to feel special and inspired.

这些人有时会自己找上门来，其他时候则需要辛格采用一些新颖的技巧来找到他们。通过搜索学术论文寻找具有某种特定技能的工程师是她的拿手好戏；她还主动打电话给实验室里的研究员，或是把学校里的工程技术人才挖走。在行业展会和研讨会中，SpaceX的招聘人员像间谍一样，秘密地拉拢他们感兴趣的候选人。他们会将装有邀请函的信封亲手交给那些人，邀请函上写明了初试的时间与地点，通常是在会场附近的酒吧或餐厅。当候选人到场后发现他们是少数被选中的幸运儿时，往往会感到欢欣鼓舞。

Like many tech companies, SpaceX subjects potential hires to a gauntlet of interviews and tests. Some of the interviews are easygoing chats in which both parties get to feel each other out; others are filled with quizzes that can be quite hard. Engineers tend to face the most rigorous interrogations, although business types and salesmen are made to suffer, too. 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.

像许多高科技公司一样，SpaceX的应聘者面临严格的面试和考试。有些面试是随意的聊天，目的是增进双方的了解；另一些面试则设置了一系列的题目，其中有些题目难度极大。业务员和销售人员虽然也要饱经折磨，但工程师们却往往要经历最严格的考验。那些预期只需要做标准题目的程序员会被不留情面地泼冷水。一般企业的面试题目，是要求软件工程师现场写十几行代码来解决问题；而SpaceX的标准面试题目则需要工程师写500行甚至更多代码。那些进入最终面试环节的候选人，会被分配另一项任务：给马斯克写一篇文章，说明自己为什么想为SpaceX工作。

The reward for solving the puzzles, acting clever in interviews, and penning up a good essay is a meeting with Musk. He interviewed almost every one of SpaceX's first one thousand hires, including the janitors and technicians, and has continued to interview the engineers as the company's workforce swelled. 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. 

对于那些解决了难题、在面试中的表现可圈可点，并写出好文章的候选者来说，他们获得的奖励就是有机会和马斯克面谈。SpaceX的前1 000名员工，包括门卫和技工，几乎都由马斯克亲自面试。随着公司员工队伍不断扩大，他仍然亲自面试工程师。在与马斯克面谈之前，每位候选人都会被告知面试时间可能会持续30秒至15分钟。

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. 

在面试刚开始的时候，埃隆有可能继续写邮件和工作，不会讲太多话，不要惊慌，那很正常。最后他会转过椅子面对着你，即使这样，他也不一定会与你有眼神交流，或和你打招呼，不要惊慌，那很正常。他会在恰当的时候和你讲话的。

From that point, the tales of engineers who have interviewed with Musk run the gamut from torturous experiences to the sublime. He might ask one question or he might ask several. You can be sure, though, that he will roll out the Riddle: “You're standing on the surface of the Earth. You walk one mile south, one mile west, and one mile north. You end up exactly where you started. Where are you?” One answer to that is the North Pole, and most of the engineers get it right away. That's when Musk will follow with “Where else could you be?” The other answer is somewhere close to the South Pole where, if you walk one mile south, the circumference of the Earth becomes one mile. Fewer engineers get this answer, and Musk will happily walk them through that riddle and others and cite any relevant equations during his explanations. 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.

从那时开始，工程师有可能会认为马斯克的谈话内容令人费解，也有可能觉得这些内容令人赞叹。他可能问一个问题，也可能问若干个。不过可以肯定的是，他一定会问到这个题目：“你站在地球表面，往南走1英里，往西走1英里，再往北走1英里，刚好回到原点，请问你在哪里？”其中一个答案是北极，大多数工程师立刻就答出来了。然后马斯克会接着问，“还有可能在哪儿？”另一个答案是在南极附近。如果你从那里向南走一英里，地球的周长就变成了一英里。没有几个工程师能给出这个答案，马斯克会愉悦地和他们讲解这个题目，并在讲解的过程中引用所有相关公式。他不怎么在乎对方是否可以给出正确答案，他更关注他们描述问题的方式和解决问题的方法。

When speaking to potential recruits, Singh tried to energize them and be up front about the demands of SpaceX and of Musk at the same time. “The recruiting pitch was SpaceX is special forces,” she said. “If you want as hard as it gets, then great. If not, then you shouldn't come here.” Once at SpaceX, the new employees found out very quickly if they were indeed up for the challenge. 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.”

在和候选人面谈时，辛格会鼓励他们，也会开门见山地告诉他们SpaceX和马斯克的标准。“SpaceX招聘的是一支特种部队，”她说，“如果你愿意接受最高难度的挑战，那太好了。如果不是这样，你不应该来这里。”新员工入职后，立刻便会发现他们是否真的勇于面对重重挑战。他们中的很多人在入职几个月后就选择离开，因为在这里每周工作90小时以上。另一些人离开的原因是他们无法接受马斯克和其他高层在会议中的直言不讳。“埃隆不了解你，而且他不在乎一些话是否会伤害你，”辛格说，“他只知道需要搞定这些事情，如果不能适应他的说话风格，你往往会感到无所适从。”

There's an impression that SpaceX suffers from incredibly high turnover, and the company has without question churned through a fair number of bodies. Many of the key executives who helped start the company, however, have hung on for a decade or more. Among the rank-and-file engineers, most people stay on for at least five years to have their stock options vest and to see their projects through. This is typical behavior for any technology company. SpaceX and Musk also seem to inspire an unusual level of loyalty. Musk has managed to conjure up that Steve Jobs–like zeal among his troops. “His vision is so clear,” Singh said. “He almost hypnotizes you. He gives you the crazy eye, and it's like, yes, we can get to Mars.” Take that a bit further and you arrive at a pleasure-pain, sadomasochistic vibe that comes with working for Musk. Numerous people interviewed for this book decried the work hours, Musk's blunt style, and his sometimes ludicrous expectations. Yet almost every person—even those who had been fired—still worshipped Musk and talked about him in terms usually reserved for superheroes or deities.

在人们的印象当中，SpaceX的高层人员流动频繁，而公司毫无疑问经历了多次换血。不过，大多数初创阶段的关键管理人员已经在公司坚持了10年甚至更久。而普通工程师中的大多数人也都至少工作满5年，为的是拿到他们的股票期权，并等到自己的项目完成。这种情况在科技公司较为常见。SpaceX和马斯克似乎激发了一种不同寻常的忠诚。马斯克在他的队伍中成功唤起了乔布斯式的狂热。“他的愿景是那么的清晰，”辛格说道，“他几乎可以催眠你，赋予你同样疯狂的愿景，比如：‘没错，我们可以去火星。’”不仅如此，为马斯克工作会让你感到痛并快乐着。本书的大量采访对象，不约而同地对超长的工作时间、马斯克粗鲁的沟通风格，以及他时而荒谬的期望表达了不满。然而，几乎所有人，包括那些被解雇的员工，都无一例外地崇拜着马斯克，他们像谈论超级英雄或者神灵一样谈论着他。

SpaceX's original headquarters in El Segundo were not quite up to the company's desired image as a place where the cool kids want to work. This is not a problem for SpaceX's new facility in Hawthorne. The building's address is 1 Rocket Road, and it has the Hawthorne Municipal Airport and several tooling and manufacturing companies as neighbors. While the SpaceX building resembles the others in size and shape, its all-white color makes it the obvious outlier. The structure looks like a gargantuan, rectangular glacier that's been planted in the midst of a particularly soulless portion of Los Angeles County's sprawl.

与位于埃尔塞贡多的总部大楼旧址相比，SpaceX在霍桑的新址更能吸引年轻人，是时尚年轻人的理想工作场所。总部新址位于火箭路1号，毗邻机场，附近还有几家模具公司和制造企业。尽管SpaceX的建筑在规模和外形上与附近其他公司的建筑相仿，但白色外观使它看上去超群绝伦。它就像一个巨大的长方形冰川，矗立在荒凉的洛杉矶外围。

Visitors to SpaceX have to walk past a security guard and through a small executive parking lot where Musk parks his black Model S, which flanks the building's entryway. The front doors are reflective and hide what's on the inside, which is more white. There are white walls in the foyer, a funky white table in the waiting area, and a white check-in desk with a pair of orchids sitting in white pots. After going through the registration process, guests are given a name badge and led into the main SpaceX office space. Musk's cubicle—a supersize unit—sits to the right where he has a couple of celebratory Aviation Week magazine covers up on the wall, pictures of his boys, next to a huge flat-screen monitor, and various knickknacks on his desk, including a boomerang, some books, a bottle of wine, and a giant samurai sword named Lady Vivamus, which Musk received when he won the Heinlein Prize, an award given for big achievements in commercial space. Hundreds of other people work in cubicles amid the big, wide-open area, most of them executives, engineers, software developers, and salespeople tapping away on their computers. The conference rooms that surround their desks all have space-themed names like Apollo or Wernher von Braun and little nameplates that explain the label's significance. The largest conference rooms have ultramodern chairs—high-backed, sleek red jobs that surround large glass tables—while panoramic photos of a Falcon 1 taking off from Kwaj or the Dragon capsule docking with the ISS hang on the walls in the background.

SpaceX的访客需要经过安检并穿过一个公司高层专用的小型停车场。马斯克的那辆黑色Model S也停在这里，就停在建筑入口的侧面。公司总部的前门是反光的，外人根本看不到里面，而进去之后你会发现，里面的白色更多。大厅里有白色的墙壁，等候区有一张现代感十足的白色桌子，白色的前台上摆放着两个白色的花盆，里面栽着兰花。在完成登记之后，访客会拿到一个名牌，然后被带到SpaceX的主要办公区域。马斯克超大的工作隔间就在右边，墙上贴着几幅《航空周刊》杂志封面，巨大的液晶显示器旁边摆放着他孩子们的照片，桌子上还摆着各种各样的物件，包括一个回旋飞镖、几本书、一瓶红酒和一把巨大的名为维瓦慕斯夫人^{(Lady Vivamus)}的武士刀——那是他荣获海因莱因奖^{(Heinlein Prize)}时获得的奖品，该奖项颁发给那些在商业领域获得过巨大成就的人。办公区大而开阔，数百人在隔间里的电脑上噼里啪啦地敲着键盘，他们大多是管理者、工程师、软件开发者和销售人员。桌子周围的会议室都以太空主题命名，比如阿波罗和沃纳·冯·布劳恩^{(Wernher Von Braun， 20世纪火箭工业奠基人)}，而门上的铭牌则注明了此名称的意义。最大的一间会议室里配备了超现代的椅子，那些高椅背的光滑红椅在大玻璃桌旁围成一圈。墙上挂着“猎鹰1号”从夸贾林升空时的照片，还有“龙”飞船停靠在国际空间站时的全景照片。

Take away the rocket swag and the samurai sword and this central part of the SpaceX office looks just like what you might find at your run-of-the-mill Silicon Valley headquarters. The same thing cannot be said for what visitors encounter as they pass through a pair of double doors into the heart of the SpaceX factory.

除去与火箭相关的物件和武士刀，SpaceX的这个核心办公区看上去和普通的硅谷公司总部没什么两样。不过，一旦访客穿过中间的那道双层门，到达SpaceX的核心工厂，眼前的一切将颠覆他们之前的认知。

The 550,000-square-foot factory floor is difficult to process at first glance. It's one continuous space with grayish epoxied floors, white walls, and white support columns. A small city's worth of stuff—people, machines, noise—has been piled into this area. Just near the entryway, one of the Dragon capsules that has gone to the ISS and returned to Earth hangs from the ceiling with black burn marks running down its side. Just under the capsule on the ground are a pair of the twenty-five-foot-long landing legs built by SpaceX to let the Falcon rocket come to a gentle rest on the ground after a flight so it can be flown again. To the left side of this entryway area there's a kitchen, and to the right side there's the mission control room. It's a closed-off area with expansive glass windows and fronted by wall-size screens for tracking a rocket's progress. It has four rows of desks with about ten computers each for the mission control staff. Step a bit farther into the factory and there are a handful of industrial work areas separated from each other in the most informal of ways. In some spots there are blue lines on the floor to mark off an area and in other spots blue workbenches have been arranged in squares to cordon off the space. It's a common sight to have one of the Merlin engines raised up in the middle of one of these work areas with a half dozen technicians wiring it up and tuning its bits and pieces.

工厂车间占地55万平方英尺，大得让人无法一览无余。这是一个完整的空间，有着浅灰色的环氧树脂地面，白色的墙壁和支柱。这片区域像是一座小城——里面有许多的人和机器，并伴有阵阵噪声。入口附近的天花板上悬挂着一个“龙”飞船。它曾为国际空间站运送补给，然后又重新返回地球，舱室的侧面还留有黑色的烧痕。舱室正下方的地面上有一对长约25英尺的着陆支撑架，SpaceX建造这个装置的目的，是帮助猎鹰火箭在发射升空后平稳着陆，并可重复利用。入口区域的左侧是厨房，右侧是任务控制室。控制室是一个封闭的空间，有落地玻璃窗，前方的墙面上布满了大大小小的屏幕，用来追踪火箭的进展。控制室里面有4排桌子，每排约有10台计算机，供任务控制中心的工作人员使用。再往工厂里面走进去，有几个生产车间随意地隔开——有的在地上用蓝线划出一个区域，有的则用蓝色的工作台围出一块块正方形的空间。在这里常常可以见到这样的景象：一台梅林引擎悬在某个作业区的半空中，五六个工程师围着它安装电路并做些零星调整。

Just behind these workspaces is a glass-enclosed square big enough to fit two of the Dragon capsules. This is a clean room where people must wear lab coats and hairnets to fiddle with the capsules without contaminating them. About forty feet to the left, there are several Falcon 9 rockets lying next to each other horizontally that have been painted and await transport. There are some areas tucked in between all of this that have blue walls and appear to have been covered by fabric. These are top-secret zones where SpaceX might be working on a fanciful astronaut's outfit or rocket part that it has to hide from visitors and employees not tied to the projects. There's a large area off to the side where SpaceX builds all of its electronics, another area for creating specialized composite materials, and another for making the bus-sized fairings that wrap around the satellites. Hundreds of people move about at the same time through the factory—a mix of gritty technicians with tattoos and bandanas, and young, white-collar engineers. The sweaty smell of kids who have just come off the playground permeates the building and hints at its nonstop activity.

作业区的后面是一个用玻璃围住的正方形空间，大到可以装下两艘“龙”飞船。这是个无尘车间，工作人员必须穿戴实验服和防尘帽，以免污染飞船。左面约40英尺处，依序摆放着几枚已经上过漆的“猎鹰9号”火箭，正等着被运走。还有一些夹在蓝墙之间的区域，看上去像被布盖住了，这里是最高机密区，SpaceX团队可能在这里制造新颖的宇航服或火箭部件，因而必须对访客和不相关的员工保密。侧面有一个很大的区域，用于制造SpaceX所有的电子器件；还有一个制造专用复合材料的区域，以及一个制造裹在卫星外面、公交车大小的整流罩的区域。数百人同时在工厂里走动，既有绑着头巾、布着文身的坚毅技师，也有年轻的白领工程师。整栋建筑里弥漫着男孩儿刚从运动场上下来的汗味，成为这里无间断工作状态的一丝线索。

Musk has left his personal touches throughout the factory. There are small things like the data center that has been bathed in blue lights to give it a sci-fi feel. The refrigerator-sized computers under the lights have been labeled with big block letters to make it look like they were made by Cyberdyne Systems, the fictional company from the Terminator movie franchise. Near the elevators, Musk has placed a glowing life-size Iron Man figure. Surely the factory's most Muskian element is the office space that has been built smack-dab in its center. This is a three-story glass structure with meeting rooms and desks that rises up between various welding and construction areas. It looks and feels bizarre to have a see-through office inside this hive of industry. Musk, though, wanted his engineers to watch what was going on with the machines at all times and to make sure they had to walk through the factory and talk to the technicians on the way to their desks.

