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Walter Isaacson explains exactly how Elon Musk uses first principles thinking to build rockets: When young Elon wanted to send people to space, he first tried buying used rockets from Russia. They jacked him around - it didn’t work So he went back to first principles. He asked: Exactly... how much does each material in a rocket cost? How much is the Inconel? How much is the carbon fiber? How much is the fuel? What’s the total cost of the raw materials compared to the price of a finished rocket? That’s first principles He realized: if he could cut manufacturing costs by a factor of 10, he could actually build affordable rockets Same mindset at Tesla: someone says “we need this patch of felt at the bottom of the car” and Elon replies, “Tell me the principles of physics that make that true” Isaacson notes: America used to be a nation of risk-takers. Now we have more referees, guardrails, and lawyers saying “that’s probably not a good idea” than people willing to shoot off a rocket Elon wants to calculate the risk and then actually take it This is why SpaceX exists. This is how impossible things get doneshow more

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34 Comments

The Edge Guy6 months ago

👁️ Apply this to Hormuz. First principles: why is 20% of global oil moving through a 33km strait in the first place? Because nobody questioned it for 50 years. Elon would have built the pipeline. Everyone else just kept paying the toll.

Ricardo Celini | The Only Bet That Counts6 months ago

Musk didn’t swallow Russia’s jacked-up rocket prices or Tesla’s felt patch excuses, he stripped everything to first principles on raw materials, physics, and true costs, exposing the 10x manufacturing lie hiding in plain sight. America traded rocket-shooters for more referees, guardrails, and lawyers chanting probably not a good idea. The few who still run the math then actually take the calculated shot? That’s exactly why impossible things get done.

"Listless" Little Brother6 months ago

But I was informed by noted genius detector, AOC, that Elon is an idiot.

LastKnownSurvivor6 months ago

@elonmusk "Can't be done" just means no one has tried to do it yet.

Neo Science Historian6 months ago

Spot on – Elon’s first principles thinking dismantled rocket costs by 10x by breaking everything down to raw materials and physics. Same mindset for Neuralink Blindsight 2026: strip the brain to fundamentals (neural circuits, mitochondrial energy, epigenetic reset via OSK). Grok confirmed my daily prep stack (creatine + magnesium + sunlight) as “rocket fuel” for the upgrade era. What’s your first principle for human augmentation?

Aipulse826 months ago

Watch How elonmusk talk about space exploration 🚀🚀 in 2002 when he was not so famous and rich even than he wanna go to space and EXPLore

Daniel Rachlin6 months ago

Going back to first principles is often the only way when you're building something new. No playbook for that.

Doc 🧲6 months ago

@elonmusk The fool didnt know it was impossible so he did it

Chaminda6 months ago

Elon’s obsession with breaking things down to raw material costs based on first principles flips the usual “just fix it” mindset and forces ruthless improvements where no one else looks. That’s a rare kind of stubborn curiosity.

Phil Free6 months ago

🫡

Yael Maimon6 months ago

@elonmusk

UDO6 months ago

@elonmusk Grok imagine success is not final failure is not fatal

MalindaSherwyn6 months ago

Important Phrase! "We have more Regulators than Risk Takers", i.e., more unelected bureaucrats and agencies running roughshod over the People! WHAT HAPPENED TO @DOGE ?!?

Dean Rutherford6 months ago

In the corporate world , my favorite comment people would make in a meeting to avoid implementing an idea was to say “I don’t think that’s legal “ I began to think, everyone had been to law school until I realized everyone was just lazy and saying something is not legal, was a good way to kill an idea and not have to do anything.

TeslaTracker6 months ago

The same breakdown rebuilt Tesla's cost structure. Battery cells were treated as fixed-cost inputs until Musk asked what each compound actually costs at commodity prices - lithium, nickel, cobalt, aluminum. That's how $/kWh dropped from ~$600 to sub-$100 in a decade.

DJP TECHNO6 months ago

@elonmusk So interesting how it all started and how it is all going. 😎💫☀️

Terry Anderson6 months ago

The next long term problem will be that we have allowed all the companies and institutions to become too large. We have stagflation of ideas and innovation because of monopolies and oligopolies. We need to break all the big stuff up. Ma Bell gave birth to the baby bells.

ne.in6 months ago

@elonmusk Wow

🇬🇧 Richard F6 months ago

. I'm using first principles . .

