In the words of Elon Musk, most technologies are stacked, and technologies are like permutations and combinations. The more technologies you have in your hands, the more tricks you can play. many.
Elon Musk has been pursuing next-dimensional things, such as new energy vehicles, autonomous driving, recyclable rockets, and even sending humans to Mars.
Taking advantage of this trip to Yanjing to discuss Tesla's future move to China and the cooperation between Tesla and Li Mu's other car brands, Elon Musk dragged Li Mu along after having dinner with him. They had a long chat in his hotel room.
He first introduced the importance of technology stacking to Li Mu, and the topic still started with cars.
He said to Li Mu: "Mr. Li, technology is really interesting. You see, if we install adaptive cruise on a car, we can develop pre-collision based on the radar hardware of adaptive cruise." system."
Li Mu said: "You don't let me go home at night just to popularize car technology to me?"
Musk smiled and said: "Look, I plan to start with automotive technology first."
Li Mu said: "I understand what you mean. Make a light bulb today, make a battery tomorrow, and combine it to become a flashlight. In two days, build a motor, string together more batteries, and it will become an electric car." That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
Musk nodded: "Absolutely..."
Li Mu smiled: "I may not be able to figure out how the battery stores power, but I know how the battery should be used. If you are trying to sneak up on me, you might as well tell me what you want to say."
Musk realized that he had been spotted by Li Mu. He smiled awkwardly and said, "Mr. Li, actually I want to talk to you about space exploration."
"Space exploration?" Li Mu asked curiously: "Where to explore?"
Musk hurriedly said: "Explore other stars, such as Mars."
Li Mu said: "Isn't NASA doing this? They also sent a Mars exploration rover, what else are you going to explore?"
Musk said seriously: "NASA only sent a rover to Mars, but it did not send people to Mars. My goal is to send people to Mars first, and then try to immigrate to Mars."
Li Mu was stunned. I heard about your plan to immigrate to Mars in my previous life, but until I was reborn, I never saw you sending people to Mars...
So Li Mu asked him: "How do you plan to accomplish this?"
Musk said: “Of course, relying on SpaceX, our current research direction is mainly on reusable launch vehicles, and the carrying capacity of our rockets will continue to increase in the future, on par with NASA’s Saturn V, or even surpassing the Saturn V. "
"Once we realize a heavy-duty recyclable rocket, our cost per kilogram may be reduced to one-tenth or even lower than the current mainstream cost of launch."
"In this way, we have the basis for going to Mars."
"For example, we build a spaceship that can land on Mars, and then use our recyclable launch vehicle to continuously launch space station components into space, and build a large space station in space orbit. This process is just like driving a car. Trucks are gradually transporting building materials that can be used to build a house from the port in Tianjin to Yanjing. Building a house may require hundreds of tons of building materials. Your truck may only be able to carry five tons at a time, so you need to He traveled back and forth between the city and Yanjing at least fifty or sixty times."
“Before there were recyclable rockets, all your trucks were disposable. That is to say, for every five tons of building materials you transported, you needed to spend a pickup truck. This cost was extremely high, even higher than what you had to build. There are many houses like this, but we can turn this disposable truck into a recyclable one in the future. That is to say, every time you travel between Tianjin and Yanjing, you only need to refuel the truck and perform daily maintenance on the truck. That’s enough, the cost reduction is not just a little bit.”
Li Mu nodded and asked, "What next?"
Musk said: "Then it's simple. We now build a space station in space as a supply base, and then transport a large amount of fuel and even booster rockets to the space station in multiple batches, turning it into a large supply station, and then We launch our heavy-lift spaceships."
"You know, the biggest fuel consumption in exploring the universe is the process of getting rid of the earth's gravity from the ground to entering space. If a traditional spacecraft goes directly to Mars, most of its load is actually fuel, such as the Mars rover. , a total of only a few hundred kilograms, but the total launch weight may exceed a thousand tons."
"If we build a space station in space, then our heavy-duty spacecraft does not need to worry about storing enough fuel to fly to Mars and back. It only needs to store enough fuel to reach the space station, so this can increase the distance of the spacecraft from the ground. payload, then refuel the space station and head to Mars.”
"We can even launch some of the equipment and living supplies that will be needed after landing on Mars to the space station in advance. After the spacecraft arrives in space, we can take these equipment with us and head to Mars together."
Li Mu scratched his head: "I'm afraid that 50 billion U.S. dollars is not enough for your project. I'm afraid adding zero will be enough, right?"