整个工厂到处都体现了马斯克的个人风格。这从很多小细节可以看出，比如沐浴在蓝光中的数据中心，让人感觉极富科幻气息；灯光下冰箱大小的计算机用大写的印刷字体标记，让它看上去像是塞柏达系统公司^{(Cyberdyne Systems，电影《终结者》中虚构的公司)}的产品。在靠近电梯的地方，马斯克摆了一个锃亮、真人大小的钢铁侠雕像。当然，工厂最具马斯克风格的地方，是不偏不倚地建在最中间的一个办公区。这是一座矗立在各种焊接区和施工区之间的玻璃建筑，有三层楼高，里面配有会议室和办公桌。在这蜂巢般的工厂里耸立着这样一座透明的办公建筑，看上去有些格格不入。然而，马斯克是想让他的工程师们在任何时间都能看到机器如何作业，确保他们可以步行穿过工厂，并在回到自己办公桌前的路上能和技师们讲话。

The factory is a temple devoted to what SpaceX sees as its major weapon in the rocket-building game, in-house manufacturing. SpaceX manufactures between 80 percent and 90 percent of its rockets, engines, electronics, and other parts. It's a strategy that flat-out dumbfounds SpaceX's competitors, like United Launch Alliance, or ULA, which openly brags about depending on more than 1,200 suppliers to make its end products. (ULA, a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, sees itself as an engine of job creation rather than a model of inefficiency.)

这座工厂是SpaceX的神庙，供奉着被视为其在火箭竞赛中的主要武器——内部制造。SpaceX自己完成了80%~90%的制造工作——包括火箭、发动机、电子设备和其他部件。这是一个让SpaceX的对手瞠目结舌的策略。以联合发射联盟^(ULA)为例，它曾公开吹嘘自己有1 200多个供应商来协助制造最终产品。ULA是洛克希德·马丁公司和波音公司的合营公司，自恃为创造就业机会的机器，而不是效率低下的典型。

A typical aerospace company comes up with the list of parts that it needs for a launch system and then hands off their design and specifications to myriad third parties who then actually build the hardware. SpaceX tends to buy as little as possible to save money and because it sees depending on suppliers—especially foreign ones—as a weakness. This approach comes off as excessive at first blush. Companies have made things like radios and power distribution units for decades. Reinventing the wheel for every computer and machine on a rocket could introduce more chances for error and, in general, be a waste of time. But for SpaceX, the strategy works. In addition to building its own engines, rocket bodies, and capsules, SpaceX designs its own motherboards and circuits, sensors to detect vibrations, flight computers, and solar panels. Just by streamlining a radio, for instance, SpaceX's engineers have found that they can reduce the weight of the device by about 20 percent. And the cost savings for a homemade radio are dramatic, dropping from between $50,000 to $100,000 for the industrial-grade equipment used by aerospace companies to $5,000 for SpaceX's unit.

典型的航空航天公司会提出发射系统所需的零件清单，然后把设计和规格交给众多的第三方制造商，由它们负责制造。而SpaceX倾向于尽可能减少采购，一方面是为了省钱，另一方面则是因为它认为依赖供应商，尤其是外国供应商，是一个缺点。这个做法乍一看不那么明智——其他公司制造如无线电设备和配电系统已有数十年，全盘重新生产火箭上的每一台计算设备和机器，可能会增大出错的概率，而且通常会浪费时间。但是对SpaceX来说，这个策略是奏效的。除了制造自己的引擎、火箭箭体和太空舱，SpaceX还设计了自己的主板、电路、探测震动的传感器、飞行计算器和太阳能板。工程师发现仅仅是精简一个无线电装置，就可以将设备的重量减少20%。而自产无线电节省的成本更是令人瞠目，其他航天航空公司使用的工业等级设备需要花费5万~10万美元，而SpaceX将其降到5 000美元。

It's hard to believe these kinds of price differentials at first, but there are dozens if not hundreds of places where SpaceX has secured such savings. The equipment at SpaceX tends to be built out of readily available consumer electronics as opposed to “space grade” equipment used by others in the industry. SpaceX has had to work for years to prove to NASA that standard electronics have gotten good enough to compete with the more expensive, specialized gear trusted in years past. “Traditional aerospace has been doing things the same way for a very, very long time,” said Drew Eldeen, a former SpaceX engineer. “The biggest challenge was convincing NASA to give something new a try and building a paper trail that showed the parts were high enough quality.” To prove that it's making the right choice to NASA and itself, SpaceX will sometimes load a rocket with both the standard equipment and prototypes of its own design for testing during flight. Engineers then compare the performance characteristics of the devices. Once a SpaceX design equals or outperforms the commercial products, it becomes the de facto hardware.

这样的价格落差一开始让人难以置信，但是SpaceX已经在几十，甚至上百个项目中节省了大量成本。不同于行业里其他公司所采用的“太空级别”设备，SpaceX的设备往往是由现成的消费电子产品制成的。SpaceX努力了多年才向NASA证明，普通电子设备已经足够优秀，毫不逊色于那些在过去几年饱受信赖且更贵、更专业的设备。“传统航空业一直以同样的方式做事，而且做了很久，”前SpaceX工程师德鲁·埃尔丁^{(Drew Eldeen)}说道，“最大的挑战是说服NASA给新生事物一个机会，并整理书面记录来证实那些部件的质量足够好。”为了向NASA和自身证明决策的正确性，SpaceX有时会同时在火箭上使用业界标准设备和自己设计的原型设备来进行发射测试。然后工程师会比较设备的运行性能。一旦SpaceX的设计等同或优于业界标准设备，它就会成为公司采用设备的标配。

There have also been numerous times when SpaceX has done pioneering work on advancing very complex hardware systems. A classic example of this is one of the factory's weirder-looking contraptions, a two-story machine designed to perform what's known as friction stir welding. The machine allows SpaceX to automate the welding process for massive sheets of metal like the ones that make up the bodies of the Falcon rockets. An arm takes one of the rocket's body panels, lines it up against another body panel, and then joins them together with a weld that could run twenty feet or more. Aerospace companies typically try to avoid welds whenever possible because they create weaknesses in the metal, and that's limited the size of metal sheets they can use and forced other design constraints. From the early days of SpaceX, Musk pushed the company to master friction stir welding, in which a spinning head is smashed at high speeds into the join between two pieces of metal in a bid to make their crystalline structures merge. It's as if you heated two sheets of aluminum foil and then joined them by putting your thumb down on the seam and twisting the metal together. This type of welding tends to result in much stronger bonds than traditional welds. Companies had performed friction stir welding before but not on structures as large as a rocket's body or to the degree to which SpaceX has used the technique. As a result of its trials and errors, SpaceX can now join large, thin sheets of metal and shave hundreds of pounds off the weight of the Falcon rockets, as it's able to use lighter-weight alloys and avoid using rivets, fasteners, and other support structures. Musk's competitors in the auto industry might soon need to do the same because SpaceX has transferred some of the equipment and techniques to Tesla. The hope is that Tesla will be able to make lighter, stronger cars.

SpaceX对于非常复杂的硬件系统做了很多具有开拓性的改进。工厂里一个看上去颇为古怪的小发明就是一个典型案例。那是一个两层楼高的机器，用于“摩擦搅拌焊接”^{(friction stir welding)}。SpaceX可以用这台机器实现巨型金属板的焊接流程自动化，这些大型金属板可以用来制造猎鹰火箭的箭体。一只机械臂举起火箭箭体的一块金属板，将其与另一块金属板对齐，然后将它们焊接在一起，焊接长度可达20英尺。航天公司通常尽量避免焊缝，因为这会对金属板的受力性能产生不利影响，而这限制了他们可使用的金属板尺寸，并带来了其他设计限制。在SpaceX初期，马斯克就要求公司掌握摩擦搅拌焊接技术，这项技术利用一个旋转的机头高速摩擦两块金属板的连接处，使它们的晶状结构融合在一起。这就好比你加热了两片铝箔，然后用拇指按压接缝处，将两片铝箔接在一起。比起传统焊接，这种焊接技术能够使焊缝更坚固。很多公司在过去都采用过摩擦搅拌焊接技术，但是他们从未将该技术用于火箭箭体这样庞大的物件上；对该技术的使用也从未达到SpaceX的高度。在经历各种实验和失败之后，SpaceX现在可以焊接又大又薄的金属片，因此可以使用更轻的合金，并无须再使用铆钉、紧固件和其他提供支撑的零件，这使得猎鹰火箭的重量减轻数百磅。SpaceX的一些设备和技术已经转移给特斯拉，希望特斯拉很快就能产出更轻、更坚固的汽车，这促使马斯克在汽车行业里的竞争对手们不得不采用相同的技术。

The technology has proven so valuable that SpaceX's competitors have started to copy it and have tried to poach some of the company's experts in the field. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's secretive rocket company, has been particularly aggressive, hiring away Ray Miryekta, one of the world's foremost friction stir welding experts and igniting a major rift with Musk.

事实证明，这项技术极具价值，以致SpaceX的对手开始竞相效仿，并试图挖走一些SpaceX公司在该领域的专家。杰夫·贝佐斯悄悄创建的火箭公司蓝源公司^{(Blue Origin)}，就曾经明目张胆地挖走了世界顶尖搅拌摩擦焊接专家雷·米耶科塔^{(Ray Miryekta)}。这件事就此拉开了贝佐斯与马斯克纷争的序幕。“杰夫聘用了雷，而且竟敢用他在SpaceX的工作成果申请专利，”

“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. “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.”*

马斯克说道，“蓝色起源强攻这些专业领域人才^[2]，开出如双倍工资这样的条件。我认为这是多此一举，并且显得鲁莽无知。”在SpaceX内部，蓝色起源被戏称为B.O.^{( body odour，意为狐臭)}，公司甚至设置了邮件过滤器，滤掉所有带有“blue”和“origin”的邮件，以杜绝其挖人墙角的行径。马斯克和贝佐斯的关系进一步恶化了，他们再也不一起聊登陆火星的共同梦想了。“我认为贝佐斯妄想成为国王，”马斯克说道，“他有不懈的工作热情和称霸电子商务领域的雄心。但说实话，他真不是个有趣的家伙。”^[3]

In the early days of SpaceX, Musk knew little about the machines and amount of grunt work that goes into making rockets. He rebuffed requests to buy specialized tooling equipment, until the engineers could explain in clear terms why they needed certain things and until experience taught him better. Musk also had yet to master some of the management techniques for which he would become both famous and to some degree infamous.

在SpaceX公司成立早期，马斯克对于制造火箭所需的机器设备一无所知，也不了解建造火箭所需的繁重工作有多少。他回绝了多个购买专用模具设备的申请，在工程师清楚地解释他们为什么需要某种设备，以及他自己从中了解相关原理之后，才批准采购申请。马斯克也尚未掌握一些后来使他声名远扬并且在一定程度上甚至使其臭名昭著的管理技巧。

Musk's growth as a CEO and rocket expert occurred alongside SpaceX's maturation as a company. At the start of the Falcon 1 journey, Musk was a forceful software executive trying to learn some basic things about a very different world. At Zip2 and PayPal, he felt comfortable standing up for his positions and directing teams of coders. At SpaceX, he had to pick things up on the job.

随着SpaceX日渐成熟，马斯克也成长为一名真正的CEO和火箭专家。在“猎鹰1号”的征程刚开始时，马斯克还只是一名干劲十足的软件公司首席执行官，正努力在一个完全不同的领域中学习基础知识。在创办Zip和PayPal时，他可以自信地坚持自己的想法并管理程序员团队。在SpaceX，他不得不边做边学。

Musk initially relied on textbooks to form the bulk of his rocketry knowledge. But as SpaceX hired one brilliant person after another, Musk realized he could tap into their stores of knowledge. He would trap an engineer in the SpaceX factory and set to work grilling him about a type of valve or specialized material. “I thought at first that he was challenging me to see if I knew my stuff,” said Kevin Brogan, one of the early engineers. “Then I realized he was trying to learn things. He would quiz you until he learned ninety percent of what you know.”

马斯克最开始的火箭知识主要来自于教科书。但是，在SpaceX聘请了一个又一个的天才之后，马斯克意识到这些人的知识可以为己所用。他会在SpaceX工厂里拦住一个工程师，然后开始追问有关阀门或某特殊材料的问题。“刚开始我以为他在考我，看我是不是知道自己在做什么，”公司的早期工程师凯文·布罗根说，“后来我才发现他想要学知识。他会不停地提问，直到学会你所掌握知识的90%。”

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. After a couple of years running SpaceX, Musk had turned into an aerospace expert on a level that few technology CEOs ever approach in their respective fields. “He was teaching us about the value of time, and we were teaching him about rocketry,” Brogan said.

和马斯克长期共事过的人都可以证实，他具有出色的学习能力和完美的记忆力，这是他最显赫并且令人生畏的技能。孩童时代的马斯克就可以快速学习书本中的知识，而现在，这项技能与童年时期相比毫不逊色。在经营SpaceX几年后，马斯克成长为一名航空专家，很少有技术公司的CEO在各自领域的专业程度能达到他那样的水准。布罗根说，“他教给我们时间的价值，我们教给他火箭知识。”

In regards to time, Musk may well set more aggressive delivery targets for very difficult-to-make products than any executive in history. Both his employees and the public have found this to be one of the more jarring aspects of Musk's character. “Elon has always been optimistic,” Brogan said. “That's the nice word. He can be a downright liar about when things need to get done. He will pick the most aggressive time schedule imaginable assuming everything goes right, and then accelerate it by assuming that everyone can work harder.”

在时间管理方面，马斯克为那些很难制造的产品设置的交付日期，比过去的任何一位高管更加激进。无论是他的员工还是普通大众，都认为这是马斯克性格中令人不太愉悦的一个方面。“埃隆一向乐观，”布罗根说，“这是好听的说法。实际上，在完工时间方面，他是个彻头彻尾的疯子。他会假设一切顺利，制定出他能想到的最激进的时间表，然后假设每个人都可以更加勤奋地工作，以便加快生产进度。”

Musk has been pilloried by the press for setting and then missing product delivery dates. It's one of the habits that got him in the most trouble as SpaceX and Tesla tried to bring their first products to market. Time and again, Musk found himself making a public appearance where he had to come up with a new batch of excuses for a delay. Reminded about the initial 2003 target date to fly the Falcon 1, Musk acted shocked. “Are you serious?” he said. “We said that? Okay, that's ridiculous. I think I just didn't know what the hell I was talking about. The only thing I had prior experience in was software, and, yeah, you can write a bunch of software and launch a website in a year. No problem. This isn't like software. It doesn't work that way with rockets.” Musk simply cannot help himself. He's an optimist by nature, and it can feel like he makes calculations for how long it will take to do something based on the idea that things will progress without flaw at every step and that all the members of his team have Muskian abilities and work ethics. As Brogan joked, Musk might forecast how long a software project will take by timing the amount of seconds needed physically to write a line of code and then extrapolating that out to match however many lines of code he expects the final piece of software to be. It's an imperfect analogy but one that does not seem that far off from Musk's worldview. “Everything he does is fast,” Brogan said. “He pees fast. It's like a fire hose—three seconds and out. He's authentically in a hurry.”

