Speaker 1: So it is my great honor to introduce a man
Speaker 1: who needs no introduction. I'm not sure where he's at,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure he's going to come in here somewhere.
Speaker 2: Where is he?
Speaker 1: Okay, there you go, a gentleman who we can call Elon.
Speaker 1: In everybody, at least in this country, I know exactly
Speaker 1: who you're talking about. But mister Elon Musk, he's the CEO,
Speaker 1: lead designer of SpaceX. Everyone I think knows this. SpaceX
Speaker 1: is an amazing commercial company. It's the first company to
Speaker 1: launch commercial rocket and to low Earth orbit with their
Speaker 1: Falcon one launch. Then in two thousand and eight they
Speaker 1: were one of the winners of a contract to bring
Speaker 1: services to the International Space Station, the first commercial company
Speaker 1: to birth with the International Space Station bringing supplies. They're
Speaker 1: also the first commercial company to return a sizeable returned
Speaker 1: vehicle with all the components still intact, which is very
Speaker 1: import to us back to the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: And so it's an amazing company. Has done a great
Speaker 1: job and continues to push the boundaries. You'll hear from Elon,
Speaker 1: but his interest really is not so much in lower
Speaker 1: Earth orbit as it is going beyond low Earth orbit
Speaker 1: and making sure humanity will continue to live by exploring
Speaker 1: beyond beyond Earth. Elon has a varied history of things
Speaker 1: that he's been involved in. This was This is one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes it so exciting to have
Speaker 1: this conversation with him today. He's not one dimensional space guy.
Speaker 1: He's involved in Tesla Motors, which he is a co
Speaker 1: founder and CEO, and also a major player in the
Speaker 1: design efforts and what they choose to go build and how.
Speaker 1: Of course, he was a co founder.
Speaker 2: Of PayPal and zip too.
Speaker 1: He's deeply involved in a number of other industries as well.
Speaker 1: And so it's my great honor to welcome Elon Muska
Speaker 1: to the stage. Thanks for coming, appreciate it. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: these are great chairs, you guys.
Speaker 2: Look at those chairs you're in.
Speaker 1: Let's see. So Elon, you've you and I were gonna
Speaker 1: have a little chat this morning. We said it was
Speaker 1: gonna be a fireside chat. So minus the fireside I
Speaker 1: guess we're ready again. I've, as you heard, I've encouraged
Speaker 1: folks to ask a few questions along the way, but
Speaker 1: I have a few, a few questions I thought to
Speaker 1: get us started. So the first one, which is probably
Speaker 1: on everybody's mind is perhaps you want to discuss a
Speaker 1: little bit about the recent loss of the dragon in
Speaker 1: the Falcon nine here on SpaceX seven.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, I mean I think it's it's obviously it's
Speaker 3: a huge loads to to SpaceX and and or do
Speaker 3: we take these missions incredibly seriously the invest Everyone that
Speaker 3: can engage in the investigation of SpaceX is very very
Speaker 3: focused on that. And in this case, the the data
Speaker 3: does seem to be quite difficult to interpret, Like whatever
Speaker 3: happened is is clearly not not a sort of simple
Speaker 3: straightforward thing. So we want to spend as much time
Speaker 3: as possible just reviewing the data, obviously going over it
Speaker 3: with with NASA and with the FA and with the
Speaker 3: number of other customers, and just sort of seeing what
Speaker 3: to feedback everyone has based on their prior experience, to
Speaker 3: see if we can get to what the most likely
Speaker 3: root causes, look at look at both what we think
Speaker 3: most likely happened and then anything that's a close call,
Speaker 3: and try to address all of those things and maximize
Speaker 3: the probably of success for future missions.
Speaker 1: Any hints on where you think the problem lies, well.
Speaker 2: And I know that there's there's media in the audience,
Speaker 2: so you have to be there, right.
Speaker 1: I never really learned that, but that is a lesson
Speaker 1: working on.
Speaker 3: So so it's yeah, I mean, I you know, the.
Speaker 2: I think, I think.
Speaker 3: I think we'll be able to say something.
Speaker 2: More definitive towards the end of the week.
Speaker 3: At this point, really the only thing that's really clear
Speaker 3: is that there was some kind of over pressure events
Speaker 3: in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank, but the exact
Speaker 3: cause and the sequence of events, there's there's still.
Speaker 2: No clear theory that fits with all the data.
Speaker 3: So we have to determine if some of the data
Speaker 3: is a measurement error of some kind or whether there
Speaker 3: is actually a theory that matches the sort of what.
Speaker 2: Appeared to be conflicting data points.
Speaker 1: Okay, very good. I'll just make a comment. The tweets
Speaker 1: you put out regularly, particularly when events like this happen,
Speaker 1: are really useful to everybody. We really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You'd be amazed at how many folks quote what you
Speaker 1: said and how glad they are that you just step
Speaker 1: right out and at least give some sign about what's
Speaker 1: going on and that you know we'll get through it.
Speaker 1: Things are going well.
Speaker 3: So we appreciate that absolutely, and for sure, as soon
Speaker 3: as we think we've got a clear line on what
Speaker 3: happened and we've sort of cross checked it with as
Speaker 3: many experts as we can, and certainly appreciate that the
Speaker 3: feedback from NASA on this front, very.
Speaker 2: Much appreciate it. We'll certainly put a put out that story.
Speaker 3: I'm only reticence about saying something quite yet is I
Speaker 3: don't want to say something that subsequently turns out to
Speaker 3: be a miss misunderstanding of the situation.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely understand that.
Speaker 1: So one of the questions that I asked myself regularly
Speaker 1: is at what point does all this government help hurt?
Speaker 1: So this event occurred, and we have you have the
Speaker 1: NASA folks there from from about three different programs that
Speaker 1: intend to use your services, ISS being one of them.
