SpaceX Evolution (Appendix E Cult of Elon)
A serialized version of this book for SubStack
Link to First Installment: https://chrisprophet.substack.com/p/spacex-evolution
The array of commercial virtues found at Musk companies is staggering, almost guaranteeing their preeminence in the long game. However, even commercial dominance will not guarantee they attain their overarching goal – because the human factor holds final sway. So it all comes down to leadership: how far are people willing to go to follow Musk’s vision? Not by chance, Elon has an extraordinary following both inside and outside his companies, despite the naysayers – who only seem to feed their ardor. People believe in him and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to support his grand enterprise of raising humanity to become a spacefaring species.
Evidence of that commitment is manifest wherever you look inside the Musk community. Myriad YouTubers, bloggers and online media talk almost exclusively about his companies, spreading word of their seemingly miraculous exploits and hope for the future.
“We work harder than other companies, because we are quite literally shifting the course of history to open space for humanity.”1 ~ SpaceX holiday party flier
It is fair to say those who work inside Musk companies are dedicating their lives to his vision, which they strive towards night and day. A good example might be the developers who were tasked to produce the software for Falcon 9 booster landings. In August 2014, Elon decides to land on a boat, by mid-September he had purchased a suitable vessel and wanted the first landing to occur in October. The software team originally estimated 12 weeks but now had only a fraction of that time remaining. They work non-stop and sleep under their desks, or on a mattress by the hardware simulation table to ensure it operates continuously. Elon buys them food and reduces software validation to one regressive test, to save precious time. Miraculously the descent software was ready by November and the flight came within an ace of landing – only failing due to hydraulic failure, which merely required they carry more hydraulic fluid.2 Phew. Elon asked and they delivered – not blind dedication but perceptive dedication to finding ways to get it done.
Accounts like this might paint Elon as a slave-driver, except he asks far more of himself on a regular basis. When Tesla transitioned from a niche supplier into a mass manufacturer of electric vehicles in 2018, they entered what became known as “production hell.” Manufacturing the Model 3 at scale proved an enormous challenge for the company, a huge capex coupled with scarce return from Model 3 sales, meant they were rushing headlong towards insolvency. Apple had shown interest in the electric car market, so Elon approached their CEO Tim Cook for help but he refused to take the meeting. A crushing blow for many but not for Elon. He dedicated his life to keeping Tesla alive, working around the clock, sleeping only a couple of hours at a time on the factory floor next to the production line and not going home to wash or eat. Following his example, everyone at Tesla worked 100 hour weeks until finally they managed to complete the production line after several courageous months. No auto company has become a mass manufacturer in the US for nearly a century – except Tesla. You might call them fanatics to the cause but together they achieved what many deemed impossible. Important to note: Tesla isn’t Elon’s main priority, arguably his heart resides with SpaceX, the center of the whirlwind.
“I would like to go [to Mars] at some point, I’ll go when I’m certain that SpaceX will be fine without me and that path will continue.”3 ~ Elon Musk
Perhaps a good way to gauge support for Elon is the number of people who apply to work for him each year. In 2020 SpaceX HR handled a million job applications for a company with less than 8,000 full time employees at that time. This infers a million people competed for around a thousand places at SpaceX, to join Elon’s exalted band. Arguably the world has never seen such concentration of aerospace talent, all determined to take space technology to the next level.