马斯克一直因为无法按时交货而被媒体嘲讽。这是在SpaceX和特斯拉试图将它们第一款产品打入市场时，给他招致最多麻烦的一个习惯。马斯克不得不经常公开露面，用一个又一个的新借口拖延交付日期。在我提醒他“猎鹰1号”要在2003年发射时，马斯克看上去很震惊。“你是认真的吗？”他说，“我们说过这样的话？好吧，那太愚蠢了。我想我那时根本不知道自己在说什么。我那时候只有设计软件的经验，是啊，你可以在一年内写一堆软件并且上线一个网站，没有任何问题。可是制造火箭和设计软件不一样。”马斯克无非是管不住自己。他是个天生的乐观主义者，在计算完成某项计划需要多少时间方面，能感觉出来他会假设每一步都能完美无瑕地完成，团队里的每一名成员也都拥有马斯克一般的超强能力和工作责任感。布罗根曾开玩笑说，马斯克或许会计算出敲出一行代码所需要的秒数，然后乘以他预期中最终软件的代码行数，以此预测完成一个软件项目所需要的时间。或许这个比喻并不贴切，但这似乎与马斯克的世界观相去不远。“他做每一件事都很快，”布罗根说，“他进卫生间3秒就出来。他是真正的来去匆匆。”

Asked about his approach, Musk said,

问及马斯克的做法时，他说，

I certainly don't try to set impossible goals. I think impossible goals are demotivating. You don't want to tell people to go through a wall by banging their head against it. I don't ever set intentionally impossible goals. But I've certainly always been optimistic on time frames. I'm trying to recalibrate to be a little more realistic.

我当然不会设定不可能完成的目标。我认为不可能实现的目标会让人变得消极。你不会让人们通过用头撞墙的方法来穿过一道墙。我从不故意设定不可能实现的目标。但我确实总是对自己设定的时间持乐观态度。我正在尝试做出调整，让自己更现实一点。

I don't assume that it's just like 100 of me or something like that. I mean, in the case of the early SpaceX days, it would have been just the lack of understanding of what it takes to develop a rocket. In that case I was off by, say, 200 percent. I think future programs might be off by anywhere from like 25 percent to 50 percent as opposed to 200 percent.

我没有做出有100个我或是诸如此类的假设。我的意思是，在SpaceX成立初期，我们并不了解制造一枚火箭都需要什么。那时候我大概偏差了200%。我认为未来的项目可能会存在25%~50%的偏差，不会再是200%。

So, I think generally you do want to have a timeline where, based on everything you know about, the schedule should be X, and you execute towards that, but with the understanding that there will be all sorts of things that you don't know about that you will encounter that will push the date beyond that. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't have tried to aim for that date from the beginning because aiming for something else would have been an arbitrary time increase.

我认为，一般情况下你的确需要有一个时间表，根据你所知道的列出所有事项。这个时间表其实是个未知数，你只是朝着那个目标努力，但你要知道，经常会发生各种意料之外的事情，导致你的目标日期延后。这并不是说你从一开始就不应该这样设置时间表，因为如果设定其他目标，只会令拖延时间的情况变得不可控。

It's different to say, “Well, what do you promise people?” Because you want to try to promise people something that includes schedule margin. But in order to achieve the external promised schedule, you've got to have an internal schedule that's more aggressive than that. Sometimes you still miss the external schedule.

“好吧，你向人们承诺什么？”这个问题是另外一回事。因为你为自己许诺的进度留有余地，但是为了达成向外许诺的进度，你必须制定一个更加激进的内部进度表。即使这样，你有时还是会无法兑现对外许诺的进度。

SpaceX, by the way, is not alone here. Being late is par for the course in the aerospace industry. It's not a question of if it's late, it's how late will the program be. I don't think an aerospace program has been completed on time since bloody World War II.

顺便说一下，SpaceX倒不是独此一家。在航天业中延迟现象司空见惯。延迟不是问题，问题在于延迟多久。我认为，在血腥的“二战”结束之后没有一项航天计划是按时完成的。

Dealing with the epically aggressive schedules and Musk's expectations has required SpaceX's engineers to develop a variety of survival techniques. Musk often asks for highly detailed proposals for how projects will be accomplished. The employees have learned never to break the time needed to accomplish something down into months or weeks. 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,” Brogan said. “I'm like, ‘Elon, sometimes people need to take a long dump.'” SpaceX's top managers work together to, in essence, create fake schedules that they know will please Musk but that are basically impossible to achieve. This would not be such a horrible situation if the targets were kept internal. Musk, however, tends to quote these fake schedules to customers, unintentionally giving them false hope. Typically, it falls to Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president, to clean up the resulting mess. She will either need to ring up a customer to give them a more realistic timeline or concoct a litany of excuses to explain away the inevitable delays. “Poor Gwynne,” Brogan said. “Just to hear her on the phone with the customers is agonizing.”

为了应付无比紧迫的进度表和马斯克的期待，SpaceX的工程师摸索出多种生存技巧。马斯克经常要求员工提供极为详细、写明项目将如何完成的提案书。员工已经学会了从来不按月和周来制定任务时间表，因为马斯克想要以天，有时甚至是以分钟为单位制定时间表，延误任务时间表的后果是很严重的。“去洗手间需要申请，”布罗根说，“我很想说‘埃隆，有时候人们需要上个大号’。”SpaceX的高级经理们会一起拟出一个虚假的时间表取悦马斯克，同时也知道这个时间表基本上无法实现。如果没有将那些任务时间表对外公布的话，也许情况还不那么糟糕。然而，马斯克喜欢将这些虚假的时间表报给客户，无意间给了他们不切实际的希望。通常情况下，收拾烂摊子的工作会落到SpaceX总裁格温·肖特维尔的头上。她必须给客户打电话，告知对方一个更现实的时间表，或是找一大堆借口为延迟辩解。“可怜的格温，”布罗根说道，“听她给客户打电话都让人觉得痛苦。”

There can be no question that Musk has mastered the art of getting the most out of his employees. Interview three dozen SpaceX engineers and each one of them will have picked up on a managerial nuance that Musk has used to get people to meet his deadlines. One example from Brogan: 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.” And by recruiting hundreds of bright, self-motivated people, SpaceX has maximized the power of the individual. One person putting in a sixteen-hour day ends up being much more effective than two people working eight-hour days together. The individual doesn't have to hold meetings, reach a consensus, or bring other people up to speed on a project. He just keeps working and working and working. 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.”

毫无疑问，在充分发挥员工价值方面，马斯克是当之无愧的大师。采访了30位SapceX的工程师，我发现每个人都能举出一项马斯克用来让员工如期完成任务的管理技巧。以布罗根为例，通常由经理为员工设置完成期限，而马斯克则引导他的工程师们自己掌控交付日期。“他不会说，你必须在周五下午2点前完成这项任务。他会说，‘我需要这项艰巨的任务在周五下午2点前完成，你能做到吗？’”布罗根说道，“然后，如果你说了‘能做到’，那么你勤奋工作的原因就不再是因为他的要求，而是为了你自己。这是一个你可以感受到的区别。你为自己的工作写下了保证书。”马斯克聘请了数百位聪明且有上进心的员工，他要将个人潜力的发挥最大化。他一天工作16小时，比两个人每人工作8小时更有效率。原因是一个人不需要开会、不需要与谁达成共识，也不需要在项目中帮助其他人。他只需要持续地工作、工作、再工作。理想的SpaceX员工是像SpaceX高级项目总监史蒂夫·戴维斯^{(Steve Davis)}这样的人。布罗根说，“多年以来，他一直坚持每天工作16小时，他一个人完成的工作比11个人加起来做的都多。”

To find Davis, Musk called a teaching assistant* in Stanford's aeronautics department and asked him if there were any hardworking, bright master's and doctoral candidates who didn't have families. The TA pointed Musk to Davis, who was pursuing a master's degree in aerospace engineering to add to degrees in finance, mechanical engineering, and particle physics. Musk called Davis on a Wednesday and offered him a job the following Friday. Davis was the twenty-second SpaceX hire and has ended up the twelfth most senior person still at the company. He turned thirty-five in 2014.

说到当初发掘戴维斯，是马斯克给斯坦福大学航天系的一名助教^[4]打电话，问他系里有没有勤奋、聪明，而且还未结婚生子的研究生和博士生。那个助教向马斯克推荐了戴维斯，说他已经获得金融学、机械工程学和量子物理学学位，正在攻读航天工程硕士学位。马斯克在星期三给戴维斯打了电话，紧接着周五就给他发了一份工作邀请。戴维斯是SpaceX聘请的第22名员工，如今已成为公司排名第12位的资深员工。2014年他才35岁。

Davis did his tour of duty on Kwaj and considered it the greatest time of his life. “Every night, you could either sleep by the rocket in this tent shelter where the geckos crawled all over you or take this one-hour boat ride that made you seasick back to the main island,” he said. “Every night, you had to pick the pain that you remembered least. You got so hot and exhausted. It was just amazing.” After working on the Falcon 1, Davis moved to the Falcon 9 and then Dragon.

戴维斯在夸贾林环礁兢兢业业地履行着自己的使命，并认为那是他人生中最伟大的时刻。他说道，“每天晚上，你要么住在火箭旁边爬满壁虎的帐篷里，要么忍受着晕船之苦乘一小时船回到主岛——每晚不得不在炎热和疲惫之间做出选择，不得不两害相权取其轻。那段经历真是太艰苦了。”在“猎鹰1号”之后，戴维斯继续参与了“猎鹰9号”和“龙”飞船项目的研发工作。

The Dragon capsule took SpaceX four years to design. It's likely the fastest project of its ilk done in the history of the aerospace industry. The project started with Musk and a handful of engineers, most of them under thirty years old, and peaked at one hundred people.* They cribbed from past capsule work and read over every paper published by NASA and other aeronautics bodies around projects like Gemini and Apollo. “If you go search for something like Apollo's reentry guidance algorithm, there are these great databases that will just spit out the answer,” Davis said. The engineers at SpaceX then had to figure out how to advance these past efforts and bring the capsule into the modern age. Some of the areas of improvement were obvious and easily accomplished, while others required more ingenuity. Saturn 5 and Apollo had colossal computing bays that produced only a fraction of the computer horsepower that can be achieved today on, say, an iPad. The SpaceX engineers knew they could save a lot of room by cutting out some of the computers while also adding capabilities with their more powerful equipment. The engineers decided that while Dragon would look a lot like Apollo, it would have steeper wall angles, to clear space for gear and for the astronauts that the company hoped to fly. SpaceX also got the recipe for its heat shield material, called PICA, through a deal with NASA. The SpaceX engineers found out how to make the PICA material less expensively and improved the underlying recipe so that Dragon—from day one—could withstand the heat of a reentry coming back from Mars.* The total cost for Dragon came in at $300 million, which would be on the order of 10 to 30 times less than capsule projects built by other companies. “The metal comes in, we roll it out, weld it, and make things,” Davis said. “We build almost everything in-house. That is why the costs have come down.”

SpaceX花了4年时间设计“龙”飞船。这可能是航空史上同类项目中完成速度最快的。项目最初由马斯克和几个工程师^{(他们中的大多数人不满30岁)}一起开展，巅峰时期团队规模达到100人。^[5]他们借鉴了过去的宇宙飞船，阅读了NASA和其他航天机构发表的关于“双子座”和“阿波罗”号宇宙飞船的所有论文。戴维斯说：“你去搜索‘阿波罗’号的再入制导算法这类的内容，那些庞大的数据库就会直接给出答案。”然后，SpaceX的工程师们必须弄清楚如何将这些项目更新换代，使宇宙飞船能够与时俱进。有些改进显而易见并且可以轻松完成，而另一些则需要更多的创造力。“土星5号”和“阿波罗”号拥有庞大的运算设备，但其运算能力却只有如今电脑^(比如iPad)的一个零头。SpaceX的工程师们知道如何运用更强大的运算技巧来提高运算能力，这会节省很多空间。尽管“龙”飞船的外观与“阿波罗”号十分相似，但它的墙壁角度更陡峭，工程师的这一决策是为了给装备和宇航员留出更多空间。SpaceX也通过和NASA达成协议，获得了PICA隔热材料的生产工艺。SpaceX的工程师找到了让PICA成本更低廉的方法，改进了基础配方。所以“龙”飞船从一开始，就能承受从火星返回、进入地球大气层时产生的热量。^[6]“龙”飞船的总成本是3亿美元，其他公司的宇宙飞船项目成本比它高10~30倍。“我们自己采购金属原材料，将它辗平、焊接，然后用它做所需的配件，”戴维斯说，“我们几乎所有配件都在内部生产。这就是成本能降下来的原因。”

Davis, like Brogan and plenty of other SpaceX engineers, has had Musk ask for the seemingly impossible. His favorite request dates back to 2004. SpaceX needed an actuator that would trigger the gimbal action used to steer the upper stage of Falcon 1. Davis had never built a piece of hardware before in his life and naturally went out to find some suppliers who could make an electromechanical actuator for him. He got a quote back for $120,000. “Elon laughed,” Davis said. “He said, ‘That part is no more complicated than a garage door opener. Your budget is five thousand dollars. Go make it work.'” Davis spent nine months building the actuator. At the end of the process, he toiled for three hours writing an e-mail to Musk covering the pros and cons of the device. The e-mail went into gory detail about how Davis had designed the part, why he had made various choices, and what its cost would be. As he pressed send, Davis felt anxiety surge through his body knowing that he'd given his all for almost a year to do something an engineer at another aerospace company would not even attempt. Musk rewarded all of this toil and angst with one of his standard responses. He wrote back, “Ok.” The actuator Davis designed ended up costing $3,900 and flew with Falcon 1 into space. “I put every ounce of intellectual capital I had into that e-mail and one minute later got that simple response,” Davis said. “Everyone in the company was having that same experience. One of my favorite things about Elon is his ability to make enormous decisions very quickly. That is still how it works today.”

和布罗根和很多其他SpaceX的工程师一样，马斯克也交付给戴维斯一些看上去不可能完成的任务。戴维斯最引以为豪的任务要追溯到2004年。SpaceX需要一个可以触发平衡动作^{(用来控制“猎鹰1号”的飞行方向)}的作动器。戴维斯在过去从未制造过硬件，所以自然而然就去找了一些可以帮他制造电动作动器的供应商。对方报价12万美元。“埃隆听完后大笑，”戴维斯说道，“他说，‘那个部件还没有车库门的开关复杂。你的预算是5 000美元，去搞定它。’”戴维斯花了9个月的时间制造那台作动器。在完成之后，他又花了3个小时给马斯克写了一封电子邮件，讲述该设备的优缺点。他在邮件中详尽地描述了自己如何设计这台设备、他做出各种选择的原因，以及所需的花费。就在按下发送键的那一刻，戴维斯感到从身体里疯狂涌出一股焦虑感，因为他知道他用了近一年的时间全力以赴，做了其他航空公司的工程师试都不会试的事情。马斯克对他所有辛劳和焦虑的奖赏是一个标准回复：“不错”戴维斯设计的作动器最终成本是3 900美元，后来随着“猎鹰1号”飞上了太空。“我将所有的研制过程统统写进那封邮件里，而一分钟之后就得到了简短的回应，”戴维斯说道，“公司里的每个人都有类似的经历。我最欣赏埃隆的一点，就是他有能力迅速做出重大决定。即使现在也是如此。”

Kevin Watson can attest to that. He arrived at SpaceX in 2008 after spending twenty-four years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Watson worked on a wide variety of projects at JPL, including building and testing computing systems that could withstand the harsh conditions of space. JPL would typically buy expensive, specially toughened computers, and this frustrated Watson. He daydreamed about ways to handcraft much cheaper, equally effective computers. While having his job interview with Musk, Watson learned that SpaceX needed just this type of thinking. Musk wanted the bulk of a rocket's computing systems to cost no more than $10,000. It was an insane figure by aerospace industry standards, where the avionics systems for a rocket typically cost well over $10 million. “In traditional aerospace, it would cost you more than ten thousand dollars just for the food at a meeting to discuss the cost of the avionics,” Watson said.