Speaker 1: You have the FAA that's UH, that's involved, the range
Speaker 1: folks are there without feeling like you're giving your customers
Speaker 1: a hard time? How is that interaction? And what what
Speaker 1: should we consider doing differently so that we in those
Speaker 1: areas where we can help, we are helpful, and in
Speaker 1: those those areas where we're really keeping you from getting
Speaker 1: your job done, we can modify ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Actually, I think the interaction with NASA has been
Speaker 3: great this far. The big the biggest challenges that there
Speaker 3: are a lot of inquiries coming in simultaneously, so it's
Speaker 3: it's hard to sort of keep you know, respond to
Speaker 3: respond to everyone right away. But but actually it seems
Speaker 3: to have gone fairly well. The biggest thing that's needed
Speaker 3: in the in the sort of short term is the
Speaker 3: ability to sort of gather all the data create a
Speaker 3: very precise timeline so that you know, by by the melosecond,
Speaker 3: we know what each sensor was reading, and we can
Speaker 3: correlate that with the ground video. And actually, like one
Speaker 3: of the biggest challenges is matching the things to the
Speaker 3: exact time, you know, because when you're talking about you know,
Speaker 3: a matter of meloseconds, you know, being able to say,
Speaker 3: what is the groundtrack video compared to the data as
Speaker 3: received by the you know, by by the ground station
Speaker 3: from the rocket, and then taking into account for exactly
Speaker 3: the actual time taking to generate a packet of information,
Speaker 3: When was that sensor read, when was it encoded into
Speaker 3: a packet, and when was that packet sent to the
Speaker 3: ground When when you're doing in in mollerseconds, that all
Speaker 3: that stuff actually makes quite a big difference.
Speaker 2: So that's the biggest sort of effort.
Speaker 3: We've been engaged thus far is just putting together a
Speaker 3: super detailed timeline and then just making sure that we
Speaker 3: have the sequence of events down as precisely as possible.
Speaker 2: That's what we're working on.
Speaker 3: And but but actually, certainly with the interaction we've had
Speaker 3: with with Nason with us has actually been quite good
Speaker 3: thus far, and we've explained that this is what we're doing,
Speaker 3: and then we very much welcome any feedback or input
Speaker 3: or a view of the data that would lead us
Speaker 3: to a better understanding of the circumstances.
Speaker 1: I thought we had a very productive discussion back when
Speaker 1: we had the Engine one anomaly, and so I found
Speaker 1: it'd be very useful. But that's a perspective from a
Speaker 1: NASA perspective, so it's always interesting to know your perspective
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's seems to be quite quite good actually. Right now, so.
Speaker 1: You're building the last couple launches, you've had landing legs,
Speaker 1: and you've been working on landing the first stage back
Speaker 1: eventually to shore. Can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that and which your vision is for that and for
Speaker 1: SpaceX in general.
Speaker 2: As you go forward.
Speaker 3: Sure, Well, the overwatching goal of SpaceX is to try
Speaker 3: to advance the state of space transport, advanced space transport
Speaker 3: technology to a point where well it get as far
Speaker 3: along the path as we can to where space travel
Speaker 3: is hopefully commonplace at some point in the future, and
Speaker 3: where we can send large numbers of people and cargo
Speaker 3: to other planets. And you know, it's like that's the
Speaker 3: sort of thing that that needs to happen for humanity
Speaker 3: to have a great future in space. So we want
Speaker 3: to keep pushing that, and I think like a key
Speaker 3: to to that future is reusability. So that's why we've
Speaker 3: worked quite hard on reusability, and unfortunately we haven't succeeded yet.
Speaker 3: And in fact, the last launch ironically was we we
Speaker 3: actually had the best chance of landing the vehicle on
Speaker 3: the on the sort of grown ship that's keeping station
Speaker 3: in the Atlantic. So we're actually quite sort of geared
Speaker 3: up for hopefully this would be a really great launch
Speaker 3: and unfortunately ended up being the opposite on my birthday
Speaker 3: of all things, a real downer you'll remember it though,
Speaker 3: definitely low point. But but but I do think in
Speaker 3: the in the future launches that that we've got a
Speaker 3: decent chance of on the ship and then bringing the
Speaker 3: boostage back to land. And then the next challenge, of course,
Speaker 3: is trying to figure out how to if efficiently effectively
Speaker 3: reuse it. And it is designed for easy reuse in theory,
Speaker 3: but we've got to see what the stage looks looks
Speaker 3: like when it comes back to one piece. We have
Speaker 3: been able to over the last few years to do
Speaker 3: a number of vertical takeoff and landing tests of hardware
Speaker 3: that's essentially in the flight configuration, so we know we
Speaker 3: can we can handle the terminal phase if you know,
Speaker 3: if things go right, we can take off land no problem.
Speaker 3: So it's just a question of completing all the pieces
Speaker 3: and hopefully later this year won't be able to do that,
Speaker 3: but that that's key. So but of course that doesn't
Speaker 3: address upper stage reuse, but it addresses boost stage reuse,
Speaker 3: which is sort of seventy percent to eight percent of
Speaker 3: the of the of the CRS and but I think
Speaker 3: would be a great step towards lowering the cost of
Speaker 3: space transport.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you look at your history, I
Speaker 1: guess zip to PayPal.
Speaker 2: These are.
Speaker 1: Largely software type efforts. Now you've got Tesla electric cars,
Speaker 1: you're building a battery plant solar City. I guess you're
Speaker 1: involved in solar City. So why space?
Speaker 2: It seems.
Speaker 1: Space to me and just what I rate we with
Speaker 1: you seems to be more of a passion than the
Speaker 1: others or are businesses. But I I can't tell why space?
Speaker 2: Why are you?
Speaker 1: Why do you think it's important for us to be
Speaker 1: having access to lowerth orbit?
Speaker 2: Well, the I mean actually technically, I mean with with the.
Speaker 3: Tesla and Solar City, they're about helping to solve the
Speaker 3: sustainable energy problem.
Speaker 2: And uh so.
Speaker 3: We're trying to make progress in that front on the
Speaker 3: with those companies. With with SpaceX, it's uh trying to
Speaker 3: help solve the kind of space bearing problem.
