In the last week of September, New York the autumn mood is already too strong to be turned away.
The maple leaves on Central Park began to turn red, and the wind on the Hudson River was filled with coolness and poured in from the direction of Atlantic Ocean.
The wind made the Manhattan skyscrapers tremble slightly in the afternoon sun.
Zhao Chen sat in front of Floor-to-Ceiling Window from Suite, holding Su Wantang's Pu'er that had just been filled with hot water.
Chen Xi is watching Henglong Capital's third-quarter position adjustment plan in the country.
Zhang Qingxue has the last round of compliance review before Chongqing handles Yunnan Agriculture Group IPO,
Su Wantang is not here today either - she went to Boston to attend an annual forum of Philanthropic Foundation and won't be back until tomorrow.
It's rare that he is the only one in Suite.
The cell phone on the coffee table suddenly vibrated.
It was a text message from Elon Musk, with only one sentence - "Look at Twitter."
Zhao Chen put down the teacup and opened Twitter.
Elon Musk's latest tweet is a video,
No narration, no background music,
There are only Texas Boca Chica and the blazing afternoon sun and the same silver-gray prototype as Stainless Steel Water Tower - Starworm.
In the video, Starworm's Raptor engine is lit on fire amid billowing smoke.
The fuselage slowly left the ground and hovered about twenty meters in the air. It was clumsy, rough, and shaky, but it stopped there steadily.
At that moment it was not Stainless Steel Water Tower, it was a rivet driven in by humans in the shortest possible time in a tunnel with no end in sight.
After a while, the engine was shut down and it fell steadily back to the ground, the dust raised lingering in the sunlight for a long time.
The caption of the tweet is only one line--
"Starhopper has just completed the low-altitude hover test. Mars, here we come."
Zhao Chen watched the video three times.
The first time I looked at it was the engine - the color of the flame in the Raptor's combustion chamber transitioned from orange-red to light blue at the moment of ignition.
The combustion stability is much better than the Tethered Test he saw with his own eyes last time at Boca Chica.
The second time I looked at it was attitude control - the lateral offset of Starworm when hovering at a height of twenty meters was extremely small.
It shows that SpaceX's Flight Control Algorithm completed the transition from tethering to free hovering in a very short period of time.
The third time he didn't look at anything, he just leaned on the back of the sofa and let the shadow of Stainless Steel Water Tower in the sun dangle in front of his eyes for a long time.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number Elon Musk.
The phone rang twice and was connected. The voice of Elon Musk came from Fremont.
In the background, you can vaguely hear the tapping of keyboards and the crisp sound of some kind of metal workpiece being placed on the workbench--
Saturday In the afternoon, he was obviously still in the office, probably reviewing the flight control data of Starworm frame by frame.
"Zhao, have you seen the video?"
"I saw it.
You told me last time on Boca Chica that Starworm's next goal is a low-altitude hovering test, which is scheduled for next year. It's only the end of September now."
Zhao Chen's voice is not high-pitched, but every word carries a kind of restraint after the facts exceed expectations.
"You did it ahead of time."
"The combustion stability test of Raptor engine went more smoothly than expected.
Flight Control Team has barely slept in the past two months--
They used a new iterative algorithm that allows Starworm to autonomously correct lateral drift during the hovering phase.
The accuracy is improved by more than one order of magnitude compared to Tethered Test."
There is something in Elon Musk's voice that Zhao Chen rarely hears -
After the excitement was briefly released, he paused for breath,
Then he said something Zhao Chen didn't expect.
"Zhao, you flew up these twenty meters with me."
His tone suddenly slowed down, and he was no longer the Silicon Valley madman who spoke freely about Twitter.
Rather, he was a man who finally saw the engine ignite successfully after spending countless nights squatting in front of the test bench at three o'clock in the morning.
"During May, I flew back and forth between Fremont and Boca Chica.
On one side, Short Sellers of Tesla hunted, and on the other side, Raptor engine of Starworm stalled repeatedly on the test bench.
One early morning, I was sitting in the iron room at the launch base, and it was raining heavily in Texas outside.
I suddenly thought of something you said to me--
'Failure must be cheap enough, and the stakes must be high enough.'
I said to myself, since failure is cheap enough, then keep trying."
Zhao Chen held the phone and did not speak.
Outside the window, the clouds above Hudson River were pulled into slender threads by the autumn wind.
The sun leaked through the gaps in the clouds, casting moving golden light spots on the river.
He was silent for a while, then spoke, his voice deeper than usual,
But every word seems to have grown out of the concrete foundation of the Boca Chica launch pad.
"This saying also holds true in reverse - the heavier the bet, the less expensive the failure.
When Era Vanguard was pressed at the 178 margin call line in May, I only made one calculation in my mind--
If my Capital Chain breaks, it's not just my problem, Lawyer Lin, Wantang, Chen Xi, Qingxue, Zhiyi--
Every one of their net worth is in it. But I have no other choice."
He switched the phone to the other ear,
"When pushed to the limit, it will either crush the chassis or ram the foundation deeper.
You used Starworm to hammer the engine, and we used the Henglong stock to build the final safety cushion."
"I remember last year at Boca Chica, you said--
'As long as the cost of failure is low enough, you can fail enough times until you find the right path.'"
Elon Musk was silent on the other end of the phone for a long time, so long that Zhao Chen thought the signal was cut off.
Then his voice sounded again, less excited and more calm after being crushed by time.
"What I lack most now is the courage to start all over again."
He paused,
"The next goal of Starship is a flight test at an altitude of 20 kilometers, scheduled for next year.
Starworm is hovering at low altitude, and Starship is falling directly from the edge of the atmosphere and then pulled back.
Do you know what that means? It could just disintegrate in the air."
"I know. But it might also fly those twenty kilometers and then fall steadily back to the launch pad."
Zhao Chen finished the cool Pu'er and placed the tea cup on the coffee table. The bottom of the cup hit the glass surface with a light and clear crisp sound.
"No matter where it falls, I will come."
"You buy your own ticket."
"Of course."
Zhao Chen When he said these two words, the corners of his mouth curled up in a very faint arc.
The clouds outside the window suddenly opened a gap, and the sunlight poured down through the gap.
Spread a flowing golden light strip on the Hudson River.
He poured himself another cup of hot water. The Pu'er in the teapot was still a little warm.
He poured half a cup, added some hot water, and watched the tea leaves slowly swirling in the cup.
From the first time I saw Starworm on the gravel road of Boca Chica last year, the prototype that was ridiculed by all mankind as Stainless Steel Water Tower,
As of today, it has successfully completed low-altitude hovering, and mankind has taken a very subtle step closer to returning to the moon and landing on Mars.
As for this step, neither he nor Elon Musk had time to write it down in their respective quarterly plans in advance.