'We need to get to Mars before I die.' Read exclusive excerpt from 'Elon Musk' by biographer Walter Isaacson

在我离世之前，我们必须到达火星。阅读传记作家沃尔特·伊萨克森的《埃隆·马斯克》独家节选

Love him or hate him, it can't be denied Elon Musk is one of the most influential figures of our time.

不管你喜欢他还是讨厌他，都无法否认埃隆·马斯克是我们这个时代最具影响力的人物之一。

The founder and CEO of SpaceX not only leads the most revolutionary and active spaceflight company on the planet, but also heads the electric car company Tesla and social media giant X (formerly known as Twitter), to name just a few of Musk's many endeavors.

作为SpaceX的创始人兼首席执行官，埃隆·马斯克不仅领导着地球上最具革命性和活跃度的航天公司，还掌管着电动汽车公司特斯拉和社交媒体巨头X（以前被称为Twitter），这只是马斯克众多事业中的几个例子。

Biographer and journalist Walter Isaacson spent two years with Musk in order to write "Elon Musk," a new, best-selling biography that explores what makes the entrepreneur and innovator tick.

传记作家和记者沃尔特·艾萨克森与马斯克共度两年时间，撰写了一本名为《埃隆·马斯克》的新书，该传记畅想了这位企业家和创新者的内在动力。这本畅销书引人入胜地探索了马斯克的内心世界。

Thanks to publisher Simon & Schuster, Space.com has an exclusive excerpt of the book that describes the sometimes-tense atmosphere at SpaceX as Musk oversaw a 2021 surge at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas in order to get its massive Starship rocket ready for its first test flight.

由于出版商西蒙与舒斯特（Simon & Schuster）的支持，Space.com获得了这本书的独家摘录，描述了SpaceX内部有紧张的氛围，当时马斯克在Texas的Starbase工厂监督SpaceX进行了一轮浩大的升级，为其巨型Starship火箭进行首次测试飞行做准备。

Related: SpaceX completes required 'corrective actions' ahead of 2nd Starship flight, Elon Musk says

相关新闻：埃隆·马斯克表示，SpaceX已完成第二次星舰飞行前所需的“纠正措施”

[Musk's son] X, then fifteen months old, toddled on top of the white Starbase conference table in Boca Chica, opening and shutting his outstretched arms. He was mimicking the animation on the screen showing the arms of the Boca Chica launchpad tower. The first three words he had learned to speak were "rocket," "car," and "daddy." Now he was practicing a new one: "chopsticks." His father paid little attention, and the other five engineers in the room that night were practiced in pretending not to be distracted by him.

（马斯克的儿子）X 当时只有十五个月大，在博卡奇卡的星际基地会议桌上蹒跚前行，伸出胳膊玩起了开合。他模仿着屏幕上 Boca Chica 发射塔的动画。他学会讲的前三个词是“火箭”、“汽车”和“爸爸”。现在他正在练习一个新词：“筷子”。他的父亲几乎没有注意到他，而当晚房间里的其他五个工程师则习惯性地装作没有被他分心。

The story of the chopsticks had begun eight months earlier, at the end of 2020, when the SpaceX team was discussing the landing legs being planned for Starship. Musk's guiding principle was rapid reusability, which he often declared was "the holy grail for making humans a space-faring civilization." In other words, rockets should be like airplanes. They should take off, land, and then take off again as soon as possible.

筷子的故事始于八个月前，即2020年底，当时SpaceX团队正在讨论为星舰计划的起落架。马斯克的指导原则是快速可重复使用，他经常宣称这是“让人类成为太空文明的圣杯”。换句话说，火箭应该像飞机一样，能够起飞、降落，然后尽快再次起飞。

The Falcon 9 had become the world's only rapidly reusable rocket. During 2020, Falcon boosters had landed safely twenty-three times, coming down upright on landing legs. The video feeds of the fiery yet gentle landings still made Musk leap from his chair. Nevertheless, he was not enamored with the landing legs being planned for Starship's booster. They added weight, thus cutting the size of the payloads the booster could lift.