凯文·华生^{(Kevin Watson)}可以证明这点。2008年，他加入SpaceX，之前在NASA的喷气推进实验室^(JPL)工作了24年。华生在JPL期间参与过很多不同的项目，包括建造和测试可以抵御太空恶劣条件的计算系统。JPL通常购买昂贵的加强版计算机，而这让华生感到沮丧，他幻想着可以打造出更便宜、同样有效的计算机。在马斯克面试他的时候，华生得知SpaceX恰恰需要这种思考方式。马斯克希望火箭的主体计算系统花费不超过1万美元。以航天领域的标准来看，这是个疯狂的数字，火箭的航天电子系统造价通常超过1 000万美元。华生说，“在传统的航天公司，为讨论航天电子设备的会议所准备的食物花费都不止1万美元。”

During the job interview, Watson promised Musk that he could do the improbable and deliver the $10,000 avionics system. He began working on making the computers for Dragon right after being hired. The first system was called CUCU, pronounced “cuckoo.” This communications box would go inside the International Space Station and communicate back with Dragon. A number of people at NASA referred to the SpaceX engineers as “the guys in the garage” and were cynical about the start-up's ability to do much of anything, including building this type of machine. But SpaceX produced the communication computer in record time, and it ended up as the first system of its kind to pass NASA's protocol tests on the first try. NASA officials were forced to say “cuckoo” over and over again during meetings—a small act of defiance SpaceX had planned all along to torture NASA. As the months went on, Watson and other engineers built out the complete computing systems for Dragon and then adapted the technology for Falcon 9. The result was a fully redundant avionics platform that used a mix of off-the-shelf computing gear and products built in-house by SpaceX. It cost a bit more than $10,000 but came close to meeting Musk's goal.

在工作面试过程中，华生向马斯克承诺他会完成这项看似不可能完成的任务，交付成本为1万美元的航天电子系统。他到任后立刻着手开始设计“龙”飞船的运算系统，第一个系统叫作CUCU，发音为“咕咕”^{(与英文的“杜鹃”同音)}。这个通信装置将被送入国际空间站，用来与“龙”飞船通信。很多NASA的人称SpaceX的工程师为“修车工”，并对初创公司在很多方面的能力表示怀疑，认为他们无法研制这类仪器。但是SpaceX以创纪录的速度研制出了这台通信计算机，并最终成为这类系统中第一个一次性通过NASA协议测试的计算机。NASA官员被迫一次又一次地在会议中说到“咕咕”——这是SpaceX为了折磨NASA开的小玩笑。随着时间的流逝，华生和其他工程师建造出了“龙”飞船完整的运算系统，并在做了一些调整后将其用于“猎鹰9号”。他们的最终成果是一个备用的航天电子平台，以确保系统发生故障时还能正常运转。它结合了现有的运算设备和SpaceX自己生产的产品，虽然成本略高于1万美元，但与马斯克的目标很接近。

SpaceX reinvigorated Watson, who had become disenchanted with JPL's acceptance of wasteful spending and bureaucracy. Musk had to sign off on every expenditure over $10,000. “It was his money that we were spending, and he was keeping an eye on it, as he damn well should,” Watson said. “He made sure nothing stupid was happening.” Decisions were made quickly during weekly meetings, and the entire company bought into them. “It was amazing how fast people would adapt to what came out of those meetings,” Watson said. “The entire ship could turn ninety degrees instantly. Lockheed Martin could never do anything like that.” Watson continued:

JPL对于浪费听之任之的态度和官僚主义作风让华生心灰意冷，而SpaceX使他焕发了新的活力。每一笔一万美元以上的开支都需要经过马斯克批准。“我们花的是他的钱，而他对此上心是理所当然的，”华生说道，“他确保没有蠢事发生。”每周的例会上，他都能迅速制定决策，并获得公司上下的认可。“人们适应会议决定的速度令人惊叹，”华生说道，“整艘船可以立即转向90度。洛克希德·马丁公司可做不到这样。”华生继续说道：

Elon is brilliant. He's involved in just about everything. He understands everything. 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. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy. He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It's amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years. 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.

埃隆是个天才。他事必躬亲并且无所不知。当他问你问题的时候，你很快就会学到，不假思索地回答是不可取的。他想要基于物理学基本定律的答案。他对火箭的物理原理了如指掌，没有人能胜过他。我见识过的他的心算能力，简直不可思议。他可以同时参与两个讨论，一个关于发射卫星，另一个关于我们能否将“龙”飞船送入正确的轨道并送达目的地，然后即时在脑子里解开所有的方程式。他多年以来积累的知识量令人震惊。我永远也不想做那个不得不与埃隆竞争的人。你不妨离开这个行业，做些别的有趣的东西。因为他比你更有谋略、更有智慧，并且执行力也比你强。

One of Watson's top discoveries at SpaceX was the test bed on the third floor of the Hawthorne factory. SpaceX has test versions of all the hardware and electronics that go into a rocket laid out on metal tables. It has in effect replicated the innards of a rocket end to end in order to run thousands of flight simulations. Someone “launches” the rocket from a computer and then every piece of mechanical and computing hardware is monitored with sensors. An engineer can tell a valve to open, then check to see if it opened, how quickly it opened, and the level of current running to it. This testing apparatus lets SpaceX engineers practice ahead of launches and figure out how they would deal with all manner of anomalies. During the actual flights, SpaceX has people in the test facility who can replicate errors seen on Falcon or Dragon and make adjustments accordingly. SpaceX has made numerous changes on the fly with this system. In one case someone spotted an error in a software file in the hours right before a launch. SpaceX's engineers changed the file, checked how it affected the test hardware, and, when no problems were detected, sent the file to the Falcon 9, waiting on the launchpad, all in less than thirty minutes. “NASA wasn't used to this,” Watson said. “If something went wrong with the shuttle, everyone was just resigned to waiting three weeks before they could try and launch again.”

华生在SpaceX最棒的新发明之一，是位于霍桑工厂三楼的测试台。SpaceX把火箭所需的所有硬件和电子设备的测试版本铺在金属台面上。实际上，它从头到尾复制了火箭的内部结构，可以模拟成千上万次飞行。一个人在电脑上“发射”火箭，然后用传感器监测每一个机械和计算机硬件。工程师可以发出开闸门的指令，然后检查闸门是否打开了、打开的速度有多快，以及流向它的电流大小。SpaceX的工程师可以用这个测试台在发射前进行练习，并想出各类异常情况的处理方法。在实际的发射过程中，测试台的工作人员可以监测“猎鹰”或“龙”飞船上的异常情况，并做出相应的调整。SpaceX用这套系统做出了数不清的实时改动。其中一个案例是：有人在发射几小时前发现了一个软件文件中的错误，SpaceX的工程师修改了该文件，检查了它对测试硬件的影响，在检测没有问题后，将文件传给在发射台上等待发射的“猎鹰9号”，整个过程耗时不到30分钟。华生说，“NASA不习惯这套做事流程，如果宇宙飞船哪里出了错，每个人都只会顺从地等待3周，之后再试着重新发射。”

From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that's bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck:

马斯克会时不时地向全公司发送电子邮件，以推行新的规定，或是让大家知道有某件事正在困扰他。其中一封较著名的邮件于2010年5月发出，主题是“首字母缩写词真恶心”。

There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don't want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees.

使用自创缩写词的趋势正在SpaceX蔓延。对缩写词的过度使用严重阻碍了交流，而在我们壮大的同时保持良好的沟通极为重要。对个人而言，零星出现的缩写词似乎并没有那么糟糕，但是如果一千人都在创造缩写词，结果就是随着时间的推移，我们将不得不为每位新员工发放一份巨大的词汇表。实际上，没有人能够记住所有的缩写词，而且因为人们不想在会议中看上去像个笨蛋，他们会沉默地坐在那里，一无所知。这对新员工来说尤其艰难。

That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action—I have given enough warnings over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past.

这种做法必须立刻停止，否则我将采取严厉的措施——多年来我已给出足够的警告。除非得到我的批准，其他缩写词不能列入SpaceX的词汇表。如果现有的缩写词无法被证明是合理的，则应删除，如我过去曾要求的那样。

For example, there should be no “HTS” [horizontal test stand] or “VTS” [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A “stand” at our test site is obviously a *test* stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with “Tripod,” which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name!

例如，测试架不应该有“HTS”^{[horizontal test stand，水平测试架]} 或“VTS”^{[vertical test stand，垂直试验架]} 这样的称呼。因为它们包含了不必要的词，所以尤其蠢。我们测试站的“支架”明显是“测试”^(test)的支架。VTS–3是四个音节，而“Tripod”^(三脚架)是两个音节，所以这讨厌的缩写版本事实上比原词更费解。

The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, eg MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum.

衡量缩略词的关键，是看它是有助于还是阻碍了交流。大多数SpaceX以外的工程师也知道的缩略词，例如GUI，就可以用。偶尔造几个缩略词/简写也可以——假设我已经批准了——例如用MVac和M9替代梅林1C–真空^{(Merlin 1C-Vacuum)}或梅林1C–海平面^{(Merlin 1C-Sea Level)}，但是最好少用。

This was classic Musk. The e-mail is rough in its tone and yet not really unwarranted for a guy who just wants things done as efficiently as possible. It obsesses over something that other people might find trivial and yet he has a definite point. It's comical in that Musk wants all acronym approvals to run directly through him, but that's entirely in keeping with the hands-on management style that has, mainly, worked well at both SpaceX and Tesla. Employees have since dubbed the acronym policy the ASS Rule.

这是典型的马斯克风格。电子邮件的语气很粗暴，但他的要求并不是毫无根据的——他只是想要尽可能高效地完成工作。其他人可能认为他所关注的事情琐碎，但是他这么做确实有他的道理。马斯克希望所有缩写词都要经过他的批准，这点确实有些滑稽，但这就是他的管理风格，事必躬亲，并且收到了很好的成效。从那以后，员工将缩写词政策称为“A.S.S.规定”^{(ASS Rule，狗屁规定)}。

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. And the absolute worst thing that someone can do is inform Musk that what he's asking is impossible. An employee could be telling Musk that there's no way to get the cost on something like that actuator down to where he wants it or that there is simply not enough time to build a part by Musk's deadline. “Elon will say, ‘Fine. You're off the project, and I am now the CEO of the project. I will do your job and be CEO of two companies at the same time. I will deliver it,'” Brogan said. “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.”

SpaceX的做事原则是全情投入你的工作并把事情搞定。等待指导或详细指示的人将会举步维艰。习惯得到反馈意见的员工也是一样。而最严重的错误，就是告诉马斯克他的要求是无法实现的。如果有人告诉马斯克，比如，作动器绝对不可能降到他的心理价位，或者在他确定的截止日期前无法造出某个部件。“埃隆会说，‘好吧，这个项目跟你无关了，从现在开始我是项目的CEO。在担任两家公司CEO的同时，你的工作也由我来做，但我可以完成。’”布罗根说，“最疯狂的是马斯克真的这么做了。每次他解雇了某个人，他都会接替那个人的工作，而无论是什么项目，他都能完成。”

It is jarring for both parties when the SpaceX culture rubs against more bureaucratic bodies like NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and the Federal Aviation Administration. The first inklings of these difficulties appeared on Kwaj, where government officials sometimes questioned what they saw as SpaceX's cavalier approach to the launch process. There were times when SpaceX would want to make a change to its launch procedures and any such change would require a pile of paperwork. SpaceX, for example, would have written down all the steps needed to replace a filter—put on gloves, wear safety goggles, remove a nut—and then want to alter this procedure or use a different type of filter. The FAA would need a week to review the new process before SpaceX could actually go about changing the filter on the rocket, a lag that both the engineers and Musk found ridiculous. On one occasion after this type of thing happened, Musk laid into an FAA official while on a conference call with members of the SpaceX team and NASA. “It got hot and heated, and he berated this guy on a personal level for like ten minutes,” Brogan said.

一旦SpaceX的文化与NASA、空军或联邦航空管理局这样比较官僚的机构发生冲突，对双方而言都是不愉快的经历。在夸贾林时，这些摩擦就已经存在了——政府官员认为SpaceX对发射火箭流程的态度不太严谨，并时常提出质疑。有很多次SpaceX想对发射程序做出一些调整，但任何此类调整都需要做大量的书面工作。例如，SpaceX已经记录了替换过滤器需要的所有步骤：戴上手套、佩戴安全护目镜、移除一个螺母等等，然后想更改这个步骤，或者使用另外一种过滤器。美国联邦航空局需要一个星期审查新的步骤，然后SpaceX才能动手更换火箭上的过滤器，这种拖延让工程师和马斯克都觉得可笑。有一次，此类事情再次发生，马斯克在SpaceX和NASA的电话会议中斥责了美国联邦航空局的一位官员。当时SpaceX团队和NASA的人也在现场。布罗根说，“现场变得火药味十足，他对这家伙进行了10分钟的人身攻击。”

Musk did not recall this incident but did remember other confrontations with the FAA. One time he compiled a list of things an FAA subordinate had said during a meeting that Musk found silly and sent the list along to the guy's boss. “And then his dingbat manager sent me this long e-mail about how he had been in the shuttle program and in charge of twenty launches or something like that and how dare I say that the other guy was wrong,” Musk said. “I told him, ‘Not only is he wrong, and let me rearticulate the reasons, but you're wrong, and let me articulate the reasons.' I don't think he sent me another e-mail after that. We're trying to have a really big impact on the space industry. If the rules are such that you can't make progress, then you have to fight the rules.

马斯克说他想不起这件事了，但是记得与美国联邦航空局的其他几次对抗。有一次，他整理了一份清单，记录了美国联邦航空局一位官员在一次会议上发表的所有愚蠢言论，并把这份清单发给了那家伙的上司。“然后他的笨蛋上司给我发了一封长邮件，说他致力于航天工作20年，负责过20次发射等等，还说我怎么敢指责那家伙做错了，”马斯克说道，“我告诉他，‘不只是那个家伙错了，我再重申一遍，你也错了。’从那以后，他好像再也没给我发过邮件。我们希望能够变革航天产业。如果这里的规则让你裹足不前，那么你就必须打破它。”

“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. So, it's very asymmetric. It's then very easy to understand why regulators resist changing the rules. It's because there's a big punishment on one side and no reward on the other. How would any rational person behave in such a scenario?”

“监管机构有一个根本问题。如果一个监管机构同意改变一个规则，结果出了问题，他们很可能会丢掉工作。反之，如果他们因为改变规则而产生了好的结果，却不会得到回报。所以，这非常不公平。这样就很容易理解为什么监管机构拒绝改变规则。一边有重罚，而另一边却没有相应的奖励。在这种情况下，任何理性的人会如何选择？”

In the middle of 2009, SpaceX hired Ken Bowersox, a former astronaut, as its vice president of astronaut safety and mission assurance. Bowersox fit the mold of recruit prized by a classic big aerospace company. He had a degree in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, had been a test pilot in the air force, and flew on the space shuttle a handful of times. Many people within SpaceX saw his arrival at the company as a good thing. He was considered a diligent, dignified sort who would provide a second set of eyes to many of SpaceX's procedures, checking to make sure the company went about things in a safe, standardized manner. Bowersox ended up smack in the middle of the constant pull and push at SpaceX between doing things efficiently and agonizing over traditional procedures. He and Musk were increasingly at odds as the months passed, and Bowersox started to feel as if his opinions were being ignored. During one incident in particular, a part made it all the way to the test stand with a major flaw—described by one engineer as the equivalent of a coffee cup not having a bottom—instead of being caught at the factory. According to observers, Bowersox argued that SpaceX should go back and investigate the process that led to the mistake and fix its root cause. Musk had already decided that he knew the basis of the problem and dismissed Bowersox after a couple of years on the job. (Bowersox declined to speak on the record about his time at SpaceX.) A number of people inside SpaceX saw the Bowersox incident as an example of Musk's hard-charging manner undermining some much-needed process. Musk had a totally different take on the situation, casting Bowersox as not being up to the engineering demands at SpaceX.