Speaker 2: I mean I I I.
Speaker 3: Think that a a future where we're a space bring
Speaker 3: civilization and a and a multiplanet species is very exciting, inspiring,
Speaker 3: awesome future. And in order for that to happen, we've
Speaker 3: we've got to dramatically improve the cost of spaceflight. And
Speaker 3: uh and that's that's why why SpaceX exists, is to
Speaker 3: try to try to lower the cost of space flight,
Speaker 3: which we've made some progress in doing, but still I
Speaker 3: would call up improvements thus far evolutionary, not revolutionary, and
Speaker 3: but with with a lot of continued work, and I
Speaker 3: think there's the potential for for order of magnitude or
Speaker 3: greater improvements. Reasonability being key to all of that, of course.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and then hopefully if you know, if we
Speaker 3: want to see if we can keep improving the constant
Speaker 3: space flight and eventually that trend is in the right direction,
Speaker 3: that could be leading to a city on Mars, and
Speaker 3: certainly along the way a lot of activity in low
Speaker 3: with orbit and the Moon and you.
Speaker 2: Know, lots of other exciting things.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we're trying to do with
Speaker 1: the International Space Station is try to figure out which
Speaker 1: industries will prosper from the use of lower orbit to
Speaker 1: try to understand or help grow the economy.
Speaker 2: Essentially in lower th orbit.
Speaker 1: And folks who are doing that are all taking risks today.
Speaker 1: Our job is to try to reduce the risk as
Speaker 1: much as we can near term so that they can
Speaker 1: get the information they need to really have a business
Speaker 1: case for the future. But everyone's trying toulate a risk.
Speaker 1: So is there an e long Musk philosophy of risk
Speaker 1: Bursted benefit? And when you when you think is the
Speaker 1: right time to jump in. I mean, what is your
Speaker 1: thought on on how to approach new industries, innovative areas
Speaker 1: and when's the right time to jump in or not?
Speaker 1: Or do you just is there no crystal ball or
Speaker 1: is it a crystal ball or wigi board? I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you figure out what you
Speaker 1: should go after?
Speaker 3: Well, definitely the course much more reliable than the crystal ball,
Speaker 3: So the yeah, I mean, I don't really like risk
Speaker 3: for risk sake or anything. It's and I do think
Speaker 3: that all the things are are very risky with a
Speaker 3: low chance of success. But if you want to try
Speaker 3: to come up with an introvertive breakthrough, that's kind of
Speaker 3: that's gonna.
Speaker 2: Be how it is.
Speaker 3: I an anything which which is significantly innovative is gonna
Speaker 3: come with the significant risk of failure. And but you know,
Speaker 3: if you you've got to take big chances in order
Speaker 3: for the potential for a big.
Speaker 2: Positive outcome, and.
Speaker 3: You know, just if and if if, I mean if
Speaker 3: if the outcome is exciting enough, then then taking a.
Speaker 2: Big risk is worthwhile. Ye, it's really our approach it.
Speaker 3: But w but then once executing down a path, I
Speaker 3: actually do my absolute best to reduce uh risk, you know,
Speaker 3: cause or or or to improve the po another way
Speaker 3: of saying, to improve the pobality of success because uh
Speaker 3: wh when you try to do something that is very
Speaker 3: very risky, uh that you ha, you you you have
Speaker 3: to spend a lot of effort trying to reduce that
Speaker 3: risk as you emblock down that path. I mean when wa,
Speaker 3: when I start as SpaceX, I thought the odds of
Speaker 3: success were very low. I thought we'd most likely fail,
Speaker 3: but I thought, well, we should give it a try. Nonetheless,
Speaker 3: and and then I'm not sure if you know what
Speaker 3: what preceded SpaceX because the why I got into the space.
Speaker 1: I remember, you're trying to purchase a vehicle two from
Speaker 1: our Russian cor That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Well, actually it was.
Speaker 3: The reason I got into space was to try to
Speaker 3: increase NASA's budget.
Speaker 2: Well the.
Speaker 3: And but so I'll tell you so the roundabout way
Speaker 3: I thought that might be accomplished was I thought, well,
Speaker 3: if if NASA's budget was more, was larger than we
Speaker 3: could do more in space exploration. And I thought, well,
Speaker 3: what particularly if we could get the public excited about
Speaker 3: sending people tomorrows? And I thought, well, if I could
Speaker 3: do a small greenhouse and send that to the surface
Speaker 3: of Mars with seasons in nutrient jail, and you hydrate
Speaker 3: the gael and landing you have a little miniature greenhouse,
Speaker 3: and then you'd have The public tends to get excited
Speaker 3: about precedents and superlatives. So if we like the you know,
Speaker 3: sort of first life on Mars, the furthest lives ever traveled,
Speaker 3: and you get people sort of excited about, well, but
Speaker 3: where we send people.
Speaker 2: There, like the health plants, we should send people, you know.
Speaker 3: And then I thought, well that could if that could
Speaker 3: get the public really excited about sending people tomorrows, then
Speaker 3: that would translate into congressional support for a bigger massa budget.
Speaker 2: That was the goal.
Speaker 3: And then I didn't have enough money to buy and
Speaker 3: I thought that that outcome would have a hard per
Speaker 3: cent chance of no commercial success.
Speaker 2: So the harp cent chance of losing all the money.
Speaker 3: So compared to that SpaceX, which I thought maybe had
Speaker 3: a ten percent chance of success, that was an improvement.
Speaker 1: There You go, well, that makes that makes good sense.
Speaker 1: So are you still thinking about that? I do remember
Speaker 1: that conversation. This was the idea where you used Martian
Speaker 1: regulars you send these self contained habitats, if not habitat.
Speaker 2: And grow like commuter across or something.
Speaker 1: But just to prove the concept, Yeah, just to get it.
Speaker 3: I mean, the real goal was to get the public excited.