猎鹰9已成为世界上唯一的快速可重复使用火箭。在2020年，Falcon助推器已经安全着陆了23次，通过起落架垂直降落。那些火焰喷射的、温和的着陆视频仍然让马斯克兴奋得跃起椅子。然而，他对星舰助推器计划中的起落架并不着迷。它们增加了火箭的重量，从而减少了助推器能够承载的有效载荷大小。

"Why don't we try to use the tower to catch it?" he asked. He was referring to the tower that holds the rocket on the launchpad. Musk had already come up with the idea of using that tower to stack the rocket; it had a set of arms that could pick up the first-stage booster, place it on the launch mount, then pick up the second-stage spacecraft, and place it atop the booster. Now he was suggesting that these arms could also be used to catch the booster when it returned to Earth.

“为什么我们不试着用发射塔接住它呢？”他问道。他指的是支撑火箭的发射塔。马斯克已经想出了使用发射塔来叠放火箭的主意；它有一组机械臂可以将第一级助推器抓起来，放在发射架上，然后再将第二级宇宙飞船抓起来，放在助推器顶部。现在他建议这些机械臂也可以用来接住助推器返回地球时的落下。

It was a wild idea, and there was a lot of consternation in the room. "If the booster comes back down to the tower and crashes into it, you can't launch the next rocket for a long time," Bill Riley says. "But we agreed to study different ways to do it."

这是一个疯狂的想法，房间里一片惊愕。 “如果助推器返回到发射塔并撞到它，你就不能很快再次发射下一枚火箭，”比尔·莱利说。 “但我们同意研究不同的方法来实现它。”

A few weeks later, just after Christmas 2020, the team gathered to brainstorm. Most engineers argued against trying to use the tower to catch the booster. The stacking arms were already dangerously complex. After more than an hour of argument, a consensus was forming to stick with the old idea of putting landing legs on the booster. But Stephen Harlow, the vehicle engineering director, kept arguing for the more audacious approach. "We have this tower, so why not try to use it?"

几个星期后，就在2020年圣诞节后不久，团队聚在一起集思广益。 大多数工程师反对尝试使用发射塔接住助推器。叠放机械臂已经非常复杂且危险。经过一个多小时的争论，正在形成一个共识，即坚持以往的想法，在助推器上安装着陆腿。但车辆工程总监斯蒂芬·哈洛仍在为更大胆的方法辩论。 “既然我们有这个发射塔，为什么不试试用它呢？”

After another hour of debate, Musk stepped in. "Harlow, you're on board with this plan," he said. "So why don't you be in charge of it?"

经过又一个小时的辩论，马斯克介入了。“哈洛，你支持这个计划”，他说道。“那么你为什么不负责执行它呢？”

As soon as he made the decision, Musk switched into silly-humor mode. He began laughing about the scene in "The Karate Kid" where the karate master, Mr. Miyagi, uses a pair of chopsticks to catch a fly. The tower arms, Musk said, would be called the chopsticks, and he dubbed the whole tower "Mechazilla." He celebrated with a tweet: "We're going to try to catch the booster with the launch tower arm!" When asked by a follower why he didn't just use landing legs, Musk responded, "Legs would certainly work, but the best part is no part." On a hot Wednesday afternoon in late July 2021, the final segment of Mechazilla with the movable chopstick arms was put in place at the Boca Chica launch site. When his team showed him an animation of the device, Musk got excited. "Kick ass!" he shouted. "The viewership on this one is going to be huge." He found a two-minute clip from "The Karate Kid" and tweeted it out from his iPhone. "SpaceX will try to catch largest ever flying object with robot chopsticks," he said. "Success is not guaranteed, but excitement is!"

马斯克一做出决定，就开始了滑稽幽默模式。他笑着提起电影《功夫小子》中的场景，习武高手宫本使用筷子捕捉苍蝇的情节。马斯克称发射塔机械臂为筷子，而整个发射塔被命名为“机械师拉”。他通过一条推文庆祝：“我们将尝试使用发射塔机械臂接住助推器！”当有人问他为什么不直接使用着陆腿时，马斯克回答道：“腿当然可以工作，但最好的部分是没有部分。”在2021年7月底的一个炎热星期三下午，可移动的筷子臂组成的“机械师拉”最后一部分被安装在了Boca Chica发射场。当团队向他展示这个装置的动画时，马斯克非常兴奋。“太牛了！”他喊道。“这个项目的观众将会很多。”他从电影《功夫小子》中找到了一段两分钟的视频片段，并用iPhone发布了一条推文。“SpaceX将尝试用机器筷子接住史上最大的飞行物体，成功并不保证，但非常令人激动！”

