Speaker 1: Thank you and good afternoon. So we have lots of cover.
Elon does a lot of things.
Speaker 2: There is at the moment one of his spaceships docked
to the space station, the Dragon spaceship. This is the
third time that's been docked. Second commercial one was launched
last week. Many of you may have followed the launch,
but there was drama. You know, there were solar panels
and all this kind of stuff we could follow on
your Twitter feed.
Speaker 3: Yet drama, what's it?
Speaker 2: Can you just tell us what it's like to be
Elon Musk in the control room during a launch when
something happens, when there's an issue.
Speaker 4: Well, it's I mean, it's extremely nerve wracking.
Speaker 3: I mean it's the thing about rocket launch is that
all of your work is distilled into these few minutes,
particularly the first several seconds around the lift off. Because
the worst thing that can happen with the rocket in
a touch word is if if you have an engine
failure or some huge failure right above the launch pad
and the whole thing can come down with about a
million pounds of T and T equivalent and destroyed the
whole lounch pad. That would be That's what's going through
my mind in case you're wondering, that's actually what.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about here.
Speaker 3: So when it clears the lightning towers and it's gotten
further enough away from not actually destroying the launch pad,
then then it's that's one sort of go down a
notch on, you know, the fear and anxiety. And then
after first stage separation.
Speaker 4: That's another one. And when the.
Speaker 3: Second stage lights up, so it's sort of going down
in intensity as the rocket is going up. And the
thing is that the first three rocket launches that we
had failed okay, and then the first one failed quite
close to the launch pad, almost destroyed the launch pad.
Speaker 4: In fact, I spent that.
Speaker 3: They're picking up rocket pieces off the reef, which sucks.
So I think like there's a pretty powerfully ingrained fear
response as a result of that, because three in a row,
just you know, and the image of those rocket failures
kind of going through my mind as I seeing the
rocket launch. So that's what's going on.
Speaker 2: And then in this case, you made it through the
state separation, but then there was an issue with the
solar cells. Tell me a little bit how you sort
of spotted the problem, diagnosed it, What does the team do?
Speaker 1: I mean, you got there in the end, but how
does it work?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the solar panels are actually okay. But and
the rocket launch went went really well, so that that
was not a problem. Where things kind of went awry
was after spacecraft separation, we try to initialize the fourth
rustler pods. So there's fourth thrustal pots with a combined
total of eighteen engines, and the system is designed with
a huge amount of dundancy, so it can take all
sorts of failures and it's complete its mission. That's that's
the whole way it's been made. In fact, it can
it can work with even if it has only two
of the four thrust replies working, you know, they can
still do a mission.
Speaker 4: So three weren't working. Wow, and.
Speaker 3: That which was a huge puzzle, like what why are
three not working? Because these things are crash strapped, so
you'd kind of think that either maybe one wouldn't work
or a crash strap pair wouldn't work, but not three.
Speaker 4: It was really really strange.
Speaker 3: So so we had the spacecraft just going through kind
of free drift in space, like we're just tumbling, and
which makes all it's also difficult to communicate with because
the antennas are like pointing, you know, every which way
you can imagine. So we had. All we had was
was a very flight two killer, it occasional two kill
a bit link that would go in and out and
that was an omnidirectional signal beaming off of the NASA
Tedrous satellite system. So in order to actually improve the
foot we first had to improve the bandwidth.
Speaker 4: So we actually asked the Air Force.
Speaker 3: If we could have some of their long range clameatory
scanners with would they give us access and we have
this communication system they would call the megaproxy, So we
had to recode the megaproxy to go through the Air
Force long range dishes to blast the spacecraft with enough
intensity to be able to upload new code to try.
Speaker 4: To fix the problem.
Speaker 3: And so we wrote some new software to essentially pressure
slam the two of the three oxidizer tanks that were
refusing to pressurize. And it turned out we've I think
we've figured out problem, which is that there's a there
was a slight chain which made to a check valve
that was in three of the tanks and not on
the other.
Speaker 4: And we're able to replicate that problem the ground later.
Speaker 3: And we're able to to basically have the have the
system build up pressure upstream, then release that pressure and
slam the valve. So we're trying to give it the
sort of the spacecraft equivalent to the heimlich maneuver basically, And.
Speaker 4: And then we got one.
Speaker 3: Of the pods too that looked like it was making progress,
and we didn't want to unfil the solar panels until
we had at least two pods.
Speaker 4: Active so we could we could go from sort.
Speaker 3: Of drifting to an active hold. But then the temperatures
of the solar panels, which are any protective covers, was
dropping and it can drop to like almost absolute zero
if it's pointing at a dog space. So so it
was dropping, dropping, dropping, and we're like, okay, we better
release the solar panels otherwise they could literally freeze in place.
And so we ran a simulation to see what would
what would happen, and it's actually slightly beneficial, and it's
kind of.
Speaker 4: Like when a skater.
Speaker 3: You know, when a skater puts her arms out, it
slows down, pull him in, it speeds up. So when
actually when the the arms went out, when the solar
panel raise went out, it slowed down. The rate of
rotation actually slightly helped us with maintaining communication with the spacecraft.
