Billionaire Musk told how he wanted to buy a rocket from the Russians

Photo: Twitter elonmusk

In the book “Elon Musk,” the billionaire told how he was unable to work with Russian rocket scientists and how he was inspired by Soviet textbooks.

Elon Musk launches rockets into space, builds luxury electric cars, dreams of making humans an interplanetary species and plans to turn solar panels into the energy of the future. Interestingly, the billionaire had difficulty agreeing to write a book about himself. Journalist Ashley Vance literally followed Musk on his heels, persuading him to talk about how PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX were created. When the entrepreneur finally agreed, the author of the future book spent 30 hours with him - traveling and talking - an amazingly long time for such a busy man as Musk, who, according to his biography, "pees in three seconds."

How to buy a rocket from Russian

Musk wanted to go to Russia to find out exactly how much it would cost to launch a rocket. He wanted to buy from the Russians a converted intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and use it as a launch vehicle.

Musk's team met with the Russians three times in four months. Among the companies with which they communicated was NPO im. S. A. Lavochkina, a manufacturer of probes for Mars and Venus commissioned by the Federal Space Agency, and the Kosmotras International Space Corporation, which launches spacecraft on a commercial basis. All these meetings obviously took place according to the same scenario - in accordance with Russian customs. Russians often skipped breakfast and invited people to their office around eleven for an early lunch. At first, there was small talk for an hour or two over sandwiches, sausage and, of course, vodka... After lunch, they smoked for a long time and drank coffee. As soon as the table was cleared, the main Russian turned to Musk and asked: “So what do you want to buy there?”

Perhaps Musk was annoyed not by his habit of swinging for a long time, but by the fact that the Russians did not take him seriously. “They looked at us in disbelief,” Cantrell said. [Jim Cantrell assisted Mask during negotiations in Moscow - approx. Rusbase]. “One of their chief designers treated Elon and me with a disregard, deciding that we were hanging noodles on his ears.”

The most tense meeting took place in an ornate but dilapidated pre-revolutionary building near the center of Moscow. Vodka flowed, toasts sounded - “For space! For America!” - and Musk sat on 20 million and hoped that they would be enough for three ICBMs, which could be converted for flight into space. Flushed with vodka, Musk asked point blank how much the ballistic missile would cost. The answer was: eight million each. Musk made a response offer: eight for two.

“They sat and looked at him for a while,” Cantrell recalled. “And then they said something like: “Young man, no.” In addition, they hinted that he did not have that kind of money.”

By this time, Mask decided that the Russians either did not intend to conduct business with him, or simply wanted to pull as much as possible from the millionaire who had been enriched on the dot-com. He went out, slamming the door.

How inspired Soviet textbooks

... When Musk was kicked out of PayPal, he returned to childhood fantasies about spaceships and flights and began to think that he might find a more important calling for himself than developing Internet services. Friends soon began to notice the changes in his behavior and way of thinking, including a group of top executives from PayPal who gathered in Las Vegas one weekend to celebrate his business success. “We were hanging out in a private booth at the Hard Rock Cafe, and Elon was sitting reading a mysterious Soviet textbook on rocket science that was all moldy and looked like it was bought on eBay,” said Kevin Hartz, an early investor in PayPal. “He studied the book and talked openly about space flight and the possibility of changing the world.”

... SpaceX was supposed to be an American attempt to start rocket science from scratch. According to Mask, over the past half century, the aerospace industry has not made much progress.

Companies in this industry did not experience much competition, so they preferred to produce very expensive and very powerful rockets. They built a Ferrari for every launch when a Honda Accord would probably do.

Mask, for his part, decided to use in SpaceX the techniques that he learned from Silicon Valley startups - to act quickly, save and maximize the benefits of computing equipment and materials that have emerged over the past twenty years.

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