"I always smile when people make projections on what can and cannot be done with technology.”4 ~ Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX President and COO
For some ‘cult’ might seem too extreme a description for this phenomenon. Yes, this societal shift is led by a charismatic visionary who wields tremendous influence through popular media,5 derides government bureaucracy and denounces ‘mainstream media’ as defenders of the status quo. However, the word ‘cult’ implies a fanatical following, which could hardly describe the group of moderate humanists closest to Musk... It could be argued the true test of someone’s dedication is how much they are willing to sacrifice. Interestingly Gwynne Shotwell revealed when they ask at SpaceX: “who wants to go to Mars?” everyone raises their hand. This is despite Elon’s oft repeated warning that Mars missions would be extremely dangerous, akin to the 2014 Shackleton expedition (an early attempt to cross the Antarctic via the South Pole) which openly advertised the extraordinary hardship involved as part of the recruiting process: -
“MEN WANTED: for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.” ~ Ernest Shackleton
Similarly, the danger for first landers is hardly underrated; as previously discussed they will probably remain on Mars for at least 52 months before they could hope to return. After such an extended period they would have fully acclimated to Mars’s low gravity hence any return to Earth might potentially prove fatal, or leave them with long-term disabilities, if they survive the transition. Essentially this means they are willing to go on a one-way mission, yet it seems most at SpaceX are still ready to make this sacrifice…
During the early days at SpaceX, anyone approaching Elon Musk’s office in a SpaceX T-shirt could expect to be greeted with: “Wear your regular clothes, people! We’re not a cult!” from Mary Beth Brown, his personnel assistant,6 who subsequently left the company…precipitously.
Notably this cult descriptor may no longer apply in coming years. Technically the word ‘cult’ is how a large congregation describes a small congregation. So if Elon Musk succeeds in changing our world – and manages to take us to new ones – his followers might soon become the majority.
“Just being in Starbase feels like a religious experience and what they are working on there can really change everything.”7 ~ Jared Isaacman, Commander of Inspiration4 and Founder of Polaris Project
Jared Isaacman is deeply committed to SpaceX development and intends to support future test missions through the Polaris Program. This private space program will prove essential technologies, such as SpaceX’s new EVA suit on a Crew Dragon mission, and culminate with Jared flying on the first Crewed Starship.8 Putting your life on the line certainly shows his willingness to sacrifice for the cause – and future of humanity.
Tenets of faith
Elon could be perceived as the avatar of a cult following, he’s personable, profound – and most of all human. Which implies his thoughts form the core tenets of their belief system. Generally Elon avoids matters of faith (why court controversy when you are already the world’s biggest disruptor) but he does commend this philosophy: -
“I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”
This suggests we need to gain a great deal more knowledge of our reality before we can even approach the big questions, such as: “the meaning of life.” Certainly exploring our incredibly diverse universe should assist the process, because there’s only so much you can learn from a single data point, i.e. planet Earth. Just to attempt this exploration will require a far better understanding of physical laws, technical capabilities and human resource, adding to our collective enlightenment.
Interestingly Elon feels there’s a high probability we are living in some kind of artificial construct, like a computer simulation. From this perspective, physical laws could be viewed as the computer code of our universe and physical information as analogous to computer data. Which suggests when we use physical laws to change our environment we are effectively hacking the universe. This might help to explain Musk’s unusual success in his ventures, essentially he’s working at a different level, using universal code to alter our reality.
“Well, I do think there's a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning… What I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that. Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn't be able to get through the day. But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach. Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It's really counterintuitive.”9 ~ Elon Musk/TEDTalks 2013
Charismatic Authority
To create any new cult requires a charismatic leader, i.e. someone who is possessed of certain extraordinary abilities. In other words followers have unreasoning faith in their leader’s gifts, granting them what is called “charismatic authority.” Max Weber describes a leader’s charisma as: -
“[A] certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.”10
Elon Musk would certainly fit this description due to a combination of his mental and physical capabilities; principally his inordinate ability to perceive solutions to seemingly insoluble problems, accompanied by the extraordinary energy required to make them reality (See Appendix F: Fermi Paradox/Champion of Humanity and Appendix G: What is Elon Musk). While Elon’s charisma might appear fairly irrelevant to many at this juncture, the resultant charismatic authority will likely prove pivotal to founding a free Mars, which then leads to the SpaceX superstate. Only charismatics can lead their people into the wilderness with any hope of survival, because It takes blind faith to confront and overcome all the problems from an alien environment, which bear no analogy to what has come before.
1 https://www.fastcompany.com/52065/hondas-space
2https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/lw6yk1/notes_from_a_talk_given_by_then_head_of_software/
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1379456383549050882
5 https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/30/23656153/elon-musk-twitter-most-followed-barack-obama
6 https://www.fastcompany.com/52065/hondas-space
https://polarisprogram.com/
10 ISBN: 9781439188873 “Theory of Social and Economic Organization,” by Max Weber