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1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 156 (from laksa118)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa156.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/06/24/what-is-it-like-to-work-with-elon-musk/\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/06/24/what-is-it-like-to-work-with-elon-musk/\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/quora\/2016\/06\/24\/what-is-it-like-to-work-with-elon-musk\/","crawl_time":1776159480,"first_indexed_time":1514703649,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,forbes!www,\/sites\/quora\/2016\/06\/24\/what-is-it-like-to-work-with-elon-musk\/ s443","src_root_hash":"7074450602188365556","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"What Is It Like To Work With Elon Musk?","meta_descriptions":["What is it like to work with Elon Musk? This question was originally answered on Quora by Dolly Singh."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"(Photo: HEIKO JUNGE\/AFP\/Getty Images)\nWhat is it like to work with Elon Musk?\noriginally appeared on\nQuora\n:\nthe knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights\n.\nAnswer\nby\nDolly Singh\n, Former Head of Talent Acquisiton at SpaceX, on\nQuora\n:\nAfter working for Elon for over five years at SpaceX as the Head of Talent Acquisition, there are many potential answers to this question. Any answer I might give will be completely colored by my own experiences, so full disclaimer: this is not an unbiased piece free of personal narrative.  \nIt is said that you cannot dream yourself a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself. If any leader and any company has done that, and continues to do that, it is SpaceX. To try and capture in words what working with Elon is like, I’d like to share some specific memories, particularly of one really rough day and its epic aftermath.   \nOn August 2nd, 2008, eight months after I joined the company, SpaceX launched its third flight of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Falcon 1 was the predecessor to the Falcon 9 launch vehicles that the company flies today.\nIt was a defining moment for the company. Elon had a couple years prior stated in the press that his $100M personal investment in the company would get us up to three tries and if we couldn’t be successful by the third flight we might have to admit defeat. In addition to the pressure created by this narrative in the press, the lobbyist armies of our competitors (the largest, most powerful defense contractors in the world) had been in overdrive in DC trying to undermine SpaceX and damage our credibility by painting us as too risky and inexperienced in order to protect their multi-billion dollar interests in the space launch business. \nSpaceX executed a picture-perfect flight in the first stage (the portion of the flight that gets the vehicle away from Earth’s gravity and where the vehicle experiences max Q\/maximum dynamic pressure, or basically where the conditions on the vehicle are physically the harshest) clearing some of the highest risk points of the mission. However, shortly after the first stage flight, immediately following stage separation (when the first stage of the vehicle detaches and falls away from the 2nd stage of the vehicle, which continues its journey to space) we lost the vehicle and mission.\nSpaceX VP of Propulsion Tom Mueller (the modern day godfather of rocket science and one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet) and his team had done such a great job redesigning the vehicle's engine systems that they were even more efficient and powerful than projected in some ways. We turned off the first stage engine, and then proceeded to separate the vehicle stages; however, when the stages uncoupled there was still a little leftover ‘kick’ or thrust in the first stage engine—so our first stage literally rear ended our second stage immediately after we had tried to separate the two sections of the vehicle. It was a devastating emotional experience. I stood around with SpaceX's\n three hundred and fifty or so employees (at the time), and we cheered the vehicle on as it took off, and as we were watching the mission clock and knew that the stages were about to separate, the video feed was cut. The company is on a twenty-second viewing delay from the mission control team, as we are being projected the external press feed which is delayed in case of major mission anomalies. So when we lost video, we knew something had gone wrong in a big way. \nElon and about seven or eight of the most senior technical people at SpaceX were commanding the mission from a trailer in the back of the Hawthorne factory, and we all waited anxiously for the trailer door to open and for someone to tell us something. The mood in the building hung thick with despair; you have to keep in mind that by this point SpaceX was six years old, and many people had been working 70-80+ hours a week, swimming against extremely powerful currents like difficult barriers in technology, institution, politics, and finance—by sheer force of their blood and sweat. \nThey had all given so much, were mentally and physically exhausted, and really needed a win in order to replenish their spiritual wells and give them the faith to keep following this man up a treacherous mountain that had depleted the hopes and resources of the many others who had come to conquer it. \nThis night would forever impact the future of the company; it had the potential to send it into a downward spiral from which we may not have ever recovered. A failure in leadership would have destroyed us not only from the eyes of the press or potential consumers but it would have destroyed us internally. When Elon came out he walked past the press and first addressed the company. Although his exact words escape me in how he started off, the essence of his comments were that:\nWe knew this was going to be hard—it is, after all rocket science. He then listed the half-dozen or so countries that had failed to even successfully execute a first stage flight and get to outer space, a feat we had accomplished successfully that day.\nHe had (in his infinite wisdom) prepared for the possibility of an issue with the flight by taking on a significant investment (from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, if I recall correctly) providing SpaceX with ample financial resources to attempt two more launches, giving us security until at least flight five if needed.\nThat we needed to pick ourselves up, and dust ourselves off, because we had a lot of work to do. Then he said, with as much fortitude and ferocity as he could muster after having been awake for like 20+ hours by that point, “\nFor my part, I will never give up, and I mean never\n,” and that if we stuck with him, we would win.\nI think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that. It was the most impressive display of leadership that I have ever witnessed. Within moments, the energy of the building went from despair and defeat to a massive buzz of determination as people began to focus on moving forward instead of looking back. This shift happened collectively, across all 300+ people in a matter of not more than five seconds. I wish I had video footage as I would love to analyze the shifts in body language that occurred over those five seconds. It was an unbelievably powerful experience.\nWhat happened in the days and weeks following that night is nothing short of a series of miracles:\nWithin a matter of hours the SpaceX team identified the likely cause of the launch failure. Typically turnaround time from others in the launch business can range from weeks to months for failure investigations. Our team combed through every ounce of data to make sure we understood exactly what went wrong as quickly as possible.\nBy August 6th we announced the results of our investigation and came 100% clean with our supporters and customer community in order to make sure we could retain their trust in this difficult time (\nSpace Exploration Technologies Corporation\n).