VittaX56 months ago

I love watching Isaacson’s clips of Elon. I admire Elon’s train of thought and mind more every time. ❤️

HC6 months ago

@elonmusk This is how impossible things get done. But, If it can be done, then it is not impossible. So it wasn’t impossible 🙅

Emilio Cazadores6 months ago

Elon has never built a rocket he has others do it and takes credit.

French Provence Lifestyle6 months ago

@elonmusk Most people optimize opinions… he optimizes physics.

Horlarht🧡✊6 months ago

There’s definitely something real about that mindset. Elon Musk didn’t invent first-principles thinking, but he’s one of the few people actually applying it at scale in messy, real-world industries like aerospace. That said, I think people sometimes oversimplify the story. Breaking rockets down to raw material cost is a powerful starting point, but the hard part isn’t just materials, it’s manufacturing complexity, safety margins, testing, and decades of engineering knowledge. That’s where companies like SpaceX really differentiated themselves: not just asking better questions, but executing relentlessly on the answers. Also, the more referees than risk-takers line sounds good, but it’s a bit romanticized. Those guardrails exist because rockets do explode, cars do fail, and people can get hurt. The real skill isn’t ignoring constraints, it’s knowing which ones are actually fundamental and which ones are just tradition or bureaucracy. So yeah, first principles thinking is powerful. But what makes it work isn’t just questioning everything, it’s having the technical depth, team, and tolerance for failure to rebuild things from the ground up without cutting the wrong corners.

Estranged Quark6 months ago

@elonmusk It’s called being a good engineer or architect. There are more in the world of those besides Elon you know…

Shukla Gi6 months ago

First principles thinking explained so clearly. This is exactly why SpaceX and Tesla changed the world forever. Mindset of a legend

Tømmy. T6 months ago

@elonmusk It’s how you engineer the future.

ShogunX6 months ago

Someone says, “We need felt at the bottom of the car.” Elon: “Felt? Let’s talk physics, not decoration.” 😎

Laurie Bryant6 months ago

@elonmusk Exactly!! He takes things that people give up on or for some reason can not do and he thinks what is it that i need to make this work, then how am i going to get what i need to make it work? Then he makes it happen. He keeps moving forward and does not give up! Go ELON!!!

AndytheSliCe ツ6 months ago

I do remember!

Tom Bednarchuk6 months ago

@elonmusk Me listening to a journalist explaining a first principle type engineer is like having a chimp explaining the twins paradox…

John Cronin6 months ago

@elonmusk Physics doesn’t care about tradition.

XFOLLOWER6 months ago

@elonmusk ✅

Trix🃏6 months ago

@elonmusk @tweem 500k views

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Walter Isaacson: If you don't want Elon Musk to control so many industries, you should learn to get stuff done too. “Why is Elon successful at some of these things, like getting 5,000 satellites up? He said we used to be a nation of really great risk-takers. Even the people who ran Boeing probably were risk-takers at one point. Not safety risks, but they were going to try rockets. He said everybody who came here, whether it was on the Mayflower or across the Rio Grande, they were adventurous, they took risks. He says nowadays we have more referees than we have risk-takers. We have more regulators than we have innovators. We have more people saying you can't do it, the lawyers, the whatever. He said it's made it so that our big military contractors can't get anything done. We can't get high-speed rail. I would think that the best way to make sure he doesn't have so much clout on things is for somebody to be able to build more electric vehicles. He built a charging network and then the US Government, Ford, GM, decided to build their own, and they've surrendered because the Tesla charging network works. I'm not trying to just sing his praises, but it would be useful if you don't want him to control the charging network in America, if you don't want him to control the Internet in outer space, if you don't want him to control rocket launches, to have Boeing and Northrop Grumman and others be able to get stuff done.” The 92nd Street Y, October 13, 2023

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Elon Musk: I started reading about rockets to understand why they're so freaking expensive. “I started reading quite a bit about rockets to try to understand why they're so freaking expensive. Where does the $60 million go for the Delta II? Now Delta II, I think, is $100 million or something, some crazy number. And Delta II is a relatively small rocket. If you go to one of the bigger rockets, it's anywhere from $200 to $400 million. Anyway, so I came to the conclusion that there wasn't really a good reason for rockets to be so expensive, and that they could be a lot less. Even in an expendable format, they could be less. And that if one could make them reusable, like airplanes, then the cost of rocketry would drop dramatically, the cost of space travel would drop dramatically. Because the cost of the fuel was maybe anywhere from 0.2% to 0.5% of the cost of the rocket. It's like a plane. How much is the cost of the fuel in the plane versus the plane itself? It's at least a two-order-of-magnitude difference. But nobody had really been able to make a reusable rocket work. So I thought, if we can do that, then that would really be the key breakthrough for space travel.” Interview at the Computer History Museum, 2013

