Speaker 1: Well, elon, you need no introduction, but for those who
Speaker 1: don't know, you are the founder and chief engineer of
Speaker 1: SpaceX and into the Mars Society, and we're delighted to
Speaker 1: have you back. You've got nine thousand people registered to
Speaker 1: hear you today.
Speaker 2: All right, cool sounds good.
Speaker 1: Okay, So usually like.
Speaker 2: Change this perspective. Let's say, if I change the perspective, is
Speaker 2: that better or is that worse?
Speaker 1: I think you were better before?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, so listen.
Speaker 1: Uh, why don't we just start out with the basis
Speaker 1: you started SpaceX to make humanity multiplanetary. Yeah, why do
Speaker 1: you see that as a critical goal?
Speaker 2: Yes? I think we want to be on track to
Speaker 2: become a multipad species and a space brank civilization in
Speaker 2: order to find out what the universe will all about,
Speaker 2: like what you know? Uh, and ensure the continuance of
Speaker 2: consciousness as we know it. Far as we know, we're
Speaker 2: the only life. I mean, people think there's aliens, but
Speaker 2: obviously I haven't seen any sign of aliens. So as
Speaker 2: far as we know, we're the only the only life.
Speaker 2: Whether we could be the only life, So let's put
Speaker 2: it that way, and we need to take the set
Speaker 2: of actions that are most likely to make the future
Speaker 2: good and result in the continuance of consciousness as we
Speaker 2: know it.
Speaker 3: Okay, so okay, well, obviously your your means to that
Speaker 3: end is to open the space frontier with reusable launch vehicles,
Speaker 3: and you've gone through some partially useful ones and now
Speaker 3: it's starship.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that basically the line of thinking that
Speaker 1: led you to the starship design?
Speaker 2: I forget. What I need to look at is look
Speaker 2: like I'm looking at the camera. So let's see. Well,
Speaker 2: on the starship front, we've gone through many iterations, starting
Speaker 2: from not really knowing how to build rockets at all
Speaker 2: with Falcon one and having four failures actually in reaching orbit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the sorry three failures, and then the fourth one got
Speaker 2: to orbit. So fourth one is a charm, so we
Speaker 2: only barely survived. I was at zero cash basically when
Speaker 2: we got that fourth one to orbit, and if that
Speaker 2: fourth one hadn't worked, we would have been curtains. So
Speaker 2: it's definitely not been smooth sailing. It's been very difficult
Speaker 2: ride with just a lot that has been discovered along
Speaker 2: the way. I mean, just just trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what questions to ask about the design it was was
Speaker 2: quite difficult. I think it's helpful to have as the
Speaker 2: objective the creation of a self sustaining city on Mars.
Speaker 2: I think this is this has to be the objective,
Speaker 2: not simply a few people or a base, but a
Speaker 2: self sustaining city. The acid test really is if the
Speaker 2: if the ships from Earth stopped coming for any reason,
Speaker 2: does Mars die out for any reason? It could be
Speaker 2: from a banal, or it could be nuclear. Again, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if the if the ship stopped coming for
Speaker 2: any reason, does the city on Mars die out? If
Speaker 2: it does, we have not We're not in a secure place.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I think this really might come down to,
Speaker 2: you know, the great filter front is this, are we
Speaker 2: going to create a self sustaining city on Mars before
Speaker 2: or after World War three? And I think the probably
Speaker 2: of it being created after World War three hopefully hopefully
Speaker 2: this's never world War three, but after is low. So
Speaker 2: we should try to create to make the city self
Speaker 2: sustaining before any possible World War three. This is just
Speaker 2: a risk. This is not you know, I mean not
Speaker 2: as people have difficulty to dealing with with probability to
Speaker 2: see that this way or that way. But it's really
Speaker 2: we just face a series of probabilities and there's some
Speaker 2: chance that we will have a giant ore or a
Speaker 2: super volcano, or you know, a commet might have the Earth,
Speaker 2: or we might just self extinguish in some Uh, it
Speaker 2: might be more of a more more of a whimper
Speaker 2: than a bang. And frankly, right now, civilization is not
Speaker 2: looking super strong, you know, it is looking a little
Speaker 2: rettal rickety right now. Frank would you.
Speaker 1: Say that it's it's more than a life boat that
Speaker 1: would actually make you civilization more clearly more able to
Speaker 1: divert asteroids from hitting the earth and uh otherwise.
Speaker 2: Help, Yeah, it's not it's not an escape, it's a
Speaker 2: it's simply something that it's like you can, I mean
Speaker 2: less modes mars is made self sustaining, which will probably
Speaker 2: not happen in my lifetime. It is certainly not its meaning,
Speaker 2: it's meaningless to have an escape, you know, a life
Speaker 2: boat or or or escape patch or something if you will.
