Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 471 The Golden Age Will Not Last Forever
"That's simply impossible."

The next day, when Zach took Yuri on a tour of the Far East Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd., Yuri tentatively expressed his thoughts, and Zach subconsciously said...

"Why?" Yuri countered. "In terms of overall industry, I admit there is a gap between us and China, but if we only look at aerospace, the gap between us and China is very small."

Even before the advent of Apollo technology, we had certain advantages over China in some core rocket technologies and traditional manned spaceflight.

Russia is now recovering, and the brain drain that was previously occurring is slowing down.

For the Russian space industry, war was only beneficial and not detrimental.

Defense spending increased, but there was no reduction in the budget allocated to space. On the contrary, it was increased because of the development of space communication systems and cooperation with China to develop space internet technology similar to Starlink.

Although the actual purchasing power of the space budget may be reduced given the depreciation of the ruble and high inflation.

The problem is that in the past, when cooperating with Europe and America, you could only get the effect of 0.5 rubles for 1 ruble. Now, when cooperating with China, you can get the effect of 5 rubles for 1 ruble.

This relates to money. In terms of talent, in the past, talent in the aerospace field would be lost to the West. Even journalists like Zack, who cover aerospace, could be lost to the West.

Now? Sorry, the West is encouraging towards Russian STEM talents, welcoming them to come and attracting high-quality STEM talent. But those related to the military and aerospace industries are also welcome, but they need to undergo special and specific strict screening. In addition, many institutions and individuals directly related to the Russian aerospace or defense industry have been sanctioned, and former employees of these institutions are unable to seek employment in the West.

The window for Russia's loss of space talent has been closed by the West itself.

"No, no, no, I'm not comparing Russian spaceflight with Chinese spaceflight, but rather comparing Russian spaceflight with Apollo technology."

When discussing China's space program, we must distinguish between its official institutions and Apollo technology, even though Western media may equate the two.

But as someone who has been working in China for over two years, I see the two as completely different.

The latter is ten times more efficient than the former, or even more.

What we need to learn is Apollo technology.

But unfortunately, I found we couldn't do it.

Zach looked somewhat sad, clearly indicating that he had also investigated the issue.

Yuri pressed further, "Why? Is it because of funding, talent, or something else?"

Zach said, "Because of the professor's presence, his reach extends to every corner of this collective. This collective, with nearly 100,000 employees, has a management structure that is less like a modern enterprise and more like a bee swarm, with the professor as the queen bee."

We, or rather, the entire world, could not possibly find another professor like him, unless parallel universes exist.

“Professor?” Yuri repeated the word.

In the Starbucks across from Far East Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd., Zack realized that Yuri had just arrived in Shenhai and quickly explained, "It's Randolph Lin. Within Apollo Technology, his nickname is Professor, and even the upstream and downstream partners are used to calling him that."

Yuri seemed to understand something. He realized who the nameless professor Valentin had mentioned when he was talking to him was. It turned out that it wasn't the unknown professor from the aerospace department of Moscow State University.

"And what about the swarm of bees?" Yuri asked.

Zach continued, "We know that SpaceX's architecture is designed for flatness and high-speed information flow."

Musk opposes using traditional hierarchical systems to transmit information.

They emphasize that communication should be done through the shortest path, and any manager who tried to enforce the chain of command in the past was quickly eliminated by Musk.

Engineers are encouraged to communicate directly with those who need information, even across departments or directly to senior management, to avoid information distortion and inefficiency.

In the past, after Musk joined NASA, we often saw news reports of NASA leadership being ousted because these managers disagreed with SpaceX's philosophy.

Yuri nodded: "I've heard that during the rapid iteration of Starship, the engineers in charge of the design work in New Orleans can communicate directly with the head of the manufacturing team in Boca Chica, Texas, and even send emails directly to Musk about design flaws or schedule delays, thus enabling rapid decision-making and modifications."

Since we're all industry professionals, communication is seamless.

Zach nodded: "That's right. In addition, they emphasize absolute ownership and accountability."

Employees are required to have absolute, one-on-one responsibility for their projects or hardware components.

Engineers who design rocket components not only have to draw up plans, but also have to be involved in manufacturing, assembly, and testing to ensure that the design is feasible and easy to produce.