\nIn seven weeks, we had another rocket fully manufactured, integrated, and on location ready to fly again. No one else could have done this in less than six months with unlimited human and financial resources; SpaceX did it in six weeks with less than four hundred people and on a restricted financial diet.\nOn September 28th, 2008, SpaceX flew its Falcon 1 launch vehicle from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific and executed its first 100% successful launch, becoming the world’s first privately built rocket to achieve Earth orbit. An accomplishment of truly epic portions and a task previously completed by only six mighty nations in the history of the world. A much-needed and much-deserved victory for the entire SpaceX team, and as it hopefully will turn out, the future of humanity overall.\nSo for those who ask, this is, in my opinion, the true character of Elon Musk. Undeterred in the face of all odds, undaunted by the fear of failure, and forged in the battlefields of some of the most terrifyingly technical and capital-intensive challenges that any human being could choose to take on. Somehow he comes out alive every time—with the other guy's head on a platter.\nWorking with him isn’t a comfortable experience; he is never satisfied with himself, so he is never really satisfied with anyone around him. He pushes himself harder and harder and he pushes others around him the exact same way. The challenge is that he is a machine and the rest of us aren’t. So if you work for Elon you have to accept the discomfort. But in that discomfort is the kind of growth you can’t get anywhere else, and worth every ounce of blood and sweat.\nThis question\noriginally appeared on\nQuora.\nAsk a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on\nTwitter\n,\nFacebook\n, and\nGoogle+\n. More questions:\nElon Musk\n:\nWhat does Elon Musk read?\nSpaceX\n:\nWhy was NASA not able to build reusable rockets like Falcon 9 of SpaceX?\nInfluential People\n:\nHow can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson?","attrs_markdown":"[Sign Up For Newsletters](https:\/\/account.forbes.com\/newsletters\/)[Games](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games)[Share a News Tip](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesstaff\/article\/tips-and-confidential-sources\/)\n\n- Featured\n  Featured\n  \n  - [Breaking News](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/news\/)\n  - [White House Watch](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/trump\/)\n  - [Daily Cover Stories](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/daily-cover-stories\/)\n  - [The Enterprise AI Shortcut: Why Co-Innovation Is Setting A New Speed For Adopting and Operationalizing AI \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/amazonwebservices\/2026\/04\/03\/the-enterprise-ai-shortcut-why-co-innovation-is-setting-a-new-speed-for-adopting-and-operationalizing-ai\/)\n  - 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Forbes Staff will review your concern shortly.>)\n- [Privacy Statement](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/fdc\/privacy.html)\n- [Your Privacy Choices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/consent\/editprivacy\/?consent_do_not_sell=true)\n- [Cookie Preferences](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/quora\/2016\/06\/24\/what-is-it-like-to-work-with-elon-musk\/)\n- [Terms of Service](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/terms\/)\n- [AdChoices](https:\/\/youradchoices.com\/control)\n- [Reprints & Permissions](https:\/\/www.parsintl.com\/publication\/forbes\/)\n\n[Innovation](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/innovation\/)\n\n[Consumer Tech](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/consumer-tech\/)\n# What Is It Like To Work With Elon Musk?\nBy[Quora](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/quora\/ \"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/quora\/\"),\n\nContributor.\n\nFollow Author\n\nJun 24, 2016, 11:33am EDT\n\nJun 24, 2016, 11:33am EDT\n\nThis article is more than 9 years old.\n\n![(Photo: HEIKO JUNGE\/AFP\/Getty Images)](https:\/\/specials-images.forbesimg.com\/imageserve\/522835486\/960x0.jpg?fit=scale)\n\n(Photo: HEIKO JUNGE\/AFP\/Getty Images)\n\n*[What is it like to work with Elon Musk?](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk) originally appeared on [Quora](http:\/\/www.quora.com\/):* *the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights*.\n\n**[Answer](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk\/answer\/Dolly-Singh-8) by [Dolly Singh](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/profile\/Dolly-Singh-8), Former Head of Talent Acquisiton at SpaceX, on [Quora](http:\/\/www.quora.com\/):**\n\nAfter working for Elon for over five years at SpaceX as the Head of Talent Acquisition, there are many potential answers to this question. Any answer I might give will be completely colored by my own experiences, so full disclaimer: this is not an unbiased piece free of personal narrative.\n\nIt is said that you cannot dream yourself a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself. If any leader and any company has done that, and continues to do that, it is SpaceX. To try and capture in words what working with Elon is like, I’d like to share some specific memories, particularly of one really rough day and its epic aftermath.\n\nOn August 2nd, 2008, eight months after I joined the company, SpaceX launched its third flight of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Falcon 1 was the predecessor to the Falcon 9 launch vehicles that the company flies today. It was a defining moment for the company. Elon had a couple years prior stated in the press that his \\$100M personal investment in the company would get us up to three tries and if we couldn’t be successful by the third flight we might have to admit defeat. In addition to the pressure created by this narrative in the press, the lobbyist armies of our competitors (the largest, most powerful defense contractors in the world) had been in overdrive in DC trying to undermine SpaceX and damage our credibility by painting us as too risky and inexperienced in order to protect their multi-billion dollar interests in the space launch business.\n\nSpaceX executed a picture-perfect flight in the first stage (the portion of the flight that gets the vehicle away from Earth’s gravity and where the vehicle experiences max Q\/maximum dynamic pressure, or basically where the conditions on the vehicle are physically the harshest) clearing some of the highest risk points of the mission. However, shortly after the first stage flight, immediately following stage separation (when the first stage of the vehicle detaches and falls away from the 2nd stage of the vehicle, which continues its journey to space) we lost the vehicle and mission.\n\nSpaceX VP of Propulsion Tom Mueller (the modern day godfather of rocket science and one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet) and his team had done such a great job redesigning the vehicle's engine systems that they were even more efficient and powerful than projected in some ways. We turned off the first stage engine, and then proceeded to separate the vehicle stages; however, when the stages uncoupled there was still a little leftover ‘kick’ or thrust in the first stage engine—so our first stage literally rear ended our second stage immediately after we had tried to separate the two sections of the vehicle. It was a devastating emotional experience. I stood around with SpaceX's three hundred and fifty or so employees (at the time), and we cheered the vehicle on as it took off, and as we were watching the mission clock and knew that the stages were about to separate, the video feed was cut. The company is on a twenty-second viewing delay from the mission control team, as we are being projected the external press feed which is delayed in case of major mission anomalies. So when we lost video, we knew something had gone wrong in a big way.