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Elon Musk: I didn't think SpaceX would succeed – and it almost didn't. “We started off developing a small rocket, which was kind of a scale model version and proceeded to have three failed launches in a row. For various technical reasons, the first three launches did not succeed... in reaching orbit. Launches 2 and 3 did get to space, but they didn't achieve enough speed to reach orbital velocity. It was in 2008, we were heading into the recession, and we had one rocket left. Fortunately, in late 2008, that fourth launch did work and we made it to orbit and then we won a NASA contract after that. Fortunately things worked out. But if that fourth launch had not worked, then SpaceX wouldn't be around. So it was very close call. In fact, when I started I thought, okay, I think I've got enough money for three launches. Fortunately, it was just enough to make that fourth one.” Montana Jobs Summit, September 16, 2013show more

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Elon Musk: My initial plan was not to start a rocket company. I just wanted to fund a one-time Oasis mission to Mars. “I started off initially with the idea of doing something in the space exploration arena. In fact, it wasn't actually with the idea of creating a company. It was initially with the thought of spurring interest in sending people to Mars. So I put together this idea called Mars Oasis, which was to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars and get people excited about the idea of going there and thus increase NASA's budget in order to make it happen. As I got more and more into that, I discovered that the real issue was that the cost of space transportation was really high, and it was getting worse. So we're used to technology getting better every year, but in some arenas it actually does not. It gets worse, particularly when you consider that in 1969 we were able to go to the moon and then we were unable to go beyond low Earth orbit. And now with the space shuttle retired, we're not even able to go to Earth orbit at all, even with people. That was not the right trajectory. So I actually went to Russia three times to look at buying an ICBM to launch this mission. Just very crazy. After my third trip of trying to negotiate with the Russians to buy an ICBM and I did actually get a deal, so figured out what it would cost and everything. But I concluded that my initial assumption had been wrong, that it was not a question of trying to generate more will to explore. Because I think the United States in particular is distillation of the human spirit of exploration. Space exploration is fundamental to the American psyche. But people really need to believe that it can be done and it's not going to break the bank if it does. So that's when I decided to start a rocket company. And I actually didn't think it would succeed and it almost didn't. We started off developing a small rocket which was kind of a scale model version. It was about 100,000 pounds of thrust. So big, you know, big, big by normal standards, but small for a rocket. And developed the engine and the airframe and the electronics and the guidance control system and then proceeded to have three failed launches in a row. And so for various technical reasons, the first three launches did not succeed in reaching orbit. Launches two and three did get to space, but they didn't achieve enough speed to reach orbital velocity. So this is 2008. And so we were heading into the recession and we had one rocket left. And fortunately in late 2008, that fourth launch did work and we made it to orbit. And then we won a NASA contract after that. And so fortunately things worked out. But if that fourth launch had not worked, then SpaceX wouldn't be around. So it was very close call. In fact, when I started I thought, okay, I've got enough money, I think I've got enough money for three launches. Fortunately, it was just enough to make that fourth one.” Montana Jobs Summit, September 16, 2013

