Elon Musk: The Scientist Behind The CEO
By: Vrijesh Prasad
Tags: Elon Musk Motivation, Elon Musk

Some say that he’s an alien others say that he’s a man-made intelligence robot but when it comes right down to it Elon Musk may be a scientist. One who is conquering the business world. Elon Musk has become a futuristic industrialist.

A person who took his coding skills to start out building machines most of the people do not fully aware that Elon Musk may be a scientist.

Even his own friends ask him who is that the chief engineer for spacex not aware that it’s Elon himself is that the chief engineer.

We will learn the planet through a scientific mind and the way his scientific way of life fuels his businesses we take a glance at the 2 techniques that elon musk uses to show himself about new subjects and industries.

From learning books like a soviet rocket manual that taught him about rockets when he was starting spacex.

To surrounding himself with experts and other people working within the field which will teach him about the themes he wants to urge into this is often the rationale why he moved from Silicon Valley to L.A so he could get on the brink of people working within the space industry.

Elon Musk may be a scientist and physicist on the within and an engineer on the surface so we’ll also take a quick check out the thinking process behind physics and therefore the techniques that anyone can use to look at the planet .

Elon Musk says that he approaches things with a physics framework even when it involves understanding the longer term saying that if you would like to know or predict the longer term then look to physics.

When Elon Musk was a child he was frightened of the dark on the other hand he understood that dark just means an absence of photons within the visible wavelength which it’s silly to be scared of a scarcity of photons that’s how he viewed and explained darkness to himself when he was just a child .

Elon Musk does this with maybe everything that he cares breaking everything down even right down to the elemental laws of physics here are another samples of the various ways Elon Musk views the planet .

Through the mind of a physicist and scientist when describing schools and education he says that learning is that the downloading of knowledge and algorithms into our brains which schools do a nasty job of it so.

He started his own school on the joe rogan podcast when talking about the birth of his son. Elon Musk compares the baby to the work he has been doing on AI and neural nets saying that an ai neural net is trying to repeat what a person’s brain is doing and you’ll see it learning quickly a bit like a baby.

When it involves happiness the equation is reality minus expectations in describing our way of thinking and using devices. Elon Musk compares us to an OS with bandwidth saying that while computers can ask one another at a trillion bits per second.

We use our thumbs to interact with our phones at 10 to 100 bits that’s why he started neura link to

connect our brains to computers it’d be the rationale why Elon Musk likes memes tons |most”> such a lot since a lot of data gets passed along in only one image he even tweeted saying who controls the memes.

Controls the universe Elon Musk says that the simplest piece of recommendation is to stay brooding about how you’ll be doing things better and keep questioning yourself and he uses the engineering term of making a feedback circuit where you’re taking what you’ve got done and adjust how you’ll be doing it better as people will tell you what you would like to listen to not what’s best there are two techniques that Elon Musk uses to show himself.

New subjects one is thru simply learning books and therefore the other is surrounding himself with smart people.

Let’s first quickly take a glance at how he has used books to make the wisdom and fuel for the companies he has built when he was a child . Elon Musk would read up to 10 hours each day saying he was raised by books he even read two sets of encyclopedia which gave an honest view of how various things might be connected.

Elon Musk’s formal education includes a degree in physics and one in economics there was also the phd in material sciences and physics that he dropped out from yet his first startups out of school were all supported him coding and programming during the first days of the web .

Elon Musk saw a computer for the primary time when he was 10 years old the primary computer he got came with workbook lessons on programming during a language called basic which might take six months to end Elon stayed up for 3 days straight and finished the entire six month course.

When it came time to bring banking online which Elon was performing on when starting company X.com which might later become paypal.

Elon didn’t have much experience in banking so Elon bought a book on the banking system to know how it worked. When it came to starting spacex Elon would study a soviet rocket manual and from friends he would borrow books like reaction propulsion elements and therefore the fundamentals of astrodynamics and he would study for months Elon Musk figures out what he needs to study. So that he can become an expert and get started working on new projects.