2009年中期，SpaceX聘请前宇航员肯·鲍尔索克斯^{(Ken Bowersox)}出任宇航员安全与任务保障部门的副总裁。鲍尔索克斯属于传统航天公司青睐的典型。他拥有海军学院的航天工程学位，曾在空军担任试飞飞行员，并有过多次乘坐宇宙飞船的经验。SpaceX内部的很多人都认为他的到来是件好事，认为他是一个勤奋、严谨的人，可以从不同的角度审视SpaceX的工作流程，以确保工作得以安全、规范地完成。然而，实际上鲍尔索克斯到了SpaceX后，却长期处于追求效率和遵守传统流程的拉锯战中。随着时间的流逝，他和马斯克的分歧越来越多，鲍尔索克斯开始感到自己的意见不受重视了。特别是在一次事件中，一个有重大缺陷的部件^{(一位工程师形容这个缺陷好比一个缺了底的咖啡杯)}在工厂时没有被筛选出来，直到上了测试台才被发现。据旁观者说，鲍尔索克斯认为SpaceX需要回溯整个流程，找到问题的根源，然后从根源上解决问题。马斯克认为他已经知道了问题的根源所在，并且解雇了已经在公司工作了两年的鲍尔索克斯。^{(鲍尔索克斯拒绝对记者发表他对任职SpaceX期间发生事情的看法。)}SpaceX很多人都将鲍尔索克斯事件当作马斯克以强硬作风破坏必要程序的一个例子。但马斯克对此有截然不同的看法，他影射鲍尔索克斯的专业知识未能达到SpaceX的技术要求。“平心而论，他没有足够深入地理解那个技术问题，”马斯克说道，“尽管其他航天公司争相聘请前宇航员入职或挂名，但SpaceX从此只聘请技术水平过硬的宇航员。”

A handful of high-ranking government officials gave me their candid takes on Musk, albeit without being willing to put their names to the remarks. One found Musk's treatment of air force generals and military men of similar rank appalling. Musk has been known to let even high-ranking officials have it when he thinks they're off base and is not apologetic about this. Another could not believe it when Musk would call very intelligent people idiots. “Imagine the worst possible way that could come out, and it would come out,” this person said. “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.” One former official felt that Musk would need to temper himself better in the years to come if SpaceX was to keep currying favor with the military and government agencies in its bid to defeat the incumbent contractors. “His biggest enemy will be himself and the way he treats people,” this person said.

有几位政府要员坦诚地向我讲述了他们对马斯克的看法，但他们要求匿名。其中一位说，马斯克与空军将领和同级别军人的沟通方式令人震惊。众所周知，当认为别人大错特错时，马斯克会直言不讳并对此毫无歉意——哪怕对方是政府高级官员。另一个人说，马斯克总是将非常聪明的人称作蠢货，这令人难以置信。“想象一下最糟糕的表达方式是什么样的，实际情况就是那样，”这个人说道，“与天才埃隆一起，就如同一对非常亲密的夫妻。他有时候可以非常温柔和忠诚，然后又在某些时候变得非常粗暴。”一位前政府官员指出，在未来几年，如果SpaceX想要继续讨好军方和政府机构，击败现有承包商获得合约，那么马斯克需要好好控制自己的脾气。“他最大的敌人是他自己，以及他对待别人的方式。”

When Musk rubs outsiders the wrong way, Shotwell is often there to try to smooth over the situation. Like Musk, she has a salty tongue and a fiery personality, but Shotwell is willing to play the role of the conciliator. These skills have allowed her to handle the day-to-day operations at SpaceX, leaving Musk to focus on the company's overall strategy, the product designs, marketing, and motivating employees. Like all of Musk's most trusted lieutenants, Shotwell has been willing to stay largely in the background, do her work, and focus on the company's cause.

正因为马斯克常常冒犯别人，肖特维尔往往需要努力平息事端。同马斯克一样，她口无遮拦、性格火爆，但是肖特维尔愿意扮演调解人的角色。这些技巧有助于肖特维尔处理SpaceX的日常业务，让马斯克可以专注于公司的整体战略、产品设计、营销和员工激励。像所有马斯克最信任的副手一样，肖特维尔愿意待在幕后，做她的工作，并专注于管理公司的业务。

Shotwell grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, the daughter of an artist (mom) and a neurosurgeon (dad). She played the part of a bright, pretty girl, getting straight A's at school and joining the cheerleading squad. Shotwell had not expressed a major inclination toward the sciences and knew only one version of an engineer—the guy who drives a train. But there were clues that she was wired a bit different. She was the daughter who mowed the lawn and helped put the family basketball hoop together. In third grade, Shotwell developed a brief interest in car engines, and her mom bought a book detailing how they work. Later, in high school, Shotwell's mom forced her to attend a lecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology on a Saturday afternoon. As Shotwell listened to one of the panels, she grew enamored with a fifty-year-old mechanical engineer. “She had these beautiful clothes, this suit and shoes that I loved,” Shotwell said. “She was tall and carried off the heels really well.” Shotwell chatted with the engineer after the talk, learning about her job. “That was the day I decided to become a mechanical engineer,” she said.

肖特维尔在芝加哥的郊区长大，母亲是艺术家，父亲是神经外科医生。她是个聪明、漂亮的女孩儿，在学校里成绩优异，并且是一名啦啦队员。肖特维尔并没有从小就表现出对科学的深厚兴趣，她对工程师的了解仅限于火车司机。但是种种迹象表明，她确实有点与众不同。她是乖乖女，会主动修剪草坪，并帮忙安装家里的篮球架。在三年级时，肖特维尔一度对汽车发动机产生了兴趣，她的母亲还因此给她买了详细讲述汽车发动机工作原理的书。读高中时，一个周六下午，肖特维尔的母亲强迫她参加了伊利诺伊技术研究所举办的讲座。在听其中一场讲座时，肖特维尔迷上了一位50多岁的女机械工程师。“她穿着漂亮的衣服，我喜欢她的套装和鞋子，”肖特维尔说道，“她身材高挑，完美地驾驭了那双鞋。”肖特维尔在讲座结束之后同那个工程师聊了聊，了解了她的工作。她说，“就在那时，我决定成为一名机械工程师。”

Shotwell went on to receive an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in applied mathematics from Northwestern University. Then she took a job at Chrysler. It was a type of management training program meant for hotshot recent graduates who appeared to have leadership potential. Shotwell started out going to auto mechanics school—“I loved that”—and then from department to department. While working on engines research, Shotwell found that there were two very expensive Cray supercomputers sitting idle because none of the veterans knew how to use them. A short while later, she logged onto the computers and set them up to run computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, operations to simulate the performance of valves and other components. The work kept Shotwell interested, but the environment started to grate on her. There were rules for everything, including lots of union regulations around who could operate certain machines. “I picked up a tool once, and got written up,” she said. “Then I opened a bottle of liquid nitrogen and got written up. I started thinking that the job was not what I had anticipated it would be.”

肖特维尔先后从西北大学获得机械工程本科学位和应用数学硕士学位。然后，她在克莱斯勒找到了一份工作，那是公司专为前途无量且具有领导潜力的应届毕业生准备的管理培训项目。肖特维尔最先去了汽车技术学校——“我喜欢这个”——然后从一个部门跳到另一个部门。在进行引擎研究的时候，肖特维尔发现有两台非常昂贵的克雷^(Cray)超级计算机处于闲置状态，因为没有一个老员工知道如何使用。很快，她登入了计算机并针对计算流体动力学^(CFD)进行设置，来模拟阀门和其他部件的性能。这项工作一直让肖特维尔很感兴趣，但是周遭环境开始让她感到不快。公司里的一切都有明文规定，包括很多工会制度，以及谁能操作哪些机器。“有一次，我因为使用了一个工具被书面警告，”她说道，“然后，我开了一罐液态氧，又被书面警告。我开始思考，这份工作不是我预期的那样。”

Shotwell pulled out of the Chrysler training program, regrouped at home, and then briefly pursued her doctorate in applied mathematics. While back on the Northwestern campus, one of her professors mentioned an opportunity at the Aerospace Corporation. Anything but a household name, Aerospace Corporation has been headquartered in El Segundo since 1960, serving as a kind of neutral, nonprofit organization that advises the air force, NASA, and other federal bodies on space programs. The company has a bureaucratic feel but has proved very useful over the years with its research activities and ability to champion and nix costly endeavors. Shotwell started at Aerospace in October 1988 and worked on a wide range of projects. One job required her to develop a thermal model that depicted how temperature fluctuations in the space shuttle's cargo bay affected the performance of equipment on various payloads. She spent ten years at Aerospace and honed her skills as a systems engineer. By the end, though, Shotwell had become irritated by the pace of the industry. “I didn't understand why it had to take fifteen years to make a military satellite,” she said. “You could see my interest was waning.”

肖特维尔最终放弃了克莱斯勒培训项目，在家中重新整理思绪。此后她曾攻读应用数学博士学位，但没持续多长时间。在回西北大学校园时，她的一位导师提到美国航空航天公司^{(Aerospace Corporation)}有个工作机会。这是一家不知名的公司，自1960年成立以来，总部就设在埃尔塞贡多，是一家中立的非营利组织。公司有些官僚作风，但这些年来，在研究活动、控制支出等方面成效显著。肖特维尔于1988年10月进入美国航空航天公司工作，并参与了诸多项目。其中一个项目是需要她开发一个热模型，描述宇宙飞船货舱中的温度波动会如何影响所负载设备的性能。她在航空航天公司工作了10年，磨炼了她作为一名系统工程师的技能。不过在最后，肖特维尔再次被行业的步调激怒。“我不明白为什么建造一枚军事卫星需要15年，”她说道，“你可以看到我越来越没兴趣了。”

For the next four years, Shotwell worked at Microcosm, a space start-up just down the road from the Aerospace Corporation, and became the head of its space systems division and business development. Boasting a combination of smarts, confidence, direct talk, and good looks, Shotwell developed a reputation as a strong saleswoman. In 2002, one of her coworkers, Hans Koenigsmann, left for SpaceX. Shotwell took Koenigsmann out for a going-away lunch and dropped him off at SpaceX's then rinky-dink headquarters. “Hans told me to go in and meet Elon,” Shotwell said. “I did, and that's when I told him, ‘You need a good business development person.'” The next day Mary Beth Brown called Shotwell and told her that Musk wanted to interview her for the new vice president of business development position. Shotwell ended up as employee No. 7. “I gave three weeks' notice at Microcosm and remodeled my bathroom because I knew I would not have a life after taking the job,” she said.

在接下来的4年中，肖特维尔在微宇宙公司^(Microcosm)担任航天系统和业务开发部门的主管，这是一家与航空航天公司位于同一条街上的初创公司。集智慧、自信、坦率和美貌于一身的肖特维尔，慢慢赢得了销售达人的美誉。2002年，她的同事汉斯·克林斯曼^{(Hans Koenigsmann)}辞职去了SpaceX。肖特维尔请他出去吃了一顿告别午餐，并开车把他送到SpaceX当时还很破旧的总部。“汉斯让我进去见见埃隆，”肖特维尔说道，“我去了，而那时也是我告诉他‘你需要一名优秀的业务开发人员’。”第二天，玛丽·贝思·布朗打电话给肖特维尔，告诉她马斯克想请她来面试新业务开发副总裁一职。肖特维尔最终成为SpaceX第7号员工。她说，“我提前3周通知微宇宙，并重新装修了我的浴室，因为我知道接受这份工作之后，不会再有自己的生活了。”

Through the early years of SpaceX, Shotwell pulled off the miraculous feat of selling something the company did not have. It took SpaceX so much longer than it had planned to have a successful flight. The failures along the way were embarrassing and bad for business. Nonetheless, Shotwell managed to sell about a dozen flights to a mix of government and commercial customers before SpaceX put its first Falcon 1 into orbit. Her deal-making skills extended to negotiating the big-ticket contracts with NASA that kept SpaceX alive during its leanest years, including a $278 million contract in August 2006 to begin work on vehicles that could ferry supplies to the ISS. Shotwell's track record of success turned her into Musk's ultimate confidante at SpaceX, and at the end of 2008, she became president and chief operating officer at the company.

在SpaceX早期的几年中，肖特维尔完成了白手起家的壮举。SpaceX第一次成功发射的时间远超预期，一路上经历的失败让人难以启齿，并对业务造成了负面影响。尽管如此，肖特维尔在SpaceX将第一枚“猎鹰1号”送入轨道前，就设法与政府和商业客户签订了十几次火箭发射合同。她的业务能力在与NASA谈判一系列巨额合同期间发挥得淋漓尽致，让SpaceX在最艰难的时期赖以存活，其中包括2006年8月的一份价值2.78亿美元的合同——建造可以运送物资到国际空间站的运载工具。肖特维尔取得的一系列成功，使她成为马斯克在SpaceX的头号亲密知己，并且在2008年年底成为公司的总裁兼首席运营官。

Part of Shotwell's duties include reinforcing the SpaceX culture as the company grows larger and larger and starts to resemble the traditional aerospace giants that it likes to mock. Shotwell can switch on an easygoing, affable air and address the entire company during a meeting or convince a collection of possible recruits why they should sign up to be worked to the bone. During one such meeting with a group of interns, Shotwell pulled about a hundred people into the corner of the cafeteria. She wore high-heel black boots, skintight jeans, a tan jacket, and a scarf and had big hoop earnings dangling beside her shoulder-length blond hair. Pacing back and forth in front of the group with a microphone in hand, she asked them to announce what school they came from and what project they were working on while at SpaceX. One student went to Cornell and worked on Dragon, another went to USC and did propulsion system design, and another went to the University of Illinois and worked with the aerodynamics group. It took about thirty minutes to make it all the way around the room, and the students were, at least by academic pedigree and bright-eyed enthusiasm, among the most impressive youngsters in the world. The students peppered Shotwell with questions—her best moment, her advice for being successful, SpaceX's competitive threats—and she replied with a mix of earnest answers and rah-rah stuff. Shotwell made sure to emphasize the lean, innovative edge SpaceX has over the more traditional aerospace companies. “Our competitors are scared shitless of us,” Shotwell told the group. “The behemoths are going to have to figure out how to get it together and compete. And it is our job to have them die.”