Speaker 2: You're simply moving to another place where you will soon
Speaker 2: die out. That doesn't count so much of a life
Speaker 2: boat really, So this is really about minimizing existential risk
Speaker 2: for civilization as a whole and then having an exciting
Speaker 2: future that you can look forward to, and a future
Speaker 2: where we are a space ban civilization and multi plant
Speaker 2: species is far more exciting than one where we are not.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's an exciting future. And being forever confined
Speaker 2: to Earth until some eventual extinction event is depressing and
Speaker 2: knock one. And we need things that make you want
Speaker 2: to get out of bed in the morning and be
Speaker 2: excited about the future. And I think being a space
Speaker 2: faring civilization it's one of those things that everyone can
Speaker 2: get excited about.
Speaker 1: But can you maybe just kind of lead people along
Speaker 1: the path that led you from the design but from
Speaker 1: Falcon nine to Falcon Heavy, but now Starship is rather
Speaker 1: different than Falcon Heavy. The engineering.
Speaker 2: Absolutely didn't quite answer your original question. You first have
Speaker 2: to say what is the goal? And once you have
Speaker 2: what is the goal, you can then measure various designs
Speaker 2: against that goal. Otherwise you're saying, how are you evaluating?
Speaker 2: Why is one design better than another? What's your goal?
Speaker 2: It's got to be a goal. So the goal is
Speaker 2: get enough ton in to Mars to and enough people
Speaker 2: to make Mars self sustaining as quickly as possible. So
Speaker 2: then you say, okay, let's back back out the math
Speaker 2: on this. We're gonna need We're gonna lot of need,
Speaker 2: a lot of tonnage. Maybe I don't know, one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand tons, maybe a million tons. So you can't be
Speaker 2: fat and around with these expandable rockets. They're a joke.
Speaker 2: They're absode even Saturn, five tiny potatoes. We need it
Speaker 2: because if you want to get like, let's say, first
Speaker 2: order approximation a million tons the sofas of Mars, inclusive
Speaker 2: of people. Uh, you know that that means probably something
Speaker 2: around four or five million useful tons of payload in
Speaker 2: the into low with orbit. You know, for every time
Speaker 2: you get to low with orbit, you're gonna get four
Speaker 2: or five tons, hopefully closer to five. It's it's you
Speaker 2: know these are this math is you really start squeezing
Speaker 2: like tiny percentages. But let's say it comfort confidently. If
Speaker 2: you've got five tons to low with orbit, you can
Speaker 2: get one ton tomorrow. That's that's confident. Maybe you can
Speaker 2: get maybe maybe I only need four. Anyway, The point
Speaker 2: is you need five million tons into Earth orbit to
Speaker 2: get one million tons to Mars. Now, let's put this
Speaker 2: into perspective. Total global capacity to orbit of all expendable
Speaker 2: rockets is around around five or six hundred tons, I think.
Speaker 2: And if you said, okay, the world's going to end
Speaker 2: if you do not increase your capacity, perhaps they could
Speaker 2: do a thousand tons. Okay, So that's one five five thousand,
Speaker 2: one five thousandth of what's needed. It's ridiculous, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's not even you know, zero point one percent
Speaker 2: would be you know, one thousandth so way less than
Speaker 2: point one percent. We have way less point one percent
Speaker 2: of the capability needed to create a if everyone went
Speaker 2: full filled with expendable rockets. Expanded rockets are the absolute
Speaker 2: are just utterly stupid, in my opinion, utterly stupid. They
Speaker 2: are a complete waste of time. People should stop wasting
Speaker 2: the time. If you try to sell an expendable plane,
Speaker 2: people would laugh the out of the room. If you
Speaker 2: trying to sell an expendable car, they would laugh the
Speaker 2: old room. Try to sell an expendable horse, they would
Speaker 2: laugh the out of the room and think there's something
Speaker 2: wrong with you mentally. So all of these things are reusable.
Speaker 2: It's essential to be reasonable. Now, creating a reusable rocket,
Speaker 2: obital rocket is very difficult. Doing a suborbital reusable rocket
Speaker 2: is easy. Doing it a reasonable oval rocket is hard.