"We need to stack the ship on the booster," Musk told the impromptu meeting of a hundred workers gathered in a semicircle in one of the three hangar-like tents in Boca Chica. It was a brutally sunny day in July 2021, and he was focused on getting FAA approval for Starship to fly. The best way, he decided, was to stack the booster and the second-stage ship on the launchpad to show that they were ready. "That will force the regulators to get off their butts," he said. "There will be public pressure getting them to move to approval."

“我们需要将太空船堆叠在助推器上。”马斯克告诉着一个临时聚集的一百名工人，他们站成半圆形站在Boca Chica的三个类似机库的帐篷中的一个里面。这是2021年7月一个异常晴热的日子，他专注于获得FAA对星舰飞行的批准。他决定的最佳方式是在发射台上将助推器和第二级船体堆叠起来，以显示它们已经准备好了。“那将迫使监管机构采取行动，”他说。“公众压力将迫使他们批准。”

It was a somewhat pointless but typical Musk move. Starship, as it turned out, would not be ready to fly until April 2023, another twenty-one months away. But creating a maniacal sense of urgency would, he hoped, light a fire under everyone, including the regulators, the workers, and even himself.

这是马斯克有些毫无意义但典型的举动。事实证明，星舰直到2023年4月才能准备好飞行，还有21个月的时间。但他希望通过制造一种疯狂的紧迫感，激励每个人，包括监管机构、工人，甚至是他自己。

For the next few hours, he lumbered along the assembly lines, his hairless arms swinging, his neck slightly bent, pausing occasionally to stare at something in silence. Increasingly, his face got darker, and his pauses took on an ominous feel. By 9 p.m., a full moon had arisen out of the ocean, and it seemed to be transforming him into a man possessed.

接下来的几个小时里，他笨拙地沿着装配线行走，他光洁的双臂摆动，脖子微微弯曲，偶尔停下来默默地盯着某个东西。他的脸色变得越来越阴沉，他的停顿带着一种不祥的感觉。到了晚上9点，满月从海洋升起，仿佛将他变成了一个被附身的人。

I had seen Musk get into this demon-mode temperament before, so I sensed what it portended. As often happens—at least two or three times a year in a major way — a compulsion was swelling inside him to order up a surge, an all-in burst of round-the-clock activity, like he had done at the Nevada battery factory, the Fremont car assembly plant, and the autonomous-driving team offices, and would later do in the crazed month after he bought Twitter. The goal was to shake things up and "extrude shit out of the system," as he put it.

我以前曾见过马斯克陷入这种恶魔模式的情绪，所以我能感觉到这意味着什么。经常发生这种情况——至少每年两三次，在重大事件中——他内心涌动着一种冲动，要求进行一次激增，全天候的活动爆发，就像他在内华达州的电池工厂、弗里蒙特汽车装配厂和自动驾驶团队办公室所做过的那样，并且后来在他购买Twitter之后的疯狂一个月里也会如此。目标是撼动现状，如他所说的"将系统中的垃圾挤压出来"。

The storm clouds building in his head burst when he and a group of his top managers went down the road to the launchpad site and didn't see anybody working. This might not have seemed unusual to most people on a late Friday night, but Musk erupted. His immediate target was a tall, mild-mannered civil engineer named Andy Krebs, who was in charge of building the infrastructure at Starbase. "Why is no one working?" Musk demanded.

他脑海中积聚的暴风雨在他和一群高级经理走到发射台附近的地方时爆发了，却没有看到任何人在工作。对于大多数人来说，在一个深夜的星期五这种情况可能并不奇怪，但马斯克爆发了。他立即把目标对准了一个身材高大、温和的土木工程师安迪·克雷布斯，他负责在星际基地建设基础设施。"为什么没有人在工作？"马斯克要求道。

Unfortunately for Krebs, it was the first time in three weeks he didn't have a full night shift working on the tower and launchpad. Soft-spoken with a hint of a stutter, he was tentative in his answers, which didn't help. "What is the [expletive] problem?" Musk demanded. "I want to see activity."