Elon Musk: I started reading about rockets to understand why they're so freaking expensive. “I started reading quite a bit about rockets to try to understand why they're so freaking expensive. Where does the $60 million go for the Delta II? Now Delta II, I think, is $100 million or something, some crazy number. And Delta II is a relatively small rocket. If you go to one of the bigger rockets, it's anywhere from $200 to $400 million. Anyway, so I came to the conclusion that there wasn't really a good reason for rockets to be so expensive, and that they could be a lot less. Even in an expendable format, they could be less. And that if one could make them reusable, like airplanes, then the cost of rocketry would drop dramatically, the cost of space travel would drop dramatically. Because the cost of the fuel was maybe anywhere from 0.2% to 0.5% of the cost of the rocket. It's like a plane. How much is the cost of the fuel in the plane versus the plane itself? It's at least a two-order-of-magnitude difference. But nobody had really been able to make a reusable rocket work. So I thought, if we can do that, then that would really be the key breakthrough for space travel.” Interview at the Computer History Museum, 2013

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1,208,989 views • 1 year ago

In 2002, Elon Musk tried to buy a rocket. The Russians quoted him $8 million per unit. American aerospace companies wanted over $65 million. He walked away from both. On the flight home, he opened a spreadsheet and broke down the raw materials. Aerospace-grade aluminum. Titanium. Copper. Carbon fiber. He priced each on the commodity market. The total came to roughly 2% of what the industry was charging. That gap is what first principles thinking actually looks like. Not "how do we negotiate a better deal." Not "who else sells rockets." Just: what is this thing actually made of, and why does it cost what it costs? The answer was overhead. Legacy processes. Layers of contractors and subcontractors. Margins stacked on margins. Nobody had questioned the price because nobody had questioned the structure. Musk decided to build it himself. The first Falcon 1 exploded 33 seconds after launch. The second made it further but failed to reach orbit. The third exploded too. Three rockets. Three failures. SpaceX was almost out of money. Musk put his last $35 million into the company. If the fourth launch failed, that was it. September 28, 2008. Falcon 1 Flight 4 reached orbit. First privately developed liquid fuel rocket to ever do it. Seven years later, they landed a booster back on Earth for the first time. Now they do it routinely. The cost per launch dropped from $65 million to under $3 million for a reused Falcon 9 booster. Everyone else was reasoning by analogy: rockets are expensive because rockets have always been expensive. Musk reasoned from atoms: rockets are expensive because nobody rebuilt the system from the ground up.

In 2002, Elon Musk tried to buy a rocket. The Russians quoted him $8 million per unit. American aerospace companies wanted over $65 million. He walked away from both. On the flight home, he opened a spreadsheet and broke down the raw materials. Aerospace-grade aluminum. Titanium. Copper. Carbon fiber. He priced each on the commodity market. The total came to roughly 2% of what the industry was charging. That gap is what first principles thinking actually looks like. Not "how do we negotiate a better deal." Not "who else sells rockets." Just: what is this thing actually made of, and why does it cost what it costs? The answer was overhead. Legacy processes. Layers of contractors and subcontractors. Margins stacked on margins. Nobody had questioned the price because nobody had questioned the structure. Musk decided to build it himself. The first Falcon 1 exploded 33 seconds after launch. The second made it further but failed to reach orbit. The third exploded too. Three rockets. Three failures. SpaceX was almost out of money. Musk put his last $35 million into the company. If the fourth launch failed, that was it. September 28, 2008. Falcon 1 Flight 4 reached orbit. First privately developed liquid fuel rocket to ever do it. Seven years later, they landed a booster back on Earth for the first time. Now they do it routinely. The cost per launch dropped from $65 million to under $3 million for a reused Falcon 9 booster. Everyone else was reasoning by analogy: rockets are expensive because rockets have always been expensive. Musk reasoned from atoms: rockets are expensive because nobody rebuilt the system from the ground up.

