When future historians report human progress during the 21st century, they may conclude that one of the key moments took place a year ago in Elon Musk's bedroom. His eureka! moments happen every few months. Sometimes during his morning shower, sometimes late at night before sleep, sometimes, as on this occasion, waking at 2 a.m.
当回顾人类在21世纪取得的进步时，未来的历史学家可能会下这样的结论：其中的一个重要时刻是一年前在埃隆·穆斯克的卧室内发生的。他的创造灵感每几个月就会喷发一次，有时是在早晨淋浴，有时是在夜晚睡前，有时——比如这次——发生在凌晨2点醒来时。
This is how he described that moment to me: "I realized that a methane-oxygen rocket engine could achieve a specific impulse greater than 380."
他是这样对我描述那一时刻的：“我意识到使用甲烷-氧气型火箭发动机可以获得380秒以上的比冲。”（比冲指火箭发动机单位重量推进剂产生的冲量，工程中习惯以“秒”为单位——译注）
Okay, it doesn't sound particularly historic. Until you realize that a rocket of that spec has adequate range to escape Earth's upper atmosphere and travel to Mars. And that it so happens that Mars has plenty of carbon dioxide (CO2) and permafrost (H2O), which could be neatly converted into the aforementioned methane (CH4) and liquid oxygen (O2). Which means you could create the fuel for the journey home right there on Mars itself. And that transforms the long-term economics of space travel between Earth and Mars because it means that you could send manned spacecraft to Mars without having to carry rocket fuel with you.
好吧，这听起来没有特别的历史意义。但如果你知道如此高比冲的火箭足以突破地球大气层，前往火星，是不是感觉就不一样了？而碰巧火星有着大量二氧化碳（CO2）和厚厚的永冻层（H2O），它们可以被巧妙地转化为上文提到的甲烷（CH4）和液态氧（O2）。这意味着你可以在火星就地制造返回地球的燃料。这会改变地球和火星之间太空旅行时需要考虑的长期经济问题，因为你可以向火星发射载人飞船而不需要随船携带火箭燃料。
That's right. Elon Musk genuinely believes that within the next couple of decades, humans will be colonizing Mars. And thanks to his early morning aha! moment, we will even be able to make the return trip. That would certainly be a useful line in the recruiting ads, unless, like him, you're comfortable with the prospect of dying on Mars after helping build humanity's second home.
就是这样。埃隆·穆斯克坚信在接下来的二十年内，人类就可以移居火星。得益于他这次凌晨的灵光一闪，我们甚至还能返航。在招募志愿者的广告中，这一条肯定能够起到鼓动作用。除非你像他一样，愿意在帮助人类建立第二个家园后长眠于火星。
This is not your typical CEO.
他不是一个典型的首席执行官。
You'd say Elon Musk was crazy, except that he has an unnerving track record of turning his dreams into reality. His second successful Internet startup, PayPal, which was sold to eBay(EBAY, Fortune 500) in 2002 for $1.5 billion only three years after its founding, was just the warm-up. (Compaq bought his first web software company.) His next act, Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, became the first private company to deliver cargo to the Space Station and has picked up billions of dollars of orders from NASA and others. His electric-vehicle company, Tesla Motors (TSLA), with sales up more than 12-fold for the first three quarters of 2013, is proving that cars can be green and sexy. (Oh, and earlier this year, while running those two companies, he found time to unveil a radical new intercity mass-transport concept called Hyperloop.) For all those reasons and more, Fortune has named Musk its 2013 Businessperson of the Year.
你会说埃隆·穆斯克很疯狂，他在将理想变成现实这一方面，有着惊人的记录。他的第二家因特网初创公司贝宝（PayPal）大获成功。在公司成立三年之后的2002年，就被eBay公司以15亿美元的价格收购。而这不过是个热身。【康柏电脑公司（Compaq）收购了他的第一家网络软件公司。】他的下一家公司，太空探索科技公司（Space Exploration Technologies），也叫SpaceX，成为了第一家为空间站供货的私人公司，并从美国国家航空航天局（NASA）和其他相关机构得到了价值数十亿的订单。他的电动汽车公司特斯拉（Tesla Motors）在2013年的前三个季度里销量增长至原来的12倍，证明了汽车可以既环保又性感。（噢，他在忙着经营这两家公司的同时，还在今年早些时候抽空提出了一项全新的跨城市交通运输概念，叫做“超回路列车”。）基于以上列举和未列举的理由，《财富》将他评为2013年度商业人物。
When you look at the incredible range of his endeavors and search for recent comparisons in the business world, only one emerges: Steve Jobs. Most business innovations involve only incremental improvement. And of those entrepreneurs lucky enough to succeed with bigger ideas, the large majority then stick to their industry sector for expansion and consolidation. Jobs and Musk are in a category all their own: serial disrupters.
鉴于他在跨度广大的不同领域中取得了此等成就，如果你想要寻找近期的商界人物进行对比，脑海中只会浮现出一个人：史蒂夫?乔布斯。大多数商业创意都是渐进式的改进。一些企业家幸运地将宏大创意变为现实，然后他们中的大多数都固守在取得成功的行业领域，扩张公司，整合能力。乔布斯和穆斯克则自成一个类型：跨领域颠覆者。