Elon Musk: My initial plan was not to start a rocket company. I just wanted to fund a one-time Oasis mission to Mars. “I started off initially with the idea of doing something in the space exploration arena. In fact, it wasn't actually with the idea of creating a company. It was initially with the thought of spurring interest in sending people to Mars. So I put together this idea called Mars Oasis, which was to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars and get people excited about the idea of going there and thus increase NASA's budget in order to make it happen. As I got more and more into that, I discovered that the real issue was that the cost of space transportation was really high, and it was getting worse. So we're used to technology getting better every year, but in some arenas it actually does not. It gets worse, particularly when you consider that in 1969 we were able to go to the moon and then we were unable to go beyond low Earth orbit. And now with the space shuttle retired, we're not even able to go to Earth orbit at all, even with people. That was not the right trajectory. So I actually went to Russia three times to look at buying an ICBM to launch this mission. Just very crazy. After my third trip of trying to negotiate with the Russians to buy an ICBM and I did actually get a deal, so figured out what it would cost and everything. But I concluded that my initial assumption had been wrong, that it was not a question of trying to generate more will to explore. Because I think the United States in particular is distillation of the human spirit of exploration. Space exploration is fundamental to the American psyche. But people really need to believe that it can be done and it's not going to break the bank if it does. So that's when I decided to start a rocket company. And I actually didn't think it would succeed and it almost didn't. We started off developing a small rocket which was kind of a scale model version. It was about 100,000 pounds of thrust. So big, you know, big, big by normal standards, but small for a rocket. And developed the engine and the airframe and the electronics and the guidance control system and then proceeded to have three failed launches in a row. And so for various technical reasons, the first three launches did not succeed in reaching orbit. Launches two and three did get to space, but they didn't achieve enough speed to reach orbital velocity. So this is 2008. And so we were heading into the recession and we had one rocket left. And fortunately in late 2008, that fourth launch did work and we made it to orbit. And then we won a NASA contract after that. And so fortunately things worked out. But if that fourth launch had not worked, then SpaceX wouldn't be around. So it was very close call. In fact, when I started I thought, okay, I've got enough money, I think I've got enough money for three launches. Fortunately, it was just enough to make that fourth one.” Montana Jobs Summit, September 16, 2013

ELON CLIPS

24,586 views • 2 months ago

Elon Musk: I gave SpaceX and Tesla all my money, and then I didn't have a house and had to borrow money for rent. “We blew up three rockets in the beginning. That was bad. Originally, I basically took all the money I made from PayPal, put it into SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity. Initially, I figured I'd keep half of it, and then I'd spend the other half on these crazy ventures that would probably fail. And then, unfortunately, they needed all the money, so I had to give them all the money. And then I didn't have a house and had to borrow money for rent. That was pretty difficult. That was back in 2008. And then, we managed to scrape enough spare parts together to do a fourth launch at SpaceX and that worked. And if it had not worked, SpaceX would have died, probably would have lacked the credibility to raise the remaining money for Tesla and we wouldn't be here today.” Interview at E3 Coliseum, June 13, 2019

Elon Musk: I gave SpaceX and Tesla all my money, and then I didn't have a house and had to borrow money for rent. “We blew up three rockets in the beginning. That was bad. Originally, I basically took all the money I made from PayPal, put it into SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity. Initially, I figured I'd keep half of it, and then I'd spend the other half on these crazy ventures that would probably fail. And then, unfortunately, they needed all the money, so I had to give them all the money. And then I didn't have a house and had to borrow money for rent. That was pretty difficult. That was back in 2008. And then, we managed to scrape enough spare parts together to do a fourth launch at SpaceX and that worked. And if it had not worked, SpaceX would have died, probably would have lacked the credibility to raise the remaining money for Tesla and we wouldn't be here today.” Interview at E3 Coliseum, June 13, 2019

ELON CLIPS

387,734 views • 8 months ago

ELON: SPACEX ALMOST DIDN’T MAKE IT “We blew up three rockets in the beginning. We actually only had [so much] money. I took all the money I made from PayPal to create SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity. Initially, I figured I'd keep half of it, and then I'd spend the other half on these crazy ventures that would probably fail. Unfortunately, they needed all the money. Then, we managed to scrape enough spare parts together to do a fourth launch at SpaceX and that worked. If it had not worked, SpaceX would have died, I probably would have lacked the credibility to raise the remaining money for Tesla and we wouldn't be here today.” Source: E3 Coliseum, June 2019

ELON: SPACEX ALMOST DIDN’T MAKE IT “We blew up three rockets in the beginning. We actually only had [so much] money. I took all the money I made from PayPal to create SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity. Initially, I figured I'd keep half of it, and then I'd spend the other half on these crazy ventures that would probably fail. Unfortunately, they needed all the money. Then, we managed to scrape enough spare parts together to do a fourth launch at SpaceX and that worked. If it had not worked, SpaceX would have died, I probably would have lacked the credibility to raise the remaining money for Tesla and we wouldn't be here today.” Source: E3 Coliseum, June 2019

