Although Chen Shijun's departure made Li Feng a little sad, life had to go on. Li Feng briefly stopped at Fengrui North America Branch and left immediately.

However, he did not go back directly. Instead, he was invited by Elon Musk to come to a small island in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific to watch the Space X rocket launch.

Elon Musk is definitely a genius, and he is not a fake genius like Li Feng, he is a real genius.

When he was 10 years old, he used his own pocket money and part of the funds sponsored by his father to buy his first computer. Later, he bought a programming textbook and learned how to program;

At the age of 12, Elon Musk successfully designed a space game software called "Blastar" and sold it for $500, making his first pot of gold in his life.

At the age of 17, Elon Musk went to Canada alone and applied to attend Queen's University in Ontario the following year.

At the age of 21, Elon Musk transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a scholarship to study economics. During his college years, he began to pay close attention to the Internet, clean energy, and space, three areas that will affect the future development of mankind.

24-year-old Elon Musk entered Stanford University to study for a doctoral program in materials science and applied physics, but on the second day after enrolling, Elon Musk decided to leave school and start a business.

In 1995, after dropping out of school, Elon Musk took random angel investment from a small group in Silicon Valley and founded Zip2, a company that specializes in developing online content publishing software for news organizations.

Then in 1999, American computer manufacturer Compaq acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash and US$34 million in stock options. 28-year-old Elon Musk made a profit of US$22 million from this acquisition.

In March of the same year, Elon Musk invested US$10 million and founded an online financial services and email payment business company "" with two partners from Silicon Valley.

In 2000, Elon Musk merged with X.cofinity to resolve competition in the fast online transfer business. The new company was renamed PayPal in February of the following year. This is also the origin of PayPal. See

There is also precedent for the wave of mergers that have come to the Internet.

Then in 2002, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel sold PayPal to eBay, the world's largest online merchant company at the time, for US$1.5 billion, and Elon Musk made a profit of US$200 million.

From US$500 at the beginning, to US$20 million, and finally to US$200 million, Elon Musk completed his magnificent transformation from a nobody to a billionaire.

Elon Musk, who has achieved financial independence, is finally able to do something he likes. He relies on cashing out funds from the PayPal project. In June of the same year, Elon Musk established a space exploration technology company, namely Space X

, preparing to develop its own launch vehicle.

Friends think he is crazy, because rocket launch is a very risky and expensive industry. From 1957 to 1966, in the initial stage of launch of American launch vehicles, there were a total of 429 launches, a quarter of which were

Failed.

The cost of rocket projects is even more staggering. The space projects of the United States, Russia and China all have large research and development teams and unlimited budgets. In order to experiment with one type of engine, the former Soviet Union could produce thousands of them.

Conduct experiments; the United States' Apollo moon landing program employed more than 300,000 people, and the cost was equivalent to more than 200 billion U.S. dollars in today's prices.

But Elon Musk still insists that the space field will be a major market. Joining the space field is not a whim, but a firm ideal that he has cherished since childhood. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is an inspiration to his life.

The book with the greatest influence.

Under the suspicious eyes of his friends, Elon Musk began to recruit a large number of rocket engineers, including NASA and many former outstanding employees of Boeing Company.

When Space

So Space

And when recruiting talents and purchasing components for Space X, Elon Musk met Tesla founder Martin Eberhard through the motor supplier AC Propulsion.

Tesla was actually not founded by Elon Musk. At that time, Tesla had no funds and no factory production capacity, and Space X had just built its own factory to build rockets.

For Elon Musk, this is simply a blessing from God! Giving talents, teams, and technology is simply a blessing!

So in February 2004, Elon Musk invested $6.3 million in Tesla and became Tesla's chairman, taking the final decision on all matters.

At this point, Elon Musk serves as the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla.

Elon Musk is not only an idealist, but also an activist. He directly named Space

The first rocket was launched a month later.

To this end, Elon Musk and his employees began working frantically. A year later, Space X’s rocket factory began to take shape, so Elon Musk began to attempt rocket launches.

It was just that Space

got canceled.

The second launch attempt was on December 19, 2005, and the launch was delayed again due to a valve failure.

The third launch attempt on February 10, 2006 was delayed again due to problems with the engine test before launch.

It was not until March 25, 2006, that the difficult-to-deliver Falcon 1 rocket was officially ignited and launched for the first time. However, 26 seconds later, due to an engine fire, it fell directly to the launch site before it even took off.

After 4 years of hard work, tens of millions of dollars spent, and countless weekend overtimes, for many SpaceX engineers, the result of this first launch was not what they expected to see.

However, Elon Musk said: "Space

Even Elon Musk later stated on the company's website: "Our rocket ignited successfully and Falcon left the launch platform, but unfortunately the rocket was lost during the first-stage rocket combustion stage."

Although Elon Musk is confident, this failure is a fatal blow to SpaceX. Everyone within the company knows that SpaceX only has enough funds to carry out 1-2 more launches.

Although the financial situation makes Elon Musk very anxious, he told his employees not to worry about funds while selling his sports cars and personal property to get more funds. He even sold his house and moved in with a friend

in the house.

It was at this time that Li Feng also had the opportunity to invest 2% each in Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technology Company (SpaceX) and Tesla (Tesla) through Peter Thiel for US$2 million and US$3 million respectively.

,5% of the shares.

After Elon Musk got the money again, he was not discouraged. He learned the lesson from the last time and asked the engineers to continue working overtime to prepare for the second launch.
Chapter completed!