\n\nElon and about seven or eight of the most senior technical people at SpaceX were commanding the mission from a trailer in the back of the Hawthorne factory, and we all waited anxiously for the trailer door to open and for someone to tell us something. The mood in the building hung thick with despair; you have to keep in mind that by this point SpaceX was six years old, and many people had been working 70-80+ hours a week, swimming against extremely powerful currents like difficult barriers in technology, institution, politics, and finance—by sheer force of their blood and sweat. They had all given so much, were mentally and physically exhausted, and really needed a win in order to replenish their spiritual wells and give them the faith to keep following this man up a treacherous mountain that had depleted the hopes and resources of the many others who had come to conquer it.\n\nThis night would forever impact the future of the company; it had the potential to send it into a downward spiral from which we may not have ever recovered. A failure in leadership would have destroyed us not only from the eyes of the press or potential consumers but it would have destroyed us internally. When Elon came out he walked past the press and first addressed the company. Although his exact words escape me in how he started off, the essence of his comments were that:\n\n- We knew this was going to be hard—it is, after all rocket science. He then listed the half-dozen or so countries that had failed to even successfully execute a first stage flight and get to outer space, a feat we had accomplished successfully that day.\n- He had (in his infinite wisdom) prepared for the possibility of an issue with the flight by taking on a significant investment (from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, if I recall correctly) providing SpaceX with ample financial resources to attempt two more launches, giving us security until at least flight five if needed.\n- That we needed to pick ourselves up, and dust ourselves off, because we had a lot of work to do. Then he said, with as much fortitude and ferocity as he could muster after having been awake for like 20+ hours by that point, “\n  [For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never](http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/id\/25990806\/ns\/technology_and_science-space\/t\/strike-three-spacexs-falcon-rocket\/#.UdegwvmgVmU)\n  ,” and that if we stuck with him, we would win.\n\nI think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that. It was the most impressive display of leadership that I have ever witnessed. Within moments, the energy of the building went from despair and defeat to a massive buzz of determination as people began to focus on moving forward instead of looking back. This shift happened collectively, across all 300+ people in a matter of not more than five seconds. I wish I had video footage as I would love to analyze the shifts in body language that occurred over those five seconds. It was an unbelievably powerful experience.\n\nWhat happened in the days and weeks following that night is nothing short of a series of miracles:\n\n- Within a matter of hours the SpaceX team identified the likely cause of the launch failure. Typically turnaround time from others in the launch business can range from weeks to months for failure investigations. Our team combed through every ounce of data to make sure we understood exactly what went wrong as quickly as possible.\n- By August 6th we announced the results of our investigation and came 100% clean with our supporters and customer community in order to make sure we could retain their trust in this difficult time ([Space Exploration Technologies Corporation](http:\/\/www.spacex.com\/F1-003.php)).\n- In seven weeks, we had another rocket fully manufactured, integrated, and on location ready to fly again. No one else could have done this in less than six months with unlimited human and financial resources; SpaceX did it in six weeks with less than four hundred people and on a restricted financial diet.\n- On September 28th, 2008, SpaceX flew its Falcon 1 launch vehicle from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific and executed its first 100% successful launch, becoming the world’s first privately built rocket to achieve Earth orbit. An accomplishment of truly epic portions and a task previously completed by only six mighty nations in the history of the world. A much-needed and much-deserved victory for the entire SpaceX team, and as it hopefully will turn out, the future of humanity overall.\n\nSo for those who ask, this is, in my opinion, the true character of Elon Musk. Undeterred in the face of all odds, undaunted by the fear of failure, and forged in the battlefields of some of the most terrifyingly technical and capital-intensive challenges that any human being could choose to take on. Somehow he comes out alive every time—with the other guy's head on a platter.\n\nWorking with him isn’t a comfortable experience; he is never satisfied with himself, so he is never really satisfied with anyone around him. He pushes himself harder and harder and he pushes others around him the exact same way. The challenge is that he is a machine and the rest of us aren’t. So if you work for Elon you have to accept the discomfort. But in that discomfort is the kind of growth you can’t get anywhere else, and worth every ounce of blood and sweat.\n\n*[This question](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk)* originally appeared on [Quora.](http:\/\/www.quora.com\/) Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on [Twitter](https:\/\/twitter.com\/Quora), [Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/quora), and [Google+](https:\/\/plus.google.com\/111127313006403749982\/posts). More questions:\n\n- [Elon Musk](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/topic\/Elon-Musk): [What does Elon Musk read?](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-does-Elon-Musk-read?ref=forbes&rel_pos=1)\n- [SpaceX](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/topic\/SpaceX-company): [Why was NASA not able to build reusable rockets like Falcon 9 of SpaceX?](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Why-was-NASA-not-able-to-build-reusable-rockets-like-Falcon-9-of-SpaceX?ref=forbes&rel_pos=2)\n- [Influential People](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/topic\/Influential-People): [How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson?](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/How-can-I-be-as-great-as-Bill-Gates-Steve-Jobs-Elon-Musk-or-Sir-Richard-Branson?redirected_qid=1342832?ref=forbes&rel_pos=3)\n\n[Editorial Standards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesstaff\/article\/forbes-editorial-values-and-standards\/)[Reprints & Permissions](https:\/\/www.parsintl.com\/publications\/forbes\/)\n\nLOADING VIDEO PLAYER...\n\nFORBES’ FEATURED Video\n\n© 2026 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.\n\n- [AdChoices](https:\/\/youradchoices.com\/control)\n- [Privacy Statement](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/fdc\/privacy.html)\n- [Your Privacy Choices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/quora\/2016\/06\/24\/what-is-it-like-to-work-with-elon-musk\/)\n- [Cookie Preferences](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/quora\/2016\/06\/24\/what-is-it-like-to-work-with-elon-musk\/)\n- [Digital Terms of Sale](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-terms-of-sale)\n- [Terms of Service](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/terms\/)\n- [Contact Us](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/fdc\/contact.html)\n- [Send Us Feedback](mailto:feedback@forbes.com)\n- [Report a Security Issue](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/contact\/)\n- [Jobs At Forbes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/careers-at-forbes\/)\n- [Reprints & Permissions](http:\/\/forbesreprints.magreprints.com\/)\n- [Forbes Press Room](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbespr\/)\n- [Advertise](http:\/\/www.forbesmedia.com\/)","attrs_readable_markdown":"![(Photo: HEIKO JUNGE\/AFP\/Getty Images)](https:\/\/specials-images.forbesimg.com\/imageserve\/522835486\/960x0.jpg?fit=scale)\n\n(Photo: HEIKO JUNGE\/AFP\/Getty Images)\n\n*[What is it like to work with Elon Musk?](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk) originally appeared on [Quora](http:\/\/www.quora.com\/):* *the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights*.