Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

by Ashlee Vance

At the top of the page, he wrote: “The sun will come out tomorrow. . . .”—Little Orphan Annie on the subject of renewable energy.

“If you asked Elon how long it would take to do something, there was never anything in his mind that would take more than an hour,”

What Musk would not tolerate were excuses or the lack of a clear plan of attack.

The sum total of the company’s automotive expertise was that a couple of the guys at Tesla really liked cars and another one had created a series of science fair projects based on technology that the automotive industry considered ridiculous.

Musk fielded another call in the middle of the night while sleeping next to Riley and had to whisper as he berated the engineers. “He’s giving us the pillow talk voice, so we all have to huddle around the speakerphone, while he tells us, ‘You guys need to get your shit together,’” Brogan said.

Elon will likely keep on writing e-mails and working during the initial part of the interview and not speak much. Don’t panic. That’s normal. Eventually, he will turn around in his chair to face you. Even then, though, he might not make actual eye contact with you or fully acknowledge your presence. Don’t panic. That’s normal. In due course, he will speak to you.

In one case someone spotted an error in a software file in the hours right before a launch. SpaceX’s engineers changed the file, checked how it affected the test hardware, and, when no problems were detected, sent the file to the Falcon 9, waiting on the launchpad, all in less than thirty minutes. “NASA wasn’t used to this,” Watson said. “If something went wrong with the shuttle, everyone was just resigned to waiting three weeks before they could try and launch again.”12