And so then we're able to uh with with the
precious lamp thing, get get it, get apart active. Then
then then a third one and then a fourth one.
Then we've got all four working and we're able to
continue the mission dock with the space station. In fact,
Dragon is currently duck with the space station right now
and if if all goes well, we'll return to Earth
in about a week or two.
Speaker 1: That sounds terrifying.
Speaker 2: Why that was?
Speaker 4: That was hardcore. I don't want to go through that again.
Speaker 2: Okay, you are not just here in in in Austin
for south by Southwest, but also to meet with the
Texas legislature to talk about it possibly a launch base
here in Texas.
Speaker 1: Tell us more about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So right now we've got two main launch locations.
One is Cape Canaval in Florida and the other is
a Vanderberg Air Force Base in California. And so the
Cape Narral is good for kind of eastward launches, Vanderberg
for southerly launches, and we figured we need a third
launch site.
Speaker 4: That's kind of a commercial launch site.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not good because Cape Narval and Vanderberg
or air Force Bass, which which is cool, and it's
obviously there's an important need for air Force space launch bases,
as there is for air Force airports, but then there's
also a need for commercial airports.
Speaker 4: And just like you wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Expect commercial airliners to land at an air force base
in a normal course of events, it makes sense to
have a commercial spaceport. And we need to be able
to launch eastward and we want to be close to
the equator.
Speaker 4: So that basically means.
Speaker 3: The potential states are Virginia through Texas going south, Hawaii
and Puerto Rico because the other things when need to stay.
Speaker 4: On US territory because.
Speaker 3: Rocket technology like we're doing is considered an advanced weapons technology,
so it's very difficult to export that if you will,
to other countries and anyways, So those are our options
right right now. Texas is arguably the leading candidate, but
we need certain legislation pass that's supportive of space launch.
I don't think it's particularly controversial, but one of the
things we need, for example, is we need to be
able to close the beach when we're doing a launch
and Texas has.
Speaker 4: The Open Beaches Act.
Speaker 3: It's like, Okay, you know, we we can't launch if
there's someone right next to the rocket, you know, on
the beach. So that's I don't like I said, I
don't think it's a particularly controversial thing.
Speaker 4: It's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 3: And then and then we kind of need liberal protection
for kind of the one in ten thousand person case
who complains about the thing. Like we had this dude
who filed a lawsuit against us for our rocket development
site in Central Texas near Waco. He's like not even
in the same county, He's in a neighboring county, and
he like also thinks like the CIA is listening to
his brain waves. So we need like just a little
bit of protection for people like that. So we're not
like spending a ton of time in court. So that's
basically what we're asking for. Learning major and I think
it's likely to move forward. So I think, you know,
if if things go as expected this this, it's likely
that we'll have a launch sight in Texas, which I
think be really cool around when so it founds on
how the environmental approval is going a lot. But I
think I think, well, if things go well, I mean
not all, not all of it's in our hands. So
but assuming that things go as expected, you know, there'd
be a decision this year and then we'll start construction
next year and then and probably the first launches would
take place and from there in two to three years.
Speaker 1: Terrific.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Falcon nine or the rocket that launched a
dragon is traditional rocket, which is to say, it's disposable bits.
But you're essentially you're ultimately focused on reusable rock. Yes,
Grasshopper is the name of that. Can you talk a
little bit about what's why reusable, what's different about reusable?
Speaker 1: And I think you probably have some things to show
as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so reasonability is extremely important if you think
it's important that humanity extend beyond Earth and become multipenant
species and all that, and I.
Speaker 4: Mean it's super important. I thought.
Speaker 3: I think it's also incredibly obvious common sense, Like you
can imagine watching like star Trek and then they got
a new starship after every every trip that would be
pretty sarly, and and and every motor transport that we're
used to, like cars, plane strains, ormobiles, horses.
Speaker 4: Bikes, they're all reusable.
Speaker 3: But not rockets, and if we can't make rockets reusable,
the cost is just prohibitive. That the like the cost
of the fuel and oxygen on a Falcon nine is
zero point three percent of the cost of the rocket.
So it's basically it's a very tiny number. It's it's
very similar to an airplane. So it's how much does
it cost to fuel up an airplane and how much
does it cost to buying air plane.
Speaker 4: They're very different things.
Speaker 3: So if we're if humanity is ever to expand beyond
Earth and establish a self sustaining base and another planet,
is critical that.
Speaker 4: We solve this problem.
Speaker 3: Whether it's SpaceX or someone else, someone has to solve
the problem and we can have one hundred fold reduction
in the cost of space plight. So so that's what
SpaceX has been trying to do, and really that's been
the goal since the beginning of the company. So so far,
I'm not being very successful in that in that regard,
so but I think we kind of have a.
Speaker 4: Handle on it. I think I think we've got to.
We've got a.
Speaker 3: Design that in the simulations in and in CAD and
so forth, it it closes like it should work.
Speaker 4: If we can build that thing. It should work, and.
Speaker 3: In fact it may be worth just rolling the reusability
videos so people have a sense of what I'm talking about.