Speaker 2: Even when a lot of smart people have put quite
Speaker 2: a bit of effort into it. They might get two
Speaker 2: or three percent of the litron mass to lower vobit
Speaker 2: and a really epic rocket would get four. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure every I do think anyone's e and four. So,
Speaker 2: but you basically need to have something that inexpendable form
Speaker 2: would probably get about four percent of its paler to orbit,
Speaker 2: such that you can spend about half of that four
Speaker 2: percent on reusability and still net out to around two
Speaker 2: percent of Palo tourbit. So you have to make both
Speaker 2: the booster and the upper stage and the fairying and
Speaker 2: everything reusable with Falcon So with Falcon one, we did
Speaker 2: actually attempt to do this, So we had a parachute
Speaker 2: in the first stage, but really did not appreciate that
Speaker 2: that first stage was going to hit the atmosphere like
Speaker 2: a concrete wall. So at first I got pretty mad
Speaker 2: at the parachutes flare until I realized, yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: their fault. We were just being cools that that thing
Speaker 2: was exploding as soon as it hit the atmosphere, and
Speaker 2: you know, so you really got to do something to
Speaker 2: ease the transition into the atmosphere. At Heimock number, it's
Speaker 2: very hot and it's a lot of force and a
Speaker 2: lot of heat. So then with falcon Hine we made
Speaker 2: a bigger rocket. And as scale matters here because you
Speaker 2: do get basically economies of scale. You can't have a
Speaker 2: tiny rocket. There's a tiny rocket, you basically just end
Speaker 2: up carrying your electronics to orbit, so your avionics, you know,
Speaker 2: so in a little rocket, if you're small enough that
Speaker 2: just your your avionics a loane ends up being a
Speaker 2: significant percentage of your payload. And then you you know,
Speaker 2: if you've had a rocket that was I don't know,
Speaker 2: they're trying to get a ten thousand pound rocket, for example,
Speaker 2: or even a ten thousand kilogram rocket to all, but
Speaker 2: I think you would basically get zero payload. Now as
Speaker 2: you get bigger, the rocket gets bigger, but the brain
Speaker 2: doesn't get bigger. The brain can say the same size,
Speaker 2: So your avionics, for example, become almost not almost zero
Speaker 2: end of the weight at for a big rocket. Then
Speaker 2: for big rockets you also get gauge advantages. So this
Speaker 2: is we're really in the nuances of rocket design and manufacturing. Here,
Speaker 2: if your things are very small, it's difficult to get
Speaker 2: your gauge accurate. So the basically how thick is the
Speaker 2: material like you want to do castings, for example, there's
Speaker 2: a minimum gauge with thickness for a casting, there's a
Speaker 2: minimum kind of error bar on the you know, on
Speaker 2: this the material skins. Even for a composite rocket, you've
Speaker 2: got uh, you know, you start getting granularity issues as
Speaker 2: you get bigger. You know you're no longer gauge limited,
Speaker 2: and you can get your your percentage accuracy on the
Speaker 2: thickness of walls and castings can be can be very good.
Speaker 2: These are the nuances that I think was no one appreciates,
Speaker 2: but I spice to say that there are advantages to size,
Speaker 2: and you can certainly see this many walks of life
Speaker 2: where if you've got a truck that's carrying cargo, it's
Speaker 2: more efficient to have a big semi truck, not a
Speaker 2: bunch of little trucks. For ships, it would be pretty
Speaker 2: silly to see container ships or containers going across the
Speaker 2: ocean one at a time with little outboard motors. That
Speaker 2: would be silly. You put them on a container ship,
Speaker 2: you have big ships, not little little tiny ships. So anyway,
Speaker 2: so size matters, it really does, and for reusability matters.
Speaker 2: So with Falcon nine, after a mess effort, we were
Speaker 2: able to achieve reusability of the booster, and we're mostly
Speaker 2: achieving reusability at this point with the faring as well.
Speaker 2: But this is a this is a monumental effort, and
Speaker 2: I think within its architecture, Falcon nine is close to
Speaker 2: a local maximum if you a you know, gas gener
Speaker 2: cycle kerosene oxygen vehicle of this particular size with a
Speaker 2: twelve phot or three point six meters diameter, which is
Speaker 2: which is that size for because of road transport limitation,
Speaker 2: so you go bigger than that, you can transport it
Speaker 2: over the road and your logistics class become extreme. So
Speaker 2: but having a long, thin rocket is not very mass efficient.
Speaker 2: You end up having to have thicker skins to take
Speaker 2: out the vending moment. So we're and then and having
Speaker 2: like kerosene is not the right fuel. Methane is a
Speaker 2: much better fuel. You can get higher i SP specific
Speaker 2: impulse basically efficiency. I mean, But for those who I
Speaker 2: think probably a lot of those who are listening to
Speaker 2: what the rock equation is, but in simple terms, it's
Speaker 2: actually straight simple. It's like a rocket is going to
Speaker 2: go further if the gas, if it shoots the gas
Speaker 2: out of the end faster and if a bigger percentage
Speaker 2: of its mass is propellant. Was obvious. So that's what
Speaker 2: that's what the rocket equation says. So I shoot shoot
Speaker 2: gas out faster in the right direction and increase the
Speaker 2: propellant the percentage of propellant that that's going to get
Speaker 2: you allow you to go further. With methane, you can
Speaker 2: shoot it out faster, and you can make it on Mars.
