Chapter 471: The Golden Age Won’t Last Forever
“This is simply impossible to achieve.”
The next day, when Zak took Yuri to visit Far East Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd., after Yuri tentatively expressed his idea, Zak subconsciously said.
“Why?” Yuri asked in return: “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 Apollo Technology appeared, compared to China, we still had certain advantages in some core rocket technology and traditional manned spaceflight.
Now Russia is reviving, and the previous talent outflow is slowing down.”
War brings only benefits and no drawbacks to the Russian aerospace industry.
National defense spending has increased, but the budget allocated to aerospace has not been cut; instead, it has gained increases due to the need to develop space communication systems and cooperate with China to develop space internet technology similar to Starlink.
Although considering the ruble depreciation and high inflation, the actual purchasing power of the aerospace budget may have decreased.
But the problem is, in the past, cooperating with Europe and America, spending 1 ruble could at most achieve the effect of 0.5 ruble; now cooperating with China, spending 1 ruble, Chinese people will at least produce the effect of 5 rubles for you.
This is in terms of money; in terms of talent, in the past, aerospace field talents would flow to the West, even reporters like Zak who report on aerospace would flow to the West.
Now? Sorry, the West adopts an encouraging attitude towards science and engineering talents coming from Russia, welcoming you to come and attract high-quality STEM talent, but for this group of people related to military industry and aerospace, they are also welcome, but they need to undergo special, specific strict review, plus many institutions and individuals directly related to Russian aerospace or national defense industry are sanctioned, and former employees of these institutions cannot find jobs in the West.
The window for Russian aerospace talent outflow has been blocked by the West itself.
“No no no, I’m not comparing Russian aerospace with China aerospace, but comparing Russian aerospace with Apollo Technology.
When we discuss China aerospace, we need to look at their official institutions and Apollo Technology separately, although in the perspective of Western media, the two can be equated.
But as a veteran who has been working in China for over two years, from my perspective, the two are completely different.
The efficiency of the latter is ten times that of the former, or even more.
What we need to learn is Apollo Technology.
But unfortunately, I find that we can’t do it.”
Zak’s expression was somewhat sad, obviously he had also investigated this issue.
Yuri pursued: “Why? Because of funds, talent, or what?”
Zak said: “Because of the existence of the professor, the professor’s tentacles reach into every corner of this collective, this collective with nearly 100,000 employees; its management structure is more like a beehive than a modern enterprise, and the professor is that queen bee.
We, or rather the whole world, cannot find a second professor, unless there is a parallel spacetime.
“Professor?” Yuri repeated the word.
In the Starbucks opposite Far East Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd., Zak realized that Yuri had just arrived in Shanghai and quickly explained: “It’s Randolph Lin. Inside Apollo Technology, his nickname is professor, and even the upstream and downstream partners are used to calling him that.”
Yuri thought thoughtfully; he now knew who the nameless professor occasionally mentioned by mentor Valentin during their communication referred to—it turned out not to be some unknown professor from Moscow University aerospace major.
“Then what about the beehive?” Yuri asked.
Zak continued: “We know that SpaceX’s structure pursues flattening 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 to complete work; any managers who tried to enforce command chains in the past were quickly gotten rid of by Musk.
Engineers are encouraged to communicate directly with those who need information, even across departments or directly reporting problems to high-level leaders, to avoid information distortion and inefficiency.
After Musk joined NASA in the past, we often saw news of NASA leadership being gotten rid of; these managers were not aligned with SpaceX’s concepts.”
Yuri nodded: “I’ve heard that during the rapid iteration process of Starship, engineers responsible for design work in New Orleans can directly communicate with the head of the manufacturing team in Boca Chica, Texas, or even send emails directly to Musk about design flaws or progress obstacles, thereby achieving rapid decision-making and modifications.”
They are all industry insiders, and communication is smooth.
Zak nodded: “Exactly, besides that, they emphasize absolute ownership and accountability.
Employees are required to take absolute, one-to-one responsibility for their projects or hardware parts.
Engineers designing rocket components not only draw drawings but must personally participate in manufacturing, assembly, and testing to ensure the design is feasible and easy to produce.