I don't know where that plays, but behind us a
farm us and people in the audience of that there.
Ye alright, So what you're saying here is that the
the first age after stage separation, the first aage turns around,
boosts back to the launch pad, and then lands propulsively
with landing gear. That's kind of how rocket should land.
That's that's the upper stage. This is the this is
the quick version of the video obviously, and then you're
seeing Dragon version two. So Dragon version two will land
on thrusters with landing gear with the at G as
accurately as a helicopter, so you can land anywhere on Earth.
That's with the accuracy of a helicopter.
Speaker 2: One last question about space before we turn to two cars.
You've talked before about how you decided.
Speaker 1: To get into this.
Speaker 2: You were you founded you know, you go founded PayPal.
You don't really, I mean, you have a physics degree,
you know something about about you know the underlying mechanics,
but you didn't have any space experience. You decided I
think on a train to go to Mars, and decided
that you could out compete in NASA, that you could
get to Mars, you could get to space faster, cheaper,
better than one of the largest, the largest space agency.
Speaker 3: In the world.
Speaker 1: How did you get that confidence?
Speaker 3: Uh? So, well, I think first of all, I should
say maybe give some of a preface to what happened
before starting SpaceX. In fact, the way I sort of
got into space was to do I was really disappointed
that we had not send anyone to Mars, that we
had not progressed beyond Apollo, and I kept waiting for
when we would.
Speaker 4: And it just didn't happen.
Speaker 3: A year after year, and and so a friend of
mine asked me about what I wanted to do after PayPal,
and I thought, well, you know, I was always curious
about space, but I didn't think about that there was
anything I could do do in space. And I went
to the NASA website to just see when are we
going to Mars?
Speaker 4: And I can find that out.
Speaker 3: I thought maybe it was there, but I well hid
them or something. But so so then I thought, well,
perhaps this is a question of will. Is there sufficient
will to do this? And the first idea I came
up with was actually to do a philanthropic mission to
send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars with
seats and dehydrated jail that would hydrate upon landing, and
you'd have this cool greenhouse with these green plants on
a red background. That'll be the money shot and and
and then you know, people like precedents and superlatives, so
it be the first first life on another planet furthest
that life ever traveled, and that would get people excited,
and you also learn about a lot about want to
support earth.
Speaker 4: Plants and a greenhouse on Mars.
Speaker 3: The whole purpose of that was to get people excited
about sending people to Mars and increase NASA's budget. So
that was my whole goal. I was going to basically torch. Yeah,
it had nothing to do with competing with NASA. In fact,
my goal was to increase their budget. And I should
say that today NASA is our biggest customer. I mean,
we've got almost fifty launchers and about a quarter of
those of FANASA, but three quarters three quarters commercial, but.
Speaker 4: One quarter NASA.
Speaker 3: And NASA's been incredibly sort of been helpful, and we
wouldn't be where we are today without without the help
and NASSA. So it's gonna really got nice too. With
competing with NASA. It's really just about what do we
need to do to have an exciting and inspiring future
in space.
Speaker 4: That's that's what I think really matters.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day.
Speaker 2: You didn't end up raising the fund the money to
pay NASA to the mission. You end up doing building
your own company, and ideally to do it cheaper than
government scout.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I was able to figure out how to
get the cost of the spacecraft and the greenhouse and
the communications system way less than it normally would cost
for such a thing.
Speaker 4: I got stuck on the rocket and I.
Speaker 3: Went to Russia three times to try to buy a
couple of their biggest ICBMs.
Speaker 4: This is about.
Speaker 3: This is in two thousand and one, late two thousand
and one and two thousand and two. It was definitely
an interesting experience, and I sort of got the feeling
I could have bought the Nook too, but.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't want to go there.
Speaker 4: And then when I when I got back from the
third trip to.
Speaker 3: Russia, that that's when I thought, Okay, look, even if
we do even if we buy these these ICBMs from Russia.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 3: Thought, I thought my initial supposition was wrong. And so
what I thought really was that we'd lost the world
to explore, that we'd lost the world to push the boundary,
and and and in retrospect, that was actually a very
foolish error. Because the United States is a nation of explorers.
United States is a distillation of the humans.
Speaker 4: Bird of exploration.
Speaker 3: It's ludicrous to actually, in retrospect, to have made such
an assumption. But people to believe that it's possible, and
that it's not gonna it's not going to bankrupt them.
It's not They're not gonna have to give up something
important like healthcare. You know, it's going to be a
cost that isn't going to meaningfully affect their their standard
of living. And I think the United States would absolutely
be super, super excited about sending people to Mars, and people,
I think a lot of people really wish that would
occur anyway, So that was that was what I came
to conclusion of. And and I thought, well, if if
we don't make a difference in the cost of the
rocket of the transport system, it's all, it doesn't matter
it's it's not like I said, it's not a question
of will, it's a question of whey. And so that's
when I came back and started the SpaceX. But when
I started SpaceX, it wasn't with the perspective of like
a world just you know, take over the world and
with with.
Speaker 4: Or some rockets. I don't know what the book I
was doing. It was like clueless.