Speaker 3: You get some engineering data about what does it take
Speaker 3: to maintain a little habitat on Mars type of thing,
Speaker 3: but the main thing would be to get the public
Speaker 3: excited and you know, get people to be you know,
Speaker 3: the public to be in the paper of a bigg
Speaker 3: ass a budget.
Speaker 2: It's the goal.
Speaker 1: And well, again, God bless you, that's a worthy goal.
Speaker 2: I hope you don't saw so.
Speaker 1: Commercial crew. So you've been selected as one of the
Speaker 1: providers for the commercial crew. Can you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about where that's headed for you as a company,
Speaker 1: and perhaps maybe how affected your company, if it has,
Speaker 1: if it's changed the thing, and how you approach space.
Speaker 3: I think things seem to be going fairly well on
Speaker 3: the commercial crew front.
Speaker 2: I mean the I mean overall.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean that there are small disagreements here
Speaker 3: and there, but overall, I like, I think we very
Speaker 3: much agree with the way it's being done. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's it's it's pretty pretty good. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are a few things where the like it seems
Speaker 3: like the amount of of sort of massive volume reserved
Speaker 3: for poop is too high. Sorry, but that's you know,
Speaker 3: there's like little things like that. We're like, well, are
Speaker 3: they really going to do that much group, But it's
Speaker 3: it's quite it's quite a large volume, but really it is,
Speaker 3: so but I could really they're pretty small disagreements. So
Speaker 3: I think that it seems to be pretty pretty sensible.
Speaker 2: And then we did the orange board.
Speaker 3: Test earlier this year, which at the Cave, which actually
Speaker 3: went pretty well, and yeah, so things are going along
Speaker 3: getting pretty exciting. And yeah, I think there's also some
Speaker 3: potential use for Dragon too as a science delivery platform,
Speaker 3: you know, going to sort of delivering payloads to Mars
Speaker 3: or other places.
Speaker 2: We're in discussion with.
Speaker 3: Other parts of NASA about some of those ideas because
Speaker 3: the propulsive landing, you know, it could really lower the
Speaker 3: cost of getting science instruments to various places in the
Speaker 3: Solar System.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of exciting.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna come back to that in just a second.
Speaker 1: But commercial the crew vehicle versus the dragging cargo vehicle,
Speaker 1: clearly there are some significant differences fairly innovative approach. I
Speaker 1: think to aboart testing where traditionally you've seen the just
Speaker 1: and rocket on top. It's a pullar versus the pusher
Speaker 1: technique where you utilize fuel that you otherwise would use
Speaker 1: for the right on orbit, but of course you're not
Speaker 1: going there, So very innovative approach. Are there other areas
Speaker 1: where you feel like you're from an innovation standpoint, you're
Speaker 1: making some significant strides with the crew vehicle?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the the the big items for well,
Speaker 3: the biggest item really for dragon Io is the ability
Speaker 3: to do a propulsive landing and it's basically having heavy
Speaker 3: thrusters on board. So those same heavy thrusters can then
Speaker 3: do the abort but retain the engines. So instead of
Speaker 3: in a normal sort of creud mission like take to
Speaker 3: take the Soyers for example, that have a tractor motor
Speaker 3: on the nose of the vehicle, that would have to
Speaker 3: be basically a rocketential on the nose that would have
Speaker 3: to be discarded on every flight, which is a potential
Speaker 3: reliability issue. And it and then you have obviously unable
Speaker 3: to reuse the the the the aborted system, and yeah,
Speaker 3: and it adds it adds a bunch of bunch of mass.
Speaker 3: But but then in addition, those same thrusters can be
Speaker 3: used for propulsive landing, so you can achieve a precise
Speaker 3: propulsive landing which on on land or water, which is
Speaker 3: I think a significant improvement.
Speaker 2: And I mean.
Speaker 3: It's sort of also it's sort of like really I
Speaker 3: think feels feels more like the future to to have
Speaker 3: that that capability. And then, as I mentioned it poor
Speaker 3: it can be extended to uh do paler delivery to
Speaker 3: the Moon or Mars or other places. Because of the
Speaker 3: generalized cape ability of propulsive landing to land land almost
Speaker 3: anywhere very good.
Speaker 1: So, uh, let's go back to dragon. At one point
Speaker 1: you had a conversation talked a little bit about something
Speaker 1: I think was virtuos Dragon Lab, where you go to
Speaker 1: lowerth orbit and do what I assumed was sort of
Speaker 1: kind of research and then and bring the vehicle back.
Speaker 1: Are you still pursuing that or something like that. Is
Speaker 1: this an area where you think that there is a potential.
Speaker 3: I think that that there is some potential for to
Speaker 3: essentially just take things to love with orbit and then
Speaker 3: bring them bring them back, you know, after a few
Speaker 3: weeks or something like that.
Speaker 2: It's it's not a huge area of attention. It's at
Speaker 2: space X, but I think we might do a few
Speaker 2: missions like that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean Dragon is is very much sort
Speaker 3: of its primary optimize optimization is as a transport vehicle
Speaker 3: to and from the space station and uh and so
Speaker 3: things like Dragon Lab and then science delivery platform I
Speaker 3: think are interesting extensions of that.
Speaker 2: And I think as as Dragon to.
Speaker 3: First flies and then gets into regular flights, I think
Speaker 3: there'll probably will be some more applications that that people
Speaker 3: could think of, particularly since with Dragon two the reusability
Speaker 3: of the vehicle should be quite high.
Speaker 2: So if we have reusability.
Speaker 3: Of the Dragon spacecraft and reusability of the booster, and
Speaker 3: somebody is willing to sort of do a bunch of
Speaker 3: flights with with the fully reused system, there's the potential
Speaker 3: for much lower cost access to space. There is a
Speaker 3: bit of a chicken and egg challenge because, like the
Speaker 3: there's a certain amount of fixed costs that have to
Speaker 3: be carried no matter what, so the the module costs
Speaker 3: of launch or the cost of each subsequent launch can
Speaker 3: drop quite significantly. So long as the launch rate per
Speaker 3: year is high, it stays up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, it adds other challenges to the system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, trying to fly. It's often as you that you
Speaker 2: need to make that yup.