This is the same method he used when he was a kid in school Elon did not always get good grades. Especially in subjects where he couldn’t see the purpose of learning them these would be mandatory subjects like afrikaans for those subjects he would work the minimum to get a passing grade saying that he would rather spend his time playing video games coding or reading books when it came to subjects that were important to him such as physics and computers.

Elon would get the very best grade he focuses on studying what’s needed here are a number of the books that elon musk recommends there’s the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy a book called ignition which is about rockets and therefore the biography of Franklin by walter isaacson one book that elon musk highly recommends is called structures or why things don’t fall down this book

gives an easy to understand explanation structural engineering terms based on how day-to-day objects hold together which can include anything from bridges to eggshells.

The foundation books are a sci-fi series set in a future where human civilization is a space-faring society it is a book series that elon recommends

people read. He learn from reading them that you simply should work on things which will prolong civilization and reduce the probability of there being a dark age.

Elon’s way of thinking about pushing humanity forward and doing what is best for humankind comes from books and not just through the foundation books but also from reading comic books. When he was younger because the stories in them were always about saving the planet albeit elon musk was raised by books and used them when he started to teach himself new subjects.

He wasn’t afraid to urge his hands dirty and figure things out by experimenting for teenagers lately who are inspired by space and rockets. It wouldn’t be so hard for them to get their parents to go on amazon and buy a rocket kit that they could then build and launch but for elon musk growing up in south africa they didn’t have the rocket kits.

That were available in the US so elon broke down the parts of a rocket kit and figured out how to build his own mixing different chemicals that would fuel his homemade rocket kits. In his college days to form some money elon would sell computer parts out of his dormitory . He would also build pcs and fix issues this built up his computer hacking background as he was not afraid to just go and figure things out.

The second way that elon musk teaches himself a few subject and an industry is by surrounding himself with smart people albeit meaning moving cities after selling paypal Elon Musk moved from Silicon Valley right down to LA.

This was because LA would bring Musk closer to the space industry which was the next adventure that he wanted to tackle after paypal around LA you had organization that had set up their space efforts from howard hughes and the us air force to nasa they all developed a lot of their aeronautical work here this meant that there were a lot of experts that elon could talk to one of the first things elon did was to join the mars society whose goal was to settle on mars.

The society already had experiments underway and even had a research center in the arctic through the society Elon also got to meet scientists who were working on mars missions for nasa a number of them would later become hired consultants that would teach and coach Elon for his jump into the space industry.

The books and being surrounded by experts is how elon taught himself about the space industry it is the same method that his cousins used to learn about the solar business.

Elon’s cousins spent two years studying solar technology and therefore the industry they visited events studied research reports and interviewed people all before starting solar city which Tesla later bought they used an equivalent techniques that elon had wont to become an expert within the space industry as elon musk began to hire engineers and build spacex.

The knowledge the new employees brought would then get transferred into elon’s own brain. These spacex employees would be experts in their fields and elon figured he could absorb their knowledge which he did by quizzing each engineer about every specific a part of the rocket that they were performing on one employee said that elon musk would quiz you until he had learn 90 of what you knew this made elon musk an aerospace.

Expert beyond what most people had seen when it comes to hiring people for his companies elon musk surrounds himself with the best people. He is ready to do that due to the futuristic tech that he keeps pushing to develop except for someone who wants to figure at tesla or spacex they not only got to be an expert in their specific field they also need to skills the opposite parts on the machines.

They are building work also elon musk expects everyone to be a chief engineer they have to possess a minimum of a basic understanding of how the entire rocket or car works simply because an engineer features a deep expertise in their specialized area of the rocket or car.

They won’t be able to tell if the work that they are doing the ideas and the improvements they come up with are for the good of the product as a whole unless they know how the whole machine works mistakes and design flaws happen when people don’t understand the systems working in the whole machine spacex hires people who have been building physical things in their personal or business life . Regardless of their job position giving shot well who is the president and ceo of spacex. Has a degree in engineering and a master’s in applied math .