Mario Nawfal

27,976 views • 1 year ago

Elon Musk: The good chief engineers thought SpaceX wouldn't make it, so I ended up taking the role. “I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't hire anyone who was good. None of the good chief engineers would join because they're like, this is too risky, you're going to die. The first three flights did fail, so it was a bit of a learning exercise there. And the fourth one fortunately worked, but if the fourth one hadn't worked, I had no money left and that would have been curtains. Interview at Y Combinator, June 16, 2025

Elon Musk: The good chief engineers thought SpaceX wouldn't make it, so I ended up taking the role. “I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't hire anyone who was good. None of the good chief engineers would join because they're like, this is too risky, you're going to die. The first three flights did fail, so it was a bit of a learning exercise there. And the fourth one fortunately worked, but if the fourth one hadn't worked, I had no money left and that would have been curtains. Interview at Y Combinator, June 16, 2025

ELON CLIPS

369,019 views • 1 year ago

ELON MUSK: “We had the third consecutive failure of the Falcon 1 rocket for SpaceX. Tesla almost went bankrupt. We closed our financing round 6 p.m. Christmas Eve, 2008. It was the last hour of the last day that it was possible. We would have gone bankrupt two days after Christmas otherwise. What's your pain threshold? Well, it's real high. So, yeah, SpaceX is alive by the skin of its teeth. So is Tesla. If things had just gone a little bit the other way, both companies would be dead. And one of the most difficult choices I have ever faced in life was in 2008. I think I had maybe $30 million or $40 million left in 2008, and I had two choices. I could put it all into one company, and then the other company would definitely die. Or split it between the two companies. But if I split it between the two companies, then both might die. And when you put your blood, sweat, and tears into creating something, building something, it's like a child. So it's like, which one am I going to let one starve to death? I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I split the money between the two. Fortunately, thank goodness, they both came through. (2:00) ... Well, there's a ton of failures along the way, that's for sure. As I said, for SpaceX, the first three launches failed. We were just barely able to scrape together enough parts and money to do the fourth launch. If that fourth launch had failed, we would have been dead. So, multiple failures along the way. I tried very hard to get the right expertise in for SpaceX. I tried hard to find a great chief engineer for the rocket, but the good chief engineers wouldn't join, and the bad ones, well, there was no point in hiring them, so I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket. So if I could have found somebody better, then we would have maybe had less than three failures.”

ELON MUSK: “We had the third consecutive failure of the Falcon 1 rocket for SpaceX. Tesla almost went bankrupt. We closed our financing round 6 p.m. Christmas Eve, 2008. It was the last hour of the last day that it was possible. We would have gone bankrupt two days after Christmas otherwise. What's your pain threshold? Well, it's real high. So, yeah, SpaceX is alive by the skin of its teeth. So is Tesla. If things had just gone a little bit the other way, both companies would be dead. And one of the most difficult choices I have ever faced in life was in 2008. I think I had maybe $30 million or $40 million left in 2008, and I had two choices. I could put it all into one company, and then the other company would definitely die. Or split it between the two companies. But if I split it between the two companies, then both might die. And when you put your blood, sweat, and tears into creating something, building something, it's like a child. So it's like, which one am I going to let one starve to death? I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I split the money between the two. Fortunately, thank goodness, they both came through. (2:00) ... Well, there's a ton of failures along the way, that's for sure. As I said, for SpaceX, the first three launches failed. We were just barely able to scrape together enough parts and money to do the fourth launch. If that fourth launch had failed, we would have been dead. So, multiple failures along the way. I tried very hard to get the right expertise in for SpaceX. I tried hard to find a great chief engineer for the rocket, but the good chief engineers wouldn't join, and the bad ones, well, there was no point in hiring them, so I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket. So if I could have found somebody better, then we would have maybe had less than three failures.”