Speaker 2: You can make it on Mars for sure, exactly. So
Speaker 2: being able to do institute propellant development is production is
Speaker 2: very important. So you don't have to carry your return fuel.
Speaker 2: With your return fuel and oxygen, it's like rockets are
Speaker 2: mostly oxygen or oxidizer. So and there's there's some other
Speaker 2: subtle advantages with a oxygen methane system in that you
Speaker 2: can go to a higher percentage a higher mass ratio
Speaker 2: of oxygen. So with kerosene you'd be about quote roughly
Speaker 2: two and a half to one oxygen to fuel mass ratio.
Speaker 2: With methane you're more like three and a half to one,
Speaker 2: and you actually want that higher mass ratio because oxygen
Speaker 2: is very dance and it's inexpensive, especially on Earth, so
Speaker 2: you're gonna you know, you have all these plants just
Speaker 2: making oxygen all day long and plank them, just make
Speaker 2: an oxygen, don't do anything. So the cost of oxygen
Speaker 2: is basically the cost of electricity anyway. So going from falcon,
Speaker 2: going from you know, kerosene, which is basically the same
Speaker 2: as jet fuel. It's like RP one rock propelland grade.
Speaker 2: Kerosine is just a tighter grade of jet fuel. You
Speaker 2: want to go from that to something which has where
Speaker 2: the gas roots out faster, that's methane and where instatu
Speaker 2: production of propellant is easier. So that's that's why the
Speaker 2: change from from kerosene to methane. Methinks just c H four.
Speaker 2: It's one carbon pore hydrogens and then the oxygen pairs
Speaker 2: pairs together. So here it's it's called O two because
Speaker 2: auction para bonds and I was you know all this stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm just basically help that kind.
Speaker 1: Of the audience together large size twice to take off
Speaker 1: thrust of a saturn five, but about the same payload,
Speaker 1: but that gives you reusability much cheaper in situ propellant.
Speaker 1: It all is coherent. Uh and uh so let me
Speaker 1: ask you the thing that I think everybody wants to know,
Speaker 1: which is when when are we going to see Starship?
Speaker 1: Do a high fly to the stratosphere? When to orbit?
Speaker 1: When first payload to Mars? When the first units to Mars?
Speaker 2: All right, well, it's all like we're obviously venturing into
Speaker 2: unknown territory. So it's not as though I have all
Speaker 2: these secret dates and I and I am, you know,
Speaker 2: just keeping them from people, but so that these are
Speaker 2: just guesses. Obviously, I'm pretty I am eighty to nine
Speaker 2: percent confident that we will reach orbit with Starship next year.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: I think probably fifty or sixty fifty percent confident that
Speaker 2: we'll be able to bring the ship and booster back.
Speaker 2: That's that's more of a dicey situation. We'll probably lose
Speaker 2: a few ships before we really get the atmospheric return
Speaker 2: and landing right. We might lose hopefully, don't you lose it.
Speaker 2: Hopefully we don't lose any boosters because that's a lot
Speaker 2: of engines. Initial booster flights will just have maybe two
Speaker 2: to four engines, not twenty eight, twenty eight a lot
Speaker 2: of engines. So yeah, and then I think we'll probably
Speaker 2: be in do it doing high volume plates. I think
Speaker 2: probably in twenty twenty two, a couple of years from now. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to make sure that our rate of innovation increases,
Speaker 2: it doesn't decrease. This is really essential. In fact, if
Speaker 2: we do not see something close to an expontential improvement
Speaker 2: in our rate of innovation, we will not reach Mars.
Speaker 2: Like a pure linear doesn't get there. Not not, well,
Speaker 2: I'll be down anyway before it gets there. It's pure linear,
Speaker 2: it's exponential. I think we could get to Mars. We
Speaker 2: could probably send an uncrewed mission there in maybe four years.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a mass contraction every twenty six months.
Speaker 2: There's one this year, so that means in a couple
Speaker 2: of years Nail is another one, and then four years
Speaker 2: is another one. I think we've got a fighting chance
Speaker 2: of making the that second Mars transfer window.
Speaker 1: So one thing that is really amazing about SpaceX to
Speaker 1: those of us who have experienced in the aerospace industry
Speaker 1: is the rate of innovation. Uh you know, Okay, last
Speaker 1: time you spoke to the Mars Society Convention was twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Since then, you've made the Falcon i'm usable, introduced Falcon
Speaker 1: Heavy Crew Dragon a satellite constellation, and you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of developing Starship. So what what is your you know,
Speaker 1: what would you say is your methodology that allows you
Speaker 1: to innovate so swiftly?