Speaker 1: Well, let's see. I I don't wanna bore everybody with
Speaker 1: all my questions. And we had talked about if folks
Speaker 1: had any questions in the audience.
Speaker 2: Let's see this. Oh wow, they're not bashful. That's good.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if we're gonna need microphones, but
Speaker 1: but i'll I'll start here.
Speaker 4: So I would like to ask question.
Speaker 2: It's a little love my question.
Speaker 4: Because, uh, you are like a kind of mentor and
Speaker 4: a visionary, and you'll give hope to a lot of
Speaker 4: people around the globe because when they see you, they
Speaker 4: realize that they can realize they dreams. But my question
Speaker 4: is different. Uh, when you are a dreamer, when you
Speaker 4: are too uh, when you are dreamer, when you are
Speaker 4: a visionary, of course you have your vision, but there
Speaker 4: are moments that sometimes maybe you stop believing in this vision,
Speaker 4: especially in the moments of some problems or failure. So
Speaker 4: could you tell me, and could you tell also to
Speaker 4: thousands of people who maybe will be motivated by your answer?
Speaker 4: What keeps you fighting for your vision? What helps you
Speaker 4: to reach your gym.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think I'm kind of constitutionally just
Speaker 3: thereed to just keep going.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's a.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it just I I don't know. I
Speaker 3: mean it Certainly there are times when things don't go
Speaker 3: well and then that's quite desperating for sure, and so
Speaker 3: then it's difficult to proceed with the same level of enthusiasm.
Speaker 3: But but I do think, like I do think the
Speaker 3: things that we're doing are you know, pretty important to
Speaker 3: the future. And if we don't succeed, then you know,
Speaker 3: there's well there's there's not it's not clear what other
Speaker 3: things would succeed. And if if we don't succeed, then
Speaker 3: we will be certainly pointed to as a reason why
Speaker 3: people shouldn't even try for these things. So I think
Speaker 3: it's important that we do whatever it's necessary to keep going.
Speaker 4: Okay, And last question, last question, So in two thousand
Speaker 4: and four, when you are going to burny Men with
Speaker 4: your cousin, you were thinking, there is a sun and
Speaker 4: let's make energy out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would like.
Speaker 4: To ask you why do you believe so in solar
Speaker 4: energy and in and clean tech energies and also in
Speaker 4: sustainable energy, and the last question I will not ask
Speaker 4: any more questions what will be the role of solar
Speaker 4: in the exploration of Mars.
Speaker 3: Sure, I think solar energy is probably fairly significant for Mars.
Speaker 3: And what's going to be quite important is having a
Speaker 3: very lightweight solar system that you know, both volumetrically and
Speaker 3: grabhometrically dance. So actually you were sort of playing with
Speaker 3: the different concepts like you know that like thing, that
Speaker 3: party thing where you've inflated and it rolls out.
Speaker 2: But the thing, like what one of.
Speaker 3: The solar concepts is is to have like a big
Speaker 3: role that you just basically inflate and it rolls out
Speaker 3: with with with like really thin solar panels on it.
Speaker 3: But but it's it's gonna be pretty important because really
Speaker 3: you either got to do that or nuclear and you
Speaker 3: know nuclear has has these challenges, but put for solar,
Speaker 3: it's pretty straightforward. So I think I think it so
Speaker 3: al is very important to the future exploration of Mars
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 4: So thank you and I wish you that your next
Speaker 4: Thursday is very successfuls A last.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go, let's go, okay, go ahead, bel team.
Speaker 5: My name is Valentina NOVAEF. I am from the United
Speaker 5: Rocket and Space Corporation, which shortly will become a part
Speaker 5: of State Corporation ross Cosmos. So I made this one
Speaker 5: quest to the West because I'd like to ask one
Speaker 5: question of you and Mask what is his secret to
Speaker 5: become a successful businessman in the space industry, and then
Speaker 5: coming back to Russia to tell Russian businessman there is
Speaker 5: a way to become a taikoun and space industry. So
Speaker 5: seriously speaking, I'd like to ask you when you started
Speaker 5: your business, was the government your partner? Was it useful
Speaker 5: in what areas? And so there are always two sides
Speaker 5: on is it going as there were times when you
Speaker 5: had to fight bureaucracy?
Speaker 2: Thank you? Sure? Well.
Speaker 3: Well, I should say with respect to starting a space business,
Speaker 3: it's definitely not the easiest environment to start a business.
Speaker 3: And I think if most people were to rank order
Speaker 3: what's the highest retinent investment, I mean, space would not
Speaker 3: be very good. I mean it's I'm very pro space,
Speaker 3: So it's like you know, but it's I mean, that's
Speaker 3: just true that like if you you know, start a
Speaker 3: hedge fund, or if you're in like many other industries,
Speaker 3: then it's much easier to make money than the space industry.
Speaker 3: This is not the easiest wanted to make money and
Speaker 3: it's yeah, car industry also quite difficult. So the in fact,
Speaker 3: I mean when starting SpaceX, the the joke I heard
Speaker 3: the jokes this, this joke so often it was ridiculous.
Speaker 3: The joke was how do you make a small portion
Speaker 3: in the space industry? And the punch line, of course
Speaker 3: being started with a large one. Yeah, And I got
Speaker 3: to a point I'd heard the joke so many times
Speaker 3: that I would just get to the punchline and say like, well,
Speaker 3: I wanted to figure out how to turn a large fortune.
Speaker 2: Just more one. That was my goal, And they're like, wow,
Speaker 2: how did you know that?