For example, in the design of the Falcon 9's recovery landing legs, the design team had to personally observe and resolve every minute problem encountered by the landing legs during the landing process at the launch site and test range, and quickly feed this information back into the next generation of designs.

Of course, there's also rapid feedback, rapid iteration, and a fearlessness of failure, among other things.

Yuri smiled wryly: "These things are too difficult to do in Russian spaceflight. Just thinking about how much resistance there is is just to destroy the command chain."

Zach nodded and said, "That's right, but Apollo Technologies is an even more monstrous group. As we mentioned earlier, employees emailed Musk to report difficulties and request resource allocation."

Here, the professor is the center; he can connect with everyone, find each person clearly, discuss the difficulties they encounter, and provide them with solutions.

This is a bee colony structure. The professor is the queen bee, and everyone else is a worker bee. The queen bee knows the nectar collection progress, routes, and difficulties of each worker bee perfectly.

Yuri exclaimed, "This is impossible!"

Realizing they were in a Starbucks, Yuri lowered his voice: "A group of nearly 100,000 people, no one could possibly do this!"

However, since this Starbucks is located opposite Far East Aerospace Science and Technology, the staff here are used to the frequent Slavic and Russian voices.

Zack sighed, "I'm sorry, I know it's impossible, but I've talked to many engineers at Apollo Technologies, and I've confirmed it repeatedly. Some of them even showed me their email signatures and specific dates."

Everyone received emails from the professors, asking about key questions, progress, and offering guidance.

Yuri shook his head again: "No, that's impossible."

After taking a sip of his latte, Zack said quietly, "I couldn't believe it at first either, but it's true. Otherwise, there's no way to explain why their progress has been so amazing."

Before coming to Shenhai, I thought the secret of Apollo Technology was victory, and continuous victory kept their organizational structure dynamic.

As you know, a continuously successful company can have a lot of vitality. IBM, GE, and Cisco all had such periods in the past, achieving continuous commercial success and making their competitors feel hopeless.

But after the lunar steel dragon was built, I realized that things were not as simple as I had thought.

What were the management philosophies of IBM, General Electric, and Cisco at their peak? They were processes, standards, predictability, and specialization.

Victory taught them how to build walls: departmental walls, hierarchical walls, and process walls.

When a company starts winning consistently, it comes to believe that the success is due to processes, not people or speed.

Thus, victory created a buffer and redundancy.

The first poison of victory is the buffer.

To ensure success next time, project managers will allocate more time, more budget, and more steps to themselves.

Why? Because no one gets fired for doing things too slowly, but they might be punished for making mistakes because they do things too fast.

In traditional tech giants, an engineer might know a project will take six months, but he'll report it will take nine months to account for all possible processes and approvals.

The second poison it brought was the solidification of the chain of command.

Once successful, middle managers will take their position and power for granted.

They started using power to control information instead of using information to solve problems.

This creates a black hole in the speed of information.

A frontline engineer discovered a minor issue, reported it to the team leader, which then passed it on to the department manager. The manager held a meeting to discuss the issue and reported it to the vice president.

It takes two weeks to resolve the problem, but reporting the problem could take up to six months.

What is the disease of big companies? This is the disease of big companies, the disease of big companies that used to plague America's giants.

From my perspective, Huawei, which learned management philosophy from IBM, also suffers from these big company ailments. Their advantage lies in their accountability mechanisms. They are more willing and better at cutting incompetent middle managers than American giants, which is why Huawei continues to thrive.

But Apollo Technology is different from all of these; it is unique, and to this day it has not suffered from the problems of large corporations.

This cannot be explained simply by a series of victories.

As you know, I'm a journalist, and a journalist specializing in aerospace. The complete truth I pieced together from the jigsaw puzzle is exactly this.

They rely entirely on a super brain.

Yuri was completely engrossed in listening. He clearly hadn't expected that someone had acted before him and investigated so thoroughly. He couldn't help but ask, "What are the specifics? Are there any more detailed questions?"

After a moment of silence, Zach said, "Of course, Yuri, of course."

They have a highly customized project management platform.

The professor doesn't directly manage nearly 100,000 people; he manages the flow of information and decision-making bottlenecks.

This project management platform is known internally at Apollo Technologies as the Neural Center, and it is not simply an upgraded version of Jira or Slack.