Speaker 2: I don't really know. We're focused on like scept iportant
Speaker 2: to have that have the objective you right, That's why
Speaker 2: I was talking so much about the importance of making
Speaker 2: wealth Mars, a self sustaining, pulling, self sustaining city on Mars.
Speaker 2: If that's the objective, then obviously, you know, just putting
Speaker 2: some satelli smoll good or it's not that that's not important.
Speaker 2: You have to achieve full and rapid reusability. Emphasize quill
Speaker 2: and rapid reusability is only relevant to the degree is
Speaker 2: rapid and complete.
Speaker 5: And uh.
Speaker 2: And then you also have to do obital refilling. This
Speaker 2: is essential as well. And uh and then propellant production
Speaker 2: on Mars also essential. So uh, you know, and with
Speaker 2: that as the goal, then you know that that that
Speaker 2: means that that that that creates I think a good
Speaker 2: forcing function for radical innovation, because in the absence of
Speaker 2: radical innovation, we have no chance of meeting that goal.
Speaker 2: Whereas if I go simply you know, defeat Lucked and
Speaker 2: Boeing or something like that, that that we were probably
Speaker 2: achieved it that really wasn't even a thing, you know,
Speaker 2: I wish it was. We got like they're they're not
Speaker 2: really trying to do not even trying to do reusability,
Speaker 2: which is bizarre because they make planes that are re usable.
Speaker 2: So I mean, if they if they talked to the
Speaker 2: you know, if they talked to one of their customers
Speaker 2: buyas or a Lucky Fighter Dead or a Boeing aircraft, like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to sell you a seven thirty seven confused
Speaker 2: once and it's not seven thirty seven megs, but that
Speaker 2: that turns out that was a single use of a
Speaker 2: planet times but you really, uh, it would be an
Speaker 2: episode thing for them to sell a single use aircraft,
Speaker 2: but they feel quite comfortable with selling a single use
Speaker 2: rocket and anyway, But if I always simply we're going
Speaker 2: to have be the leaders in launching the conventional satellites
Speaker 2: that exist, we would probably approach that in on a
Speaker 2: sort of a logarithmic basis where you know you'd get there,
Speaker 2: and you sort of slowly make progress towards doing ten
Speaker 2: launches a year, twelve open launches a year, and while
Speaker 2: they do six or something like that. But since the
Speaker 2: goal is, hey, we need to make life multiplanter before
Speaker 2: it's too late and time really matters, so we're says us,
Speaker 2: it's like we're shooting for Mars, not just the moon.
Speaker 2: It's not much shoot for the moon, shoot from Mars
Speaker 2: and then and then the you know, these these competitive
Speaker 2: things are are kind of small things along the way.
Speaker 2: Unless somebody else is shooting from Mars, they will not
Speaker 2: be competitive with something as pedestrian as launching a few
Speaker 2: satellites into Earth. Over So, how how.
Speaker 1: Can the Mars Society help you?
Speaker 2: Well, I do think this. In order to for there
Speaker 2: to be a self sustained city on Mars, this we're
Speaker 2: going to need an intersection of sets here. One set
Speaker 2: is the set of people that want to go and
Speaker 2: can either find sponsorship. They can either afford it themselves
Speaker 2: or find government sponsorship or take out a loan, wherever
Speaker 2: the case may be. But somehow you've got to have
Speaker 2: the set of people who want to go to Mars
Speaker 2: and can and can come up with the funds somehow
Speaker 2: to do that, and then then you know it's I
Speaker 2: should say it's there's two sets desire to go to
Speaker 2: Mars and can afford to go to Mars. When when
Speaker 2: desire to go to the people who want to go
Speaker 2: to Mars and the people who can afford to go
Speaker 2: to Mars. When that intersection of sets reaches a million roughly,
Speaker 2: then I think we will have this city on Mars.
Speaker 2: So we need both the motivation and the you know,
Speaker 2: we need both the means and the way. I mean
Speaker 2: we need It's like we need people to.
Speaker 1: Want the will in the way.
Speaker 2: The will in the way, yes, exactly the way well
Speaker 2: as will as a way, but in this case we
Speaker 2: will end away. So when the will in the way intersect,
Speaker 2: then we will have it be of all the planet species.
Speaker 2: The will in the way must intersect. So I think
Speaker 2: the Martrostic can really help with the will.
Speaker 1: Okay, you provide the way, we'll provide the will.
Speaker 2: Yes exactly. Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, your assistant Jen told me earlier that you have
Speaker 1: a hard cutoff at the half hour. Is that true
Speaker 1: or do you want to stay and take some questions
Speaker 1: from the audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could do maybe five ten minutes of questions.
Speaker 1: All right, great, so we've got one hundred questions. So
Speaker 1: would Jim, do you want to read a question or two?
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure thing, hi Eland. My name is James Brooke.