肖特维尔的职责还包括完善SpaceX的公司文化，因为随着不断发展壮大，公司开始变得越来越像他们曾经嘲笑的那些传统航天巨头。肖特维尔可以营造一种温馨的氛围，在一个会议中向全公司发表演说；或者向一群新雇员说明为什么他们应该拼命工作。在某个与实习生的会议中，肖特维尔将大约100人带到餐厅的角落。她穿着黑色高跟皮靴、紧身牛仔裤、褐色的夹克，披着一条围巾；一对大环型耳环在她齐肩的金发旁晃来晃去。她在人群前来回踱步，手里拿着麦克风，要求他们报出自己的毕业院校和在SpaceX负责的项目。一个学生来自康奈尔大学，参与了“龙”飞船项目；另一个学生来自南加州大学，参与了推进系统的设计；还有一个学生来自伊利诺伊大学，参与了空气动力学部门的工作。房间里所有人大约用了30分钟才介绍完，至少从学业成就、表现出的热情中可以看出，在场的学生是世界上年轻人中的佼佼者。学生们向肖特维尔抛出一个个问题——她最美好的时刻、她对成功的建议、SpaceX面临的竞争危机等——而她真诚地解答了这些问题，并鼓励他们。肖特维尔强调，和传统航天公司相比，SpaceX在精益创新方面极具优势。“我们的对手被我们吓破了胆，”肖特维尔告诉大家，“其他航天巨头将不得不想方设法与我们竞争。而我们的职责就是超越它们。”

One of SpaceX's biggest goals, Shotwell said, was to fly as often as possible. The company has never sought to make a fortune off each flight. It would rather make a little on each launch and keep the flights flowing. A Falcon 9 flight costs $60 million, and the company would like to see that figure drop to about $20 million through economies of scale and improvements in launch technology. SpaceX spent $2.5 billion to get four Dragon capsules to the ISS, nine flights with the Falcon 9, and five flights with the Falcon 1. It's a price-per-launch total that the rest of the players in the industry cannot comprehend let alone aspire to. “I don't know what those guys do with their money,” Shotwell said. “They are smoking it. I just don't know.” As Shotwell saw it, a number of new nations were showing interest in launches, eyeing communications technology as essential to growing their economies and leveling their status with developed nations. Cheaper flights would help SpaceX take the majority of the business from that new customer set. The company also expected to participate in an expanding market for human flights. SpaceX has never had any interest in doing the five-minute tourist flights to low Earth orbit like Virgin Galactic and XCOR. It does, however, have the ability to carry researchers to orbiting habitats being built by Bigelow Aerospace and to orbiting science labs being constructed by various countries. SpaceX will also start making its own satellites, turning the company into a one-stop space shop. All of these plans hinge on SpaceX being able to prove that it can fly on schedule every month and churn through the $5 billion backlog of launches. “Most of our customers signed up early and wanted to be supportive and got good deals on their missions,” she said. “We are in a phase now where we need to launch on time and make launching Dragons more efficient.”

正如肖特维尔所说，SpaceX公司的最主要目标，就是尽可能提高发射频率。公司从来不指望一次发射大赚一笔。它宁愿每一次发射只赚一点并通过多次发射形成良性循环。“猎鹰9号”的飞行成本为6 000万美元，公司希望通过规模效益和改进发射技术将这一数字降至约20万美元。SpaceX总共花费了25亿美元将4个“龙”飞船送到了国际空间站，执行了9次“猎鹰9号”和5次“猎鹰1号”的发射任务。每次发射的价格是同行业中其他公司所无法理解的，更是难以企及的。“我不知道同行是怎么花钱的，”肖特维尔说，“他们在烧钱。我真的一无所知。”正如肖特维尔所见，一些新兴国家对于火箭发射兴趣盎然，他们视这些通信技术为重要产业，一方面为了发展经济，另一方面也为了跟发达国家比肩。低廉的发射价格吸引了这些新客户群，为SpaceX贡献了大部分新业务。此外，SpaceX还希望参与到载人飞行这一正在扩张的市场当中。SpaceX对于诸如维珍银河和航天公司XCOR所做的5分钟低地轨道太空旅行这类业务向来毫无兴趣。然而，它的确有能力把研究人员送到轨道上由毕格罗宇航公司^{( Bigelow Aerospace)}在那里建造的栖息地和不同国家建造的轨道科学实验室。SpaceX也开始建造自己的卫星，既有像硅谷的创业公司所建造的那种小型卫星，也有一些企业和政府需要的大型卫星。这些服务正将SpaceX打造成一站式的太空商店。所有这些计划取决于SpaceX能否证明自己每月按计划飞行的能力，并完成50亿美元的发射订单。“我们的大多数客户很早前就签约了，他们希望得到足够的支持并且能够拿到更好的价格，”她说，“我们正处在这样一个阶段，我们需要按时发射，并且让发射‘龙’飞船的效率更优。”

For a short while, the conversation with the interns bogged down. It turned to some of the annoyances of SpaceX's campus. The company leases its facility and has not been able to build things like a massive parking structure that would make life easier for its three-thousand-person workforce. Shotwell promised that more parking, more bathrooms, and more of the freebies that technology start-ups in Silicon Valley offer their employees would be on the way. “I want a day care,” she said.

有一段时间，肖特维尔与实习生的谈话陷入了僵局，由于公司的设施都是租赁的，还没有能力建设诸如巨型停车场之类的可以为3 000位员工带来便利的设施。肖特维尔承诺将会提供更多的停车位、更多的卫生间和更多的像硅谷科技创业公司所提供的那些免费赠品。“我想要一个托儿所。”她说。

But it was while discussing SpaceX's grandest missions that Shotwell really came into her own and seemed to inspire the interns. Some of them clearly dreamed of becoming astronauts, and Shotwell said that working at SpaceX was almost certainly their best chance to get to space now that NASA's astronaut corps had dwindled. Musk had made designing cool-looking, “non–Stay Puft” spacesuits a personal priority. “They can't be clunky and nasty,” Shotwell said. “You have to do better than that.” As for where the astronauts would go: well, there were the space habitats, the moon, and, of course, Mars as options. SpaceX has already started testing a giant rocket, called the Falcon Heavy, that will take it much farther into space than the Falcon 9, and it has another, even larger spaceship on the way. “Our Falcon Heavy rocket will not take a busload of people to Mars,” she said. “So, there's something after Heavy. We're working on it.” To make something like that vehicle happen, she said, the SpaceX employees needed to be effective and pushy. “Make sure your output is high,” Shotwell said.

只有当讨论到SpaceX的宏伟愿景时，肖特维尔才能慢慢进入状态，并激发起实习生们的热情。他们中的一些人明确表明自己想成为宇航员，肖特维尔说，在SpaceX工作是进入太空的最好机会，而NASA的宇航员队伍正在减员。马斯克的重要目标之一，就是设计出拥有酷炫外观，看上去不再像“棉花糖宝宝”的宇航服。“宇航服不能笨重丑陋，”肖特维尔说，“你必须做得更好。”至于宇航员们想去的地方，则有空间站、月球，当然还有火星等。SpaceX已经开始测试一种名为“猎鹰重型”^{(Falcon Heavy )}的巨型火箭，它的射程比“猎鹰9号”更远，并且还有另一艘更大的太空仓正在建造中。“我们的猎鹰重型火箭无法把整辆巴士上的乘客都送上火星，”她说，“所以在‘猎鹰重型’之后，还会有别的新产品，我们正在努力中。”为了研制出这样的火箭，SpaceX的员工需要有效率并富有进取心。肖特维尔说，“确保你的产出是高水平的，扫清你前进路上的一切障碍。”

“If we're throwing a bunch of shit in your way, you need to be mouthy about it. That's not a quality that's widely accepted elsewhere, but it is at SpaceX.” And, if that sounded harsh, so be it. As Shotwell saw it, the commercial space race was coming down to SpaceX and China and that's it. And in the bigger picture, the race was on to ensure man's survival. “If you hate people and think human extinction is okay, then fuck it,” Shotwell said. “Don't go to space. If you think it is worth humans doing some risk management and finding a second place to go live, then you should be focused on this issue and willing to spend some money. I am pretty sure we will be selected by NASA to drop landers and rovers off on Mars. Then the first SpaceX mission will be to drop off a bunch of supplies, so that once people get there, there will be places to live and food to eat and stuff for them to do.”

“如果我们在你前进的道路上堆满了屎，你就必须把屎给吃了！这种方式不被其他地方广泛接受，但这里是SpaceX。”这些或许听起来刺耳，但你必须接受。就如肖特维尔所见，商业太空竞赛已经变成了SpaceX和中国之间的你争我夺，从大局上来说，这场竞赛关系到了人类的生死存亡。“如果你憎恨人类并认为人类理应灭亡，那算了，”肖特维尔说，“别去太空了。如果你认为人类值得冒险去寻找第二块生存之地，你就必须专注在这个领域并愿意投资。我敢肯定，NASA会选定由我们将着陆器和探测器投放到火星。那么SpaceX的第一项火星任务将会是投放一大批物资，一旦人们到达那里，就可以解决他们的日常所需。”

It's talk like this that thrills and amazes people in the aerospace industry, who have long been hoping that some company would come along and truly revolutionize space travel. Aeronautics experts will point out that twenty years after the Wright brothers started their experiments, air travel had become routine. The launch business, by contrast, appears to have frozen. We've been to the moon, sent research vehicles to Mars, and explored the solar system, but all of these things are still immensely expensive one-off projects. “The cost remains extraordinarily high because of the rocket equation,” said Carol Stoker, the planetary scientist at NASA. Thanks to military and government contracts from agencies like NASA, the aerospace industry has historically had massive budgets to work with and tried to make the biggest, most reliable machines it could. The business has been tuned to strive for maximum performance, so that the aerospace contractors can say they met their requirements. That strategy makes sense if you're trying to send up a $1 billion military satellite for the U.S. government and simply cannot afford for the payload to blow up. But on the whole, this approach stifles the pursuit of other endeavors. It leads to bloat and excess and a crippling of the commercial space industry.

长久以来，在航天领域里一直有人希望有公司能够取得成功，可以给太空旅行带来真正革命性的进展，而这样的对话让这类人激动不已。航空专家们指出，莱特兄弟开始飞行试验后的20年，航空旅行已经成为常态；而相比之下，火箭发射出现后的20年，这个领域却似乎陷入了停滞。我们虽然去过月球，将探测车送入火星，并探索了太阳系，但所有这一切都还是造价高昂的一次性项目。美国航空航天局的行星科学家卡罗尔·斯托克说，“在现有的火箭方程式之下，太空探索的成本依然非常高昂。”多亏了那些来自军方和NASA等政府部门的合同，航天工业一直拥有大量预算，可以继续努力，尽其所能建造值得信赖的机器。航天承办商们为了达到要求，只能努力让机器的性能最优化。这一战略有它的道理，因为如果你为美国政府发射价值10亿美元的军事卫星，无论如何你也负不起卫星炸毁的责任。但总体来说，这种方式不仅压抑了其他方面的追求，也导致了组织机构臃肿和过度支出，并令商用航天工业一蹶不振。

Outside of SpaceX, the American launch providers are no longer competitive against their peers in other countries. They have limited launch abilities and questionable ambition. SpaceX's main competitor for domestic military satellites and other large payloads is United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture formed in 2006 when Boeing and Lockheed Martin combined forces. The thinking at the time about the union was that the government did not have enough business for two companies and that combining the research and manufacturing work of Boeing and Lockheed would result in cheaper, safer launches. ULA has leaned on decades of work around the Delta (Boeing) and Atlas (Lockheed) launch vehicles and has flown many dozens of rockets successfully, making it a model of reliability. But neither the joint venture nor Boeing nor Lockheed, both of which can offer commercial services on their own, come close to competing on price against SpaceX, the Russians, or the Chinese. “For the most part, the global commercial market is dominated by Arianespace [Europe], Long March [China] or Russian vehicles,” said Dave Bearden, the general manager of civil and commercial programs at the Aerospace Corporation. “There are just different labor rates and differences in the way they are built.”

除SpaceX之外，美国其他火箭发射供应商在其他国家的同行面前不再具有竞争力。他们只有有限的发射能力和值得怀疑的雄心壮志。SpaceX在美国国内军用卫星和其他大型载荷领域的主要竞争者是联合发射联盟^(ULA)，它成立于2006年，是波音公司和和洛克希德·马丁公司的合资企业。当时这个强强联合的设想是由于政府不能提供足够的业务支持，而波音和和洛克希德·马丁在研究和制造方面的合作可以降低发射成本并提高安全性。ULA在过去几十年倚赖波音的“三角洲”^{(Delta )}和洛克希德的“宇宙神”^(Atlas)运载火箭，并成功发射了数十枚火箭，形成了可靠的模式。但无论是合资公司，还是具有提供商用服务能力的波音或者洛克希德公司，在价格上都无法与SpaceX、俄罗斯和中国竞争。“在大多数情况下，全球商业市场由欧洲的阿丽亚娜航天公司、中国的长征公司^{(Long March)}及俄罗斯的运载火箭所垄断，”航空航天公司民用和商业项目总经理戴夫·比尔登^{(Dave Bearden)}说，“它们之间的差别只是劳动力价格和建造方式不同。”

To put things more bluntly, ULA has turned into an embarrassment for the United States. In March 2014, ULA's then CEO, Michael Gass, faced off against Musk during a congressional hearing that dealt, in part, with SpaceX's request to take on more of the government's annual launch load. A series of slides were rolled out that showed how the government payments for launches have skyrocketed since Boeing and Lockheed went from a duopoly to a monopoly. According to Musk's math presented at the hearing, ULA charged $380 million per flight, while SpaceX would charge $90 million per flight. (The $90 million figure was higher than SpaceX's standard $60 million because the government has certain additional requirements for particularly sensitive launches.) By simply picking SpaceX as its launch provider, Musk pointed out, the government would save enough money to pay for the satellite going on the rocket. Gass had no real retort. He claimed Musk's figures for the ULA launch price were inaccurate but failed to provide a figure of his own. The hearing also came as tensions between the United States and Russia were running high due to Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine. Musk rightly noted that the United States could soon be placing sanctions on Russia that could carry over to aerospace equipment. ULA, as it happens, relies on Russian-made engines to send up sensitive U.S. military equipment in its Atlas V rockets. “Our Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles are truly American,” Musk said. “We design and manufacture our rockets in California and Texas.” Gass countered that ULA had bought a two-year supply of Russian engines and purchased the blueprints to the machines and had them translated from Russian to English, and he said this with a straight face. (A few months after the hearing, ULA replaced Gass as CEO and signed a deal with Blue Origin to develop American-made rockets.)

说得更直白些，ULA已经把美国推向了一个尴尬的境地。在2014年3月，ULA当时的首席执行官迈克尔·盖斯^{(Michael Gaiss)}与马斯克在国会听证会上对峙。当时SpaceX要求在某种程度上承接更多的政府订单。一组幻灯片展示了波音公司和洛克希德从双寡头变成独家垄断后，导致了政府支出飞涨。根据马斯克在听证会上展示的数字，ULA为每次发射收取3.8亿美元，相比之下SpaceX只收取9 000万美元。^{(这9 000万美元高于SpaceX 6 000万美元的标准发射价格，这是因为政府有一些基于敏感性的额外要求。)}马斯克指出，如果挑选SpaceX作为发射供应商，政府省下的钱足够支付火箭运载的卫星成本。盖斯并没有真正反驳，他声称马斯克关于发射价格的数据是不准确的，但他拒绝提供自己的数据。当时由于美俄关系持续紧张，听证会正是在这一背景下召开的。马斯克恰逢其时地指出，美国很快就可以对俄罗斯进行制裁，此举有可能涉及航天设备。而ULA在当时条件下，却依赖装备了俄制火箭引擎的“宇宙神5号”火箭将敏感的美国军事装备送入太空。“我们的‘猎鹰9号’和‘猎鹰重型’运载火箭是真正的‘美国制造’，”马斯克说，“我们在加州和得州设计和制造我们的火箭。”盖斯反驳说，ULA已经买下了俄罗斯火箭引擎的两年供应权，并购买了该引擎的设计图，还把它从俄文翻译成了英文。盖斯说此话时面无表情。^{(听证会之后几个月，ULA另寻他人接替了盖斯的CEO职位，并和蓝色起源签署协议研发美国制造的火箭。)}

Some of the most disheartening moments of the hearing arrived when Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama took the microphone for questioning. ULA has manufacturing facilities in Alabama and close ties to the senator. Shelby felt compelled to play the role of hometown booster by repeatedly pointing out that ULA had enjoyed sixty-eight successful launches and then asking Musk what he made of that accomplishment. The aerospace industry stands as one of Shelby's biggest donors and he's ended up surprisingly pro-bureaucracy and anticompetition when it comes to getting things into space. “Typically competition results in better quality and lower-priced contracts—but the launch market is not typical,” Shelby said. “It is limited demand framed by government-industrial policies.” The March hearing in which Shelby made these statements would turn out to be something of a sham. The government had agreed to put fourteen of its sensitive launches up for bid instead of just awarding them directly to ULA. Musk had come to Congress to present his case for why SpaceX made sense as a viable candidate for those and other launches. The day after the hearing, the air force cut the number of launches up for bid from fourteen to between seven and one. One month later, SpaceX filed a lawsuit against the air force asking for a chance to earn its launch business. “SpaceX is not seeking to be awarded contracts for these launches,” the company said on its freedomtolaunch.com website. “We are simply seeking the right to compete.”*

