Yesterday, we talked about Bowie Bonds, a brilliant money maneuver by David Bowie that made him $55 million and allowed him to buy back the rest of his masters.

What Bowie likely wasn’t aware of in 1997, was that his witty Wall Street play had caught the eyes and ears of a young aspiring entrepreneur who was in the midst of plotting his first company.

Years later, when that entrepreneur would go on to start a whole slew of paradigm-shifting companies and become one one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet, he would pay tribute to the late David Bowie in a rather unlikely way.

When Elon Musk launched a Tesla into outer space via SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, he made sure the vehicle was blaring Space Oddity.

Then, three years later, he stunned the music publishing world by purchasing David Bowie’s music catalog for 5177.78 Bitcoin (BTC), which was valued right around $306,000,000 at the time.

After the purchase, Musk promised his team at SpaceX that if they could get boots on the ground on Mars by 2026, he’d personally build a hyper-advanced digital imaging system and put on a David Bowie hologram show to welcome his astronauts.

Elon Musk is a mad, narcissistic, tyrannical, man-child. He’s also a genius changing the course of human history with some wisdom worth paying attention to.

For example, consider his rules for building rockets:

After thumbing through these four rules, I found them to be worthwhile reading material for anyone working on a project (creative or non).

Question every cost

When Musk was building his first rocket, he kept costs laughably low. A parts manufacturer once quoted him $120,000 for a bizarre gizmo called an actuator. Musk challenged one of his engineers to make the same part for $5,000. Today, SpaceX makes 70% of the parts on their rockets in-house.

Have a maniacal sense of urgency

When Space'X’s lead engineer, Tom Mueller, was working on the Merlin engines, he presented an aggressive deadline to Musk (knowing that Musk appreciated aggressive deadlines). Musk told him to cut it in half. Mueller pushed back and said it was ‘impossible’. To which Musk responded, “When I ask for something, you fucking give it to me.”

Learn by failing

SpaceX was notorious for pushing their engines until they broke to see what the limits were. Tom Mueller, Musk’s very first hire and the lead engineer he cussed out in the previous rule, would often say, “It’s not how well you avoid problems. It’s how fast you figure out what the problem is and fix it.”

Improvise

One evening in McGregor, Texas, lightning struck a fuel tank. This led to a rip. Musk, who was not at the test site, told Mueller to fly the fuel tank back to their Los Angeles headquarters. Musk showed up to the facilities dressed for a Christmas party he was planning to attend. In his dress clothes, he began applying a layer of epoxy to the fuel tanks. He never made it to the Christmas party.

In Closing

There was rule, however, that Musk left out of his short guide to rocket-building… dreaming. What Musk does better than nearly every entrepreneur who came before him is that he has the ability to dream without limitations.

By Cole Schafer.

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