不幸的是，对于克雷布斯来说，这是三周以来他第一次没有在塔和发射台上值夜班。他说话轻声细语，有点口吃，在回答问题时有些犹豫，这并没有帮助他。"问题到底是什么？"马斯克要求道。"我想看到活动。"

That's when he ordered the surge. Starship's booster and second stage, he said, should be rolled out of the manufacturing bays and stacked on the launchpad within ten days. He wanted five hundred workers from around SpaceX—Cape Canaveral, Los Angeles, Seattle—to be flown immediately to Boca Chica and thrown into the breach. "This is not a volunteer organization," he said. "We are not selling Girl Scout cookies. Get them here now." When he called Gwynne Shotwell, who was in bed in Los Angeles, to figure out what workers and supervisors would come to Boca Chica, she protested that the engineers at the Cape still had Falcon 9 launches to prepare for. Musk ordered them delayed. The surge was his priority.

这时候，他下令进行突击行动。他说，星舰的助推器和二级阶段应该在十天内从制造车间中滚出来，堆叠在发射台上。他想让来自SpaceX各地的五百名工人——佛罗里达州卡纳维拉尔角、洛杉矶、西雅图——立即飞往博卡奇卡，并且投入到缺口中。"这不是一个志愿者组织，"他说。"我们不是在卖女童子军饼干。现在就把他们送到这里。"当他给在洛杉矶的格温·肖特韦尔打电话，想了解哪些工人和监督员将前往博卡奇卡时，她提出抗议称，佛罗里达角的工程师们仍然需要准备猎鹰9号火箭的发射。但马斯克下令推迟这些计划。突击行动是他的首要任务。

Shortly after 1 a.m., Musk sent out an email titled "Starship Surge" to all SpaceX employees. "Anyone who is not working on other obviously critical path projects at SpaceX should shift immediately to work on the first Starship orbit," he wrote. "Please fly, drive, or get here by any means possible."

凌晨1点后不久，马斯克给所有SpaceX员工发送了一封标题为"Starship Surge"的电子邮件。他写道："任何没有在SpaceX上其他显然关键路径项目上工作的人都应立即转移到第一艘星舰轨道任务上。请通过任何可能的方式飞来、开车或到达这里。"

At Cape Canaveral, Kiko Dontchev, who won his spurs when Musk ignited a similar frenzy after seeing almost no one working on Pad 39A one night, began rousing his best workers to fly to Texas. Musk's assistant Jehn Balajadia tried to get hotel rooms in nearby Brownsville, but most were booked for a border-control convention, so she scrambled to make arrangements for workers to sleep on air mattresses. Sam Patel worked through the night figuring out the reporting and supervising structures they would put in place — and also how to get enough food to Boca Chica to feed everyone.

在佛罗里达角卡纳维拉尔，马斯克在一个晚上看到39A号发射台几乎没有人工作后，基科·唐切夫借此赢得了声誉。他开始激励他最好的工人飞往德克萨斯州。马斯克的助理杰恩·巴拉哈迪亚试图在附近的布朗斯维尔为他们预订酒店房间，但大多数都被边境控制会议预定了，所以她匆忙安排工人们睡在充气床上。萨姆·帕特尔通宵工作，计划了他们将实施的汇报和监督结构，还考虑如何运送足够的食物到博卡奇卡以供所有人享用。

By the time Musk got back from the launchpad to the Starbase main building, the video monitor by the front door had been reprogrammed. It read, "Ship+Rocket Stacked T –196h 44m 23s," and was counting down the seconds. Balajadia explained that Musk does not let them round off into days or even hours. Every second counted. "We need to get to Mars before I die," he said. "There's no forcing function for getting us to Mars other than us, and sometimes that means me."