\n\n**[Answer](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk\/answer\/Dolly-Singh-8) by [Dolly Singh](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/profile\/Dolly-Singh-8), Former Head of Talent Acquisiton at SpaceX, on [Quora](http:\/\/www.quora.com\/):**\n\nAfter working for Elon for over five years at SpaceX as the Head of Talent Acquisition, there are many potential answers to this question. Any answer I might give will be completely colored by my own experiences, so full disclaimer: this is not an unbiased piece free of personal narrative.\n\nIt is said that you cannot dream yourself a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself. If any leader and any company has done that, and continues to do that, it is SpaceX. To try and capture in words what working with Elon is like, I’d like to share some specific memories, particularly of one really rough day and its epic aftermath.\n\nOn August 2nd, 2008, eight months after I joined the company, SpaceX launched its third flight of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Falcon 1 was the predecessor to the Falcon 9 launch vehicles that the company flies today. It was a defining moment for the company. Elon had a couple years prior stated in the press that his \\$100M personal investment in the company would get us up to three tries and if we couldn’t be successful by the third flight we might have to admit defeat. In addition to the pressure created by this narrative in the press, the lobbyist armies of our competitors (the largest, most powerful defense contractors in the world) had been in overdrive in DC trying to undermine SpaceX and damage our credibility by painting us as too risky and inexperienced in order to protect their multi-billion dollar interests in the space launch business.\n\nSpaceX executed a picture-perfect flight in the first stage (the portion of the flight that gets the vehicle away from Earth’s gravity and where the vehicle experiences max Q\/maximum dynamic pressure, or basically where the conditions on the vehicle are physically the harshest) clearing some of the highest risk points of the mission. However, shortly after the first stage flight, immediately following stage separation (when the first stage of the vehicle detaches and falls away from the 2nd stage of the vehicle, which continues its journey to space) we lost the vehicle and mission.\n\nSpaceX VP of Propulsion Tom Mueller (the modern day godfather of rocket science and one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet) and his team had done such a great job redesigning the vehicle's engine systems that they were even more efficient and powerful than projected in some ways. We turned off the first stage engine, and then proceeded to separate the vehicle stages; however, when the stages uncoupled there was still a little leftover ‘kick’ or thrust in the first stage engine—so our first stage literally rear ended our second stage immediately after we had tried to separate the two sections of the vehicle. It was a devastating emotional experience. I stood around with SpaceX's three hundred and fifty or so employees (at the time), and we cheered the vehicle on as it took off, and as we were watching the mission clock and knew that the stages were about to separate, the video feed was cut. The company is on a twenty-second viewing delay from the mission control team, as we are being projected the external press feed which is delayed in case of major mission anomalies. So when we lost video, we knew something had gone wrong in a big way.\n\nElon and about seven or eight of the most senior technical people at SpaceX were commanding the mission from a trailer in the back of the Hawthorne factory, and we all waited anxiously for the trailer door to open and for someone to tell us something. The mood in the building hung thick with despair; you have to keep in mind that by this point SpaceX was six years old, and many people had been working 70-80+ hours a week, swimming against extremely powerful currents like difficult barriers in technology, institution, politics, and finance—by sheer force of their blood and sweat. They had all given so much, were mentally and physically exhausted, and really needed a win in order to replenish their spiritual wells and give them the faith to keep following this man up a treacherous mountain that had depleted the hopes and resources of the many others who had come to conquer it.\n\nThis night would forever impact the future of the company; it had the potential to send it into a downward spiral from which we may not have ever recovered. A failure in leadership would have destroyed us not only from the eyes of the press or potential consumers but it would have destroyed us internally. When Elon came out he walked past the press and first addressed the company. Although his exact words escape me in how he started off, the essence of his comments were that:\n\n- We knew this was going to be hard—it is, after all rocket science. He then listed the half-dozen or so countries that had failed to even successfully execute a first stage flight and get to outer space, a feat we had accomplished successfully that day.\n- He had (in his infinite wisdom) prepared for the possibility of an issue with the flight by taking on a significant investment (from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, if I recall correctly) providing SpaceX with ample financial resources to attempt two more launches, giving us security until at least flight five if needed.\n- That we needed to pick ourselves up, and dust ourselves off, because we had a lot of work to do. Then he said, with as much fortitude and ferocity as he could muster after having been awake for like 20+ hours by that point, “\n  [For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never](http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/id\/25990806\/ns\/technology_and_science-space\/t\/strike-three-spacexs-falcon-rocket\/#.UdegwvmgVmU)\n  ,” and that if we stuck with him, we would win.\n\nI think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that. It was the most impressive display of leadership that I have ever witnessed. Within moments, the energy of the building went from despair and defeat to a massive buzz of determination as people began to focus on moving forward instead of looking back. This shift happened collectively, across all 300+ people in a matter of not more than five seconds. I wish I had video footage as I would love to analyze the shifts in body language that occurred over those five seconds. It was an unbelievably powerful experience.\n\nWhat happened in the days and weeks following that night is nothing short of a series of miracles:\n\n- Within a matter of hours the SpaceX team identified the likely cause of the launch failure. Typically turnaround time from others in the launch business can range from weeks to months for failure investigations. Our team combed through every ounce of data to make sure we understood exactly what went wrong as quickly as possible.\n- By August 6th we announced the results of our investigation and came 100% clean with our supporters and customer community in order to make sure we could retain their trust in this difficult time ([Space Exploration Technologies Corporation](http:\/\/www.spacex.com\/F1-003.php)).\n- In seven weeks, we had another rocket fully manufactured, integrated, and on location ready to fly again. No one else could have done this in less than six months with unlimited human and financial resources; SpaceX did it in six weeks with less than four hundred people and on a restricted financial diet.\n- On September 28th, 2008, SpaceX flew its Falcon 1 launch vehicle from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific and executed its first 100% successful launch, becoming the world’s first privately built rocket to achieve Earth orbit. An accomplishment of truly epic portions and a task previously completed by only six mighty nations in the history of the world. A much-needed and much-deserved victory for the entire SpaceX team, and as it hopefully will turn out, the future of humanity overall.