Speaker 5: I'm from Seattle, Washington. Where's the best place to land
Speaker 5: on Mars? Do you think?
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm not super sure. I can tell you what
Speaker 2: the criteria are that you'd want you'd want to be,
Speaker 2: but anyway, I think the short answer is mid latitudes,
Speaker 2: probably on the north so you want to be close
Speaker 2: to ice. You don't be too you don't be too
Speaker 2: far away from the sun, so you can get sol
Speaker 2: the power. And you want to land at a low
Speaker 2: altitude so that you can take maximum effect of atmosphere breaking.
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 5: I like Milli's chasma. It's a nice little area at
Speaker 5: the bottom of Alice marineras their pressure is high.
Speaker 2: Okay, is there a lot of ice there?
Speaker 5: There's ice around there. We'd have to look for it though.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: That kind of brings me to my next question, and
Speaker 5: I'm going to turn it over to Carrie to ask
Speaker 5: you one. How would you prioritize like missions like two
Speaker 5: through ten. Are you going to focus on exploration or
Speaker 5: building up the infrastructure or.
Speaker 2: Science we're gonna put I think the first order of
Speaker 2: business is build a propellant plant. I mean, we can
Speaker 2: for sure a lot out a bunch of droids. You know,
Speaker 2: that's no problem. I think why not? You know, we're
Speaker 2: going you know, and probably if anyone wants to put
Speaker 2: their droid on, we can just take it. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's like, hey, it's basically a remote control car with
Speaker 2: sole power to remote control car, and we could provide
Speaker 2: the the communication relay, so you know, you could just
Speaker 2: basically connect to your car from your computer at home
Speaker 2: and you know, cruise your electric you could have legs
Speaker 2: to matter you're robo device slash car. That would pretty cool.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of to be worried about, like
Speaker 2: you know, life contamination. It's like listen, anything that can
Speaker 2: survive on Mars is very It's so freaking tough. It's
Speaker 2: insane that it is cold, and there's like a lot
Speaker 2: of UV radiation. And if it's not going to be
Speaker 2: too worried about anything, we sent it from Earth for
Speaker 2: that way. It's just tougher than anything on Earth. So
Speaker 2: but but I think the first word of business is
Speaker 2: we've got to build up propellant plant to make propellant.
Speaker 2: And this is we said, we've got to need a
Speaker 2: lot of energy. We've got to mine some ice and
Speaker 2: we've got you got CO two from the atmosphere. So
Speaker 2: from the ice, you got the H two. Find that
Speaker 2: H two with the two got c H four oh two.
Speaker 2: But that's a lot of energy and requite hard. I
Speaker 2: think to make that repellent plan to reliable. But that's
Speaker 2: the primary order of business. And then we crols to
Speaker 2: look around and see if you can learn anything from a
Speaker 2: scientific standpoint.
Speaker 5: Carrie, do you want to go next? Sure?
Speaker 4: Thank you, James. I'm Carrie Fade. I live in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us today, mister Musk. That we
Speaker 4: do have a lot of questions from thirteen fourteen year
Speaker 4: old so I'm just going to pick one and ask you.
Speaker 4: It's from a teenager and her name is Dara, and
Speaker 4: she wants to be an engineer and build starships and
Speaker 4: robots and her dream is working for SpaceX.
Speaker 1: What should she focus on to be an engineer?
Speaker 2: Well, I think this all kinds of engineering that's needed.
Speaker 2: So you don't have to be an aerospace engineer. You
Speaker 2: could be in electronics, the mechanical engineer, local engineer, it
Speaker 2: could be software engineer. I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 2: engineering basically almost any kind of engineering. We'll mean chemical engineering.
Speaker 2: I think also for figuring out how to make a
Speaker 2: good propellant depot or propellent production plan. And uh yeah,
Speaker 2: I think physics in general is a good background for thinking.
Speaker 2: You know, I just generally recommend people take physics closest
Speaker 2: because physics has the best tools for critical thinking.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Elon James.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks Kerry. Another question, the Boring Company, now, is
Speaker 5: that just kind of an outfit to build tunneling machines
Speaker 5: that can work on Mars.
Speaker 2: No, the Boring Company actually started as kind of a joke.
Speaker 2: And I for a lot a lot of times people
Speaker 2: would ask me, what, what do I think the opportunities
Speaker 2: are there, And for I don't know, five years or more,
Speaker 2: I kept saying, can someone please start a telling company?