Speaker 3: I thought the most likely outcome was that we would fail,
and the first three rockets did fail.
Speaker 2: So and you put all your money into it.
Speaker 3: Between Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City all in. Yeah, that
wasn't the plan at the beginning.
Speaker 2: By the way, and Peter Tail says, we don't think
big anymore.
Speaker 1: You must have some conversations with him about that.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Peter's spent a big supporter actually, so
he's he invested in SpaceX at a very important time
in two thousand and eight before we reached orbit, so
after our.
Speaker 4: Third failure of it, before our first success.
Speaker 3: So you know, big credit to Peter and Luke Nosik
and the other guys that I found. Respond Basically, my
my buddy's great well, my buddies from Papal saved my butt.
Speaker 4: You know, it was really really good.
Speaker 2: So so let's talk about cars. Many and the audience
may recollect the notorious New York Times review of the
Model S, Yes, exactly of the Model S earlier this year,
and your reaction to that review, and the Times reaction
to your reaction, and the effect on your share price
and on orders and all that, and without rehashing the
review or the facts, I'd like it you just to post.
Speaker 1: Mortem the entire experience.
Speaker 4: How do I do a post mortem without any facts
or anything?
Speaker 1: Post mortem? Post mortem?
Speaker 2: Your reaction to the review and what you know put
you on the couch, and what would you do differently today?
Speaker 1: Having seen the weight all played out?
Speaker 4: Well, I think I think this one thing I didn't do.
Speaker 3: And maybe still should, which is to post the rebuttal
to the rebuttal, because I withheld that and waited for
the public editor. I sent that information to the public editor,
waited for her to do her sort of thing, and
she came down kind of on the side of Tesla
with respect to the fact that the article was in error,
but but disagreed on the motive.
Speaker 1: On the ethics, Yes, and because you impugned both facts and.
Speaker 4: Ethics, I did, yes, and and and I think it was.
I think it was.
Speaker 3: I would call it a low grade ethics violation, not
like a big one. I don't think he thought he
was doing anything particularly terrible.
Speaker 4: But I would call it a low grade, low grade violation.
Speaker 3: And not not not of the Jason Blair, you know,
crazy fabrication variety.
Speaker 4: But I would call it a low grade. It was
not in good faith.
Speaker 3: If that that's that's that's an important point. And I
probably should have posted that rebuttal to make that clear,
but I didn't do it.
Speaker 4: That's what I regret.
Speaker 2: So the only change you would make is that the
very last bit the rebuttal that you wrote but that
has not been published, you would get.
Speaker 4: Maybe I should, you would get out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you would continue to use the same language
in the same way.
Speaker 3: And I don't think the language was inaccurate.
Speaker 4: I really don't.
Speaker 1: You've often.
Speaker 2: You've often said that one of your management techniques, one
of the secrets of your successes, that you listen to
negative feedback. Yes was a Times review not didn't fall
into the category of negative feedback.
Speaker 3: I have no problem with negative feedback. I have a
problem with nor do I have a problem with critical reviews.
If I had a problem with critical reviews, I would
spend all my time battling critical reviews. There have been
hundreds of negative articles, hundreds, and yet I've only spoken
out a few times. I don't have a problem with
critical reviews. I have a problem with false reviews.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: One of the technologies that you had to you know,
basically developed to near perfection or at least or at
least work on hardest with lithium batteries for the electric
cars or run on lithuan batteries. Safety has always been
an issue, accidents, et cetera. Recently, Boeing had fires with
their lithium batteries, and these and the dreaminers now to
service because of that, you volunteered to help the Boeing executives,
I guess, diagnose and redesign.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit.
Speaker 2: About what they did wrong, what you would have done differently,
and what do you think that the future of you know,
Boeing in others, airline batteries are going to.
Speaker 3: Be sure well, first of all, on the bowing front,
I mean, obviously, even though SpaceX and Going compete on
the space side, we have no competition on the commercial
airline a side, and some of the comments that I
made about Boeing, somehow I've been interverted as an attack
on Boeing, when it is in fact not an attack
on Boeing.
Speaker 4: The only reason I actually, I mean, the main.
Speaker 3: Reason I should say I offered to help, was that
there's a friend of mine, Richard Branson, who's whose airline
is suffering as a result of this with him iron Fire,
and here he was mentioning that, you know, he's losing
hundreds of millions he always airline is as a result
of this this problem. I said, well, I think we
could probably help, and then so he said, oh great, well,
let me connect you with the chief engineer of the
seven eight seven. I said, cool, we're happy to help.
So provided some advice and hopefully that'll be helpful. And
I said, we're also happy to actually do the solution
if you want. And they haven't taken this stuff on
that offer, but we're happy to help, either in an
advisory capacity or to do the solution whatever would result
in the seven eight seven getting back to flight sooner.
We're just trying to you know, productive and helpful. So
I mean, I think in the case of the battery.
Voeing doesn't have a ton of in house battery expertise,
so that they outsourced the battery and then you had
a whole bunch of kind of nested outsourcing where the
outsourced the battery system, and then and then that got
outsourced to another company, then to another company, and then
to a whole bunch of other companies.