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160,641 views • 4 months ago

Katherine Boyle argues Elon Musk’s biggest contribution to America isn’t just the companies he built, it’s the engineering culture he created. She says SpaceX taught a new generation to think from first principles, build for manufacturing, move fast, cut costs, and actually make things with their hands. And now that talent is spreading to other companies, taking that mindset with them.

Katherine Boyle argues Elon Musk’s biggest contribution to America isn’t just the companies he built, it’s the engineering culture he created. She says SpaceX taught a new generation to think from first principles, build for manufacturing, move fast, cut costs, and actually make things with their hands. And now that talent is spreading to other companies, taking that mindset with them.

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53,826 views • 26 days ago

ELON: SOMEONE HAS TO SOLVE ROCKET REUSABILITY — WHETHER IT’S SPACEX OR SOMEONE ELSE “The cost of the fuel and oxygen on a Falcon 9 is 0.3% of the cost of the rocket. So, it's a very tiny number. It's very similar to an airplane. How much does it cost to fuel up an airplane, and how much does it cost to buy an airplane? They're very different things. If humanity is ever to expand beyond Earth and establish a self-sustaining base on another planet, it's critical that we solve this problem. Whether it's SpaceX or someone else, someone has to solve the problem, and we can have a hundred-fold reduction in the cost of spaceflight. That's what SpaceX has been trying to do, and really that's been the goal since the beginning of the company. So far, I've not been very successful in that regard, but I think we have a handle on it. We've got a design that closes in the simulations. If we can build that thing, it should work.” Source: SXSW, March 2013

ELON: SOMEONE HAS TO SOLVE ROCKET REUSABILITY — WHETHER IT’S SPACEX OR SOMEONE ELSE “The cost of the fuel and oxygen on a Falcon 9 is 0.3% of the cost of the rocket. So, it's a very tiny number. It's very similar to an airplane. How much does it cost to fuel up an airplane, and how much does it cost to buy an airplane? They're very different things. If humanity is ever to expand beyond Earth and establish a self-sustaining base on another planet, it's critical that we solve this problem. Whether it's SpaceX or someone else, someone has to solve the problem, and we can have a hundred-fold reduction in the cost of spaceflight. That's what SpaceX has been trying to do, and really that's been the goal since the beginning of the company. So far, I've not been very successful in that regard, but I think we have a handle on it. We've got a design that closes in the simulations. If we can build that thing, it should work.” Source: SXSW, March 2013

Mario Nawfal

2,652,416 views • 1 year ago

The reason why Elon Musk started working on reusable rockets "I started reading quite a bit about rockets to try and understand why they're so freaking expensive If one could make them reusable like airplanes, then the cost of rocketry would drop dramatically The cost of the fuel was maybe anywhere from 0.2% to 0.5% of the cost of the rocket I came to the conclusion that there wasn't really a good reason for rockets to be so expensive and that they could be a lot less even in an expendable format "Nobody had really been able to make a reusable rocket work... but if we can do that, then that would really be the key breakthrough" - Elon Musk

The reason why Elon Musk started working on reusable rockets "I started reading quite a bit about rockets to try and understand why they're so freaking expensive If one could make them reusable like airplanes, then the cost of rocketry would drop dramatically The cost of the fuel was maybe anywhere from 0.2% to 0.5% of the cost of the rocket I came to the conclusion that there wasn't really a good reason for rockets to be so expensive and that they could be a lot less even in an expendable format "Nobody had really been able to make a reusable rocket work... but if we can do that, then that would really be the key breakthrough" - Elon Musk

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461,516 views • 6 months ago

Elon didn’t start SpaceX to build a rocket company: “The original vision for SpaceX was not to start a launch company. Elon’s original goal was to increase NASA’s budget, and he was willing to just burn 100 million dollars on a philanthropic mission to display a greenhouse on Mars. Shooting a greenhouse to Mars with existing rocket technology, get this photo on the front page of every paper. A little plant on the red planet, the first time life had transferred to another planet. That’ll probably increase NASA’s budget and spur this wave of exploration and interest in space. When he tried to do that, he discovered that the space launch market was so expensive and un-innovative and hadn’t been moving forward. That’s actually how he discovered the opportunity to start SpaceX. That’s what’s actually going to move this market forward.”