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean I do think there's that there
Speaker 3: is opportunity in space, but but it is, it's it's
Speaker 3: it's it's tough going. I think if but I think if, if,
Speaker 3: if SpaceX and other companies can can lower the cost
Speaker 3: of transport to orbit and perhaps beyond, then there's a
Speaker 3: lot of potential for entrepreneurship at the destination. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can think of it like the like the Union
Speaker 3: Pacific railway. You know, before there was the univer Cific railway,
Speaker 3: it was real hard to have commerce between the West
Speaker 3: coast and the East coast. It'd go by wagon or
Speaker 3: a really long sailing journey. But once there was the transport,
Speaker 3: then there were huge opportunities. And now look at sort
Speaker 3: of you know, the California and Washington State and all
Speaker 3: the industries that have been created in Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
Speaker 3: But you've got to have that fundamental transport element otherwise
Speaker 3: there's just it's really tricky. So we're trying to establish
Speaker 3: that transport element, make it easier to get to lower orbit,
Speaker 3: and hopefully in the future, make it easier to get
Speaker 3: to the Moon or Mars. And I'm an idea of
Speaker 3: this long term vision of like if there was affordable
Speaker 3: transport to a place like Mars, I think the entrepreneurial
Speaker 3: opportunities would be phenomenal, you know, because there'd be people
Speaker 3: that would want to create everything from the first pizza
Speaker 3: joint to the first iron ore factory. To be like
Speaker 3: just an enormous amount of opportunity for people to create
Speaker 3: things on Mars. And that'd be different things on Mars.
Speaker 3: Some of the things on Mars would be different they
Speaker 3: wouldn't even imagine on Earth.
Speaker 2: It would be very exciting.
Speaker 3: So I think that's that's really key to making things
Speaker 3: happen in space is you've got to have someplace. You've
Speaker 3: gotta have some place to go in some place in
Speaker 3: some way to get there.
Speaker 1: So so along those lines, did you read Andy Ware's
Speaker 1: book The Marshal?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it was good. What do you think I
Speaker 2: thought it was?
Speaker 3: It was pretty excellent, certainly one of the most realistic
Speaker 3: books on Mars that that I've read.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, there were a few things like the
Speaker 2: wind force.
Speaker 3: On Mars is not really that high. It's not going
Speaker 3: to knock you over or anything. It's high obviously high velocity,
Speaker 3: but low force. But overall I thought it was pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And apparently it's been made into a movie.
Speaker 1: And everything, so you don't you don't have a cameo
Speaker 1: on that one too.
Speaker 2: I don't have a cameo on that one.
Speaker 3: I'm a little worried that it might not make people
Speaker 3: too keen on going to Mars.
Speaker 2: This looks really hard.
Speaker 3: I think we need to show about how Mas is
Speaker 3: awesome and it's like the wild West, and you've got
Speaker 3: the gun slingers and like the cool cowboys and.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing.
Speaker 1: All right, maybe you got to write a book too.
Speaker 1: Let's see, there's a question over here.
Speaker 6: Hi there, my name is Anita Goel. I'm here at
Speaker 6: out of Harvard and MIT. You run a company called
Speaker 6: NATO biosim So, in your vision and dream to achieve
Speaker 6: low cost space travel, how do you allocate your estments
Speaker 6: between engineering and essentially driving down the cost of existing
Speaker 6: technology versus investing in new breakthrough physics things like breakthrough
Speaker 6: propulsion physics anti gravity. What's your vision in the bifurcation
Speaker 6: of those two kinds of portfolios.
Speaker 3: Well, we don't spend a ton of time on new physics.
Speaker 3: I mean the I think with current physics this huge potential,
Speaker 3: so rather than rely on a breakthrough, which we you know,
Speaker 3: really it's difficult to envision what that breakthrough would exactly be.
Speaker 2: Or even and exactly be.
Speaker 3: The I'm quite confident that with what we know of
Speaker 3: current physics, sort of just going with the kind of
Speaker 3: you know, where the standard model of physics is today,
Speaker 3: that there are dramatic improvements possible in spacelight. And I
Speaker 3: think with the you know, certainly with with falcon iine,
Speaker 3: I think we can make improvements and then with our
Speaker 3: next generation rocket system, which is still you know, many
Speaker 3: years away, that'll be a deep cryo METHYLOCKX system. I
Speaker 3: think I think we can achieve full reusability and that
Speaker 3: that's really that's a that's a huge potential for you know,
Speaker 3: like maybe a two order of magnitude reduction in the
Speaker 3: class of spaceline. So as far as R and D
Speaker 3: is concerned.
Speaker 2: Like we we we we.
Speaker 3: We we hire great engineers as fast as we can
Speaker 3: find them. So it's like the it's not that easy
Speaker 3: to find, but I should say great ish is with
Speaker 3: the sort of like the right mindset and everything, we
Speaker 3: we hire at the at the at the maximum rate
Speaker 3: that we can find people that we think would would
Speaker 3: really be an asset to the team, so there's no
Speaker 3: limitation on that.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're here. Hi.
Speaker 7: My name is Zachary Malton, a student from babs In College.
Speaker 7: I just want to say it's an order to be here.
Speaker 7: I read Ashley Vancy's biography about you. One thing that
Speaker 7: really was intriguing to me was the super Draco engine
Speaker 7: for the Dragon V two that was used to printed
Speaker 7: out of three day technology vision using that technology more
Speaker 7: in the future and when you first splace exploration and
Speaker 7: do you think they'll how about affect the costs in
Speaker 7: terms of getting to Mars anything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So, as you lud to, we we actually print
Speaker 3: the super Draco engines, so they're printed out of titanum
Speaker 3: in a canal, and that actually allows us to.
Speaker 2: Reduce the cost.
Speaker 3: Of those engines quite a bit, in particular because we
Speaker 3: can print integral cooling channels. So when you've got an
Speaker 3: hour glass chamber and you've got cooling channels in the
Speaker 3: wall of the chamber, where the whole wall consists of
Speaker 3: cooling channels, it's onally quite difficult to create that thrust
Speaker 3: chamber and nozzle because you've got to create an inner
Speaker 3: jacket outer jacket kind of machine the inner jacket it's
Speaker 3: and then braise the whole thing together. It's real pain
Speaker 3: and you've got a bunch of joints in there to
Speaker 3: make it all work. So with printing, you can print
Speaker 3: something that you can't make by any other means, so
Speaker 3: it actually ends up being lighter and cheaper than if
Speaker 3: we're built it by traditional methods. For our next generation engine,
Speaker 3: which we call the Rafter, which as mentioned is sort
Speaker 3: of a it's a it's a deep crime of methologue.