这场听证会最令人沮丧的时刻，出现在亚拉巴马州参议员理查德·谢尔比^{(Richard Shelby)}拿起麦克风进行询问的时候。ULA在亚拉巴马州建有生产基地，并同这个参议员有着密切的关系。谢尔比不得已扮演起家乡企业拯救者的角色，反复强调ULA进行过的68次成功发射，并询问马斯克如何看待这些成就。航天业是谢尔比最大的资助者之一，所以当谈论到太空发射时，谢尔比倾向于支持官僚主义并反对竞争，这令人非常惊讶。“通常情况下，竞争会带来品质更好、价格更低的合同——但火箭发射市场却比较特殊，”谢尔比说，“这是政府和产业政策所造就的有限需求。”这场三月听证会差点变成了走过场。政府本来已经同意了对14次敏感的发射任务进行招标，而不再直接交付给ULA；马斯克也已经在国会陈述自己的立场，说明SpaceX作为完成这些任务和其他发射任务的候选者是切实可行的。但听证会之后的第二天，空军就把原本用来竞标的14次发射改为1~7次。一个月后，SpaceX对空军提起诉讼，要求获得发射业务的机会。公司在自由发射^{(freedomtolaunch.com)}网站上写道：“我们只是在追寻公平竞争的权利。”^[7]

SpaceX's main competitor for ISS resupply missions and commercial satellites in the United States is Orbital Sciences Corporation. Founded in Virginia in 1982, the company started out not unlike SpaceX, as the new kid that raised outside funding and focused on putting smaller satellites into low-Earth orbit. Orbital is more experienced, although it has a limited roster of machine types. Orbital depends on suppliers, including Russian and Ukrainian companies, for its engines and rocket bodies, making it more of an assembler of spacecraft than a true builder like SpaceX. And, also unlike SpaceX, Orbital's capsules cannot withstand the journey back from the ISS to Earth, so it's unable to return experiments and other goods. In October 2014, one of Orbital's rockets blew up on the launchpad. With its ability to launch on hold while it investigated the incident, Orbital reached out to SpaceX for help. It wanted to see if Musk had any extra capacity to take care of some of Orbital's customers. The company also signaled that it would move away from using Russian engines as well.

在为国际空间站进行补给和发射商业卫星方面，SpaceX的主要竞争对手是轨道科学公司^{(Orbital Sciences Corp.)}。这家1982年成立于弗吉尼亚州的公司，起步和SpaceX并没有什么不同，都是通过外部募集资金，并专注于将小型卫星送入低地轨道。尽管机器类型有限，轨道科学公司的经验却更胜一筹。但轨道科学公司在火箭引擎和火箭箭体上，依赖于俄罗斯和乌克兰的供应商，这使得它更像一个航天器的组装公司，而不是SpaceX那样的真正的制造商。除此之外，轨道科学公司的太空舱没法像SpaceX那样经受从国际空间站返回地球的旅程，所以它无法将实验设备和其他物品带回来。2014年10月，轨道科学公司的一枚火箭在发射台上爆炸。由于调查期间发射搁置，轨道科学公司找到SpaceX寻求帮助，想看看马斯克是否有额外的能力为轨道科学公司的客户提供服务。轨道科学公司也表示，以后也将逐步弃用俄罗斯制造的火箭引擎。

As for getting humans to space, SpaceX and Boeing were the victors in a four-year NASA competition to fly astronauts to the ISS. SpaceX will get $2.6 billion, and Boeing will get $4.2 billion to develop their capsules and ferry people to the ISS by 2017. The companies would, in effect, be replacing the space shuttle and restoring the United States' ability to conduct manned flights. “I actually don't mind that Boeing gets twice as much money for meeting the same NASA requirements as SpaceX with worse technology,” Musk said. “Having two companies involved is better for the advancement of human spaceflight.”

在载人航天领域，在NASA一场长达4年的将宇航员送入国际空间站的竞标中，SpaceX和波音双双获胜，两家公司将共同承担为NASA将宇航员送上国际空间站的任务。SpaceX获得了26亿美元，波音获得了42亿美元，用来在2017年之前开发自己的太空舱，并将人类送入国际空间站。这两家公司实际上取代了过去的航天飞机，并恢复美国在载人航天领域的能力。“我其实并不介意波音用更差的技术获得两倍于我们的资金，并以此满足NASA对于SpaceX的相同要求，”马斯克说，“让两家企业参与进来会令载人航天技术发展得更好。”

SpaceX had once looked like it too would be a one-trick pony. The company's original plans were to have the smallish Falcon 1 function as its primary workhorse. At $6 million to $12 million per flight, the Falcon 1 was by far the cheapest means of getting something into orbit, thrilling people in the space industry. When Google announced its Lunar X Prize in 2007—$30 million in awards to people who could land a robot on the moon—many of the proposals that followed selected the Falcon 1 as their preferred launch vehicle because it seemed like the only reasonably priced option for getting something to the moon. Scientists around the world were equally excited, thinking that for the first time they had a means of placing experiments into orbit in a cost-effective way. But for all the enthusiastic talk about the Falcon 1, the demand never arrived. “It became very clear that there was a huge need for the Falcon 1 but no money for it,” said Shotwell. “The market has to be able to sustain a certain amount of vehicles, and three Falcon 1s per year does not make a business.” The last Falcon 1 launch took place in July 2009 from Kwajalein, when SpaceX carried a satellite into orbit for the Malaysian government. People in the aerospace industry have been grumbling ever since. “We gave Falcon 1 a hell of a shot,” Shotwell said. “I was emotional about it and disappointed. I'd anticipated a flood of orders but, after eight years, they just did not come.”

SpaceX这家专精航天领域的企业曾一度让人觉得只会昙花一现。公司原来是以体型较小的“猎鹰1号”作为主力军。“猎鹰1号”的平均发射成本为600万~1 200万美元，价格远低于其他将物品送入太空的运载工具，这让许多业内人士为之兴奋不已。2007年Google公布了它的月球探索大奖^{(LunarX Prize)}，为能够把机器送上月球的人提供3 000美元资金，当时许多提交方案的科学家都不约而同地选择“猎鹰1号”作为首选发射载体，因为从控制发射成本的角度来看，这似乎是将机器送入太空的唯一合理选择。世界上的许多科学家都对这个项目投注了极大的热情，认为终于有一种经济实惠的方法可以将实验设备送入轨道了。然而，业界对于“猎鹰1号”的热切关注且没有转化成实际的订单。肖特维尔说：“问题的本质一目了然，‘猎鹰1号’虽然需求巨大，但资金短缺导致购买力不足。而每年仅仅3台的销量不足以让我们持续生产‘猎鹰1号’。”2009年7月，“猎鹰1号”的最近一次发射是在夸贾林，当时SpaceX受马来西亚政府委托发射轨道卫星。自此以来，航天业内议论纷纷。肖特维尔说：“我们对‘猎鹰1号’满怀期待，对于这个结果，我们感到既激动又失望。我曾期盼着大批订单汹涌而至，但8年过去了，这个梦想一直没有实现。”

SpaceX has since expanded its launch capabilities at a remarkable pace and looks like it might be on the verge of getting that $12 million per flight option back. In June 2010, the Falcon 9 flew for the first time and orbited Earth successfully. In December 2010, SpaceX proved that the Falcon 9 could carry the Dragon capsule into space and that the capsule could be recovered safely after an ocean landing.* It became the first commercial company ever to pull off this feat. Then, in May 2012, SpaceX went through the most significant moment in the company's history since that first successful launch on Kwajalein.

此后，SpaceX快速地拓展了发射能力，并眼看有希望重新提供价值1 200万美元的发射服务。2010年6月，“猎鹰9号”成功发射并顺利环绕地球运转。2010年12月，SpaceX成功证明“猎鹰9号”能够运载“龙”飞船进入太空，并能成功回收降落至海面的太空舱。^[8]SpaceX成为第一家完成这一壮举的商业公司。随即在2012年5月，SpaceX经历了其历史上自夸贾林首次发射成功以来的重要时刻。

On May 22, at 3:44 A.M., a Falcon 9 rocket took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket did its yeoman-like work boosting Dragon into space. Then the capsule's solar panels fanned out and Dragon became dependent on its eighteen Draco thrusters, or small rocket engines, to guide its path to the International Space Station. The SpaceX engineers worked in shifts—some of them sleeping on cots at the factory—as it took the capsule three days for Dragon to make its journey. They spent most of the time observing Dragon's flight and checking to see that its sensor systems were picking up the ISS. Originally, Dragon planned to dock with the ISS around 4 A.M. on the twenty-fifth, but as the capsule approached the space station, an unexpected glint kept throwing off the calculations of a laser used to measure the distance between Dragon and the ISS. “I remember it being two and a half hours of struggle,” Shotwell said. Her outfit of Uggs, a fishnet sweater, and leggings started to feel like pajamas as the night wore on, and the engineers battled this unplanned difficulty.

5月22日凌晨3时44分，一架“猎鹰9号”火箭在佛罗里达州卡纳维拉尔角的肯尼迪航天中心发射升空。火箭义无反顾地把“龙”飞船推向太空，直到太空舱脱离。太空舱展开太阳能发电板，依靠着自带的18枚德拉科推进器^{(小型火箭引擎)}继续往国际空间站进发，整个过程需要3天时间，SpaceX的工程师们在此期间夜以继日地轮番工作，有的甚至睡在公司的折叠床上。他们大部分时间都在监控“龙”飞船的飞行状态，及其感应器是否能够探测到国际空间站。按照原定计划，“龙”飞船将在25日凌晨4时停泊在国际空间站，但当太空舱靠近空间站的时候，意想不到的闪光持续干扰着激光探测器，使太空舱与空间站之间的距离测算有误差。肖特维尔说：“我记得我们折腾了将近两个半小时。”工程师们紧张地处理这突如其来的故障，而夜色渐深，肖特维尔身上的UGG雪地靴、渔网毛衣和紧身裤已经被她穿出了睡衣的困顿感。

Fearing all the time that the mission would be aborted, SpaceX decided to upload some new software to the Dragon that would cut the size of the visual frame used by the sensors to eliminate the effect of the sunlight on the machine. Then, just before 7 A.M., Dragon got close enough to the ISS for Don Pettit, an astronaut, to use a fifty-eight-foot robotic arm to reach out and grab the resupply capsule. “Houston, Station, it looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail,” Pettit said.

SpaceX公司内部顿时被恐惧所笼罩，大家都害怕这次任务就此宣告失败，情急之下，工程师们不得不改变策略，决定向“龙”飞船上传新的软件，减少视觉传感器使用的帧数，以此来消除太阳光对机器的影响。大约早上7点，“龙”飞船终于足够靠近国际空间站，宇航员唐·佩蒂特用58英尺长的机械臂抓到了应急补给舱。佩蒂特说道，“报告总部，这里是国际空间站，我们好像抓到‘龙’的尾巴了。”

“I'd been digesting my guts,” Shotwell said. “And then I am drinking champagne at six in the morning.” About thirty people were in the control room when the docking happened. Over the next couple of hours, workers streamed into the SpaceX factory to soak up the elation of the moment. SpaceX had set another first, as the only private company to dock with the ISS. A couple of months later SpaceX received $440 million from NASA to keep developing Dragon so that it could transport people. “Elon is changing the way aerospace business is done,” said NASA's Stoker. “He's managed to keep the safety factor up while cutting costs. He's just taken the best things from the tech industry like the open-floor office plans and having everyone talking and all this human interaction. It's a very different way to most of the aerospace industry, which is designed to produce requirements documents and project reviews.”

肖特维尔说：“整夜我都提心吊胆，早上六点喝了香槟。”“龙”飞船停靠在空间站的时候，控制室里大约有30名员工。之后的几个小时，工作人员鱼贯涌入分享这令人喜悦万分的成就。SpaceX又完成了一个史无前例的壮举，成为第一个完成国际空间站对接的私有企业。几个月后，SpaceX收到了来自NASA的4.4亿美元拨款，用于将“龙”飞船打造成载人航天器。美国宇航员斯托克说：“埃隆在改变整个宇航业的商业运作模式，在保证安全性的同时降低成本。他把科技产业的优势都集中在一起了，比如开放的办公空间、畅通的沟通互动模式，而传统宇航界的做法与之截然相反，整个运作机制仿佛是为了拟定繁复的条文和审查手续而存在。”

In May 2014, Musk invited the press to SpaceX's headquarters to demonstrate what some of that NASA money had bought. He unveiled the Dragon V2, or version two, spacecraft. Unlike most executives, who like to show their products off at trade shows or daytime events, Musk prefers to hold true Hollywood-style galas in the evenings. People arrived in Hawthorne by the hundreds and snacked on hors d'oeuvres until the 7:30 P.M. showing. Musk appeared wearing a purplish velvet jacket and popping open the capsule's door with a bump of his fist like the Fonz. What he revealed was spectacular. The cramped quarters of past capsules were gone. There were seven thin, sturdy, contoured seats arranged with four seats close to the main console and a row of three seats in the back. Musk walked around in the capsule to show how roomy it was and then plopped down in the central captain's chair. He reached up and unlocked a four-paneled flat-screen console that gracefully slid down right in front of the first row of seats.* In the middle of the console was a joystick for flying the aircraft and some physical buttons for essential functions that astronauts could press in case of an emergency or a malfunctioning touch-screen. The inside of the capsule had a bright, metallic finish. Someone had finally built a spaceship worthy of scientist and moviemaker dreams.

2014年5月，马斯克邀请媒体到SpaceX的总部，展示他们利用NASA的资金获得的成果。在媒体大会上，他揭开了第二代“龙”飞船^{(Dragon V2)}的面纱。和大多数高层领导不一样的是，马斯克不太喜欢展会或者白天活动，他更倾向于精心策划好莱坞式的夜间酒会并在其间发布新品。成百上千的宾客汇聚在霍桑总部享用酒食，一直到晚上七点半展会开始。马斯克穿着紫色天鹅绒夹克登场，像方兹^{(Fonz，20世纪80年代美国著名情景剧里的人物)}那样用拳头敲开舱门，而舱门里面的东西令人叹为观止。以前那个狭窄的舱室结构消失了，取而代之的是7把纤细、稳固、线条流畅的座椅，其中4把靠近主控制台，另外3把位于后面一排。马斯克在舱内四处走动，向人们展示了宽敞的空间，并坐在中间机长的座位上。他伸手去按解锁键，由4块屏幕组成的主控制台优雅地徐徐落下，刚好位于前排座位的正前方。^[9]控制台的正中央有飞行控制手柄，还有几个紧急情况下使用的重要实体按钮，供触屏发生故障时使用。太空舱的内部材质明亮且带有金属感。时隔多年，终于诞生了一款符合科学家和科幻电影工作者梦想的航天器。

There was substance to go with the style. The Dragon 2 will be able to dock with the ISS and other space habitats automatically without needing the intervention of a robotic arm. It will run on a SuperDraco engine—a thruster made by SpaceX and the first engine ever built completely by a 3-D printer to go into space. This means that a machine guided by a computer formed the engine out of single piece of metal—in this case the high-strength alloy Inconel—so that its strength and performance should exceed anything built by humans by welding various parts together. And most mind-boggling of all, Musk revealed that the Dragon 2 will be able to land anywhere on Earth that SpaceX wants by using the SuperDraco engines and thrusters to come to a gentle stop on the ground. No more landings at sea. No more throwing spaceships away. “That is how a twenty-first-century spaceship should land,” Musk said. “You can just reload propellant and fly again. So long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space.”