Elon says that the majority of his time about 80 percent of it’s on engineering and style not media or business related things. It is gwen shot well who handles the day-to-day workings of spacex this lets elon focus on designing the rockets and motivating the engineering teams Elon states that the trail to the ceo office shouldn’t be through the finance or marketing departments but through the engineering and style.

But even the financial people at his companies have engineering backgrounds the ceo of tesla has degrees in economics and mechanical engineering and applied mechanics continuing with elon hiring and surrounding himself with the simplest another notable mentions include in 2011 spacex hired Garrett Reisman a retired nasa astronaut even investors accompany engineering backgrounds.

One of tesla’s first investors was valor equity who specialized in making manufacturing more efficient. The managing director of operations tim watkins was sent to tesla to work on the roadster production.Watkins has degrees in electrical engineering and industrial robotics everyone is an engineer.

If you would like to know and predict the longer term then learn the thinking behind physics this is often what elon musk advises people when it involves jobs within the future and choosing what to learn elon says that he tries to use the tools of physics as much as possible and that using physics is a good framework for thinking.

Let’s take a glance at the most physics principle that shapes elon musk’s thinking earlier we showed how elon broke down being scared of the dark into its most elementary elements and this same way of thinking was used when it came to putting together battery packs.

For tesla and launching his spacex business it’s called reasoning from first principles the idea is not to follow trends for example being scared of the dark because others have said that there are monsters but instead breaking it down into the

fundamental truths there is just a lack of photons when it came to starting his own space rocket company the problem was that rockets were too expensive and they have always been that way but if you break it down into first principles you then ask yourself what is a rocket made up of.

There is aerospace aluminum alloys titanium some copper and carbon fiber you can’t really break it down any further than that after breaking a rocket down into its most basic elements elon asked himself what is the cost of those materials on the commodity market. The cost ended up being only two percent of the traditional price of a rocket and this also included the value of fuel the rationale why rockets are so expensive is that there are numerous companies involved in making the various parts of the rocket and every company must make a profit for themselves.

There are even companies supplying the businesses who are supplying the parts the value just keeps adding up breaking things down like this using rudiment reasoning does take greater effort as you need to understand the subject on a deep level. But you’ll find yourself with better results as you will be ready to create new knowledge and solutions from scratch spacex may be a next-gen rocket company because they build their own rockets in-house not counting on outside suppliers elon’s advice is to require the position that to a point you’re wrong and your goal is to figure on being less wrong over time.

Try and predict the longer term then make adjustments supported the errors you discover from your previous predictions elon didn’t think that the boring company would work he said they were going to dig a tunnel and that maybe it will work or maybe it won’t they ended up figuring it out as they went along experimenting and correcting along the way and their first self-driving tunnel is almost complete under las vegas.

Elon says that the toughest thing to try to to is to work out what inquirie to ask saying that when you’ve got the proper questions then the simplest answers become available a good book for understanding the basics of physics and understanding the thinking behind it is six easy pieces the essentials of physics explained by its most brilliant teacher the link is in the description.

In the first piece feynman points out that things must be learn only to be unlearned again or more likely to be corrected saying that the definition of science is that the test of all knowledge is experiment which imagination is required and it’s key in arising with the ideas and theories to experiment with within the first place.

This can all be seen with spacex’s public test launches as they keep trying out new things that pushes innovation within the space industry seeing what works pushing until their prototypes fail on purpose and exploring ways on how to improve their designs.

Elon Musk says that too many smart people go into finance law and internet-based companies and wants more people going into making things and innovating in manufacturing too many smart minds are working on making people.

There is a lot of progress that needs to happen in manufacturing things whether it is for high-tech products such as electric cars and space rockets or for more everyday items that can help push humanity forward. The old ways of doing things need to be broken down into their most basic parts using the thinking methods of physics and then built back up with the experimental mind of an engineer.