Like the Falcon 9 recovery landing leg design, the design team must personally observe and solve every subtle problem the legs encounter during landing at the launch site and test field, and quickly feed back to the next generation design.
Of course, there is also rapid feedback, rapid iteration, not fearing failure, and so on.”
Yuri smiled bitterly: “These are too difficult to achieve in Russian aerospace; just getting rid of the command chain, I know just thinking about it how much resistance there is.”
Zak nodded: “Exactly, but Apollo Technology is an even more pervert group. We mentioned earlier that employees send emails to Musk to feedback difficulties and apply for resource tilt.
Here, the professor is the center; he can link to everyone, clearly find everyone, discuss the difficulties they encounter with them, and give them solutions.
This is a beehive-style structure; the professor is the queen bee, everyone else is worker bee; the queen bee knows like the back of her hand every worker bee’s honey gathering progress, route, and difficulties.”
Yuri exclaimed: “This is impossible!”
Realizing this was Starbucks, Yuri lowered his voice: “A group of nearly 100,000 people, no one can do this!”
However, because this Starbucks is right opposite Far East Aerospace Technology, the staff here are used to the Slavs and Russian language voices that appear here from time to time.
Zak let out a long sigh: “Sorry, I also know this is impossible, but I’ve talked to many Apollo Technology engineers, confirmed repeatedly, and even among them they showed me their email signatures and specific times.
Everyone has received emails from the professor, asking them key questions, progress, and giving them some guidance.”
Yuri still shook his head: “No, this is impossible.”
After taking a sip of the latte on the table, Zak said faintly: “I didn’t dare believe it at first either, but this is the fact; otherwise, it can’t explain why their progress is so astonishing.
Before coming to Shanghai in the past, I thought the secret of Apollo Technology was victory, constant victory filling their organizational structure with vitality.
You know, how vigorous the life force of a constantly successful company is; past IBM, General Electric, Cisco, General Electric all had such periods, constantly achieving commercial success, making their competitors feel despair.
But after the Lunar Steel Dragon was completed, I realized things were not as simple as I thought.
What was the management philosophy of IBM, General Electric, Cisco at their peak? It was process, standards, predictability, specialized division of labor.
Victory taught them how to build walls: department walls, hierarchy walls, process walls.
When a company starts to win constantly, it will believe that it was the process that brought victory, not people and speed.
Thus victory creates buffers and redundancy.
The first poison brought by victory is buffer.
Project managers, to ensure the next success, will leave themselves more time, more budget, more steps.
Why? Because no one gets fired for being too slow, but might get punished for making mistakes by going too fast.
In traditional giants on a certain project, engineers know it needs 6 months, but he will report 9 months to cope with all possible processes and approvals.
The second poison brought is curing the command chain.
Once successful, middle managers will consider their status and power as a matter of course.
They start using power to control information, rather than using information to solve problems.
This creates a black hole in information speed.
Frontline engineers discover a small problem, report to team leader, pass to department manager, manager holds meeting to discuss, report to vice president.
Problem solving takes two weeks, but problem reporting might take half a year.
What is big company disease? This is big company disease, the big company disease that used to pervade American giants.
In my perspective, Huawei, which learned management philosophy from IBM, also has these big company diseases; their good point is that they have responsibility mechanisms, they are more daring and better at chopping unfit middle managers than American giants, this is the reason Huawei still maintains vitality to this day.
But Apollo Technology is different from all these; it is unique, and even to this day has no big company disease.
This cannot be explained simply by constant victory.
You know, I am a reporter, and a reporter focused on aerospace; the complete truth pieced together from the puzzle pieces I found is like this.
They completely rely on a super brain.”
Yuri was already fascinated; obviously he didn’t expect that someone had acted before him and investigated so deeply; he couldn’t help but ask: “Specifically? Are there more specific details?”
Zak was silent for a moment and then 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 information flow and decision bottlenecks.
This project management platform is named neural hub inside Apollo Technology; this is not a simple upgrade of Jira or Slack.
All key project data, design iterations, test reports, resource applications, obstacles must be entered into this system in a unified, concise format.
The professor himself does not look at massive meeting records or lengthy reports.