All critical project data, design iterations, test reports, resource requests, and obstacles must be entered into this system in a unified and concise format.

The professor himself does not read massive amounts of meeting minutes or lengthy reports.

He only looks at outliers and critical path blockages selected by the neural center using algorithms.

For example, the lunar lander propulsion system project has 500 tasks.

The professor doesn't look at the 490 completed tasks; he only looks at the 10 key tasks because these 10 key tasks are related to the other 490.

The progress is 3 working days slower than expected, or the cost suddenly exceeds the budget by 15%.

This system will push these no more than 20 urgent but important bottlenecks directly to the professor in the early morning.

Then the superbrain comes into play.

The professor's super brain demonstrated inhuman efficiency in processing this filtered information.

When he sees a bottleneck in a project, he may only need 30 seconds to read a piece of information, but in his mind, he has already completed the cross-project comparison and risk analysis that traditional managers would need to do for days or even weeks.

His brief replies often consist of a proven solution or a crucial cross-departmental connection.

He was a dictator who controlled everything, but also a highly efficient catalyst.

The queen bee doesn't need to choose flowers for each worker bee; she only ensures that the worker bees have the best tools and the fewest obstacles.

Apollo Technologies engineers are given a high degree of autonomy to perform tasks and make daily decisions.

The professor rarely interfered with these routine tasks.

The professor only personally intervenes in those 2% of key bottlenecks that have an exponential impact on the overall group's goals.

These 2% of decisions are often the most critical, such as changing the core design principles of a rocket.

Why do we need to build large rockets like Starship, just like SpaceX? Why can't we delve deeper into navigation systems, utilize lunar resources, and construct large electromagnetic launch orbits on the moon?
The professor decides on these directional tasks, determines the allocation of billions or even tens of billions of RMB in resources, intervenes in the progress of each core node, and provides each engineer with just the right guidance.

“So, Yuri,” Zach concluded, “he’s not managing the time of 100,000 individuals.”

He uses a super system to automate or authorize the resolution of 99% of problems, and then uses his superhuman intelligence to provide the most precise and powerful impetus at the most critical 1% of the time.

We can't do this, and neither can any other company or organization on Earth.

If Bezos knew such detailed information, he would definitely regret not spending hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the professor.

Yuri listened attentively and pondered the matter. He didn't completely believe what Zack said, because Zack had also said that this was the truth he had pieced together from the puzzle, and it might not be the real truth.

He also noticed that the examples mentioned by the other party were all giants and entrepreneurs of America, and the connection between the other party and America could be seen just from the wording.

“Zack, what you’re saying is incredible, amazing. I find it hard to imagine that a person could do this.”

"Even if what you're saying is true, have you considered the problems involved?" Yuri paused for a moment, then asked in return. Zack thought for a moment and said, "You mean inertia?"

Zack's answer made Yuri look at him with new respect, and he nodded: "That's right, it's inertia."

Think about it. If the professor really does guide every engineer's work, answer their questions, and tell them the direction, as you say, then it will inevitably lead to laziness. Wouldn't it be better if every engineer just waited for the professor to teach them how to solve the problem?

This will greatly reduce their initiative.

How can this problem be solved?

Research and development in the aerospace field is not as monotonous and tedious as bees collecting nectar.

Zack replied, "Of course, I certainly asked the engineers I know."

In reality, nobody wants to receive guidance from a professor.

The professor's guidance is neither free nor unlimited.

Apollo Technologies has an unwritten three-step self-rescue principle:
Before your professor discovers that your progress is behind schedule, engineers must clearly list at least three different solutions or approaches they have tried in your workflow.

If a professor receives only a push notification from the system containing a question without any attempt, his response is often extremely damaging, sometimes directly questioning the engineer's value by attaching a simple answer derived from basic principles that you should have thought of.

Asking the right questions is a survival skill.

At Apollo Technology, people quickly realized that asking professors questions was not about seeking answers, but about verifying your own.

You must conduct your research in great depth, making sure you ask a question that is worth his time and involves interdisciplinary or fundamental physical limits.

The professor will judge whether you are just lazy or genuinely facing a problem.

Inertia will be severely punished, while truly valuable questions will receive resources and support.

You mentioned dragging it out until a professor comes to teach it.

The problem is that the professor is concerned with the iteration speed of the entire project.

