If you were to travel downtown to Michigan Avenue and survey 100 people, it can be reasonably argued that the vast majority (if not all) of the people you surveyed would know who Elon Musk is. Musk is widely recognized as the enormously successful and wealthy chief executive officer of Tesla and the founder of SpaceX. The latter in particular has gained a lot of attention and momentum as of late, and is thus the creation of focus in this post.
Even though most people seem to be aware of SpaceX’s existence, I would doubt that the majority of people know the specific goals of the company and what exactly it strives to achieve. For those who do not know, SpaceX (which stands for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) was founded by Musk in 2002 as an aerospace manufacturing company. The corporation works very closely with NASA to transport astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, and also helps launch satellites into Earth’s orbit. Upon the initial exploration I did a while back of the specific workings of SpaceX, I learned that Musk somehow developed a way to produce less expensive yet equally advanced space transportation technologies as its competing aerospace engineering organizations. During my research, I discovered that, as a result of its less costly nature, SpaceX has become a rather disruptive force in the space launch industry. To help emphasize how revolutionary Musk’s company’s technologies are, SpaceX charges $62 million for their standard Falcon 9 rocket launch, which is remarkably cheaper than launching a competing company’s rocket, such as the United States’ United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas V, which is priced at around $165 million.
One of the most innovative ideas Musk had during the development of SpaceX is the use of reusable rocket launchers- this has been an integral aspect of how SpaceX is able to create less expensive products. Typically, when NASA creates a rocket, the rocket is broken down into three stages of release after being launched. This not only requires a massive amount of fuel, but also means that the rocket from each stage is discarded into the ocean (that’s three huge, not environmentally-friendly rockets ending up in the ocean, permanently). Musk counteracted this by helping create liquid-fueled rockets in 2015. While SpaceX’s rockets are by no means completely environmentally safe, they have allowed aerospace engineering to make great progress towards leaving smaller environmental footprints.
As I refreshed my memory of Musk and SpaceX’s achievements before writing this post, I began to contemplate how creatives like Musk can even begin to construct these seemingly bizarre ideas in their minds. Ideas that are so unique and so brand new seem to repeatedly come to life through people like Musk, and are not decreasing in frequency as time passes. This realization led me to explore whether or not there is some sort of chemical alteration in Musk’s mind. The presence of such an alteration would explain the remarkable speed and quality of the ideas produced during the incubation step of Musk’s creative process.
My research yielded the fact that Musk’s brain contains significantly elevated levels of dopamine. High dopamine indicates that a person can produce thoughts quickly and sustain their quick thinking for a long period of time. These people are often unable to sleep (on multiple occasions, Musk has talked about how difficult it is for him to get enough sleep), have multiple trains of creative thought at once, and have influxes of thoughts that come in rapid succession. When I discovered this, I was able to recall a distinct connection to one of our readings. After some searching, I found that this idea was expressed almost identically in a Week 5 reading: Luke Smillie’s Openness to Experience: The Gates of the Mind. On page 4, Smillie articulates the neurologic effects of elevated levels of dopamine in the brain, saying:
“[There is] some evidence [that] implicates dopamine, a neurochemical that—among many other functions—signals the incentive value of information. This process might explain why open people seem to have more sensitive radars for detecting and processing all kinds of concepts, percepts and qualia” (Smillie 4).
This is a more in-depth explanation of the one I previously provided, but it states the exact same idea about dopamine’s positive correlation with high creative productivity.
Elon Musk is undoubtedly one of the most influential creatives of our time. While his journey has not been without consequence and trial, it is still something to admire. I personally marvel at his persistence in the face of obstacles, as well as the fact that his motivation to be creative transcends monetary benefit. I am very glad that I took the time to further explore the inner workings of some of Musk’s creative processes with SpaceX, and am thrilled to see what he comes up with next regarding the journey further into space.
Its crazy at how much SpaceX was able to cut back on costs of their rockets. Truly is incredible the amount of advancements we've have seen in such little time.
ReplyDelete