He only looks at anomalies and key path blockage points screened out by the neural hub according to algorithms.
For example, the lunar lander propulsion system project has 500 tasks.
The professor won’t look at the 490 completed ones; he only looks at those 10 key tasks, because these 10 key tasks relate to the other 490.
Progress is 3 working days slower than expected, or cost suddenly overruns by 15%.
This system will in the early morning push these no more than 20 urgent but important bottlenecks directly to the professor.
Then the super brain comes into play at this time.
The professor’s super brain, when processing this filtered information, shows non-human efficiency.
When he sees a project’s bottleneck, he may only need 30 seconds to read a piece of information, but in his brain, he has already completed cross-project comparisons and risk analysis that traditional managers need days or even weeks to do.
His one short reply is often a set of verified solutions or a key cross-department connection.
He is the dictator controlling everything, and also an efficient catalyst.
The queen bee does not need to choose flowers for every worker bee; she only ensures worker bees have the best tools and the least obstacles.
Apollo Technology’s engineers are given extremely high autonomy to execute tasks and make daily decisions.
The professor rarely intervenes in these daily works.
The professor only personally intervenes in that 2% that has exponential impact on the entire group’s goals, key bottlenecks.
These 2% decisions are often the most critical, like changing the core ideas of rocket design.
Like why do we have to make large rockets like Starship like SpaceX? Why can’t we deeply exploit the navigation system, utilize moon resources, and build large electromagnetic launch rails on the moon?
The professor decides these directional works, decides resource allocation of billions or tens of billions rmb, intervenes in the work progress of every core node, gives every engineer just the right pointers.”
“So, Yuri,” Zak summarized: “He is not managing the time of 100,000 individuals.
He automates or authorizes solutions to 99% of problems through a super system, then uses his superhuman wisdom at the most critical 1% time points to give the most precise and powerful push.
This we can’t do, no other company or institution on this earth can do.
If Bezos knew such detailed details, he would definitely regret why he didn’t spend a few billion US dollars to keep the professor back then.”
Yuri listened very seriously and was thinking; he didn’t fully believe what Zak said, because the other party also said this was the truth pieced together from puzzle pieces, not necessarily the real truth.
Additionally, he also noticed that the examples mentioned by the other party were all American giants, American entrepreneurs; just from the wording, one can see the connection between the other party and America.
“Zak, what you said is incredible, magical; I find it hard to imagine a person can do this.
Even if everything you said is true, but have you thought about the problems that exist in this.” Yuri was silent for a moment, then asked in return.
Zak thought and then said: “You mean inertia?”
Zak’s answer made Yuri look at him higher; he nodded: “Exactly, inertia.
Think about it, if the professor really as you said guides every engineer’s work, answers their questions, tells them directions, it will inevitably lead to the emergence of inertia; every engineer drags until the professor comes to teach me how to solve it, right?
This will greatly reduce their initiative.
How is this problem solved?
Research and development in the aerospace field is not as single and boring as bees gathering honey.”
Zak answered: “Of course, I’ve of course asked the engineers I know.
The actual situation is, no one wants to receive guidance from the professor.
The professor’s guidance is not free or unlimited.
There is an unwritten three-step self-rescue principle inside Apollo Technology:
Before being discovered by the professor that your progress is behind expectation, the engineer must clearly list in your work process at least three different solutions or ideas they have already tried.
If the professor receives from the system a push that only contains the problem without attempts, his reply is usually extremely destructive, sometimes directly attaching a simple answer derived from basic principles that you should have thought of to question the engineer’s value.
Asking the right question is a survival skill.
At Apollo Technology, people quickly understand that asking the professor is not to seek answers, but to verify your own answers.
You must do your research extremely deeply, ensure that what you ask is a question worth wasting his time, involving cross-discipline or basic physics limits.
The professor will judge if you are inert or really encountered a difficult problem.
Inertia will be severely punished, while truly valuable questions will get resources and support.
You mentioned dragging until the professor comes to teach.
The problem is, the professor focuses on the iteration speed of the entire project.
If an engineer delays because waiting for the professor’s reply, they not only delay their own work, but will become a key path blockage point marked in the system.