If an engineer delays while waiting for a professor's reply, they not only waste their own time but also become a critical path blockage in the system.

If the professor tells the engineer to solve it himself, and the engineer takes several days to solve it, then you will be labeled as incompetent in this system.

At Apollo Technologies, incompetence is a more serious crime than failure.

Failure is permissible, but procrastination and laziness are signs of incompetence, which will lead to your rapid marginalization. If this happens twice, the engineer will be relegated to an insignificant department and will soon find it unacceptable and leave the company.

Yuri, you're right. Research and development in the aerospace field is indeed complex, but Apollo Technology has broken down this complexity and assigned it to individuals through a more stringent accountability system than SpaceX.

The professor acts like a filter; he only focuses his attention on engineering problems of atomic bomb scale.

Yuri said thoughtfully, "So, the engineers there won't procrastinate; they'll work hard to ensure that when they have to send a distress signal to the queen bee, it's a high-quality, worthwhile problem to solve, not a blank sheet that exposes their laziness?"

Zack nodded and said, "You've summarized it very well."

It wasn't until a week later that Yuri met Randolph Lin, the human whom Zack hailed as a super brain, at Apollo Technology.

After the other party walked in, he could clearly feel that the atmosphere in the entire conference room became oppressive. The engineers who were originally discussing engineering issues involuntarily slowed down, as if speaking too fast would lead to problems being found out.

Over the past week, after interacting with Apollo Technology's engineers several times, he also got a feel for their style.

If Yuri were to summarize, it would be: "It's always people who seek out problems, not the other way around."

And based on the phenomena he observed, he was indeed unable to find any contradictions with the Zack puzzle.

"Comrade Yuri, we have reviewed your list of questions, which mainly concerns the digital mapping of the KORD system and the thrust adjustment interface of the NK-33 engine."

The engineer's speech in the conference room was translated into Russian by an artificial intelligence device and then transmitted to Yuri's ears via an earpiece.

Yuri cut straight to the heart of the matter: "What we care about most is the real-time performance of the distributed control network."

Most importantly, the coupled vibrations generated by the 30 engines during the ignition phase place millisecond-level computational demands on the controller. How can we ensure bus latency and data integrity? Should we use a theoretically feasible solution, or redesign the solution based on current technology?

"We plan to use a custom chip as the core processor and design a separate redundant fiber optic data bus."

Lin Ran only stayed in the conference room for half an hour, asked a few key questions, and then left: "I think you've done a good job. Proceed at this pace. Please remember that our Russian friends hope to see the N1 rocket send their astronauts to the moon by the end of this year."

In other words, you have at most two months to complete all the design of the N-1 rocket and deliver it to the factory, conduct at least a ground ignition test in July, and carry out the first official launch in September.

Time is tight, but I have faith in everyone's abilities.

After Lin Ran finished speaking, he got up and left, while Yuri and the Chinese engineers continued to discuss the technical details.

Yuri returned to his lodgings that evening, looking somewhat dejected. "Hey Zack? Want to come out for a drink?"

When Zack arrived at a stylish bar in Dahua Night Alley, the table in front of Yuri was already full of glasses, but thankfully, only two were empty.

"What's wrong?" Zack asked with a smile.

Yuri sighed, “I thought I was unique. Well, even if I’m not unique, I’m still one of the best engineers in Moscow.”

But in just one week here, I'm surrounded by young people with the potential to become the best engineers.

This is really scary.

The night before last, around 10 PM, a Chinese engineer I had been discussing things with messaged me on WeChat, asking if I minded making a video call. He said he had some technical questions he wanted to discuss with me.

We spent a full half hour discussing the turbine characteristic curves around the thrust adjustment interface of the NK33 engine's throttle valve.

He spoke broken Russian, relying mainly on formulas and images.

I was thinking to myself, "Chinese engineers are really dedicated; they're still working at 10 p.m."

After the video call, I went to sleep. At 2 a.m., he sent me another message: Mr. Grigorievich, are you asleep?
To make matters worse, I saw him at his workstation at nine o'clock the next morning, as if nothing had happened.

Apollo Technology isn't just about one or two young people like this, and I wouldn't dare say all young people are like this, but I'm sure most of them are.

Even without considering the existence of the professor's super brain, I find it hard to imagine how we can compete with China.