\n\nSo for those who ask, this is, in my opinion, the true character of Elon Musk. Undeterred in the face of all odds, undaunted by the fear of failure, and forged in the battlefields of some of the most terrifyingly technical and capital-intensive challenges that any human being could choose to take on. Somehow he comes out alive every time—with the other guy's head on a platter.\n\nWorking with him isn’t a comfortable experience; he is never satisfied with himself, so he is never really satisfied with anyone around him. He pushes himself harder and harder and he pushes others around him the exact same way. The challenge is that he is a machine and the rest of us aren’t. So if you work for Elon you have to accept the discomfort. But in that discomfort is the kind of growth you can’t get anywhere else, and worth every ounce of blood and sweat.\n\n*[This question](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk)* originally appeared on [Quora.](http:\/\/www.quora.com\/) Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on [Twitter](https:\/\/twitter.com\/Quora), [Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/quora), and [Google+](https:\/\/plus.google.com\/111127313006403749982\/posts). More questions:\n\n- [Elon Musk](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/topic\/Elon-Musk): [What does Elon Musk read?](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-does-Elon-Musk-read?ref=forbes&rel_pos=1)\n- [SpaceX](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/topic\/SpaceX-company): [Why was NASA not able to build reusable rockets like Falcon 9 of SpaceX?](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Why-was-NASA-not-able-to-build-reusable-rockets-like-Falcon-9-of-SpaceX?ref=forbes&rel_pos=2)\n- [Influential People](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/topic\/Influential-People): [How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson?](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/How-can-I-be-as-great-as-Bill-Gates-Steve-Jobs-Elon-Musk-or-Sir-Richard-Branson?redirected_qid=1342832?ref=forbes&rel_pos=3)","meta_canonical":null}

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URL	https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/06/24/what-is-it-like-to-work-with-elon-musk/
Last Crawled	2026-04-14 09:38:00 (3 days ago)
First Indexed	2017-12-31 07:00:49 (8 years ago)
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Meta Title	What Is It Like To Work With Elon Musk?
Meta Description	What is it like to work with Elon Musk? This question was originally answered on Quora by Dolly Singh.
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Boilerpipe Text	(Photo: HEIKO JUNGE/AFP/Getty Images) What is it like to work with Elon Musk? originally appeared on Quora : the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights . Answer by Dolly Singh , Former Head of Talent Acquisiton at SpaceX, on Quora : After working for Elon for over five years at SpaceX as the Head of Talent Acquisition, there are many potential answers to this question. Any answer I might give will be completely colored by my own experiences, so full disclaimer: this is not an unbiased piece free of personal narrative. It is said that you cannot dream yourself a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself. If any leader and any company has done that, and continues to do that, it is SpaceX. To try and capture in words what working with Elon is like, I’d like to share some specific memories, particularly of one really rough day and its epic aftermath. On August 2nd, 2008, eight months after I joined the company, SpaceX launched its third flight of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Falcon 1 was the predecessor to the Falcon 9 launch vehicles that the company flies today. It was a defining moment for the company. Elon had a couple years prior stated in the press that his $100M personal investment in the company would get us up to three tries and if we couldn’t be successful by the third flight we might have to admit defeat. In addition to the pressure created by this narrative in the press, the lobbyist armies of our competitors (the largest, most powerful defense contractors in the world) had been in overdrive in DC trying to undermine SpaceX and damage our credibility by painting us as too risky and inexperienced in order to protect their multi-billion dollar interests in the space launch business. SpaceX executed a picture-perfect flight in the first stage (the portion of the flight that gets the vehicle away from Earth’s gravity and where the vehicle experiences max Q/maximum dynamic pressure, or basically where the conditions on the vehicle are physically the harshest) clearing some of the highest risk points of the mission. However, shortly after the first stage flight, immediately following stage separation (when the first stage of the vehicle detaches and falls away from the 2nd stage of the vehicle, which continues its journey to space) we lost the vehicle and mission. SpaceX VP of Propulsion Tom Mueller (the modern day godfather of rocket science and one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet) and his team had done such a great job redesigning the vehicle's engine systems that they were even more efficient and powerful than projected in some ways. We turned off the first stage engine, and then proceeded to separate the vehicle stages; however, when the stages uncoupled there was still a little leftover ‘kick’ or thrust in the first stage engine—so our first stage literally rear ended our second stage immediately after we had tried to separate the two sections of the vehicle. It was a devastating emotional experience. I stood around with SpaceX's three hundred and fifty or so employees (at the time), and we cheered the vehicle on as it took off, and as we were watching the mission clock and knew that the stages were about to separate, the video feed was cut. The company is on a twenty-second viewing delay from the mission control team, as we are being projected the external press feed which is delayed in case of major mission anomalies. So when we lost video, we knew something had gone wrong in a big way. Elon and about seven or eight of the most senior technical people at SpaceX were commanding the mission from a trailer in the back of the Hawthorne factory, and we all waited anxiously for the trailer door to open and for someone to tell us something. The mood in the building hung thick with despair; you have to keep in mind that by this point SpaceX was six years old, and many people had been working 70-80+ hours a week, swimming against extremely powerful currents like difficult barriers in technology, institution, politics, and finance—by sheer force of their blood and sweat. They had all given so much, were mentally and physically exhausted, and really needed a win in order to replenish their spiritual wells and give them the faith to keep following this man up a treacherous mountain that had depleted the hopes and resources of the many others who had come to conquer it. This night would forever impact the future of the company; it had the potential to send it into a downward spiral from which we may not have ever recovered. A failure in leadership would have destroyed us not only from the eyes of the press or potential consumers but it would have destroyed us internally. When Elon came out he walked past the press and first addressed the company. Although his exact words escape me in how he started off, the essence of his comments were that: We knew this was going to be hard—it is, after all rocket science. He then listed the half-dozen or so countries that had failed to even successfully execute a first stage flight and get to outer space, a feat we had accomplished successfully that day. He had (in his infinite wisdom) prepared for the possibility of an issue with the flight by taking on a significant investment (from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, if I recall correctly) providing SpaceX with ample financial resources to attempt two more launches, giving us security until at least flight five if needed. That we needed to pick ourselves up, and