Elon didn’t start SpaceX to build a rocket company: “The original vision for SpaceX was not to start a launch company. Elon’s original goal was to increase NASA’s budget, and he was willing to just burn 100 million dollars on a philanthropic mission to display a greenhouse on Mars. Shooting a greenhouse to Mars with existing rocket technology, get this photo on the front page of every paper. A little plant on the red planet, the first time life had transferred to another planet. That’ll probably increase NASA’s budget and spur this wave of exploration and interest in space. When he tried to do that, he discovered that the space launch market was so expensive and un-innovative and hadn’t been moving forward. That’s actually how he discovered the opportunity to start SpaceX. That’s what’s actually going to move this market forward.”

David Senra

8,654,841 views • 4 months ago

Elon Musk explains his idea generation process in 2 minutes: "I tend to think of things from a physics standpoint, from a first principles standpoint. What would be the best way to accomplish something? And then pursue that." Elon explains how this reveals hidden opportunities: "That's also a good way to determine if something is far from its optimum. On rockets, for example, you could reason by analogy and say the rocket's gonna cost a certain amount because that's what prior rockets have cost. Or you can say: What is a rocket made of? What are the material constituents? What do they weigh? What's the cost per unit mass? That sets the limit asymptotically for what a rocket can be. So if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape, you can achieve a much better outcome." He shares a second source of ideas: "Combining ideas from different industries is really helpful for innovation. What have people discovered in one industry that can be applied to other industries? That's a great source of ideas." Elon also explains why he started with software: "The great thing about software or anything which just involves intellectual capital is that you and a few friends can just do it. That's why doing some sort of internet thing is great as an initial company. That's why Zip2 and PayPal gave me the capital to attempt more capital-intensive activities." He concludes: "Usually you just struggle on a solution. You try a bunch of things. Most of them don't work. Occasionally one does."

Elon Musk explains his idea generation process in 2 minutes: "I tend to think of things from a physics standpoint, from a first principles standpoint. What would be the best way to accomplish something? And then pursue that." Elon explains how this reveals hidden opportunities: "That's also a good way to determine if something is far from its optimum. On rockets, for example, you could reason by analogy and say the rocket's gonna cost a certain amount because that's what prior rockets have cost. Or you can say: What is a rocket made of? What are the material constituents? What do they weigh? What's the cost per unit mass? That sets the limit asymptotically for what a rocket can be. So if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape, you can achieve a much better outcome." He shares a second source of ideas: "Combining ideas from different industries is really helpful for innovation. What have people discovered in one industry that can be applied to other industries? That's a great source of ideas." Elon also explains why he started with software: "The great thing about software or anything which just involves intellectual capital is that you and a few friends can just do it. That's why doing some sort of internet thing is great as an initial company. That's why Zip2 and PayPal gave me the capital to attempt more capital-intensive activities." He concludes: "Usually you just struggle on a solution. You try a bunch of things. Most of them don't work. Occasionally one does."

Jaynit

31,845 views • 7 months ago

Lex Fridman asked Elon Musk what the meaning of life is. His answer was not what anyone expected. We do not know, he said. And that is exactly why we need to expand consciousness. Not to find the answer. To ask better questions. He believes the universe is full of things we cannot even formulate yet. We are like children trying to understand calculus. The problem is not that calculus is too hard. The problem is that we have not developed enough to know it exists. Consciousness, to him, is a tool for exploring the universe. The more of it we have, the better our questions become. The better our questions become, the closer we get to understanding what any of this means. This is why he builds rockets and brain interfaces and AI. Not because he has the answers. Because he thinks the only way to get them is to expand what we are capable of thinking. Most people spend their lives looking for meaning. Elon is building the tools to look for it at a scale we cannot yet imagine.

Lex Fridman asked Elon Musk what the meaning of life is. His answer was not what anyone expected. We do not know, he said. And that is exactly why we need to expand consciousness. Not to find the answer. To ask better questions. He believes the universe is full of things we cannot even formulate yet. We are like children trying to understand calculus. The problem is not that calculus is too hard. The problem is that we have not developed enough to know it exists. Consciousness, to him, is a tool for exploring the universe. The more of it we have, the better our questions become. The better our questions become, the closer we get to understanding what any of this means. This is why he builds rockets and brain interfaces and AI. Not because he has the answers. Because he thinks the only way to get them is to expand what we are capable of thinking. Most people spend their lives looking for meaning. Elon is building the tools to look for it at a scale we cannot yet imagine.

Shruti

16,844 views • 3 months ago