Speaker 4: And you're like four layers deep before you actually got
to any hardware.
Speaker 3: And so that resulted and I think in a kind
of a breakdown of communication. I mean from an architectural standpoint,
The fundamental issue is that the is that I think
is that the cells are too big. The battery cells
are too big, and the gaps between the battery cells
are are not big enough. And the problem with a
big battery cell is that the thermal pathway is in
a most case scenario is very long. So you say, well,
if there's a hot spot in the battery, can it
get its heat out? And if it's deep in a cell,
it can't. It can't do that. And it's also hard
to thermally condition the cells. That the life of the
pack will be will be dependent upon on the temperature,
with the average not the average temperature, but the worst
temperature at any point in any cell. So you want
to really even that temperature out. That's why Tesla is
a fan of having lots of small cells and then
actively cooling each cell to keep the temperature even and
make sure that if if hotspot does developed, it's a
very short pathway to the cooling system and it can
you know, take care of it. Then you also want
to make sure that it's again quite technical here, sorry,
it's it's passive propagation proof. So so if you even
if your active cooling system fails and you get them
more on away in a cell, that therm we're on
an event can't cascade into a neighboring cell, and you
get the thermal domino effect, right, I mean, it's it's
not it's not super complicated.
Speaker 4: So so.
Speaker 3: It just if if you have big cells, you want
big gaps, and ideally you want you don't want big cells.
If you do, you want big gaps, small cells, small gaps.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so.
Speaker 2: I mean this is this is really important because because
the whole thing about this new generation of aeroplanes that
they're light, they use composites, they use electronics rather than
mechanical systems, and so electricity drives the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So basically my understanding is that.
Speaker 2: You need lithium batteries in the sky. It just doesn't
work any other way. And your point is it can
be done.
Speaker 4: Oh, totally can be done.
Speaker 3: YEA, Like lithium is getting a bit of a bad
name here, Lithium is obviously the way to go. I mean,
people have lithium my own batteries and their cell phones
and their laptops. I mean, I don't think anyone's panicking
here with the fact that they go to lithium ion battery.
Speaker 4: You know, next to a sensitive region of probably their body.
You know, got it.
Speaker 2: Well, just staying on on on power for one last
set of questions before well, before I returned.
Speaker 1: To your life, which seems insane.
Speaker 4: Is the same.
Speaker 2: You're also a chairman of Solar City, which I believe
is America's largest solar installer. You know, so space transportation
energy ticking.
Speaker 1: Off the big ones there.
Speaker 2: Now, you know, solar got a bad name over the
last few years because of the cylinder meltdown, et cetera.
But in my sense that people different are not differentiating
between the making of solar cells and the using of
solar cells and the Chinese competition and the glutting of
the market on the supply side is what solender what
got Cylinder in trouble.
Speaker 1: They couldn't compete with the falling prices. But you're a
consumer of solar cells, So how do you see you know,
the Chinese, Chinese competition and sort of the glut of
solar solar cells on the market. What did I do
with you?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think what China is doing in the
solar panel arena is awesome because they're lowering the cost
of solar power for the world, and they have these
huge gigafactories that they created out in the Chinese desert
and with a ton of funding from the Chinese government.
So it's like a giant donation from the tiny Chinese government.
Like thanks, that's awesome, you know, And you know, people
sort of complain about a Cylinder, but I mean, obviously
anyone who's been involved in the venture world knows that
you don't at a thousand.
Speaker 4: There's some companies that die.
Speaker 3: The only reason we know about Cylinder is because became
a political football, right, And I mean there are other
sort of panel manufacturers are still doing reasonably well, but
it is tough when you're competing. I mean, I think
a good rule of thumb was don't is, don't compete
with China with a commodity product. You know, you're really
asking for travel in that scenario. And it's really super
easy to make fifteen percent inefficient or standard efficiency solar panels.
It's super easy. It's like easier of the making freaking
drywall at this point. So it's like, is there everything
we should be competing with China in drywall manufacturing? Okay,
probably not so so, so that's the thing. So, and
the hard part of solar power is not the panel,
it's actually the whole system. It's basically designing something that's
going to fit on particular rooftop because you have all
these heterogeneous rooftops. Then you've got to you've got to
mount the system, you've got to wire it up, you've
got to connect it with the inverters connected to the grid,
you've got to do all the permitting. I mean, it's
a bunch of like thorny, unglamorous, stupid problems. But if
somebody doesn't optimize them, they're still going to cost a
ton of money and a lot of them are really
not they're not fun problems, they're not you know, exciting
problems to optimize, but but they are the problems that
actually matter in the cost of solar power.
Speaker 2: So it's really more like you know, like a like
a roofing contractor than it is at a company.
Speaker 4: I mean, what you're doing is you're putting a second
roof on a building. Yeah, okay, so.
Speaker 3: And you've got to do it at scale, and then
you've got to manage all these systems because there's still
some I mean, even though the after sales service is small,
when you've got like hundreds of thousands of systems, that's
still a lot to manage. And and so what solar
City really is is a giant distributed utility and it's
working in partnership with the house and business and in
competition with the big sort of monopoly utility.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think it's like literally power to the people.