第二代“龙”飞船可称得上真正的内外兼修，它可以自动停靠在国际空间站或其他太空栖息地，不再依赖机械臂，同时第二代“龙”飞船还使用超级德拉科引擎。这是有史以来第一个完全采用3D打印技术制造出来的航天引擎，因为是由计算机控制的器械使用高强度镍铬铁合金直接打印而成的，不需要经过人工焊接，所以其强度和性能均达到了前所未有的水平。然而，马斯克披露的信息当中最令人不可思议的是，利用超级德科拉引擎和推进器，第二代“龙”飞船能够温和地降落在计算机设定好的任何地方，从此不再需要降落在海面上，不再有废弃的太空船。马斯克说，“这是21世纪太空舱应有的着陆方式。你可以再次注满火箭推进剂，再次起飞。如果我们不改变现有的抛弃火箭和太空舱的方式，我们就不可能在太空探索中有新突破。”

The Dragon 2 is just one of the machines that SpaceX continues to develop in parallel. One of the company's next milestones will be the first flight of the Falcon Heavy, which is designed to be the world's most powerful rocket.* SpaceX has found a way to combine three Falcon 9s into a single craft with 27 of the Merlin engines and the ability to carry more than 53 metric tons of stuff into orbit. Part of the genius of Musk and Mueller's designs is that SpaceX can reuse the same engine in different configurations—from the Falcon 1 up to the Falcon Heavy—saving on cost and time. “We make our main combustion chambers, turbo pump, gas generators, injectors, and main valves,” Mueller said. “We have complete control. We have our own test site, while most of the other guys use government test sites. The labor hours are cut in half and so is the work around the materials. Four years ago, we could make two rockets a year and now we can make twenty a year.” SpaceX boasts that the Falcon Heavy can take up twice the payload of the nearest competitor—the Delta IV Heavy from Boeing/ULA—at one-third the cost. SpaceX is also busy building a spaceport from the ground up. The goal is to be able to launch many rockets an hour from this facility located in Brownsville, Texas, by automating the processes needed to stand a rocket up on the pad, fuel it, and send it off.

第二代“龙”飞船不过是SpaceX生产线上同时研发的诸多产品之一，另外正在研发的具有里程碑意义的产品是猎鹰重型火箭，从设计角度来说，它将成为世界上最强大的火箭。^[10]SpaceX已经找到了将3枚“猎鹰9号”火箭组合成一枚火箭的方法，组合后的新火箭拥有27台梅林引擎，能把超过53吨重的物品送入轨道。马斯克和米勒的设计有一个巧妙之处：从“猎鹰1号”到猎鹰重型火箭，所有型号都可以使用相同的引擎，从而节省成本和时间。米勒说，“我们自主生产燃油缸、涡轮泵、气体发生器、喷射器和主阀门，我们对成品有绝对的控制权。我们还有自己的实验基地，而绝大多数竞争对手使用的是政府的实验基地，因而我们的工时减少了一半，与生产材料相关的工作也少了一半。4年前，我们一年能制造两枚火箭，现在我们一年能制造20枚。”SpaceX表示，重型猎鹰的载重量是同类竞品波音/ULA的重型德尔塔4号载重量的两倍，然而造价仅是后者的1/3。SpaceX同时还忙于在得克萨斯州布朗斯维尔建设一个全新的航天发射场，旨在通过自动化管理——完成火箭就位、加注燃料和发射升空，使每个小时内发射的火箭数量更多。

Just as it did in the early days, SpaceX continues to experiment with these new vehicles during actual launches in ways that other companies would dare not do. SpaceX will often announce that it's trying out a new engine or its landing legs and place the emphasis on that one upgrade in the marketing material leading up to a launch. It's common, though, for SpaceX to test out a dozen other objectives in secret during a mission. Musk essentially asks employees to do the impossible on top of the impossible. One former SpaceX executive described the working atmosphere as a perpetual-motion machine that runs on a weird mix of dissatisfaction and eternal hope. “It's like he has everyone working on this car that is meant to get from Los Angeles to New York on one tank of gas,” this executive said. “They will work on the car for a year and test all of its parts. Then, when they set off for New York after that year, all of the vice presidents think privately that the car will be lucky to get to Las Vegas. What ends up happening is that the car gets to New Mexico—twice as far as they ever expected—and Elon is still mad. He gets twice as much as anyone else out of people.”

SpaceX一如既往地通过实际发射来对新的产品进行各种试验，这让同行望而生畏。它常常会宣布采用新的引擎或者是着陆脚架，并在发射前的预热宣传中就这些升级大作文章。当然，SpaceX并不是事无巨细地全部公之于众，它也常常在发射任务过程中秘密进行个别实验。马斯克基本上是要求员工在完成不可能的任务之外，还要达到不可能实现的目标。一位SpaceX的前高管用“永动机”来描述当时的工作氛围，这台永动机依靠“永不满足”与“永恒希望”结合在一起时所产生的动能来运转。“这就好比马斯克要求大家用一年时间造出一辆车，只用一缸油能从洛杉矶开到纽约。一年之后，准备将车开往纽约进行测试的时候，所有人都觉得这辆车最多只能开到拉斯维加斯，但最后却开到了新墨西哥州，比人们的预期距离多了一倍，尽管如此，马斯克仍然会大发雷霆。不论与谁相比，他都会让员工取得两倍于别人的业绩。”

There's a degree to which it's just never enough for Musk, no matter what it is. Case in point: the December 2010 launch in which SpaceX got the Dragon capsule to orbit Earth and return successfully. This had been one of the company's great achievements, and people had worked tirelessly for months, if not years. The launch had taken place on December 8, and SpaceX had a Christmas party on December 16. About ninety minutes before the party started, Musk had called his top executives to SpaceX for a meeting. Six of them, including Mueller, were decked out in party attire and ready to celebrate the holidays and SpaceX's historic achievement around Dragon. Musk laid into them for about an hour because the truss structure for a future rocket was running behind schedule. “Their wives were sitting three cubes over waiting for the berating to end,” Brogan said. Other examples of similar behavior have cropped up from time to time. Musk, for example, rewarded a group of thirty employees who had pulled off a tough project for NASA with bonuses that consisted of additional stock option grants. Many of the employees, seeking instant, more tangible gratification, demanded cash. “He chided us for not valuing the stock,” Drew Eldeen, a former engineer, said. “He said, ‘In the long run, this is worth a lot more than a thousand dollars in cash.' He wasn't screaming or anything like that, but he seemed disappointed in us. It was hard to hear that.”

从某种程度上来说，马斯克对凡事都有极高的期待值。2010年12月8日的那次发射就是一个最好的证明。那天，“龙”飞船成功发射，绕地球一周并安全返回，这可谓SpaceX历史上最为光彩的成就之一，许多人为之倾注了诸多时间和心血。12月16日，SpaceX总部举行圣诞派对，在派对开始前90分钟，马斯克把所有高层召集起来开闭门会议。包括米勒在内的6位高管盛装出席，准备庆祝圣诞节以及“龙”飞船大获成功。但在这样的时刻，马斯克却为一枚新型火箭的桁架结构延误进度而大动肝火，训斥了他们足足一个小时。布罗根说：“他们的妻子都坐在隔了三个办公隔间的地方，等着马斯克训完他们。”类似的例子在日常工作中不时出现。有一次，有30名员工在一个难度极大的NASA项目上做出了特殊贡献，马斯克拿出额外的股票期权奖励他们。许多员工为了寻求眼前的现实利益，要求换成现金奖励。前工程师德鲁·伊勒丁^{(Drew Eldeen)}说：“他训斥我们没有意识到SpaceX股票的价值。他说，‘假以时日，这些股票的价值比一千美元现金要高得多！’他并没有向我们大吼大叫，但他明显对我们感到失望了，听到他说那番话真的很不好受。”

The lingering question for many SpaceX employees is when exactly they will see a big reward for all their work. SpaceX's staff is paid well but by no means exorbitantly. Many of them expect to make their money when SpaceX files for an initial public offering. The thing is that Musk does not want to go public anytime soon, and understandably so. It's a bit hard to explain the whole Mars thing to investors, when it's unclear what the business model around starting a colony on another planet will be. When the employees heard Musk say that an IPO was years away and would not occur until the Mars mission looked more secure, they started to grumble, and when Musk found out, he addressed all of SpaceX in an e-mail that is a fantastic window into his thinking and how it differs from almost every other CEO's. (The full e-mail appears in Appendix 3.)

对于许多SpaceX员工来说，何时能看到他们真正的劳动回报是一个挥之不去的问题。尽管SpaceX员工薪酬不算低，但也绝对不算很高，他们当中很多人都盼望着公司上市的那一天，这样他们便可以通过出卖股票赚钱。但马斯克并不打算在近期内进行首次公开募股，其原因显而易见。首先，要向投资人讲明白火星计划是件很困难的事情，因为移民火星或其他星球没有现成的商业模式可循。当知道马斯克近期内没有上市的想法，并且在火星计划不明朗的前提下不会考虑上市时，员工们开始抱怨。马斯克意识到这些负面情绪，便给全公司的员工写了一封邮件，阐述了他这么做的理由。这封邮件有助于让我们了解他的思维模式，以及与其他CEO相比，他的思维方式有多么异乎寻常^{(全文可见附录3)}。

Going Public

关于上市

Per my recent comments, I am increasingly concerned about SpaceX going public before the Mars transport system is in place. Creating the technology needed to establish life on Mars is and always has been the fundamental goal of SpaceX. If being a public company diminishes that likelihood, then we should not do so until Mars is secure. This is something that I am open to reconsidering, but, given my experiences with Tesla and SolarCity, I am hesitant to foist being public on SpaceX, especially given the long term nature of our mission.

正如我最近的评论，我越来越担心SpaceX在火星运输系统就位之前就上市的问题。SpaceX的根本目标一直是创造在火星生活所需的技术。如果成为一家上市公司会降低创造这种技术的可能性，那么我们在火星计划确定以前不应该上市。上市议题当然是可供讨论的，但根据我在特斯拉和太阳城的经验，特别是鉴于我们长期使命的本质，我在犹豫到底要不要让SpaceX上市。

Some at SpaceX who have not been through a public company experience may think that being public is desirable. This is not so. Public company stocks, particularly if big step changes in technology are involved, go through extreme volatility, both for reasons of internal execution and for reasons that have nothing to do with anything except the economy. This causes people to be distracted by the manic-depressive nature of the stock instead of creating great products.

那些没有上市公司工作经验的员工可能认为，公司上市肯定会带来好处。答案并非如此。尤其是当涉及技术上的巨大变化时，上市公司的股票价格会由于内部运营和外部经济原因而剧烈震荡。这会让人们因为股票价格涨跌而分心，对开发新产品造成影响。

For those who are under the impression that they are so clever that they can outsmart public market investors and would sell SpaceX stock at the “right time,” let me relieve you of any such notion. If you really are better than most hedge fund managers, then there is no need to worry about the value of your SpaceX stock, as you can just invest in other public company stocks and make billions of dollars in the market.

对于那些认为自己比公开市场投资者更聪明，能够在“适当时机”卖掉SpaceX股票的人来说，让我来打消你的这种想法吧。如果你真的比大多数对冲基金经理还要聪明，那么你无须担心你持有的SpaceX股票价值，因为你可以投资其他上市公司的股票，在市场上赚个几十亿美元。

Elon

埃隆

^[1]这里需要说明一下，太空产业有许多人质疑可重复性火箭的可行性，有很大部分是因为机械和金属在发射期间所经受的压力。由于难以克服的风险，我们并不清楚最大的客户是否会考虑发射重复使用的太空船。这是其他国家和企业尚未寻求这项技术的一大理由。有一派太空专家认为，马斯克明显是在浪费时间，工程计算已经证明重复使用的火箭是不能成功的。

^[2]蓝色起源也抢走一大批SpaceX火箭推进系统团队的员工。

^[3]马斯克也对蓝色起源和贝佐斯的可重复使用的火箭技术专利申请提出异议。“他的专利申请根本就是无稽之谈，”马斯克说道，“人们提出使火箭在海上平台着陆的想法已经长达半个世纪，这个专利根本就不成立，因为过去50年，人们以小说和非小说的各种方式提出相同的构想。这就像苏斯博士的《绿色的蛋和该死的火腿》^{[此比喻来自于苏斯博士的同名著作(Green Eggs and Ham)]}，人们用了各种方式提出这个建议。解决问题的方法就是把它做出来，就像实实在在地创造一枚可以实现那个构想的火箭。

^[4]这名助教就是麦克尔·克罗诺^{(Michael Colonno)}。

^[5]根据马斯克的说法：“‘龙’飞船第一个版本的初期作业，只有我和三或四名工程师参与，当时我们资金紧缺，也不知道NASA会不会与我们签署合约，从技术上来说，在那之前已经有‘神奇天龙’号^{(Magic Dragon)}，因为没有NASA的条件要求，所以简单得多。参与神奇天龙号制作的，只有我和英国的一些研究高空气球的家伙。”

^[6]NASA研究“龙”飞船的设计，注意到这艘宇宙飞船的许多功能似乎一开始就是为了登陆火星而设计的。相关人士已经发表了几篇文章，说明NASA赞助“龙”飞船收集火星标本，然后返回地球的任务是可行的。

^[7]空间领域的政治活动可以变得相当令人讨厌。NASA前副局长洛里· 加弗^{(Lori Garver)}花了多年时间争取放开NASA合同的限制，以便让私有企业也可以参与为国际空间站提供补给这类项目的投标。她致力于强化NASA和私人部门之间的联系并获得了胜利，但也付出了一定的代价。“我收到过死亡威胁，收到过假炭疽病毒。”她说道。加弗也遇到过SpaceX的竞争对手，他们试图散布有关SpaceX和马斯克的流言。“他们声称马斯克在南非违反了税法，并且在那里还有个秘密家庭。我说，‘你就编吧。’埃隆、杰夫·贝佐斯和罗伯特·毕格罗具有远见卓识，这种人成为富翁是我们的幸运。只有疯子才会去丑化埃隆。可能他有时说话会惹人不快，但在有些时候，对每个人都和蔼可亲并非明智之举。”

^[8]在这次的飞行中，SpaceX偷偷在“龙”飞船里面放了一大块车轮状的奶酪，正是当年送老鼠上火星计划时期，斯科尔送给马斯克的那一块奶酪。

^[9]马斯克用他独有的方式向我解释了主控制台的外观：“我试着赋予它与Model S类似的外观^{(采用与Model S相同的屏幕，就像将Model S升级成了太空操作系统)}，但是故意裸露的铝格栅使其外观更具异域情调。”

^[10]疯狂的是，NASA正在建造可以登陆火星的下一代巨型飞船，而SpaceX也在独立建造同类型的飞船——重型猎鹰。NASA的项目预算是180亿美元，而政府研究表明，该数字已经相当保守。亿万富翁安德鲁·比尔是一位风险投资人，也曾是商业太空领域的创业者。“NASA的这个项目纯属胡闹，”他这样说道，“整个宇宙飞船系统就是个灾难。他们一无所知。哪个有脑子的人会采用巨大的固体助推器，尤其是安装在必须高度密封的地方？他们很幸运，助推器只遭遇了一次灾难性的失败。”比尔的残酷评论源自他多年来目睹的一切——政府通过贴钱资助宇宙飞船的建造和发射，来与私人太空公司竞争。政府不停资助参与竞争的火箭商，导致他的比尔航空公司退出该领域。“全世界的政府花了数十亿美元试图做埃隆在做的事，而他们都失败了，”他说道，“我们需要政府，但是政府出面和企业展开竞争真是不正常。”