Dima Zeniuk

90,275 views • 7 months ago

Paul Buchheit tells the story of Elon Musk’s talk at Google before the first SpaceX launch When asked about the common denominators of founders who build $100 billion companies, Gmail creator Paul Buchheit gives the following response: “There is this obsessive focus. There’s almost an irrationality in some of these founders. The example that comes out as like the most insane version of it is probably Elon Musk.” Paul recalls how Elon gave a tech talk at Google around 2003 - after he had started SpaceX, but before they had done the first rocket launch. Someone asked what Elon would do if the rocket explodes when it launched, and Elon replied: “Well, I have enough money for three launches, so I hope one of them succeeds.” The first three launches blew up too and SpaceX only barely scraped together enough money for a fourth launch that ultimately succeeded. Paul comments: “If that fourth rocket hadn’t worked, there would be no SpaceX and Elon would be bankrupt. That is insane. I would not take all of my money and plow it into some harebrained rocket scheme. That’s a level of irrational that is I think wonderful.” Video source: Y Combinator (2018)

Paul Buchheit tells the story of Elon Musk’s talk at Google before the first SpaceX launch When asked about the common denominators of founders who build $100 billion companies, Gmail creator Paul Buchheit gives the following response: “There is this obsessive focus. There’s almost an irrationality in some of these founders. The example that comes out as like the most insane version of it is probably Elon Musk.” Paul recalls how Elon gave a tech talk at Google around 2003 - after he had started SpaceX, but before they had done the first rocket launch. Someone asked what Elon would do if the rocket explodes when it launched, and Elon replied: “Well, I have enough money for three launches, so I hope one of them succeeds.” The first three launches blew up too and SpaceX only barely scraped together enough money for a fourth launch that ultimately succeeded. Paul comments: “If that fourth rocket hadn’t worked, there would be no SpaceX and Elon would be bankrupt. That is insane. I would not take all of my money and plow it into some harebrained rocket scheme. That’s a level of irrational that is I think wonderful.” Video source: Y Combinator (2018)

Startup Archive

53,521 views • 9 months ago

ELON MUSK: Nobody believed SpaceX could land rockets, until it did. “We really had no idea at the start of SpaceX how to actually make rockets. And obviously, we blew up a rocket three times before finally reaching orbit. It took many attempts from a very talented and dedicated team. And now, we’ve gotten to the point where we take off and land and recover a booster every few days. When we were trying to land the booster, no one really believed that we could succeed. And I was told by so many experts in the aerospace industry that you’re not going to succeed in doing this. And even if you do, no one’s going to buy a rocket that was, you know, a used rocket, essentially. And yeah, it’s amazing to think that we’ve got our 700th flight coming up. So, just a huge testament to the incredible work of the Falcon team and the launch team, manufacturing team.”

ELON MUSK: Nobody believed SpaceX could land rockets, until it did. “We really had no idea at the start of SpaceX how to actually make rockets. And obviously, we blew up a rocket three times before finally reaching orbit. It took many attempts from a very talented and dedicated team. And now, we’ve gotten to the point where we take off and land and recover a booster every few days. When we were trying to land the booster, no one really believed that we could succeed. And I was told by so many experts in the aerospace industry that you’re not going to succeed in doing this. And even if you do, no one’s going to buy a rocket that was, you know, a used rocket, essentially. And yeah, it’s amazing to think that we’ve got our 700th flight coming up. So, just a huge testament to the incredible work of the Falcon team and the launch team, manufacturing team.”

DogeDesigner

61,627 views • 4 days ago

Elon Musk on why he told SpaceX recruits "we're probably going to die" "With SpaceX, I think there's like a less than 10% chance of being successful, maybe 1%. But if a startup doesn't do something to advance rocket technology, it's definitely not coming from the big defense contractors. So a small chance of success is better than no chance of success" "I started that in mid 2002 expecting to fail. Even when recruiting people, I didn't try to make out that it would succeed. I said, we're probably going to die, but there's maybe a 10% chance we might not die, and this is the only way to get people to Mars" "I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't hire anyone who was good. None of the good chief engineers would join, because they said this is too risky, you're going to die" "The first three flights did fail. The fourth one fortunately worked. But if the fourth one hadn't worked, I had no money left, it would have been curtains. My estimate of success was not far off. We made it by the skin of our teeth"