New engineers at the Russian Space Agency are content with four hours of effective work a day, which they consider excessive, showing none of the dedication and sacrifice of the Cold War era.

I saw this spirit in a commercial space agency in China.

This is absolutely terrifying.

Zach picked up his glass, downed his cocktail in one gulp, and then looked at Yuri. In the dim light, his eyes were deep, carrying the complex emotions of having experienced the rise and fall of two golden ages.

"Mr. Yuri, please calm down."

What you are seeing is nothing new.

What you are seeing is the power of the tide of history, which is more powerful than any ideology.

Zach's voice, with its journalistic narration, pulled his thoughts back to the North American continent thirty years ago.

"What you are experiencing now is exactly what I experienced in the golden age of Silicon Valley in California during the 1990s."

At that time, I was a young journalist covering space news.

But at that time, America's most popular place was Silicon Valley, the most popular magazine was Wired, and the hottest news was always related to the Internet and computers.

Spaceflight? What an outdated thing, nobody cares about it.

The space race is over; what we care about now is the internet, connecting everything.

Creating a space magazine is like being a child abandoned by the times; only immigrants like us would do it.

Silicon Valley back then, like Baoshan as you see it now, was filled with an almost pathological frenzy.

Those young people in their twenties, sleeping on folding beds in the office, are driven by caffeine and a fervent desire to change the world.

Of course, they weren't doing it for national glory, but for stock options and wealth.

Back then, emails at 10 PM and code commits at 2 AM were the norm, not the exception.

Zucker lowered his voice and said: "You know, when we report on SpaceX's success, we often only see Musk's vision."

But the real secret lies in his successful inheritance and utilization of Silicon Valley's relentless culture, applying it to the aerospace industry.

He shrugged: "The engineer you see who's still messaging you at 2 a.m. has huge resources behind him, a clear promotion path, and rewards far beyond your imagination."

The Chinese have perfectly combined the Silicon Valley model with collectivist efficiency.

They fueled these elites with capital, hope, and collectivism, keeping them running like a never-ending engine.

"So, Mr. Yuri, you're asking us how we compete?" After a moment, Zack's voice was tinged with helplessness.

Instead of answering directly, he asked a rhetorical question: "The answer is, wait."

Yuri was stunned. He thought Zack would offer some brilliant technical strategy, because in their short time together, he thought Zack was a smart man, an extremely smart man.

But the answer was unexpectedly negative.

"Wait?" Yuri frowned. "Wait for what? Wait for us to be completely left behind?"

“No, Yuri, we’re waiting for the right time.” Zack leaned forward slightly. “What you’re seeing now is the period of greatest acceleration in human history, a period of perfect combination of technological fervor and national resources.”

No one could compete with Silicon Valley in the 1990s, and similarly, no one can compete with China in the aerospace field today.

Zack's words were calm, yet carried a chilling insight:
"How did Silicon Valley's golden age end? It wasn't defeated by technology, but diluted by complacency, the dispersion of talent, and the pursuit of profit by capital."

When wealth reaches a saturation point, when technology enters a bottleneck period, and when engineers begin to tire of working overtime until 2 a.m., they will pursue comfort, balance, and family.

That almost pathological fervor will slowly cool down.

He gestured to the scene before him: "What you see in Shanghai now, the Baoshan Industrial Zone, is the Palo Alto I saw back then."

They're running so fast they can't see the road beneath their feet.

But believe me, technological progress cannot continue at such a rapid pace forever.

Both mathematics and engineering follow an S-shaped growth pattern.

Zach concluded, "Our mission is to lie low."

The goal of this collaboration is to acquire the core technologies we need most.

Then, we must wait for this period to pass, like hunters.

They wait for themselves to become complacent, for their talent to start leaving, and for their technological progress to hit a bottleneck.

What we need to do is remain low-key when they accelerate and strike decisively when they stall.

We cannot compete head-on for resources, but we can use our wisdom and patience to weather this era.

What we're aiming for isn't to take off at the same pace as them, but to ensure we have a ticket to the next round of competition.

When that time comes, we can then enter the market and utilize diffusion technology to claim our rightful share of the pie.

After listening, Yuri sobered up completely, because he felt that what the other person said made some sense.

(End of this chapter)