If the professor replies to the engineer to solve it yourself, and this engineer takes several days to solve it, then in this system, you will be labeled as lacking ability.
At Apollo Technology, lack of ability is a more serious crime than failure.
Failure is allowed, but delay and inertia are manifestations of lack of ability, which will lead to you being quickly marginalized; if such a situation happens twice, this engineer will be marginalized to irrelevant departments, and soon will not be able to accept it and resign.
Yuri, you are right, research and development in the aerospace field is indeed complex, but Apollo Technology precisely decomposes this complexity to individuals with a more stringent accountability system than SpaceX.
The professor is like a filter; he only invests attention in atomic bomb-level engineering problems.”
Yuri said thoughtfully: “So, the engineers there won’t delay; they will work desperately to ensure that when they have to send a distress signal to the queen bee, it is a high-quality, worthwhile difficult problem to solve, not a blank paper exposing their own inertia?”
Zak nodded: “You summarized it very well.”
It was not until a week later that Yuri met the human whom Zak praised as the super brain at Apollo Technology—Randolph Lin.
After he walked in, Yuri could clearly feel the atmosphere in the entire meeting room become oppressive; the engineers who were originally discussing engineering problems involuntarily slowed down, as if speaking fast would get them picked on for problems.
And in this past week, after dealing with Apollo Technology’s engineers several times, he also witnessed the style here.
If Yuri were to summarize, it would be: “Always people seeking things, not waiting for things to find people.”
And from the phenomena he observed, indeed no contradictions with Zak’s puzzle were found.
“Comrade Yuri, we have studied your list of questions, mainly about the digital mapping of the KORD system and the thrust adjustment interface of the NK-33 engine.”
The engineers’ speeches in the meeting room were translated by artificial intelligence equipment, translated into Russian and then transmitted to Yuri’s ears via earpiece.
Yuri went straight to the core: “What we are most concerned about is the real-time performance of the distributed control network.
Most importantly, the coupled vibration produced by 30 engines in the ignition phase, the computing requirements for the controller are millisecond-level; how do we ensure bus latency and data integrity? Use theoretically feasible solutions, or redesign solutions based on current technology?”
“We plan to use custom chips as the core processor, separately design redundant fiber optics data bus”
Lin Ran stayed in the meeting room for only half an hour, asked a few key questions and then left the meeting room: “I think you guys are doing well; just proceed with this progress. Please remember, our Russian friends hope to see the N1 rocket send their astronauts to the moon by the end of this year.
That is to say, you have at most two months to complete all designs of the N-1 rocket and deliver it to the factory side; at least conduct ground ignition test in July this year, and the first formal launch in September.
Time is tight, but I believe in everyone’s ability.”
After Lin Ran finished speaking and got up to leave, Yuri and the Chinese engineers continued to discuss technical details.
That evening, back at his residence, Yuri was somewhat dejected: “Hey, Zak? Want to come out for a drink?”
When Zak arrived at a stylish bar in Dahua Night Alley, the table in front of Yuri was already full of wine glasses, but fortunately, only two were empty.
“What’s wrong?” Zak laughed.
Yuri sighed: “I thought I was unique; well, even if not unique, I am among the best engineers in Moscow.
But here, in just a short week, I am surrounded by young people with the potential to become the best engineers.
This is really too terrifying.
The night before last at ten o’clock, a Chinese engineer discussing with me sent WeChat asking if I minded a video call to discuss some technical issues.
We discussed for a full half hour around the turbine characteristic curve of the NK33 engine throttle valve thrust adjustment interface.
He spoke stumbling Russian, mainly relying on formulas and images.
I was thinking at the time, Chinese engineers are really hardworking, still working at ten in the evening.
After this video call, I went to sleep, and at two o’clock he messaged me again: Mister Grigoryevich, are you asleep?
Worse, the next morning at nine o’clock, I saw him appear at his workstation as if nothing happened.
Apollo Technology is not one or two young people like this; I dare not say all young people are like this, but I dare say most are.
Even without considering the existence of the professor super brain, I find it hard to imagine how we can compete with China.
