Me 'n Elon
Above: Maverick, West Wendover, NV. 08 July 2024.
Out and about on the 'Wing (2021 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle). Direction Winnemucca, NV overnight and Menlo Park, CA the next day 09 July 2024.
150-mile segment from Park City, UT on I-80 began at 82 degrees and ended here in West Wendover, NV at 94 degrees.
Riding reflections. I thought to myself as the 'Wing six droned on at 85 mph and 3500 rpm, westbound, on the I-80 slab across the atmospherically occluded, blindingly white, desiccated Great Salt Lake Desert, how my recent reading of the first one hundred pages of Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk had brought forward some thoughts I have mulled around for some time.
In his book, "Elon Musk," Isaacson discussed Musk's "maniacal" pursuit of excellence. Musk would set task expectations that his employees felt were impossible to fulfill. They could do 100%, his people told him, but not the 150% Musk was asking for. The employee pushback was met by Musk with some form of "well, if you can't do it, I'll find someone who can." When the employees came back with 125%, they learned that they could achieve more than they first believed they could, and Musk, pleased, accepted the result. I was lucky to have a couple of bosses who managed me much in the same way. Out of fear, I put in the effort and accomplished beyond my own expectations of my abilities. Both of the bosses laid the money on me, also in amounts beyond my expectations, when I delivered the results. I experienced a heady level of self-esteem and self confidence in addition to the financial reward as a result of my achievements. I applied this management principle with success in my own varied managerial roles. Not all employees will respond successfully to this type of pressure. Some employees will not make the cut and have to be let go or be reassigned. I learned that true accomplishment doesn't occur without experiencing some form of pain.
I have come to believe, even before hearing about Elon Musk, that it is likely that earth is the only place where life exists in the universe. I won't go into here why I believe this is true. That earth is alone as having life in the universe is, of course, very much a contrarian view. Mormon theology is congruent with the conventional wisdom. I grew up learning Mormon theology about the universe and the nature of God. Mormons teach that as man is now, God once was, and that man today can progress to become like God and rule over worlds of his own. Mormon theology implies an infinite number of Gods and worlds in a limitless universe. Conventional wisdom about life in the universe is also bolstered by the Drake equation. Motorcycling on a Triumph Rocket III near Tucson some years ago I stopped to visit the US National Observatory. There I learned about the Drake equation, a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active communicative, extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. In contradistinction to the Mormon theological multi world view and the Drake hypothesis, Musk cites the Fermi Paradox which is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. Musk says, "if life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now." Musk's passion to colonize Mars and beyond derives from his belief that "we're it," and therefore there is an imperative, or destiny, for mankind to hedge its survival bets by populating other planets. Interestingly, Stephen Hawking also held this view...along with Mwah (sic) heh heh.
I loved the account from Isaacson's book on how Musk would sit down with his rocket experts to name the SpaceX rockets. Musk didn't want any jargony (sic), numerical/alphabet names for his rockets. In naming the rockets, Musk and his rocket team took inspiration from Star War's Millennium Falcon space craft and came up with names like, Falcon, Draco, Merlin, Kestrel and Raptor. Issacson describes the passionate, joyful engagement of Musk and his rocketeers as they selected names for the SpaceX rockets. Moral? You can, and should have, fun as you create.
Musk saw himself as somewhat of a social misfit. He'd go to parties with his brother and friends, but he'd end up as more of an observer than a full party participant. I've considered myself socially tainted ever since I didn't get invited to Irene Greene's dance party when I was in the fifth grade. Since then, I've shied away from cozying up to the cool kids, or the insiders. I was "star" center on the high school basketball team, and I, along with best friend, "star" guard Hippo, while staying, mostly, but not always, outside of the cool kids orbit, had considerable status in the school, having positive relations with the broad majority of the students, whom many of the cool kids ignored. I didn't build rockets as an antidote to self-perceived social awkwardness. But I had some success in managing financial services business turnarounds. In life I have cast a wide net to develop social relationships. As a boss, my ability to discern the difference between underlying talent and con artists derived from my early skepticism about the cool kids. Reality check. I don't mean to arbitrarily conflate cool kids with phoniness. I have learned over the course of my life that being "cool" is not mutually exclusive from being talented, high in character, and empathetic. I've been fortunate to number many cool kids as friends and acquaintances.
Ten years ago, while in San Francisco, I attended a limited partners private equity fund annual meeting where Elon Musk was the speaker. The fund where I was invested had considerable SpaceX holdings. The Q and A was boring with a lot of tedious financial discussion. Even Musk seemed bored. I got ahold of the Q and A mike and asked Musk if he had seen the movie, "The Martian," and if he had seen it, what he thought of it. Elon responded to my question with zeal and enthusiasm saying he had seen the movie and that movies like "The Martian," helped condition the population to accepting the imperative of space travel. In answering the question, Musk showed the same enthusiasm as was described in Issacson's account of Musk and his rocket experts naming their rockets.
I don't mean to conflate myself to Elon Musk in any way, a ridiculous thought on its face. But I identify with many of the passions and traits of Musk's early life.