dust ourselves off, because we had a lot of work to do. Then he said, with as much fortitude and ferocity as he could muster after having been awake for like 20+ hours by that point, “ For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never ,” and that if we stuck with him, we would win. I think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that. It was the most impressive display of leadership that I have ever witnessed. Within moments, the energy of the building went from despair and defeat to a massive buzz of determination as people began to focus on moving forward instead of looking back. This shift happened collectively, across all 300+ people in a matter of not more than five seconds. I wish I had video footage as I would love to analyze the shifts in body language that occurred over those five seconds. It was an unbelievably powerful experience. What happened in the days and weeks following that night is nothing short of a series of miracles: Within a matter of hours the SpaceX team identified the likely cause of the launch failure. Typically turnaround time from others in the launch business can range from weeks to months for failure investigations. Our team combed through every ounce of data to make sure we understood exactly what went wrong as quickly as possible. By August 6th we announced the results of our investigation and came 100% clean with our supporters and customer community in order to make sure we could retain their trust in this difficult time ( Space Exploration Technologies Corporation ). In seven weeks, we had another rocket fully manufactured, integrated, and on location ready to fly again. No one else could have done this in less than six months with unlimited human and financial resources; SpaceX did it in six weeks with less than four hundred people and on a restricted financial diet. On September 28th, 2008, SpaceX flew its Falcon 1 launch vehicle from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific and executed its first 100% successful launch, becoming the world’s first privately built rocket to achieve Earth orbit. An accomplishment of truly epic portions and a task previously completed by only six mighty nations in the history of the world. A much-needed and much-deserved victory for the entire SpaceX team, and as it hopefully will turn out, the future of humanity overall. So for those who ask, this is, in my opinion, the true character of Elon Musk. Undeterred in the face of all odds, undaunted by the fear of failure, and forged in the battlefields of some of the most terrifyingly technical and capital-intensive challenges that any human being could choose to take on. Somehow he comes out alive every time—with the other guy's head on a platter. Working with him isn’t a comfortable experience; he is never satisfied with himself, so he is never really satisfied with anyone around him. He pushes himself harder and harder and he pushes others around him the exact same way. The challenge is that he is a machine and the rest of us aren’t. So if you work for Elon you have to accept the discomfort. But in that discomfort is the kind of growth you can’t get anywhere else, and worth every ounce of blood and sweat. This question originally appeared on Quora. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter , Facebook , and Google+ . More questions: Elon Musk : What does Elon Musk read? SpaceX : Why was NASA not able to build reusable rockets like Falcon 9 of SpaceX? Influential People : How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson?
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Follow Author Jun 24, 2016, 11:33am EDT Jun 24, 2016, 11:33am EDT This article is more than 9 years old. ![(Photo: HEIKO JUNGE/AFP/Getty Images)](https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/522835486/960x0.jpg?fit=scale) (Photo: HEIKO JUNGE/AFP/Getty Images) [What is it like to work with Elon Musk?](https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk) originally appeared on [Quora](http://www.quora.com/): the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. [Answer](https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk/answer/Dolly-Singh-8) by [Dolly Singh](https://www.quora.com/profile/Dolly-Singh-8), Former Head of Talent Acquisiton at SpaceX, on [Quora](http://www.quora.com/): After working for Elon for over five years at SpaceX as the Head of Talent Acquisition, there are many potential answers to this question. Any answer I might give will be completely colored by my own experiences, so full disclaimer: this is not an unbiased piece free of personal narrative. It is said that you cannot dream yourself a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself. If any leader and any company has done that, and continues to do that, it is SpaceX. To try and capture in words what working with Elon is like, I’d like to share some specific memories, particularly of one really rough day and its epic aftermath. On August 2nd, 2008, eight months after I joined the company, SpaceX launched its third flight of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Falcon 1 was the predecessor to the Falcon 9 launch vehicles that the company flies today. It was a defining moment for the company. Elon had a couple years prior stated in the press that his \$100M personal investment in the company would get us up to three tries and if we couldn’t be successful by the third flight we might have to admit defeat. In addition to the pressure created by this narrative in the press, the lobbyist armies of our competitors (the largest, most powerful defense contractors in the world) had been in overdrive in DC trying to undermine SpaceX and damage our credibility by painting us as too risky and inexperienced in order to protect their multi-billion dollar interests in the space launch business. SpaceX executed a picture-perfect flight in the first stage (the portion of the flight that gets the vehicle away from Earth’s gravity and where the vehicle experiences max Q/maximum dynamic pressure, or basically where the conditions on the vehicle are physically the harshest) clearing some of the highest risk points of the mission. However, shortly after the first stage flight, immediately following stage separation (when the first stage of the vehicle detaches and falls away from the 2nd stage of the vehicle, which continues its journey to space) we lost the vehicle and mission. SpaceX VP of Propulsion Tom Mueller (the modern day godfather of rocket science and one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet) and his team had done such a great job redesigning the vehicle's engine systems that they were even more efficient and powerful than projected in some ways. We turned off the first stage engine, and then proceeded to separate the vehicle stages; however, when the stages uncoupled there was still a little leftover ‘kick’ or thrust in the first stage engine—so our first stage literally rear ended our second stage immediately after we had tried to separate the two sections of the vehicle. It was a devastating emotional experience. I stood around with SpaceX's three hundred and fifty or so employees (at the time), and we cheered the vehicle on as it took off, and as we were watching the mission clock and knew that the stages were about to separate, the video feed was cut. The company is on a twenty-second viewing delay from the mission control team, as we are being projected the external press feed which is delayed in case of major mission anomalies. So when we lost video, we knew something had gone wrong in a big way. Elon and about seven or eight of the most senior technical people at SpaceX were commanding the mission from a trailer in the back of the Hawthorne factory, and we all waited anxiously for the trailer door to open and for someone to tell us something. The mood in the building hung thick with despair; you have to keep in mind that by this point SpaceX was six years old, and many people had been working 70-80+ hours a week, swimming against extremely powerful currents like difficult barriers in technology, institution, politics, and finance—by sheer force of their blood and sweat. They had all given so much, were mentally and