Speaker 2: Because I think tunnels have a lot of opportunity for
Speaker 2: alleviating traffic in cities and just improving quality of life overall.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of streets you could turn
Speaker 2: into parks, you certainly wouldn't need parking. You could just
Speaker 2: park cars on the ground. So and I just everyone
Speaker 2: that I was joking, and I was, and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess we'll just see what it takes to drill
Speaker 2: take a tunnel. And and you know, all these like
Speaker 2: so cooled traffic experts and like haven't really made much progress. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, studies like LA and DC or SOLIW traffic nightmare.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, guys, well we've got such great ideas,
Speaker 2: when why is this little traffic nightmare? So if you
Speaker 2: built tunnels, you've got to go three D somehow, either
Speaker 2: underground or above ground, like either air or ground. And
Speaker 2: the problem with air is, like you know, any anything
Speaker 2: that can carry persons can generate a lot of noise
Speaker 2: and a lot of windforce, so and could fall in
Speaker 2: your head and also kind of not be good for privacy,
Speaker 2: and like you know, you're sitting in your backyard and
Speaker 2: something like flying over you, it's like not that cool.
Speaker 2: So the tunnels are working all those things there are
Speaker 2: also weather proof, you know, don't have many privacy issues,
Speaker 2: and safe anyway they will leave. They would make a
Speaker 2: big difference to traffic. And we have the first production
Speaker 2: tunnel or useful tunnel in Vegas that's going to open
Speaker 2: in a month or two, So a few months, I guess,
Speaker 2: and hopefully we'll be ready for prime time around the
Speaker 2: consumer electronic show. So and now for Mars, I think
Speaker 2: tunnels and dating in general is good, but you need
Speaker 2: to build a very light system compared to what would
Speaker 2: matters on Earth. You don't really care all that much
Speaker 2: about mass on Earth. You care a lot about masks
Speaker 2: going to Mars.
Speaker 5: Is it fair to say that you're learning some techniques
Speaker 5: that might apply to Mars with the boring.
Speaker 2: Comempany, Yeah, yeah, probably.
Speaker 5: When do you think Starship will be able to be
Speaker 5: demonstrating refeeling in low eerth orbit?
Speaker 2: I think we've got a shot at doing that in
Speaker 2: twenty two, about two years.
Speaker 5: And then when do you guys think you'll have a
Speaker 5: moonship prototype?
Speaker 2: Probably two or three years. As soon as you've got
Speaker 2: over refilling, you you can send significant payload to the Moon,
Speaker 2: like significant meaning one hundred tons of useful payload out
Speaker 2: of shot.
Speaker 5: So then from there, I think you mentioned Mars is
Speaker 5: a couple of years after that.
Speaker 2: It's only a couple years after that. Because the Mars
Speaker 2: transit window is every twenty six months, I think we
Speaker 2: maybe have a shot of standing or I send something
Speaker 2: to Mars in three years, but the windows is four
Speaker 2: years away because of the being in the different parts
Speaker 2: of this whole system.
Speaker 5: Carrie asked a question from a young person. I'd like
Speaker 5: to also ask, do you have any tips for young
Speaker 5: people who love Mars but don't know how to help
Speaker 5: with the settlement of Mars.
Speaker 2: Well, I think definitely, you know, anyone who is a
Speaker 2: strong advocate for Mars. I think this really makes a difference.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of times it's not even people
Speaker 2: aren't even thinking about it, and you know, you can
Speaker 2: talk to people at a party and they or talk
Speaker 2: to friends. I like, it's just even not even a
Speaker 2: topic of conversation. So I think it could really help
Speaker 2: if everyone out there who thinks this is important for
Speaker 2: the future of humanity and consciousness as a whole, to
Speaker 2: make it part of what people are thinking about, bringing
Speaker 2: up at parties and talking to friends and online. It's
Speaker 2: like it should be a thing that we do, and
Speaker 2: I think it's worth you know, maybe one percent of
Speaker 2: our resources at least, and that's not going to fundamentally
Speaker 2: change change things your quality of life if we have one.
Speaker 2: If we spend one percent of our resources, you know,
Speaker 2: much less than healthcare obviously, maybe probably even less than
Speaker 2: we spend on cosmetics. Frankly, then that that would be
Speaker 2: enough to make life Palti planetary. But we really need
Speaker 2: to make this a thing people talk about it at least
Speaker 2: one percent of the time, and that that would really matter.
Speaker 2: Like that, as we're talking about earlier, we need we
Speaker 2: need the will, which is, we need a critical mass
Speaker 2: of people wanting to make it happen, and then we
Speaker 2: need the way and Stays Basics is going to try
Speaker 2: hard to provide the way, and then once we show
Speaker 2: that there's a way, probably there'll be other companies that
Speaker 2: also try to do it as well. So we need
Speaker 2: the will in the way they can provide either. The
Speaker 2: will is extremely important. It makes a huge difference.