当马斯克从发射台回到Starbase主楼时，门口的视频监视器已被重新编程。上面显示："Ship+Rocket Stacked T –196h 44m 23s"，并开始倒计时。巴拉哈迪亚解释说，马斯克不允许他们将时间计算成天甚至小时。每一秒都很重要。他说："我们需要在我死之前到达火星。没有比我们更加强制的因素来推动我们实现这个目标，有时候这意味着我必须亲自出马。"

The surge was successful. In just over ten days, the booster and spacecraft of Starship were stacked on the launchpad. It was also a bit pointless. The rocket was not yet capable of flying, and stacking it did not force the FAA to rush its approval. But the ginned-up crisis pushed the team to remain hardcore, and it provided Musk with a bit of the drama that his headspace craves. "I feel renewed faith in the future of humanity," he said that evening. Another storm had passed.

这次行动非常成功。仅仅十天左右，Starship的升级器和飞船就已经堆叠在了发射台上。然而，这一切似乎有点无意义。火箭还没有达到可飞行的状态，并且将其堆叠并没有迫使联邦航空局加快批准。但这次危机促使团队保持了韧性，并为马斯克提供了他内心渴望的一些戏剧性。"我感到对人类的未来有了重新的信心。"他在那天晚上说道。又过去了一场风暴。

A few weeks after the surge, Musk turned his attention to Raptor, the engine that would power Starship. Fueled by supercooled liquid methane and liquid oxygen, it had more than twice the thrust of the Falcon 9's Merlin engine. This meant that Starship would have more thrust than any other rocket in history.

在行动之后的几周，马斯克将注意力转向了Raptor引擎，这是将推动星舰的引擎。这种引擎使用超级冷却的液态甲烷和液态氧燃料，它的推力比猎鹰9号导弹使用的梅林引擎高出两倍以上。这意味着星舰将具备比历史上任何其他火箭都更多的推力。

But the Raptor engine would not get humanity to Mars simply by being powerful. It would also have to be manufactured by the hundreds at a reasonable cost. Each Starship would need about forty of them, and Musk envisioned a fleet of scores of Starships. Raptor was too complex to be mass-manufactured. It looked like a spaghetti bush. So in August 2021, Musk fired the person in charge of its design and personally took on the title of vice president for propulsion. His goal was to get the cost of each engine to around $200,000, a tenth of what it then cost.

但单纯的强大推力并不能使Raptor引擎将人类送上火星。它还必须以合理的成本进行大规模制造。每艘星舰需要大约四十个这样的引擎，而马斯克设想的是一支拥有数十艘星舰的舰队。由于Raptor引擎过于复杂，无法进行大规模生产，看起来就像是一棵意大利面树。因此，在2021年8月，马斯克解雇了负责设计的负责人，并亲自担任推进系统副总裁的职位。他的目标是将每个引擎的成本降低到约20万美元，相当于当时的十分之一。

Gwynne Shotwell and the SpaceX CFO, Bret Johnsen, arranged a small meeting one afternoon with the person in the finance department in charge of overseeing Raptor costs. In walked a studious looking young financial analyst named Lucas Hughes, whose slightly preppy appearance was mitigated by his hair being scrunched into a ponytail. He had never directly interacted with Musk and wasn't even sure Musk knew his name. So he was nervous.

格温·肖特威尔和SpaceX首席财务官布雷特·约翰森在一个下午与负责监督Raptor成本的财务部门的人安排了一次小型会议。走进来一个看起来用心的年轻财务分析师卢卡斯·休斯，他略带风格的外貌被扎成马尾辫的头发稍微缓解了一些。他从未直接与马斯克互动过，甚至不确定马斯克是否知道他的名字。因此，他感到很紧张。

Musk began with his lecture on collegiality. "I want to be super clear," he began. "You are not the friend of the engineers. You are the judge. If you're popular among the engineers, this is bad. If you don't step on toes, I will fire you. Is that clear?" Hughes stuttered a bit as he assented.

马斯克开始讲授团队合作的课程。"我想非常清楚地告诉你们,"他开始说道。"你们不是工程师的朋友，而是评判者。如果你在工程师中很受欢迎，这是不好的。如果你不主动解决问题，我会解雇你。你明白吗?"休斯有些支支吾吾地表示同意。

Ever since he flew back from Russia and calculated the costs of building his own rockets, Musk had deployed what he called the "idiot index." That was the ratio of the total cost of a component to the cost of its raw materials. Something with a high idiot index — say, a component that cost $1,000 when the aluminum that composed it cost only $100 — was likely to have a design that was too complex or a manufacturing process that was too inefficient. As Musk put it, "If the ratio is high, you're an idiot."