Speaker 3: So what I mean by that is the methane and
Speaker 3: oxygen are cool too close to their freezing points, so
Speaker 3: not not far from the freezing point as opposed to
Speaker 3: close to their walling point, which is more which is
Speaker 3: normally the case. The you know, with that engine, we're
Speaker 3: trying to print as much as possible. It's it's a
Speaker 3: big The biggest limitation on three printing right now is
Speaker 3: the size ovelope, So there's limit on how big we
Speaker 3: can print something. But we're able to print the turbopump
Speaker 3: components and much of the injected not the whole thing,
Speaker 3: but many of the critical parts we can print, So
Speaker 3: that actually helps us in speeding up the development. So
Speaker 3: instead of waiting for castings to be developed, which can
Speaker 3: take several months, and then if the casting is wrong,
Speaker 3: you've got to iterate in the casting, and each iteration
Speaker 3: we can take several months. With printing we can have
Speaker 3: those iterations can be reduced to a matter of weeks
Speaker 3: or months, so that that actually helps with the speed
Speaker 3: of developments as well.
Speaker 2: See are we here? Hi? I'm Ros Spungehock with a
Speaker 2: company called High Orbit.
Speaker 7: I wondered if you could give us a little bit
Speaker 7: of an update on what's going on with the hyper
Speaker 7: loop and.
Speaker 1: Is there any overlap between the worker doom of SpaceX
Speaker 1: and hyperop technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, SpaceX is not.
Speaker 3: Neither I nor SpaceX are doing anything to try to
Speaker 3: commercialize the hypher loop. There are I think at least two,
Speaker 3: maybe more than two companies that have formed that are
Speaker 3: completely independent of me or SpaceX that are working towards
Speaker 3: commercializing the hypher loop technology or high blop idea or design.
Speaker 3: What what SpaceX is doing is We're going to just
Speaker 3: create a little student competition for higher loop ideas, so
Speaker 3: kind of like around the way that Formula SAE works,
Speaker 3: where students can come up with a design and compete
Speaker 3: against each other to design the best pod. So what
Speaker 3: what SpaceX will do is just construct about a mile
Speaker 3: long low pressure tube near nearly vacuum two basically in
Speaker 3: which students can kind of raise their pods. So it's
Speaker 3: just basically to support get get students excited about engineering.
Speaker 3: That's the only involvement of SpaceX myself with the hyperlib
Speaker 3: at this point.
Speaker 8: Okay, over here, well, I'm Paul Kastagno mus sociologist, and
Speaker 8: I'm writing a book about the International Space Station. How
Speaker 8: would you describe the scientific value of the International Space
Speaker 8: Station and where would you draw the line between luxury
Speaker 8: and need when it comes to space exploration.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean for space I mean I really spend
Speaker 3: all of my time thinking about just how to get
Speaker 3: to the space station. To be honest, I I I
Speaker 3: actually hadn't even really seen a proper movie of the
Speaker 3: inside of the space station until I went to see
Speaker 3: the preview of the new Imax thing that's coming out.
Speaker 3: And it's amazing, Like when that Space Station Imax movie
Speaker 3: exact people are gonna have blown away.
Speaker 2: It's awesome.
Speaker 3: I actually bought my whole team at at space X
Speaker 3: to go go see the preview of the of the
Speaker 3: IMAX movie. And I mean it, it's like it is
Speaker 3: a very unique laboratory because this is the only thing
Speaker 3: that's in sort of micro gravity, that's above the Earth's atmosphere,
Speaker 3: and you can learn a lot about basically human physiology,
Speaker 3: uh and two experiments that you can't really do any
Speaker 3: any other lab. And you know, and you can have
Speaker 3: to bring scientists up and they can actually work in
Speaker 3: this incredibly unique lab. So I think that there's a
Speaker 3: lot to be game there and and I think it
Speaker 3: just you can't sort of, you know, ignore the coolness
Speaker 3: factor of it. Like that's like people think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: So I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And you know, the the the public wanna have something
Speaker 3: going on in space, uh that that involves people, and yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's it's just I don't know, it's the coolest
Speaker 3: thing going on in space. So there's a lot of
Speaker 3: value that.
Speaker 1: You know, we we we try to to uh sells
Speaker 1: the wrong word. It's the word we use, but sells
Speaker 1: really the wrong word. We're trying to get people to
Speaker 1: recognize that there's a platform in Lowers orbit and that, uh,
Speaker 1: this is important. What's done in Lower's orbit has benefit
Speaker 1: to to uh those of us on Earth that will
Speaker 1: never actually go to space. But in doing that, you
Speaker 1: trying to get their interest level. And part of their
Speaker 1: interest level is the cool factor that you talked about.
Speaker 1: And and I've always kind of struggled with that being
Speaker 1: sort of a black and white. I I understand and
Speaker 1: the purpose in my head, that's why I joined NASA, right,
Speaker 1: But over the years, this is one of the things
Speaker 1: that I've started to recognize is important. So my question
Speaker 1: to you is did we I've heard a rumor that
Speaker 1: for the suits for commercial crew that you wanted to
Speaker 1: play and role in that and so is that true?
Speaker 1: And is there some reason behind the design of the
Speaker 1: suit that you want to personally be involved in other
Speaker 1: than cruise safety.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think we've actually spent a lot of effort on
Speaker 3: the spacesuit design, on both the functionality and the aesthetics.
Speaker 2: But I think just getting.
Speaker 3: It's actually really hard because if you just sort of
Speaker 3: optimize functionality, it's one thing. If you optimize for aesthetics,
Speaker 3: it doesn't work. Like you know, there's things that see movies,
Speaker 3: they don't work. So the so it's like, okay, how
Speaker 3: do we make something that looks cool, antworks and with
Speaker 3: with with a key uh goal here of being being
Speaker 3: that you know, when people see that spaceally, they want
Speaker 3: them to think, yeah, I want to wear that thing
Speaker 3: one day.
