| ELON MUSK Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Ashlee Vance New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, May 2015 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-06-230123-9 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-06-230123-3 | 392pp. | HC/FCI | $28.99 | |
| Page 2: | "Plenty of people had left Musk's companies, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and would talk, and I already knew a lot of his friends." |
| These are only two of Musk's companies, and not the first he founded. |
| Page 3: | "The negotiation hadn't begun, and Musk was already dishing. He opened up about the major fear keeping him up at night: namely that Google's cofounder and CEO Larry Page might well have been building a fleet of artificial-intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind." |
| I wouldn't call expressing concern about the possible extinction of humanity "dishing." Also this likely overstates Musk's concern; he's too intelligent to think we are close to that kind of AI. |
| Page 4: | "A waiter showed up with a giant yellow cotton candy desert sculpture, and Musk dug into it..." |
| Spelling: S/B "dessert." (Unless this sculpture somehow presaged Musk's participation in Burning Man on the Black Rock Desert.) |
| Page 5: | "If some of the things Musk says and does seem absurd, that's because on one level they very much are. On this occasion, for example, Musk's assistant had just handed him some cookies-and-cream ice cream with sprinkles on top, and he then talked earnestly about saving humanity while a blotch of the dessert hung from his lower lip." |
| Of all Musk's goals and beliefs, like terraforming Mars with nuclear weapons, the one Vance chooses to remark on is a bit of dessert clinging to his face? And why the obsession with Musk's diet? It reminds me of Elizabeth Weil's writing about Gary Hudson. |
| Page 5: | "Musk is a sci-fi version of P. T. Barnum who has gotten extraordinarily rich by preying on people's fear and self-hatred." |
| And now the charge that Musk is bilking his customers; more echoes of Elizabeth Weil. |
| Page 7: | "It seems impossible that anything good could call Hawthorne home. It's a bleak part of Los Angeles County in which groupings of run-down houses, run-down shops, and run-down eateries surround huge, industrial complexes that appear to have been built during some kind of architectural Boring Rectangle movement. Did Elon Musk really stick his company in the middle of this dreck? then, okay, things start to make more sense when you see one 550,000-square-foot rectangle painted an ostentatious hue of 'Unity of Body, Soul, and Mind' white." |
| "Unity of Body, Soul, and Mind white" — Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?! |
| Page 7: | "Still other rockets, in another part of the building, awaited coats of white paint." |
| Ah, but what kind of white paint? |
| Pages 23-24: | " 'In this game you have to destroy an alien space freighter, which is carrying deadly Hydrogen Bombs and Status Beam Machines.' [. . .] (As of this writing, not even the Internet knows what 'status beam machines' are.)" |
| I have no doubt that this is a mistranscription of "Stasis-Beam Machines" (with or without caps.) The stasis beam or stasis field is a staple of science fiction. (See e.g. Larry Niven's world of Ptaavs and other novels & stories.) It's often a means of preserving things against the ravages of time by slowing or stopping time's passage. But in the context of Musk's game, I think it merely stops the lives of living beings. |
| Page 30: | "My grandfather had this desire for adventure, exploration doing crazy things." |
| Missing comma: S/B "exploration, doing crazy things". |
| Page 39: | "Granulated chlorine with brake fluid—that's quite impressive." |
| Chlorine, of course, is a gas at normal temperatures and would not lend itself to granulation. This no doubt S/B "chlorine bleach", or sodium hypochlorite. |
| Page 64: | "Ever marketing savvy, the Musk brothers tried to make their Web service seem more important..." |
| Missing hyphen: S/B "marketing-savvy". |
| Page 73: | "But they' didn't. There was no vision once they took over." |
| Extra apostrophe: S/B "they didn't". |
| Pages 92-93: | "This collection of super-bright employees has become known as the PayPal Mafia—more or less the current ruling class of Silicon Valley—and Musk is its most famous and successful member." |
| I doubt that PayPal alumni are influential enough to merit this moniker. |
| Page 108: | "From Cantrell and others, he'd borrowed Rocket Propulsion Elements, Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, and Aerothermodynamics of Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion, along with several more seminal texts." |
| I guess this is OK, since it may not mean that the unnamed books are more seminal in the field of rocketry than those named. That is, it's not "several more seminal texts" but "several more seminal texts". |
| Page 109: | "He could have spent ten million dollars to send up the mice, but instead he'll spend hundreds of millions and probably fail like all the others who proceeded him." |
| Word choice: S/B "who preceded him". |
| Page 113: | "Desks were interspersed around the factory so that Ivy League computer scientists and engineers designing the machines could sit with the welders and machinists building the hardware." |
| I doubt that many of the scientists and engineers were from Ivy League Universities. |
| Page 115: | "A trip to Mars was naturally slated for somewhere near the end of the decade." |
| Naturally? |
| Page 119: | " 'She pretty much called the shots,' the technician said." |
| This technician is never identified (nor given anonimity.) |
| Page 121: | "Instead, Buzza a strong leader ready to put SpaceX's relentless ethos into play, coordinated a couple of trucks..." |
| Missing comma: S/B "Buzza, a strong leader". |
| Page 128: | "...when Musk would allow everyone to use their work computers to play computer games like Quake III Arena and Counter-Strike against each other." |
| Missing commas: S/B "Quake III, Arena, and Counter-Strike". |