自从他从俄罗斯飞回来计算了自己建造火箭的成本后，马斯克就开始使用他称之为"白痴指数"的方法。这是一个组件总成本与其原材料成本之比的比值。如果某个组件的白痴指数很高——比如，一个成本为1000美元的组件，而它所构成的铝材只需要100美元——那么很可能是因为设计过于复杂或制造过程效率低下。马斯克说："如果这个比值很高，你就是个白痴。"

"What are the best parts in Raptor as judged by the idiot index?" Musk asked.

"根据白痴指数评判，哪些是Raptor引擎中最好的部分?" 马斯克问道。

"I'm not sure," Hughes responded. "I will find out." This was not good. Musk's face hardened, and Shotwell shot me a worried glance.

"我不确定," 休斯回答道。"我会查明的。" 这并不好。马斯克的表情变得严肃起来，肖特威尔瞥了我一眼，表现出担忧。

"You better be [expletive] sure in the future you know these things off the top of your head," Musk said. "If you ever come into a meeting and do not know what are the idiot parts, then your resignation will be accepted immediately." He spoke in a monotone and showed no emotion. "How can you [expletive] not know what the best and worst parts are?"

"你最好在今后的工作中对这些事情了如指掌，" 马斯克说道，语气平淡，没有表露任何情绪。"如果你进入会议时不知道哪些是白痴部分，那么你的辞呈将会立即被接受。" "你怎么可能[咒骂]都不知道哪些是最优秀和最糟糕的部件?"

"I know the cost chart down to the smallest part," Hughes said quietly. "I just don't know the cost of the raw materials of those parts."

"我对每个部件的成本清单了如指掌，" 休斯平静地说道。"我只是不知道这些部件的原材料成本。"

"What are the worst five parts?" Musk demanded. Hughes looked at his computer to see if he could calculate an answer. "NO! Don't look at your screen," Musk said. "Just name one. You should know the problematic parts."

"最糟糕的五个部件是哪些?" 马斯克要求道。休斯看了一眼电脑，看是否能够计算出答案。"不！不要看你的屏幕，" 马斯克说道。"随便提一个出来。你应该知道有问题的部件是哪些。"

"There's the half nozzle jacket," Hughes offered tentatively. "I think it costs thirteen thousand dollars."

"有一个半喷嘴套筒，" 休斯小心翼翼地提议道。"我记得它的成本是一万三千美元。"

"It's made of a single piece of steel," Musk said, now quizzing him. "How much does that material cost?"

"它是由一整块钢制成的，" 马斯克继续盘问他。"那个材料的成本是多少?"

"I think a few thousand dollars?" replied Hughes.

"我觉得可能是几千美元?" 休斯回答道。

Musk knew the answer. "No. It's just steel. It's about two hundred bucks. You have very badly failed. If you don't improve, your resignation will be accepted. This meeting is over. Done."

马斯克知道答案："不对。那只是普通的钢材，大约只值200美元。你犯了很大的错误。如果你不改善，你的辞职将会被接受。会议结束了，完毕。"

When Hughes came into the conference room the next day for a follow-up presentation, Musk showed no sign that he remembered reaming him out. "We are looking at the twenty worst 'idiot index' parts," Hughes began as he pulled up a slide. "There's definitely some themes." Other than wringing a pencil, he was able to hide his nervousness. Musk listened quietly and nodded. "It's mainly the parts that require a lot of high-precision machining, like pumps and fairings," Hughes continued. "We need to cut out as much of the machining as possible." Musk started smiling. This had been one of his themes. He asked a few specific questions about the use of copper and the best way to do stamping and hole-punching. It was no longer a quiz or a confrontation. Musk was interested in figuring out the answers.