Elon Musk on why he told SpaceX recruits "we're probably going to die" "With SpaceX, I think there's like a less than 10% chance of being successful, maybe 1%. But if a startup doesn't do something to advance rocket technology, it's definitely not coming from the big defense contractors. So a small chance of success is better than no chance of success" "I started that in mid 2002 expecting to fail. Even when recruiting people, I didn't try to make out that it would succeed. I said, we're probably going to die, but there's maybe a 10% chance we might not die, and this is the only way to get people to Mars" "I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't hire anyone who was good. None of the good chief engineers would join, because they said this is too risky, you're going to die" "The first three flights did fail. The fourth one fortunately worked. But if the fourth one hadn't worked, I had no money left, it would have been curtains. My estimate of success was not far off. We made it by the skin of our teeth"

Jaynit

319,869 views • 10 days ago

Elon Musk on the hardest decision in his life: “It's just when I started running out of money from PayPal and the markets went into a recession, that's when bankruptcy was knocking at the door. It was in 2008. From 2008 through 2012, bankruptcy was knocking at the door. I had one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make in 2008. I had like $40 million left or something from the PayPal sale. And I could put it all on SpaceX or all on Tesla and increase the probability that either one would survive. Or I could split it. But to me, the company's like a kid. It's not like just a company to me. So it's sort of like if you've got two kids, how could you really say, okay, we're going to let one kid starve? So I was like, I couldn't bring myself to say I'm going to, you know, definitely that company's going to die or definitely that company's going to die. So I ended up splitting the money and gave $20 million to Tesla and $20 million to SpaceX. But that could have ended up being a super dumb decision, and both companies could have gone bankrupt as a result. So at the time, I was like, 'Man, this would really suck if both companies go bankrupt because I kind of split the meal.' But then, fortunately, the fourth launch of SpaceX reached orbit. If that fourth launch had failed, SpaceX would be dead for sure. And then we closed the Tesla financing round on the last hour of the last day that it was possible, which was 6 p.m. December 24th, 2008.”

Elon Musk on the hardest decision in his life: “It's just when I started running out of money from PayPal and the markets went into a recession, that's when bankruptcy was knocking at the door. It was in 2008. From 2008 through 2012, bankruptcy was knocking at the door. I had one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make in 2008. I had like $40 million left or something from the PayPal sale. And I could put it all on SpaceX or all on Tesla and increase the probability that either one would survive. Or I could split it. But to me, the company's like a kid. It's not like just a company to me. So it's sort of like if you've got two kids, how could you really say, okay, we're going to let one kid starve? So I was like, I couldn't bring myself to say I'm going to, you know, definitely that company's going to die or definitely that company's going to die. So I ended up splitting the money and gave $20 million to Tesla and $20 million to SpaceX. But that could have ended up being a super dumb decision, and both companies could have gone bankrupt as a result. So at the time, I was like, 'Man, this would really suck if both companies go bankrupt because I kind of split the meal.' But then, fortunately, the fourth launch of SpaceX reached orbit. If that fourth launch had failed, SpaceX would be dead for sure. And then we closed the Tesla financing round on the last hour of the last day that it was possible, which was 6 p.m. December 24th, 2008.”

Eva Fo𝕏 🦊 Claudius Nero's Legion

317,697 views • 9 months ago

#Ramayana PART-3! Why Ramayana Couldn't Be Just One Film: Nitesh Tiwari Reveals the Untold Battle Behind the Epic's Split! "We would not have done justice to the total story of Ramayana if we had done it in one part. We would have had to rush through too many things, and they had far too many valuable stuff which is there for us to just crunch it in one and leave aside a lot of stuff. So we had to probably work very hard in trying to decide whether we want to go for two parts or three parts. We thought about doing three parts also, but then what was happening in doing that is we were only left with wars in part three. And emotions are core for Ramayana, you know. So we were not really having great emotional connect in part three when we were doing it like that. So we then finally decided, okay, we are going to crunch it into two parts, so that not just visual extravaganza remains, but emotional core doesn't get compromised."