| Page 128: | "? said Colonno." |
| Who? |
| Page 129: | "? Lasik." |
| Lasik? Would it not be quicker and less costly to pay to replace the man's eyeglasses? |
| Page 134: | "The air force gave the newcomers a cool welcome." |
| Capitalization: S/B "Air Force". |
| Page 147: | "After it folded, Straubel followed Harold Rosen, an engineer famed for inventing the geostationary satellite..." |
| I wasn't familiar with his name, but Harold Rosen built the first geostationary satellite, SynCom, for Hughes Aircraft Company in 1963. It was Arthur C. Clarke, of course, who came up with the concept in 1945. |
| Page 150: | "...Gemstar International Group, which owned TV Guide and some electronic programming guide technology." |
| Contrary to my first impression, this refers not to computer programming but to TV programming — i.e. what to watch when. Still, it could be worded better: S/B "electronic TV program schedule guide". |
| Page 157: | "As for tools, Tesla had a single Craftsman toolbox loaded with hammers, nails, and other carpentry basics." |
| This can't be right. Anyone building a car needs lots of tools close at hand, and you don't build a car with carpentry tools. |
| Page 157: | "The company had acquired a schematic for an electric motor design and figured..." |
| This looks like another case where Vance didn't understand what he heard. Tesla must have had information on an electric motor propulsion system, and not just the schematic but parts lists, operating notes, and etc. |
| Page 157: | "The engineers bought a blue lift for the car..." |
| What's a blue lift? |
| Page 166: | "Tesla's engineers had decided on a two-speed transmission, which is the underlying mechanism in the car for transferring power from the motor to the wheels." |
| Really? My first thought was that anyone reading this book has to know what a transmission means in this context. Then I remembered the guy who rode in my car to the fourth space shuttle landing at Edwards AFB, and didn't know what a tachometer was. |
| Page 182: | "Downey appreciated that Musk was not a foul-smelling, fidgety coder whack job." |
| Word choice: S/B "codger". (Probably an editor error.) |
| Page 183: | "Justine wrote in magazine article..." |
| Missing article: S/B "wrote in a magazine article". |
| Page 196: | "Musks's friend the billionaire Jeff Skoll..." |
| Missing comma: S/B "friend, the billionaire Jeff Skoll". |
| Page 157: | "He could have spent ten million dollars to send up the mice, but instead he'll spend hundreds of millions and probably fail like all the others who proceeded him." |
| Word choice: S/B "who preceded him". |
| Page 206: | "While Musk meditated on this..." |
| [...on the tree of woe...] |
| Page 209: | "Steve Jurvetson, a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Tesla investor..." |
| Missing word: S/B "and a Tesla investor". |
| Page 213: | "The rocket looks—let's face it— like a giant white phallus." |
| Well, yeah. Has there ever been a rocket capable of reaching orbit that doesn't? |
| Page 232: | Musk: "I don't think an aerospace program has been completed on time since bloody World War II." |
| I think research would falsify this. Max Hunter's work on the Polaris missile (ca. 1958) comes to mind. However, it is true enough to be a useful generalization. |
| Page 238: | "One of Watson's top discoveries was the test bed on the third floor of the Hawthorne factory." |
| Again, this reveals someone who has little knowledge of America's space program. What Watson found is just SpaceX's version of the NASA SAIL — Shuttle Avionics Integration Laaboratory. Anyone developing complex machines will have something similar. |
| Page 245: | "The company [...] has proved very useful over the years with its research activities and its ability to champion and nix costly endeavors." |
| Word choice: S/B "to champion or nix". |
| Page 250: | "But neither the joint venture nor Boeing nor Lockheed [...] come close to competing on price against SpaceX..." |
| Number error: S/B "comes close to". (Also, the last company named is now Lockheed Martin.) |
| Page 269: | "Tesla had posted a profit, hit $562 million in quarterly revenue, and become as valuable as Mazda Motor." |
| Terminology: S/B "Mazda Motor Corporation". |
| Page 276: | "To perform these joyrides-cum-tests in relative secrecy, the engineers had to weld the tips of the exhaust pipes back onto the car to make it look like any other CLS." |
| I appreciate the need for secrecy. But what did they do about the sound of the motor — or rather the lack of it? |
| Page 281: | "Musk opted to solve this problem by making the body of the Model S out of lightweight aluminum instead of steel." |
| I'd like to know what alloy was used. Or is that a secret? |
| Page 283: | " 'They wanted to put in a bloody switch or a button for the lights,' Musk said. 'Why would we need a switch? When it's dark, turn the lights on.' " |
Some reasons why:
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| Page 288: | "It January 2009, Tesla took over Porsche's usual spot at the Detroit auto show..." |
| Typo: S/B "In January 2009". |
| Page 291: | "The IPO stood as the first for an American carmaker since Ford went public in 1956." |
| I wondered about American Motors. Research showed it was formed in 1954 from the merger of Hudson Motors and Nash-Kelvinator. So it would have become a public company before Ford did. |
| Page 334fn: | "Hydrogen's density is also very porous..." |
| Word choice: S/B "low" or "light". Perhaps this was overlooked during an editing pass by the author. |
| Page 368: | Musk: "O'Reilly is like a failed physicist who became a serial litigate." |
| Word choice: S/B "litigant". |
I was annoyed throughout my reading at the minuscule size of the asterisks used to mark footnotes. Almost invariably, I would miss the mark in the text; seeing the footnote, I would have to go back and figure out what it referred to. This is not the author's fault, of course. But it, and the small page numbers enclosed by square brackets, are bad decisions on the publisher's part.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.