Speaker 3: Okay, It's like it's literally So I think it's really
awesome because utility has just never had.
Speaker 4: Any competition before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now they're like they have to actually think
about the cost of power and figure out better ways
to do it. And the thing I think it's really great,
and the credit there is really due to Lennon and
Peter Rye co founders. I mean, I've hearn a few
ideas every now and then, but mostly it's just about
showing up at the board meeting to hear the good news.
Speaker 4: It's those guys are just think sessional some job.
Speaker 2: So you are CEO and CTO of SpaceX, so not
just running company progression chief technology officers as well. You
are CEO and chief product designer for Tesla, so not
just running the company, but designing the cars. And you're
chairman of Solar City.
Speaker 1: Right, what is your life like.
Speaker 3: It's it's very busy, and I'd actually like to take
it down just as Scooch, honestly, because there they're always
I mean these things that the last few years have
been really really great, but then there were a number
of years that saw horribly and I'd like to just
not have it be so extreme. And like last year
was a year of great achievement, but honestly, I didn't
have that much fun.
Speaker 4: It sucked.
Speaker 3: I didn't have that much fun. My US resolution was
to have a little bit more fun this year. So hey,
I'm at south By Southwest.
Speaker 1: You know, and you have five children?
Speaker 4: Do They're awesome? Kids are awesome. By the way, you
guys should all have kids. Kids are great.
Speaker 1: How much do you see them?
Speaker 4: I don't see them enough, actually, But.
Speaker 3: I what I find is that I'm able to be
with them and still be on email because I don't
need like constant interaction except when we're talking directly. So
I find I can be with them and still be
you know, working at the same time.
Speaker 1: But wait, are you saying you can do email while
you're with your children?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Absolutely sure.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: I mean not all it's time, but a lot of
the time. That's why I tended to have a phone,
and you can sort of you do email in interstitial moments.
In the absence of that, I would not be able
to get my job done.
Speaker 1: Well, that's impressive.
Speaker 3: We are.
Speaker 1: I have five children. I can't do email wine with
my children. It's not good for the children and it's
really not good for the email.
Speaker 3: Well, I do have to have a nanny there otherwise
they'll kill each other.
Speaker 4: So yeah, we.
Speaker 2: Are going to turn to audience questions at this point.
Just a reminder that if you tweet your questions hashtag
ask musk there's a team in the back that will
be selecting the are the ones that we haven't already covered,
and it seem interesting, and I get them in front,
maybe you can see them as well. So as the
first one from David Solis. Yes, when it comes to
researching analyzing entrepreneurial opportunity, how do you go about qualifying
or legitimizing presumably the idea?
Speaker 3: Sure, well, I'm not sure I'm the best guide here
because the things that I've chosen have not been I've
not been trying to optimize on a risk adjusted return basis.
So there are like I would not say that I
went to the rocker business, of the car business or
the solar business thinking that it's a great opportunity. I
just thought that that something needed to be done in
these industries in order to make a difference, and that's
why I did it. So, But in general, I do
think it's worth thinking about, like what whether what you're
doing is going to result in disruptive change or not.
If it's just incremental, it's unlikely to be something major.
It's got to be something that's substanti actually better than
what's gone on before.
Speaker 2: That cubes up our next question really Well, this is
from a Craig Lagrese space, automotive, finance, energy disrupted major industries.
Speaker 1: What would you do if you had a free reign
over education?
Speaker 4: Well, I think that the way that we current lead
to education is wrong.
Speaker 3: And when you see something like the Kon Academy and
so for I think that's probably going in the right direction.
Speaker 4: I mean, generally, you want.
Speaker 3: Education to be like as close to a video game
as possible, like a good video game, Like you do
not need to tell your kid to play video games.
They will play video games on autopilot all day. So
if you can make it interactive and engaging, then you can.
Speaker 4: Make education far more compelling and a far easier to do.
Speaker 3: So I think that's how it should be, and it
shouldn't be that you've got like these grades where people
move in lockstep and so everyone goes through, you know,
goes like normally we'll go through English, math, science and
so forth, from like fifth grade to sixth grade to
seventh grade, like it's an assembly line. But people are
not objects on an assembly line. That's a ridiculous notion.
People learn and are interested in different things at different paces.
So you really want to disconnect the whole grade level
three thing from the subjects, allow people to progress at
the fastest pace that they can or interested in each subject.
It seems like a really obvious thing. I mean, I
think like most teaching today is a lot like vaudeville,
where and as a result, just not that compelling. It's
like somebody's standing up there and lecturing to you, and
they've done the same.
Speaker 4: Lecture several years in a row.
Speaker 3: They're not necessarily all that engaged or in doing it.
And you compare that to say, Batman the Dark Knight, Okay,
and then you've got like the world's best special effects,
you've got the world's best director, screenwriter, multiple cuts, amazing,
you know, editing and and and and and and that's amazing.
But but like imagine if instead you had like the
local town aspiring actor to the one person play version
of that, that would not be compelling.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with Peter Tiel about the unnecessaryness of
university higher education?