#Ramayana PART-3! Why Ramayana Couldn't Be Just One Film: Nitesh Tiwari Reveals the Untold Battle Behind the Epic's Split! "We would not have done justice to the total story of Ramayana if we had done it in one part. We would have had to rush through too many things, and they had far too many valuable stuff which is there for us to just crunch it in one and leave aside a lot of stuff. So we had to probably work very hard in trying to decide whether we want to go for two parts or three parts. We thought about doing three parts also, but then what was happening in doing that is we were only left with wars in part three. And emotions are core for Ramayana, you know. So we were not really having great emotional connect in part three when we were doing it like that. So we then finally decided, okay, we are going to crunch it into two parts, so that not just visual extravaganza remains, but emotional core doesn't get compromised."

cinegeek

46,715 views • 14 days ago

I asked Jaylen Brown about Sam Hauser for the three-point record and he started laughing: “It was terrible. I remember when Sam almost had the record when we were in Washington, and he hurt his ankle, and I didn't play that game, and I was in the back, and I was like, ‘Bro, you got to get back out there. I need you to get that record.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, it's gonna come back to me. That was two years ago…. It might not be another two years.” “But it was a joy to watch, man. We was all rooting for him. I wanted him to get it, but probably it was a little bit too much pressure on it.”

I asked Jaylen Brown about Sam Hauser for the three-point record and he started laughing: “It was terrible. I remember when Sam almost had the record when we were in Washington, and he hurt his ankle, and I didn't play that game, and I was in the back, and I was like, ‘Bro, you got to get back out there. I need you to get that record.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, it's gonna come back to me. That was two years ago…. It might not be another two years.” “But it was a joy to watch, man. We was all rooting for him. I wanted him to get it, but probably it was a little bit too much pressure on it.”

Noa Dalzell 🏀

371,109 views • 7 months ago

Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski talks about his team's negotiations with Bo Bichette in free agency before he signed with the Mets: "I can't say that we ever thought it was done. We thought we were very close to having a deal done. We thought it was going to happen, but it wasn't done. There's a difference between the two. As I've explained to some other people, it's a situation where in baseball, and agents run things differently between themselves, they do things in different ways. Until you sign a memo of understanding, you don't have a deal done. We did not sign one of those. It wasn't that we weren't moving towards that direction. It isn't to think that we were going to get there based upon our conversations, but we did not get to that point so I can't say that I ever thought we had it done. I did think we were going to get a deal done."

Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski talks about his team's negotiations with Bo Bichette in free agency before he signed with the Mets: "I can't say that we ever thought it was done. We thought we were very close to having a deal done. We thought it was going to happen, but it wasn't done. There's a difference between the two. As I've explained to some other people, it's a situation where in baseball, and agents run things differently between themselves, they do things in different ways. Until you sign a memo of understanding, you don't have a deal done. We did not sign one of those. It wasn't that we weren't moving towards that direction. It isn't to think that we were going to get there based upon our conversations, but we did not get to that point so I can't say that I ever thought we had it done. I did think we were going to get a deal done."

SNY Mets

93,449 views • 6 months ago

Garrett Wilson was asked about his sideline exchange with Aaron Glenn at the end of the first half: "I just didn't know exactly what the plan was. Once I figured it out, I was disappointed. I'll just say that." Follow-up: "To not run a play, is that what you mean?" Wilson: "I didn't know exactly what the plan was. Once we converted the fourth down, I just thought we were going for the, trying to make the play. Obviously, we get to another fourth down and it's a tough spot to be in. In hindsight, I get why they did that, but in the moment, I was just like, 'man...'. I don't know. Yeah."

Garrett Wilson was asked about his sideline exchange with Aaron Glenn at the end of the first half: "I just didn't know exactly what the plan was. Once I figured it out, I was disappointed. I'll just say that." Follow-up: "To not run a play, is that what you mean?" Wilson: "I didn't know exactly what the plan was. Once we converted the fourth down, I just thought we were going for the, trying to make the play. Obviously, we get to another fourth down and it's a tough spot to be in. In hindsight, I get why they did that, but in the moment, I was just like, 'man...'. I don't know. Yeah."

SNY Jets

2,670,454 views • 10 months ago

SpaceX was one launch away from dying. Three Falcon 1 launches had already failed. Money was running out. Another failure could have been the end of the company. Then Falcon 1 Flight 4 lifted off from a tiny island in the Pacific and became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach Earth orbit. That single launch changed everything. Rest is history.

SpaceX was one launch away from dying. Three Falcon 1 launches had already failed. Money was running out. Another failure could have been the end of the company. Then Falcon 1 Flight 4 lifted off from a tiny island in the Pacific and became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach Earth orbit. That single launch changed everything. Rest is history.

