Chapter 1221 (2/2)
”Spend government money!”
Elon Musk said: ”the most important thing for these government agencies to research and develop space technology is cost. NASA's technology accumulation in the field of space technology ranks first in the world, but their technologies are all made by the U.S. government with hundreds of billions of dollars in the cold war period. The development momentum of Chinese launch vehicles in recent years is very strong, but it is also inseparable from the full support of the government As the support of the government, the launch vehicles developed by these institutions have a common problem, that is, their cost performance is too low! ”
Speaking of this, Elon Musk came to the spirit and said: ”look, boss, for example, the U.S. government wants to build a military satellite positioning system and give NASA the task of launching a dozen satellites. For the military, they don't care about the hundreds of millions of dollars in the cost of launching. The Chinese government must It's the same, but in the future, the gold owner behind the commercial satellite is the enterprise rather than the country. If the cost of rocket launching is too high, the development of the whole commercial satellite will be greatly affected. However, it's a big yamen like NASA who doesn't study how to reduce the cost, so the market of commercial rocket launching will stagnate because of the high cost. If this time What would it be like for a private company to study how to reduce the launch cost of commercial satellites? ”
Li Mu suddenly realized.
Elon Musk was aiming at such a market in space.What he said really makes sense. The government's large investment in space projects is always in pursuit of high performance rather than cost performance. Therefore, the development of the whole space industry is like a deformed official market. If we use cars as a metaphor, it is like that every country has a state-owned automobile manufacturer, who is desperately developing the fastest running cars and the most loaded cars Cars are the most powerful in technology, so the cars they make are either as fast as lightning, or super powerful in power, or extremely powerful in technology. But the only disadvantage is that they are too expensive to drive. Ordinary people can't even burn their mother's oil, let alone buy them and drive them back.
However, it is not only every country that has the demand for automobiles, but also many individuals and individual groups have the desire for automobiles. At this time, if a company focuses on building the car with the highest cost performance, it will surely be able to occupy the largest initiative in this market.
If a communication company wants to put ten satellites in a fixed orbit, it may cost three billion US dollars to find a U.S. launch, and two billion US dollars to find a Chinese launch. But if a company can do it for one billion US dollars, it can also save 200 million US dollars for its own profits. There is no doubt that in the market of commercial satellites in the future, its development space will become very large.
Thinking of this, Li Mu smacked his lips and looked at Elon Musk and said, ”it sounds like a bit interesting, but the initial investment in this industry is too large, and you always have technical reserves, right? It's impossible to start from scratch, so where do you get your technology reserves? ”
“NASA！” Elon Musk said with a smile: ”you can understand NASA as a largely abandoned treasure house, which has a large number of idle talents and technologies. As long as we have enough starting capital, I can find a large number of talents who are proficient in a certain technology and can quickly change a certain technology for their own use from NASA, and start to develop directly from 70% and 80% of the completion. The starting point will not be It's always fast, and our R & D direction is different from those of these institutions, which can avoid risks to the greatest extent. ”
With that said, Elon Musk explained: ”take cars as an analogy. NASA studies expensive and top-notch F1, while Europe and Japan study V12, double supercharging and super running with more than 1000 horsepower. China studies V8, supercharging and sports cars with more than 600 horsepower but less expensive. We use their engine technology, engine gearbox adjustment technology Chassis adjustment technology and other electronic auxiliary technologies, but we don't build racing cars, super racing cars or sports cars, we will build a 4-cylinder 2.0 economic model, build this model, and then in this level of market, we will be the largest possessor. ”
”Imagine that when there are only ten million dollars of F1, one million dollars of Ferrari and hundreds of thousands of dollars of Mercedes Benz on the market, we have created tens of thousands of dollars of Toyota Prius. What kind of situation would that be...”
If it's not for his identity, Li Mu really wants to applaud Elon Musk and send him a sentence, one by one. No wonder this guy is called the iron man of Silicon Valley. He seems to be engaging in a strange industry, and the prospect is not optimistic at all. But in fact, he has made the future development space planning very clear. Space-x may not catch up with NASA in his whole life It can't catch up with the Chinese long march series and the Russian space agency, but it's enough for him to be more cost-effective than them.
When the market is full of cars like Ferrari, the car can only be the toys of the top rich. After all, it is a very small number of the society that can afford Ferrari. But once the Prius, a kind of hybrid car with real leather resistance and fuel saving, comes out, it is too attractive for ordinary people to afford a consumer of a Prius, rather than a consumer of a Ferrari At least ten thousand times more, which is Elon Musk's ambition in space.
Moreover, Li Mu himself is an Internet technology background. He knows that with the rapid development of Internet technology, satellites will play an increasingly important role in the future Internet development. In the last life, Facebook, Google and apple all seem to have their own satellite launch plans. It's not easy to make a decade later that will be the era of Satellite Internet. At that time, it's not just Internet production Products need their own satellites, and hardware development also needs their own satellites. It is likely that there will be a demand for dozens of satellites to be launched in the future under their own product system alone. Therefore, the market prospect of commercial satellite launching in the world is indeed very broad.
After straightening out these, Li Mu suddenly became particularly interested in Elon Musk's aerospace career. He said to Elon Musk, ”Elon, you have convinced me that when you want to officially start, you can come to me at any time. I'm ready to play with you for 100 million dollars.”
”That's great!” Elon Musk said seriously, ”if so, next year I will set up a sum of money from PayPal, let's invest in space together!”