Speaker 3: I don't don't. I definitely I do agree with Peter's
point that a university education is often unnecessary. That's not
to say it's unnecessary for all people, But I think
you've probably learned about as much. For the vast majority
of what you're gonna learn there in the first two years,
and most of it is from your classmates.
Speaker 4: Because you can always buy the textbooks and just read
them like nobody's stopping you from doing that, or go
online or go online.
Speaker 3: So now now, for a lot of companies, they do
want to see the completion of the degree because they're
looking for someone who's going to persevere and see it
through to the end, and that's actually what's important to them.
Speaker 4: So it really depends on what somebody's goal is.
Speaker 3: If the goal is to start a company, I would
say no point in finishing college. In my case, I
had to otherwise I get kicked out of the country, So.
Speaker 4: That was important.
Speaker 2: But although you went on and got a master's degree
as well.
Speaker 3: Right, I came out to look at value to do
a PhD at Stanford and applied physics and material science
to work on ultra capacitors who use in electric cars,
and that's what I was going to do, and then
I started to put that on hold to start a company.
But since I already had my undergrad I couldn't get
an H one BBSA and that kind of thing. So
if the h one BB's requires a degree, but other
than that, I would have if that wasn't the case,
I probably would have stopped education sooner.
Speaker 1: Did you not go to Wharton for Yeah?
Speaker 3: They did dual undergrade in physics and business at Wharton. Yeah,
but it was undergrad not not master's understood.
Speaker 1: Another question for the audience from Dan Griffiths.
Speaker 2: Fill in the blank, you will be disappointed if blank
does not happen in your lifetime.
Speaker 3: Well, probably the most thing I've disappointed is if if
humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime, I'd be
really disappointed. That would be you know that that would
probably be my biggest disappointment. And yeah, I think I
think that's the thing I'm most concerned about because because we're.
Speaker 4: At this and obviously that's what SpaceX is working on.
Speaker 3: So I'm not trying to be self serving here, but
it's just I kind of worry that we've hit this
if I don't know whether technology level will keep going
or subside. And for the first time in four and
a half billion years, the technology level is at the
point where we can extend life to another planet, make
life multiplanetary, and I think it's too easy to take
for granted that it's going to stay above that level.
And if it doesn't and it falls blow that will
it return?
Speaker 4: Who knows?
Speaker 3: You know, the sign is gradually expanding, and in about
you know, roughly five hundred million years, maybe a billion
years of the outside the oceans will boil and there
will be no meaningful life on Earth. I mean it
might be like some you know, chemotrophs or or ultra
high temperature bacteria or something, but nothing that can make
a spaceship. And that's like, if you think it's like,
maybe it's a five hundred million your type, for that's
only a ten percent increase in the.
Speaker 4: Life of lifespan of Earth. So if.
Speaker 3: If humanity had taken an extra ten percent longer to
get here, it wouldn't have gotten here at all. Yeah,
And so far, we haven't seen any signs of life from.
Speaker 4: Other worlds that we have. We haven't detected anything.
Speaker 3: I hope, you know, hopefully we do, and hopefully it's
not a warship coming towards us. But I just think
that's the thing that really concerns me. We need to
get this done and then that is the best thing
we can do to ensure the continued existence of humanity.
So that's why I would say that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1: Do you personally do you personally want to step foot
on Mars?
Speaker 4: I do personally want to have put on Mars.
Speaker 3: But honestly, I would be doing this even if there
was no even if I knew there was no chance
of me going to Mars, because I think, like I said,
I think it's just important that we are on a
path to getting there, So I would like to go
at some point. I'll go if I'm certain that SpaceX
will be fine without me and that that path will continue.
Because you may have heard me, some people may have
heard the joke I've made before, which is like, you know,
I would I think I would like to die on Mars,
just not on impact, you know.
Speaker 2: So another question from the audience, and we just we
just lost lost that one. There was a I don't
remember who would ask this question, but the question was which, when,
when Which do you think is.
Speaker 1: Going to have more impact on the world, SpaceX or Tesla.
Speaker 3: Well, I think if we look back, or with historians,
if I would look back on the impact of Tesla
in many.
Speaker 4: Years from now, I think it would be that Tesla.
Speaker 3: Hopefully that Tesla advanced the advent of sustainable transport by
something like a decade, maybe maybe two decades. But I
do think electric cars are inevitable. In fact, I think
all modes of transport will go fully electric, with the
ironic exception of rockets. So that's uh, that's what I think.
And then for Solo City, perhaps something similar on the
energy production site, sustainable energy production. Then for SpaceX, hopefully
SpaceX developed develops the technology necessary to transport large numbs
of people in cargo to Mars.
Speaker 4: And I mean I think that's you know, a big
or impact.
Speaker 3: But we're all the the what Solo City and Tesla
are about are solving what I think is the most
pressing terrestrial concern, which is the sustainable production and consumption
of energy. Well helping solve it. I mean, there's many
people solving it. And then what SpaceX is about is
helping solve the biggest non terrestrial problem, which is the
extension of life beyond Earth.
Speaker 4: So those are how I see it.