DogeDesigner

52,125 views • 2 months ago

Sergey Brin on AI and Jeff Dean back in December when Gemini peaked: “I would say in some ways we for sure messed up in that we underinvested and sort of didn't take it as seriously as we should have, say, eight years ago when we published the Transformer paper. We actually didn't take it all that seriously and didn't necessarily invest in scaling the compute. And also we were too scared to bring it to people because chatbots say dumb things. And, you know, OpenAI ran with it, which is good for them. It was a super smart insight, and it was also our people like Ilya who went there to do that. But I do think we still have benefited from that long history. So we had a lot of the research and development of neural networks kind of going back to Google Brain. That was also kind of lucky. It wasn't luck that we hired Jeff Dean. I mean, we were lucky to get him. But we were in this sort of mindset that deep technical things matter. And so we hired him. We hired a lot of people from DEC, honestly, because they had the top research labs at the time. But he [Jeff Dean] was passionate about neural networks. And it stemmed, I think, from actually his college experiment. I don't know. He was like, whatever, curing third world disease and figuring out neural networks when he was like 16. He's done crazy things. But he was passionate about it. He built up a whole effort. And actually in my division at the time in Google X. We had him but I didn't I was like okay Jeff you do whatever you want. He's like oh we can tell cats from dogs. I'm like oh okay cool. But you know, you also trust your technical people and soon enough they were developing all these algorithms these neural nets that were doing some of our search. And then, you know, Noam came up with a transformer and we were able to do more and more. But yeah, I mean, so we had the underpinnings, we had the R&D. We did underinvest for a number of years and didn't take it as seriously as we should have.” Both Jeff Dean and Noam Shazeer left Google in the past two months.

Sergey Brin on AI and Jeff Dean back in December when Gemini peaked: “I would say in some ways we for sure messed up in that we underinvested and sort of didn't take it as seriously as we should have, say, eight years ago when we published the Transformer paper. We actually didn't take it all that seriously and didn't necessarily invest in scaling the compute. And also we were too scared to bring it to people because chatbots say dumb things. And, you know, OpenAI ran with it, which is good for them. It was a super smart insight, and it was also our people like Ilya who went there to do that. But I do think we still have benefited from that long history. So we had a lot of the research and development of neural networks kind of going back to Google Brain. That was also kind of lucky. It wasn't luck that we hired Jeff Dean. I mean, we were lucky to get him. But we were in this sort of mindset that deep technical things matter. And so we hired him. We hired a lot of people from DEC, honestly, because they had the top research labs at the time. But he [Jeff Dean] was passionate about neural networks. And it stemmed, I think, from actually his college experiment. I don't know. He was like, whatever, curing third world disease and figuring out neural networks when he was like 16. He's done crazy things. But he was passionate about it. He built up a whole effort. And actually in my division at the time in Google X. We had him but I didn't I was like okay Jeff you do whatever you want. He's like oh we can tell cats from dogs. I'm like oh okay cool. But you know, you also trust your technical people and soon enough they were developing all these algorithms these neural nets that were doing some of our search. And then, you know, Noam came up with a transformer and we were able to do more and more. But yeah, I mean, so we had the underpinnings, we had the R&D. We did underinvest for a number of years and didn't take it as seriously as we should have.” Both Jeff Dean and Noam Shazeer left Google in the past two months.

tae kim

247,281 views • 7 days ago

A company that came within hours of missing payroll became one of the most valuable in the world. 👏 As SpaceX stock hits its lows, let's look back at Tesla's journey. One thing history teaches us is never to bet against Elon Musk. On December 24th, 2008, Tesla's bank account was about to hit zero. Payroll was two days away. If the financing didn't close that exact afternoon, the company was finished. Then the global financial crisis hit. Musk's other company, SpaceX, was in just as much trouble, its rocket had failed to reach orbit three times in a row. 😯 Musk had already poured nearly all his money from selling PayPal into both companies. In September 2008, on its fourth attempt, SpaceX's rocket finally reached orbit.🚀 But Tesla still needed its own miracle, and time was almost out. Musk put in the last twenty million dollars he had to his name, matched by other investors, and called in every favor he had.