Speaker 5: What's the coolest part of starship develop I'm.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess the closet part of starship development is
Speaker 2: working with just a great team of engineers and coming
Speaker 2: up with interesting solutions. And you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: just fundamentally enjoyable. If you're working with a lot of good,
Speaker 2: smart people creatively towards solutions that have never existed before.
Speaker 2: That's very rewarding. So I guess probably like that the most.
Speaker 5: Can you talk a little bit about how Starship could
Speaker 5: be used for other destinations in the Solar System like
Speaker 5: Venus and the outer planets.
Speaker 2: The Starship is is definitely a general generalized ship. It
Speaker 2: basically can it's it solves for transport anywhere in the
Speaker 2: Solar System that where there is a solid surface to land.
Speaker 2: So if you can land there, we take there. We
Speaker 2: will also actually go into the atmosphere Venus for example,
Speaker 2: just like going to Orbit and uh and and perhaps
Speaker 2: to the upper atmosphere. Venus's atmosphere is extremely dense also
Speaker 2: quite hot. So because of that dense atmosphere, you could
Speaker 2: you could have something you could have a kind of
Speaker 2: like a some sort of dirigible, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: some kind of like like things that could float on
Speaker 2: Venus that could not float on in the atmosphere because
Speaker 2: of the dense atmosphere, So you con could have been
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not a super friendly place. And then
Speaker 2: like Mercury is super hot. I think that we could
Speaker 2: go to Sarahs or any of the asteroids, the moons
Speaker 2: of Jupiter or the quite high radiation around there, and
Speaker 2: then out to Saturn, you know, eventually getting out to uh,
Speaker 2: you know, the sort of caper belt or cloud and
Speaker 2: that kind of thing the outer Solar System. So so starship,
Speaker 2: once you have for pount depots, you can kind of
Speaker 2: like planet hop or moon hop around the Solar System.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not a vehicle that would enable us
Speaker 2: to go interstellar, but it's that that's a that's a
Speaker 2: that's a tough one, but we need to make this
Speaker 2: the leap. We're going to another planner first. Once we
Speaker 2: are multiplanet species will create a forcing function with the
Speaker 2: rapid improvement of spaceflight, and and we'll figure out new
Speaker 2: technologies that will ultimately allow us to go to other
Speaker 2: star systems.
Speaker 1: What do you look for in the people you hire,
Speaker 1: especially the engineers.
Speaker 2: Really just look for evidence of exceptional ability. So it's
Speaker 2: not or at least aspirationally like sometimes these things get
Speaker 2: messed up in recruiting, or the recruiting fault of beings
Speaker 2: ends up being wrong, like sometimes wonder with Tesla, if
Speaker 2: Nikola Tesla applied to Tesla, would we even give him
Speaker 2: an interview? It's not clear. You know, this guy came
Speaker 2: from like some weird college and somewhere in eastern Europe.
Speaker 2: He's got some odd mannerisms. Now, we don't know if
Speaker 2: we should give an interview like I worry that that's
Speaker 2: actually what we do instead of like react, it should
Speaker 2: be like, man, Nichola, this this this kid is super smart.
Speaker 2: What does he want? We'll pay him anything. That should
Speaker 2: be that that should be the reaction if Nicola Tesla applies,
Speaker 2: you know, to Tesla ironically. But so, but I can
Speaker 2: tell you the intent is we're looking for evidence of
Speaker 2: exceptional ability. Uh. And it really doesn't matter if you
Speaker 2: want to graduate high school or college or anything. We're
Speaker 2: just looking for evidence of exceptional ability such that it
Speaker 2: would be a good predictor for doing exceptional things to SpaceX.
Speaker 1: All right, you have some more questions from the audience
Speaker 1: the gym.
Speaker 5: I've got one. So, have you thought about indication that
Speaker 5: works between Earth and Mars and kind of I mean
Speaker 5: you're working on starlink, what about like an Internet around Mars?
Speaker 5: Have you thought about that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean you could certainly do some variant of starlink
Speaker 2: probably would probably have to be the last question, because
Speaker 2: I've got a bunch of things to pall that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you could just do it version of starlink around Mars
Speaker 2: and then you just need a big laser coming from Earth.
Speaker 2: Probably want it to be an orbit so it doesn't
Speaker 2: get atmospheric diffraction or attenuation. You want to go from
Speaker 2: a big laser from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, and
Speaker 2: then you're gonna need some relay stations for when Mars
Speaker 2: is on the other side of the Sun, so you
Speaker 2: can't just shoot a laser through the Sun.
Speaker 5: All right, Thank you, Thank you so much, Elian. We're
Speaker 5: all pulling for you. Good luck, but appreciate it.
Speaker 2: And just like I, thank you to all the people
Speaker 2: out there that that are that are fighting hard for
Speaker 2: the course of Mars. There's not that many and we
Speaker 2: need more. Thank you, Thank you,