New engineers at the Russian Space Agency are satisfied with four hours of effective work time a day; they think this is already exaggerated, without any dedication and sacrifice spirit from the Cold War period.
Yet I see such spirit in a Chinese commercial aerospace agency.
This is really too terrifying.”
Zak picked up his wine glass, downed the cocktail in one go, then looked at Yuri; under the dim lights, his eyes were deep, carrying complexity from experiencing the rise and fall of two golden ages.
“Mister Yuri, please calm down.
What you see is not new.
What you see is the power of the torrent of the era, which is more powerful than any ideology.”
Zak’s voice carried a reporter’s narrative sense, pulling his thoughts back to the North American continent thirty years ago.
“What you feel now is exactly what I felt in the golden age of Silicon Valley in California in the 1990s.
At that time, I was still a young reporter, reporting aerospace news.
But at that time, the hottest place in America was Silicon Valley, the hottest magazine was Wired, and the hottest news was always about the internet and computers.
Aerospace? What outdated stuff, no one cared.
The space race was already over; what we cared about now was the internet, connecting everything.
Doing aerospace magazines was like being children abandoned by the era; only immigrants like us would do it.
The Silicon Valley back then was like the Baoshan you see now, full of near-pathological frenzy.
Those twenty-something young people slept on foldable beds in offices, driven by caffeine and frenzy to change the world.
Of course, not for national glory, but for stock options and wealth.
Back then, ten o’clock evening emails, two o’clock in the morning code submissions were the norm, not the exception.”
Zak lowered his voice: “You know, when we report SpaceX’s success, we often only see Musk’s vision.
But the real secret lies in his successful inheritance and utilization of that sleepless culture of Silicon Valley, applying it to the aerospace industry.”
He spread his hands: “The engineer you saw sending you messages at two in the morning has massive resource support behind him, clear promotion paths, returns far beyond your imagination.
Chinese people perfectly combined the Silicon Valley model with collectivist efficiency.
They use capital, hope, and collectivism as fuel, making these elites run like an engine that never stops.”
“So, Mister Yuri, you ask how we compete?” After a moment, Zak’s voice carried helplessness.
He didn’t answer directly, but used a rhetorical question: “The answer is, wait.”
Yuri was stunned; he thought Zak would give some ingenious technical strategy, because in this short time together, he thought Zak was a smart person, extremely smart.
Yet unexpectedly it was such a negative answer.
“Wait?” Yuri frowned: “Wait for what? Wait to be completely left behind by them?”
“No, Yuri, waiting for time.” Zak leaned forward slightly: “What you see now is the period of maximum acceleration produced by the perfect combination of technological frenzy and national resources in human history.
No one could compete with Silicon Valley in the 1990s; similarly, no one can compete with China in the aerospace field today.”
Zak’s words were calm, yet carried cold insight:
“How did Silicon Valley’s golden age end? Not defeated by technology, but diluted by self-satisfaction, talent dispersion, and capital profit-seeking.
When wealth reaches a saturation point, when technology enters a bottleneck period, when engineers start to tire of two a.m. overtime, they will pursue comfort, balance, and family.
That near-pathological frenzy will slowly cool down.”
He gestured at the scene in front of him: “The Shanghai you see now, the Baoshan industrial zone you see, is exactly the Palo Alto I saw back then.
They are running too fast now, to the point they can’t see the road under their feet.
But believe me, technological development cannot always be so rapid.
Whether mathematics or engineering, they all follow the S-curve growth law.”
Zak summarized: “Our task is to lie low.
It is to use this cooperation to get the core technologies we need most.
Then, we must wait like hunters for this period to pass.
Wait for them to slowly become satisfied with the status quo, wait for their talent to start flowing out, wait for their technological progress to fall into bottlenecks.
What we do is stay low-key while they accelerate, and strike fatally when they stagnate.
We cannot compete head-on with resources, but we can use our wisdom and patience to endure this era.
What we pursue is not to take off synchronously with them, but to ensure we have tickets to enter when the new round of competition begins.
When that time comes, enter the field and use the diffused technology to get our share of the cake.”
After listening, Yuri sobered up completely from the alcohol, because he felt what the other party said made some sense.