physically exhausted, and really needed a win in order to replenish their spiritual wells and give them the faith to keep following this man up a treacherous mountain that had depleted the hopes and resources of the many others who had come to conquer it. This night would forever impact the future of the company; it had the potential to send it into a downward spiral from which we may not have ever recovered. A failure in leadership would have destroyed us not only from the eyes of the press or potential consumers but it would have destroyed us internally. When Elon came out he walked past the press and first addressed the company. Although his exact words escape me in how he started off, the essence of his comments were that: - We knew this was going to be hard—it is, after all rocket science. He then listed the half-dozen or so countries that had failed to even successfully execute a first stage flight and get to outer space, a feat we had accomplished successfully that day. - He had (in his infinite wisdom) prepared for the possibility of an issue with the flight by taking on a significant investment (from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, if I recall correctly) providing SpaceX with ample financial resources to attempt two more launches, giving us security until at least flight five if needed. - That we needed to pick ourselves up, and dust ourselves off, because we had a lot of work to do. Then he said, with as much fortitude and ferocity as he could muster after having been awake for like 20+ hours by that point, “ [For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25990806/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/strike-three-spacexs-falcon-rocket/#.UdegwvmgVmU) ,” and that if we stuck with him, we would win. I think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that. It was the most impressive display of leadership that I have ever witnessed. Within moments, the energy of the building went from despair and defeat to a massive buzz of determination as people began to focus on moving forward instead of looking back. This shift happened collectively, across all 300+ people in a matter of not more than five seconds. I wish I had video footage as I would love to analyze the shifts in body language that occurred over those five seconds. It was an unbelievably powerful experience. What happened in the days and weeks following that night is nothing short of a series of miracles: - Within a matter of hours the SpaceX team identified the likely cause of the launch failure. Typically turnaround time from others in the launch business can range from weeks to months for failure investigations. Our team combed through every ounce of data to make sure we understood exactly what went wrong as quickly as possible. - By August 6th we announced the results of our investigation and came 100% clean with our supporters and customer community in order to make sure we could retain their trust in this difficult time ([Space Exploration Technologies Corporation](http://www.spacex.com/F1-003.php)). - In seven weeks, we had another rocket fully manufactured, integrated, and on location ready to fly again. No one else could have done this in less than six months with unlimited human and financial resources; SpaceX did it in six weeks with less than four hundred people and on a restricted financial diet. - On September 28th, 2008, SpaceX flew its Falcon 1 launch vehicle from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific and executed its first 100% successful launch, becoming the world’s first privately built rocket to achieve Earth orbit. An accomplishment of truly epic portions and a task previously completed by only six mighty nations in the history of the world. A much-needed and much-deserved victory for the entire SpaceX team, and as it hopefully will turn out, the future of humanity overall. So for those who ask, this is, in my opinion, the true character of Elon Musk. Undeterred in the face of all odds, undaunted by the fear of failure, and forged in the battlefields of some of the most terrifyingly technical and capital-intensive challenges that any human being could choose to take on. Somehow he comes out alive every time—with the other guy's head on a platter. Working with him isn’t a comfortable experience; he is never satisfied with himself, so he is never really satisfied with anyone around him. He pushes himself harder and harder and he pushes others around him the exact same way. The challenge is that he is a machine and the rest of us aren’t. So if you work for Elon you have to accept the discomfort. But in that discomfort is the kind of growth you can’t get anywhere else, and worth every ounce of blood and sweat. [This question](https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk) originally appeared on [Quora.](http://www.quora.com/) Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Quora), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/quora), and [Google+](https://plus.google.com/111127313006403749982/posts). More questions: - [Elon Musk](https://www.quora.com/topic/Elon-Musk): [What does Elon Musk read?](https://www.quora.com/What-does-Elon-Musk-read?ref=forbes&rel_pos=1) - [SpaceX](https://www.quora.com/topic/SpaceX-company): [Why was NASA not able to build reusable rockets like Falcon 9 of SpaceX?](https://www.quora.com/Why-was-NASA-not-able-to-build-reusable-rockets-like-Falcon-9-of-SpaceX?ref=forbes&rel_pos=2) - [Influential People](https://www.quora.com/topic/Influential-People): [How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson?](https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-be-as-great-as-Bill-Gates-Steve-Jobs-Elon-Musk-or-Sir-Richard-Branson?redirected_qid=1342832?ref=forbes&rel_pos=3) [Editorial Standards](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesstaff/article/forbes-editorial-values-and-standards/)[Reprints & Permissions](https://www.parsintl.com/publications/forbes/) LOADING VIDEO PLAYER... FORBES’ FEATURED Video © 2026 Forbes Media LLC. 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Readable Markdown	![(Photo: HEIKO JUNGE/AFP/Getty Images)](https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/522835486/960x0.jpg?fit=scale) (Photo: HEIKO JUNGE/AFP/Getty Images) [What is it like to work with Elon Musk?](https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk) originally appeared on [Quora](http://www.quora.com/): the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. [Answer](https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk/answer/Dolly-Singh-8) by [Dolly Singh](https://www.quora.com/profile/Dolly-Singh-8), Former Head of Talent Acquisiton at SpaceX, on [Quora](http://www.quora.com/): After working for Elon for over five years at SpaceX as the Head of Talent Acquisition, there are many potential answers to this question. Any answer I might give will be completely colored by my own experiences, so full disclaimer: this is not an unbiased piece free of personal narrative. It is said that you cannot dream yourself a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself. If any leader and any company has done that, and continues to do that, it is SpaceX. To try and capture in words what working with Elon is like, I’d like to share some specific memories, particularly of one really rough day and its epic aftermath. On August 2nd, 2008, eight months after I joined the company, SpaceX launched its third flight of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Falcon 1 was the predecessor to the Falcon 9 launch vehicles that the company flies today. It was a defining moment for the company. Elon had a couple years prior stated in the press that his \$100M personal investment in the company would get us up to three tries and if we couldn’t be successful by the third flight we might have to admit defeat. In addition to the pressure created by this narrative in the press, the lobbyist armies of our competitors (the largest, most powerful defense contractors in the world) had been in overdrive in DC trying to undermine SpaceX and damage our credibility by painting us as too risky and inexperienced in order to protect their multi-billion dollar interests in the space