Speaker 2: Yeah that looks awesome. So that's that's that's the reason
Speaker 2: for it. Very good.
Speaker 1: Let's see, we'll do a couple more questions and then
Speaker 1: let's let's can we get back in the back here
Speaker 1: or do we have somebody else here already with the microphone.
Speaker 1: All right, go ahead, thank you.
Speaker 9: I'm Alex Pearlman. I'm with Boston Magazine and I'm writing
Speaker 9: for Advice today. I was hoping that you could give
Speaker 9: us a little bit of an update on the most
Speaker 9: recent news with the idea of putting satellites to provide
Speaker 9: internet to developing countries and unconnected people.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: So we're still at the early stages of it's sort
Speaker 3: of a big leo constellation munication idea, and we're hopeful,
Speaker 3: hopefully going to launch get a test satellite next year.
Speaker 3: And but but I think the long term potential of
Speaker 3: it is is pretty pretty great. But I don't want
Speaker 3: to overplay or overstate, you know, things quite you know
Speaker 3: that this you know, or any stage of the game, really,
Speaker 3: but the long term goal is to create a comprehensive
Speaker 3: global communication system that's that provides high bandwidth, low latency
Speaker 3: connectivity anywhere in the world and provides cross links through
Speaker 3: the satellites so that you can have improved long distance Internet.
Speaker 3: It's one of the things that sort of your lize
Speaker 3: when you look at this is that you can actually
Speaker 3: have a more direct path through space and you can
Speaker 3: and photons move faster upon what fiber optic material.
Speaker 2: They're running through.
Speaker 3: Photons actually move about forty to fifty percent faster in
Speaker 3: vacuum than they.
Speaker 2: Do in fiber optic cables.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the way that the fiber
Speaker 3: optic cables go, they trace the outlines of the continents
Speaker 3: and they go through many repeaters and routers and everything.
Speaker 3: So if you want to say, communicate from a server
Speaker 3: in California to one in South Africa, it's a very
Speaker 3: very long route and sort of very roundabout path, and
Speaker 3: it's a high latency, low photonic speed, and you can
Speaker 3: actually have that communication be quite a bit faster if
Speaker 3: it's in space. So I think there's there's the potential
Speaker 3: for doing a fabet of long distance internet activity as
Speaker 3: well as providing.
Speaker 2: Bandwidth broadly.
Speaker 3: But it's also worth saying that a lot of companies
Speaker 3: have tried this and kind of broking their pick on it,
Speaker 3: and I think we we want to be really careful
Speaker 3: about how we delivered, about trying to make this thing
Speaker 3: work and not not overextend ourselves. So we're being s
Speaker 3: we're being, you know, fairly careful about it. But I
Speaker 3: I do think this is something that should be built
Speaker 3: and would be quite good to have.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: In our case, the the communications technology would be substantially
Speaker 3: more advanced. In the past, we'll say attempts like tealdeesic
Speaker 3: h the the the electronics of the day were very
Speaker 3: low bandwidth, I mean really analog or barely digital, and
Speaker 3: they weren't very high bandwidth. So she said it really
Speaker 3: didn't compete with stage with terrestrial phones. In the case
Speaker 3: utilities they were looking to compete with or or to
Speaker 3: address cell needs. That the system we're talking about would
Speaker 3: not attempt to compete with celluar needs. So for example,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't compete directly with say Iridium, which is which
Speaker 3: which can talk directly to a handset. Our system would
Speaker 3: seem to would seek to talk to a small user
Speaker 3: terminal that's about the size of a pizza box, or
Speaker 3: much like you know current dishes that are the satellite dishes.
Speaker 3: But but it will be flat because we have faced
Speaker 3: ray antenna that's tracking the satellites. But you could mount
Speaker 3: it in a window or just anywhere outside as long.
Speaker 2: As you can see the sky. It would work.
Speaker 1: See back here, we'll take our last question back here.
Speaker 10: Hey Elon, thanks for coming out. I would like to
Speaker 10: show you. We brought a virtual reality camera here. It's
Speaker 10: record for the first time. We have a small start
Speaker 10: up in San Francisco called space VR, and we believe
Speaker 10: that virtual reality is the future of space exploration because
Speaker 10: you can put people on the very cutting the very
Speaker 10: front of every every expiration mission. Is that something that
Speaker 10: you've given much thought or have any opinions on?
Speaker 3: Well, I've gone I've perceived the vicial reality demos at
Speaker 3: Oculus and at Valve, and it's pretty impressive. You can
Speaker 3: sort of imagine if that's extrap late into the future,
Speaker 3: it's really gonna super feel like you're there. And I
Speaker 3: wonder if some people are never gonna want to take
Speaker 3: that all. Honestly, it's like it's pretty I mean, it's
Speaker 3: pretty entrancing. But I do think it'd be quite exciting
Speaker 3: to do that for a space as well. Yeah, do
Speaker 3: you have a set up here?
Speaker 2: Okay? It's right there? Wow, Okay, cool? Okay, w where
Speaker 2: are you based in? W Where? But where are you based? Okay?
Speaker 3: I think maybe today is gonna be tricky, but uh
Speaker 3: but but maybe uh if since you're based in California, uh,
Speaker 3: I could we could range something in I you know,
Speaker 3: in the coming weeks.
Speaker 1: Tell you alright, let's see, Elan, we'll uh we'll call
Speaker 1: it a a conference.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: I wanted to first, uh, thank you very much. You've
Speaker 1: been very genius with your time and we uh you know,
Speaker 1: from the moment I called you, you were all in
Speaker 1: and UH it's really this open conversation and your your
Speaker 1: thoughts on uh on the on what's in front of
Speaker 1: us that uh really excites us all in this room.
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for your time. We really
Speaker 1: appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. Thanks tiring me alright, alright, thank