Elon Musk said: "If you look purely at investment, it does require a huge amount of capital, but the project itself can still make money."
Li Mu asked: "Making money by launching rockets? How many launches will it take to support your project?"
Elon Musk said: “Not only can we make money from commercial launches, but we can also make money through equipment leasing and space services. If we can build a space station in space, maybe China, the United States, Russia, and the European Union will need space exploration in the future. We provide certain help, which is also money. You can think of it as turning the space station into a hotel, and it is the most expensive hotel."
"That's right." Elon Musk added: "Actually, the most profitable thing is the commercial manned space business. For example, a three-day trip in space on our spacecraft costs US$50 million per person. It's not too much. ? At that time, we only need to design a manned capsule and bring the manned capsule with us during the launch mission, and we will be able to make a lot of money."
Li Mu smiled: "Is this your space ride-hailing business?"
"That's pretty much what it means." Seeing Li Mu laugh out loud, Elon Musk hurriedly explained: "Mr. Li, don't think this is a joke, it's not! Let me tell you, there are many billionaires who are eager to get married. They have so much money in space that they can't spend it all, and there is no commercial service on earth that they can't afford or enjoy. At this time, if commercial manned spaceflight is opened, they will definitely feel it very much. If you are interested, you will be able to make a lot of money from this business alone.”
Li Mu looked at Elon Musk and said seriously: "I think you are just fooling me. As for the commercial space travel business you described, I think you may not be able to get there even if I give you another fifteen years."
In fact, until Li Mu was born again, he had never heard of anyone actually sent into space by Elon Musk.
Elon Musk said very sincerely: "Mr. Li, if we follow the current pace, it will indeed take a long time. I need to wait for Tesla to succeed, PayPal to realize cash, and then I can use it to support SpaceX after I have a lot of cash. This also means that SpaceX may be idling for more than ten years without being able to speed up."
After speaking, Elon Musk looked at Li Mu eagerly and said seriously: "But, Mr. Li, if you are willing to invest in this project, then I believe that it will develop rapidly, and it may even be possible within the next ten years." Just realize that, even if it is impossible to immigrate to Mars within ten years, at least we can already send people to Mars and then bring them back.”
Li Mu suddenly remembered the movie "The Martian" he had watched before. Not to mention colonizing Mars, if you could build the Mars base in the movie, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. How the hell can ordinary people afford it? s things.
If this project can really be accelerated, then perhaps in a few years it will be possible to realize a SpaceX space station and even manned missions to Mars.
But how meaningful is this? It is impossible to make money from this project. Whether the commercial operation is good or bad is nothing more than a matter of how much investors lose or how little they lose.
Moreover, if a private company registered in the United States builds a space station or engages in space exploration, the U.S. government will not provide subsidies.
Not only that, in recent years, the U.S. government has not been so supportive of even NASA. It is said that the budget is so small that it will take at least 2020 to return to the moon.
Rather than bothering with things in space and Mars, it is better to first understand the things on earth.
However, before Li Mu declined Musk, he suddenly thought of a very serious question.
The question is, make money, make money, and what is the purpose of making money in the end
There is an upper limit to the material life of human society. If a person's assets exceed several billion dollars, he can basically spend as much as he wants on the earth. He can buy a large number of villas, islands, private jets, and private yachts all over the country. Even for cruise ships, if you use a few hundred million dollars to build a trust fund, even if you don't do any business, the interest alone will be enough to survive for a lifetime.
After your death, you can put all your inheritance into a trust fund. If you leave one billion US dollars to your descendants, let each of them take one million US dollars from the fund every month. Even so, one descendant will only receive one million US dollars per year. Just twelve million dollars.
The key billion US dollars is in the capital market. It is not a big problem to achieve a return rate of 10% every year. In other words, the annual profit alone is 100 million US dollars, enough for nine descendants to live a lifetime.
If the assets reach tens of billions of dollars, it is basically impossible to spend them all.
As for myself, with the listing of Makino Technology and the listing of Taobao Technology, as well as the continuous development of a lot of other businesses invested in, my future worth may exceed one to two trillion US dollars. How can I spend all that money
It's better to use some of it to do something big that other rich people can't do.
The plan to go to Mars may indeed cost a lot of money, but even so, it will only bring the second-richest man in the world closer to him.
In this case, why not spend some money and give it a try? It’s time to play...
(End of chapter)