Speaker 2: We have two related questions, the one that's no longer
on the screen, but and another one that is that
The first was what was the best advice you ever
got and the second and you maybe can join them
in your answer, is you mentioned working with your friends
Peter Teal and RIDRW Branson who influences and inspires you?
Speaker 3: Sure, well, I'm inspired by a lot of historical figures.
Like one of my favorite guys is Ben Franklin. You know,
I just think he's you know, he's a really good guy.
I mean, he was a scientist and he also i
mean worked in obviously publishing and the political sphere, but
he kind of like he's just thought about like what
are the what are the problems that need to get
solved and worked on those. I mean, it's just seems
like a good guy around. So I like him and
the like just historical figures like in science and literature,
and I mean huge fan of Churchill and and obviously
like Tesla.
Speaker 4: We named Tesla after Nikola.
Speaker 3: Tesla better than most motors, you know, and I actually
haven't named any product or company.
Speaker 4: After myself, but.
Speaker 3: Then maybe gives a sense of like I think, like
Tesla is someone who deserves a lot of recognition, and.
Speaker 1: They're all dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think there's a friend of mine,
like Larry Page. I think what Larry's doing and and
Serge at Google. I'm really admire what they've done. I think,
obviously he's recently dead, but Steve Jobs here doesn't admire
Steve Jobs.
Speaker 4: I think Bezlis is doing some great.
Speaker 1: Things and among others competing with.
Speaker 3: You, yes, but that's a good thing. In fact, every
time I see Jeff Beslis, I say, why aren't you
doing more in space?
Speaker 1: The other half the question was the best advice you
ever got?
Speaker 4: Best advice I ever got? Well, I think the.
Speaker 3: You know, the physics training is a very good training
where it's a good framework for reasoning where you're trained
to think about first principles and reason from there. And
that means boiling things down to the most fundamental truths
and then connecting those truths in a way to try
to understand how reality is. Because you know, physics has
this problem where they're trying to figure out things that
are totally counterintuitive, and so they had to have a
framework for for for getting there, like quantum mechanics is
incredibly counterintuitive, but it's true, and so you had so
physics developed a framework for for figuring.
Speaker 4: Out things that aren't obvious.
Speaker 3: And that's why I think it's it's not it's it's
a lot of advice, but it's it's it's the right framework.
Speaker 4: And then you know, just in general, critical.
Speaker 3: Thinking is is good, you know, examining whether you have
the correct axioms, are the most applicable axioms, does the
logic necessarily connect? And then what are the what are
the range of probable outcomes? Outcomes are usually not deterministic,
they're they're they're a range, and so you want to
figure out what those probabilities are and make sure ideally.
Speaker 4: That you're the house.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's fine to take, it's fine to
it's fine to gamble, as long as you're the house,
and you know and say that is is to listen
to critical feedback, which you alluded to earlier. Voice solicit
critical feedback, particularly from friends, because generally they will be
thinking it, but they won't tell you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the question here from a Gels chance and you
use the development on your hyper loop idea, and you
might be explain what your hyper loop idea is.
Speaker 3: Ha, Well, what I have said is that I'm putting
the hyper loop stuff on hold until I get Tesla
to profitability, because I think if I was an investor
in Tesla, and they heard me sort of spouting off
about the hyperloop before I got the company profitable. They
were like, hey, you know, go do go do your job.
Speaker 4: So that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: I think once Tesla isn't it in a has been profitable,
maybe for at least for a quarter, maybe two quarters,
then i'll I'll.
Speaker 4: Talk about the hyper loop. But I think it could
be an interesting way to.
Speaker 3: I mean, it would be an interesting way to travel
really quickly from one city to the next.
Speaker 1: And quickly explain, just in one sense, what a hyper
loop is.
Speaker 3: Well, it would be something that would be i'd say
twice as fast as a plane, at least in terms
of total transit time, maybe a little faster. It would
be immune to whether incapable of crashing pretty much unless
there's like a terrorist attack, and the ticket price would
be like, let's say, half that of a plane, So it.
Speaker 1: Would be better in every way the train of some sort,
though it's kind of it's.
Speaker 4: Not exactly a train.
Speaker 3: It would be a different It would be a new
mode of transportation that doesn't currently exist.
Speaker 4: Terrestrial terrestrial, yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, underground, above ground could go either a kind of subway.
Speaker 4: Perhaps I think it's I think it's.
Speaker 3: The capital costs will be less if it's mostly above ground,
but you can go underground too.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Maybe last question, what's the biggest mistake you've ever made?
And this is from Lexi Hill. Was the biggest mistake
you've ever made? And how did you move forward looking back?
Was it really that big a deal?
Speaker 4: Biggest mistake?
Speaker 3: I've made lots of mistakes, some of them some are
pretty big.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's hard to say because things have worked
out pretty well in the end.
Speaker 3: So how how big of a mistake could it have been?
As the question is really really asking, you know, I
did lots of dumb things at my first company and
at PayPal, and you know, I think, I think sometimes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: There's so many I like got I'm hard pressed to
say this is this is the biggest. Thanks for listening.
See you in the next episode.