Rebirth of the internet boss

Chapter 509

Although Chen Shijun's departure made Li Feng a little sad, but life has to go on, and Li Feng has done what he should do, so Li Feng paused briefly at Fengrui North America Branch, and then left immediately.

However, he did not go back directly, but was invited by Elon Musk to a small island in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean to watch the Space X rocket launch.

Elon Musk is definitely a genius, and he is not a fake genius like Li Feng, but a real genius.

When he was 10 years old, he bought his first computer with the pocket money he had saved and part of the funds sponsored by his father. Later, he bought a programming textbook and learned how to program;
At the age of 12, Elon Musk successfully designed a space game software called "Blastar", and then sold it for $500, making his first pot of gold in life.

At the age of 17, Elon Musk went to Canada alone, and applied to enter Queen's University in Ontario the following year.

21-year-old Elon Musk relied on a scholarship to transfer to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania to study economics. During college, he began to pay close attention to the Internet, clean energy, and space, three fields that affect the future development of mankind.

24-year-old Elon Musk entered Stanford University to study materials science and applied physics doctoral program, but on the second day after enrollment, Elon Musk decided to leave school to start a business.

In the same year, 1995, after dropping out of school, Elon Musk took a random angel investment from a small group in Silicon Valley and founded Zip2, a company specializing in the development of online content publishing software for news organizations.

然后到了1999年，美国电脑制造商康柏公司以3 .07亿美元现金和3400万美元股票期权收购了Zip2公司，28岁的埃隆.马斯克在这笔收购中获利2200万美元。

In March of the same year, Elon Sik invested 3 million US dollars and founded an online financial service and email payment business company "X.com" with two partners from Silicon Valley.

In 2000, Elon Musk merged X.com and Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel, in order to solve the competition in the online fast transfer business. The new company was renamed PayPal in February of the following year. ), which is also the origin of PayPal, it seems that the wave of Internet mergers also has precedents.

Then in 2002, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel sold PayPal to eBay, the world's largest online business company at that time, for US$15 billion, and Elon Musk made a profit of US$2 million.

From $500 at the beginning, to $2000 million, and finally to $2 million, Elon Musk has completed a gorgeous turn from a small person to a billionaire.

Elon Musk, who has achieved financial independence, is finally able to do something he likes. He relies on cashing out funds from the PayPal project. In June of the same year, Elon Musk established a space exploration technology company, namely Space X , preparing to develop its own launch vehicle.

Friends thought he was crazy, because rocket launching is a risky and expensive business.From 1957 to 1966, there were 429 launches in the initial stage of American launch vehicles, and a quarter of them failed.

The high cost of rocket projects is even more shocking. The space programs of the United States, Russia and China all have huge R&D teams and unlimited budgets.In order to experiment with a type of engine, the former Soviet Union could manufacture thousands of engines for experimentation; the Apollo moon landing program in the United States employed more than 30 people, and the cost converted into the current price is equivalent to more than 2000 billion US dollars.

But Elon Musk still insists that the space field will be a major market, and joining the space field is not a whim, but a firm ideal he has cherished since childhood. A book with the greatest impact.

In the suspicious eyes of his friends, Elon Musk began to recruit troops and recruited a large number of rocket engineers, including many former outstanding employees of NASA and Boeing, who were recruited by him.

When Space X first started, things went smoothly.Because the then US President Bush Jr. reduced the US space exploration budget, a large number of talents left NASA.

So Space X absorbed a large number of NASA scientists and engineers, invested 1 million US dollars to build a factory, and Falcon 1 gradually took shape.

And when recruiting talents and purchasing components for Space X, Elon Musk met Tesla founder Martin Eberhard through motor supplier AC Propulsion.

Tesla was not actually founded by Elon Musk. At that time, Tesla had no capital and no factory production capacity, and Space X had just built its own factory to build rockets.

For Elon Musk, this is simply God-blessing!Sending talent, team, and technology is simply good luck!
So in February 2004, Elon Musk invested $02 million in Tesla and became the chairman of Tesla, taking the final decision on all matters.

So far, Elon Musk has also served as the CEO of two companies, Space Exploration Technology (Space X) and Tesla (Tesla).

And Elon Musk is not only an idealist, but also a man of action. He directly named Space X's first rocket "Falcon 15" and set a strict timetable. The first rocket was launched a month later.

To this end, Elon Musk and his employees began to work crazily. A year later, Space X's rocket factory had begun to take shape, so Elon Musk began to try rocket launches.

只是一开始十分顺利的Space X突然变得十分不顺了，“猎鹰一号”火箭的最初发射尝试是在2005年11月26日的下午5:11，结果过多的液氧泄漏最后发射被取消。

A second launch attempt, on December 2005, 12, was again delayed due to a valve failure.

A third launch attempt, on February 2006, 2, was again delayed due to problems with pre-launch engine tests.

It was not until March 2006, 3 that the dystocia "Falcon 25" rocket was officially ignited and launched for the first time, but 26 seconds later, due to an engine fire, it fell directly on the launch site before taking off.

Four years of hard work, tens of millions of dollars spent, and countless weekends, for many SpaceX engineers, this first launch turned out not to be what they hoped for.

However, Elon Elon Musk said: "Space X will continue to work hard, no matter whether it is in the sky or on the ground, if it is not successful, it will never give up",
Even Elon Musk later stated on the company's website: "Our rocket ignited successfully and Falcon left the launch platform, but unfortunately the rocket was lost during the combustion stage of the first stage rocket."

Although Elon Musk is full of confidence, this failure is a fatal blow to SpaceX. Everyone inside the company knows that SpaceX's funds are only enough for 1-2 more launches.

Although the financial situation made Elon Musk very anxious, he told his employees not to worry about funds, while selling his sports cars and personal property in exchange for more funds. He even sold his house and moved in with friends. in the house.

It was at this time that Musk, who was cheating, met Li Feng who was cheating. Li Feng also bought shares in Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technology Company (SpaceX) through Peter Thiel for 200 million US dollars and 300 million US dollars respectively. ) and Tesla (Tesla) each with 2% and 5% of the shares.

After Elon Musk got the money again, he was not discouraged. He learned the lesson from the last time and asked the engineers to continue to work overtime to prepare for the second launch.

One year later, on March 2007, 3, Space X was preparing for the rocket launch again, and Li Feng also brought Lu Lu to see it.

(End of this chapter)