A company that came within hours of missing payroll became one of the most valuable in the world. 👏 As SpaceX stock hits its lows, let's look back at Tesla's journey. One thing history teaches us is never to bet against Elon Musk. On December 24th, 2008, Tesla's bank account was about to hit zero. Payroll was two days away. If the financing didn't close that exact afternoon, the company was finished. Then the global financial crisis hit. Musk's other company, SpaceX, was in just as much trouble, its rocket had failed to reach orbit three times in a row. 😯 Musk had already poured nearly all his money from selling PayPal into both companies. In September 2008, on its fourth attempt, SpaceX's rocket finally reached orbit.🚀 But Tesla still needed its own miracle, and time was almost out. Musk put in the last twenty million dollars he had to his name, matched by other investors, and called in every favor he had.

Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial

36,204 views • 25 days ago

Here's Elon Musk back in 2010 announcing that SpaceX is going to try to build a fully and rapidly reusable orbit-class rocket. “The pivotal breakthrough that's necessary, that some company has to come up with to make life multiplanetary is a fully and rapidly reusable orbit-class rocket. This is a very difficult thing to do because we live on a planet where that is just barely possible. If gravity were a little lower, it would be easy. If it was a little higher, it would be impossible. Even for an expendable launch vehicle where you don't attempt any recovery, you get maybe 2% to 3% of your liftoff weight to orbit. Now you say, okay, let's make it reusable. Which means you've got to strengthen the stages, you've got to add a lot of weight, a lot of thermal protection, you've got to do a lot of things that add weight to that vehicle and still have a useful payload to orbit. Now, you're saying, of that meager 2% to 3% and maybe if you're really good, get it to 4%, you've got to add all that's necessary to bring the rocket stages back to the launchpad and be able to refly them and still have useful payloads to orbit. So, a very difficult thing. This has been attempted many times in the past and generally what's happened is when people have concluded that success was not one of the possible outcomes then the project's been abandoned. It's just a very tough engineering problem. It wasn't something that I thought I wasn't sure it could be solved, for a while, but then relatively recently, probably in the last 12 months or so, I've come to the conclusion that it can be solved. And I think SpaceX is going to try to do it. We could fail. I'm not saying we're certain of success here, but we're going to try to do it. We have a design that on paper, doing the calculations, doing the simulations, it does work. And now we need to make sure that those simulations and reality agree because generally when they don't, reality wins.” National Press Club, September 29, 2010

Here's Elon Musk back in 2010 announcing that SpaceX is going to try to build a fully and rapidly reusable orbit-class rocket. “The pivotal breakthrough that's necessary, that some company has to come up with to make life multiplanetary is a fully and rapidly reusable orbit-class rocket. This is a very difficult thing to do because we live on a planet where that is just barely possible. If gravity were a little lower, it would be easy. If it was a little higher, it would be impossible. Even for an expendable launch vehicle where you don't attempt any recovery, you get maybe 2% to 3% of your liftoff weight to orbit. Now you say, okay, let's make it reusable. Which means you've got to strengthen the stages, you've got to add a lot of weight, a lot of thermal protection, you've got to do a lot of things that add weight to that vehicle and still have a useful payload to orbit. Now, you're saying, of that meager 2% to 3% and maybe if you're really good, get it to 4%, you've got to add all that's necessary to bring the rocket stages back to the launchpad and be able to refly them and still have useful payloads to orbit. So, a very difficult thing. This has been attempted many times in the past and generally what's happened is when people have concluded that success was not one of the possible outcomes then the project's been abandoned. It's just a very tough engineering problem. It wasn't something that I thought I wasn't sure it could be solved, for a while, but then relatively recently, probably in the last 12 months or so, I've come to the conclusion that it can be solved. And I think SpaceX is going to try to do it. We could fail. I'm not saying we're certain of success here, but we're going to try to do it. We have a design that on paper, doing the calculations, doing the simulations, it does work. And now we need to make sure that those simulations and reality agree because generally when they don't, reality wins.” National Press Club, September 29, 2010

ELON CLIPS

14,920 views • 11 months ago