launch business. SpaceX executed a picture-perfect flight in the first stage (the portion of the flight that gets the vehicle away from Earth’s gravity and where the vehicle experiences max Q/maximum dynamic pressure, or basically where the conditions on the vehicle are physically the harshest) clearing some of the highest risk points of the mission. However, shortly after the first stage flight, immediately following stage separation (when the first stage of the vehicle detaches and falls away from the 2nd stage of the vehicle, which continues its journey to space) we lost the vehicle and mission. SpaceX VP of Propulsion Tom Mueller (the modern day godfather of rocket science and one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet) and his team had done such a great job redesigning the vehicle's engine systems that they were even more efficient and powerful than projected in some ways. We turned off the first stage engine, and then proceeded to separate the vehicle stages; however, when the stages uncoupled there was still a little leftover ‘kick’ or thrust in the first stage engine—so our first stage literally rear ended our second stage immediately after we had tried to separate the two sections of the vehicle. It was a devastating emotional experience. I stood around with SpaceX's three hundred and fifty or so employees (at the time), and we cheered the vehicle on as it took off, and as we were watching the mission clock and knew that the stages were about to separate, the video feed was cut. The company is on a twenty-second viewing delay from the mission control team, as we are being projected the external press feed which is delayed in case of major mission anomalies. So when we lost video, we knew something had gone wrong in a big way. Elon and about seven or eight of the most senior technical people at SpaceX were commanding the mission from a trailer in the back of the Hawthorne factory, and we all waited anxiously for the trailer door to open and for someone to tell us something. The mood in the building hung thick with despair; you have to keep in mind that by this point SpaceX was six years old, and many people had been working 70-80+ hours a week, swimming against extremely powerful currents like difficult barriers in technology, institution, politics, and finance—by sheer force of their blood and sweat. They had all given so much, were mentally and physically exhausted, and really needed a win in order to replenish their spiritual wells and give them the faith to keep following this man up a treacherous mountain that had depleted the hopes and resources of the many others who had come to conquer it. This night would forever impact the future of the company; it had the potential to send it into a downward spiral from which we may not have ever recovered. A failure in leadership would have destroyed us not only from the eyes of the press or potential consumers but it would have destroyed us internally. When Elon came out he walked past the press and first addressed the company. Although his exact words escape me in how he started off, the essence of his comments were that: - We knew this was going to be hard—it is, after all rocket science. He then listed the half-dozen or so countries that had failed to even successfully execute a first stage flight and get to outer space, a feat we had accomplished successfully that day. - He had (in his infinite wisdom) prepared for the possibility of an issue with the flight by taking on a significant investment (from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, if I recall correctly) providing SpaceX with ample financial resources to attempt two more launches, giving us security until at least flight five if needed. - That we needed to pick ourselves up, and dust ourselves off, because we had a lot of work to do. Then he said, with as much fortitude and ferocity as he could muster after having been awake for like 20+ hours by that point, “ [For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25990806/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/strike-three-spacexs-falcon-rocket/#.UdegwvmgVmU) ,” and that if we stuck with him, we would win. I think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that. It was the most impressive display of leadership that I have ever witnessed. Within moments, the energy of the building went from despair and defeat to a massive buzz of determination as people began to focus on moving forward instead of looking back. This shift happened collectively, across all 300+ people in a matter of not more than five seconds. I wish I had video footage as I would love to analyze the shifts in body language that occurred over those five seconds. It was an unbelievably powerful experience. What happened in the days and weeks following that night is nothing short of a series of miracles: - Within a matter of hours the SpaceX team identified the likely cause of the launch failure. Typically turnaround time from others in the launch business can range from weeks to months for failure investigations. Our team combed through every ounce of data to make sure we understood exactly what went wrong as quickly as possible. - By August 6th we announced the results of our investigation and came 100% clean with our supporters and customer community in order to make sure we could retain their trust in this difficult time ([Space Exploration Technologies Corporation](http://www.spacex.com/F1-003.php)). - In seven weeks, we had another rocket fully manufactured, integrated, and on location ready to fly again. No one else could have done this in less than six months with unlimited human and financial resources; SpaceX did it in six weeks with less than four hundred people and on a restricted financial diet. - On September 28th, 2008, SpaceX flew its Falcon 1 launch vehicle from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific and executed its first 100% successful launch, becoming the world’s first privately built rocket to achieve Earth orbit. An accomplishment of truly epic portions and a task previously completed by only six mighty nations in the history of the world. A much-needed and much-deserved victory for the entire SpaceX team, and as it hopefully will turn out, the future of humanity overall. So for those who ask, this is, in my opinion, the true character of Elon Musk. Undeterred in the face of all odds, undaunted by the fear of failure, and forged in the battlefields of some of the most terrifyingly technical and capital-intensive challenges that any human being could choose to take on. Somehow he comes out alive every time—with the other guy's head on a platter. Working with him isn’t a comfortable experience; he is never satisfied with himself, so he is never really satisfied with anyone around him. He pushes himself harder and harder and he pushes others around him the exact same way. The challenge is that he is a machine and the rest of us aren’t. So if you work for Elon you have to accept the discomfort. But in that discomfort is the kind of growth you can’t get anywhere else, and worth every ounce of blood and sweat. [This question](https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk) originally appeared on [Quora.](http://www.quora.com/) Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Quora), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/quora), and [Google+](https://plus.google.com/111127313006403749982/posts). More questions: - [Elon Musk](https://www.quora.com/topic/Elon-Musk): [What does Elon Musk read?](https://www.quora.com/What-does-Elon-Musk-read?ref=forbes&rel_pos=1) - [SpaceX](https://www.quora.com/topic/SpaceX-company): [Why was NASA not able to build reusable rockets like Falcon 9 of SpaceX?](https://www.quora.com/Why-was-NASA-not-able-to-build-reusable-rockets-like-Falcon-9-of-SpaceX?ref=forbes&rel_pos=2) - [Influential People](https://www.quora.com/topic/Influential-People): [How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson?](https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-be-as-great-as-Bill-Gates-Steve-Jobs-Elon-Musk-or-Sir-Richard-Branson?redirected_qid=1342832?ref=forbes&rel_pos=3)
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