第二天，当休斯走进会议室做跟进演示时，马斯克没有任何迹象表明他还记得训斥他。"我们正在研究最差的20个'白痴指数'部件，" 休斯一边展示幻灯片，一边开始说道。"确实存在一些共同点。"除了握着一支铅笔紧张地搓动外，他成功地隐藏住了自己的紧张情绪。马斯克静静地听着，并点了点头。"这些主要是需要大量高精度加工的部件，比如泵和舷板，" 休斯继续说道。"我们需要尽量减少加工工艺。"马斯克开始微笑了，这正是他的一个主题。他对使用铜以及最佳冲压和冲孔方式提出了几个具体问题。这已经不再是一场问答或对抗，马斯克对找出答案产生了浓厚的兴趣。

"We are looking at some of the techniques that automakers use to keep these costs down," Hughes continued. He also had a slide that showed how they were applying Musk's algorithm to each of the parts. There were columns that showed what requirements had been questioned, what parts had been deleted, and the name of the specific person in charge of each component.

"我们正在研究一些汽车制造商用来降低成本的技术，" 休斯继续说道。他还展示了一张幻灯片，展示了他们如何将马斯克的算法应用于每个部件。其中的列显示哪些要求已被质疑、哪些部件已被删除以及每个组件负责人的姓名。

"We should ask each of them to see if they can get the cost of their part down by eighty percent," Musk suggested, "and if they can't, we should consider asking them to step aside if someone else might be able to do so."

"我们应该要求每个人尝试将他们部件的成本降低百分之八十，" 马斯克建议道，"如果他们无法做到，我们应该考虑让其他人来尝试，看是否有可能实现这一目标。"

By the end of the meeting, they had a roadmap to get the cost of each engine down from $2 million to $200,000 in twelve months. After these meetings, I pulled Shotwell aside and asked for her assessment of how Musk had treated Hughes. She cares about the human dimension that Musk ignores. She lowered her voice. "I heard that Lucas lost his first child about seven weeks ago," she said. "He and his wife had a baby with birth problems who was never able to leave the hospital." That was why, she felt, Hughes had been flustered and less prepared than usual. Given that Musk had a similar experience when his first baby died, sending him into months of grief, I suggested to Shotwell he should be able to relate. "I still need to tell Elon," she said.

会议结束时，他们制定了一份路线图，计划在十二个月内将每台发动机的成本从200万美元降低到20万美元。在这些会议后，我把肖特维尔叫到一边，询问她对马斯克对待休斯的评价。她关心马斯克忽视的人情味。她压低声音说："我听说卢卡斯在七周前失去了他的第一个孩子，"她说道。"他和妻子的孩子出生时就有问题，始终无法离开医院。"这也是为什么她觉得休斯比平时更慌乱，准备不足。考虑到马斯克在他的第一个孩子去世时经历了相似的经历，陷入数月的悲痛之中，我建议肖特维尔可以与他产生共鸣。"我还需要告诉埃隆，"她说道。

I didn't mention this to Musk when I talked to him later that day, because Shotwell told me it was confidential, but I did ask him whether he thought he was too harsh with Hughes. Musk stared a bit blankly, as if he wasn't sure what I was referring to. After some silence, he answered in the abstract. "I give people hardcore feedback, mostly accurate, and I try not to do it in a way that's ad hominem," he says. "I try to criticize the action, not the person. We all make mistakes. What matters is whether a person has a good feedback loop, can seek criticism from others, and can improve. Physics does not care about hurt feelings. It cares about whether you got the rocket right."

那天晚些时候，我与马斯克交流时没有向他提到这个事情，因为肖特维尔告诉我这是保密的。但我询问了他是否认为他对待休斯太过严厉。马斯克有些茫然地盯着我，好像不确定我在说什么。经过一段沉默后，他以抽象的方式回答："我会给人们提供一些极端的反馈，大多数是准确的，而且我试图不以人身攻击的方式进行。我试着批评行为，而不是批评个人。我们都会犯错误。重要的是一个人是否具备良好的反馈循环能力，能够从别人那里接受批评并改善。物理学并不关心伤害感受，它关心的是你是否正确掌握了火箭技术。"

Excerpted from "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson. Copyright © 2023 by Walter Isaacson. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

摘自《埃隆·马斯克传》（作者：沃尔特·艾萨克森）。版权所有 © 2023 经西蒙舒斯特公司许可转载。保留所有权利。