Speaker 1: Elon Musk is here.
Speaker 2: He is chief executive of two startup companies with bowl missions.
He leads Tesla Motors, the electric car company that has
attracted attention from both car enthusiasts and environmentalist as well.
The company's powerful rochister, which can travel from zero to
sixty in less than four seconds, is entirely powered by batteries.
The company plans to break into the mainstream modo market
with an electric sedan as early as twenty eleven. Mosk
is also a found to see of Space Exploration Technologies,
a company trying to slash the cost of space travel.
Last year, the company signed an agreement with NASA to
send cargo to the International Space Station and if that
is not enough. He's also chairman of a growing company
called Solar City that installs solar panels on homes and businesses.
He has thrived in Silicon Valley one of the co
founders of PayPal, the online payments company that eBay bought
for one point five billion dollars in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: I am pleased to have him here at this table
for the first time.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Thank you, thanks for having me. I've been a
big find of the show for a long time.
Speaker 4: Let's just talk about you first, so that if the
audience does not know growing up in South Africa. Yeah yeah,
and why how how did you end up in Canada?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess growing up in South Africa, I was
actually it was very technology oriented and I taught myself
how to program computers, mostly because I wanted to program games.
And I when when I was about twelve, program sold
my first game, and whenever I'd read about technology and
great innovation, it's it was coming from from the United States, and.
Speaker 1: So it was, you know, that's where I wanted to be.
Speaker 3: And I tried to convince my parents to move move there,
and uh, neither of them would They would have wahed.
I tried my mother trying to find neither would would
do it. My mother later moved back to initially Canada
and then and then the US. And so when I
was seventeen, as soon as I got my Canadian passport,
three weeks later, I was in Canada.
Speaker 4: So here you are, and you come to Canada and
make it to the United States, and then you and
and several other guys come together and create PayPal right
and you sell it to eBay for one point whatever.
Speaker 1: It was five billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so after PayPal, Uh that that gave me, you know,
a fair bit of capital. And uh, there were there
were there were three areas when as in college, there
were three areas that I though would most affect the
future of humanity and and those were the Internet, the
transition to a sustainable energy and transportation sector. And the
third was space exploration and particularly the extension of life
to multiple planets. And I didn't ever expect to be
involved in the third one, but but it just that
seems to.
Speaker 1: Me that's something that would be very important for the future.
Speaker 3: And with the capital I got from the sale of PayPal,
I was able to go into both those those areas.
And uh and so hint hents uh SpaceX and and
in the space and then in in the sustainable energy
and transportation you've got Solar City and and Tesla.
Speaker 1: We to talk about space exploration just for a moment.
Speaker 4: How is it going in terms of creating the systems
that will engage in space exploration, not just for governments
and not just for NASA, but for private citizens as well.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: You have to divide the efforts that are going on
into what isn't an orbit class effort versus a sub
orbital class effort, and there's really a very big difference.
But the general public doesn't understand the difference between getting
to space and getting to getting to orbit, and so
it's important to make that distinction. To do a suborbital flight,
you need a terminal velosity of around mark three. To
get to orbit you need a terminal polosophy of mark
twenty five. It's a huge, huge difference. And because the
energy required to do that scales with the square of
the velocity, So suborbital maybe nine units of energy, orbit
is six hundred and twenty five units of energy, So
it's only about one and a half percent of the
energy of orbit is required to get to SubOrbit. So
that there's there are a number of efforts in the
suboverval category that certainly could grow one day to to orbital.
Jeff Bezos has an effort, and uh, I know that
that's something that that's Ranson involved in this. Branson absolutely,
not so much directly from the technology standpoint, but from
he's he's funding that development at Scales Composits in California.
Speaker 1: What are you doing? So we're in the we're in
the in the in the orbit class.
Speaker 3: And that's it's it's a lot more capital and and
uh and and and that's really where you're sort of
pushing the ragged edge of of what's what's physically possible.
Speaker 1: And uh, last year we got to orbit uh with
for the first.
Speaker 3: Time with with our rocket and UH that was certainly
a huge relief and a milestone.
Speaker 1: And so what's the next step, You're gonna rocket into orbit?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so next month we were putting a satellite for
Malaysia into orbit uh and then from Malaysia form Formulasia
Malasian satellite. And but in the rocket business, the rocket
company does launch. It's not like the airline business. So
you don't sell the rocket, you sell the launch. And
and then later this year we'll be launching out big
rocket from Cape Canaveral. That's the Falcon Mine and that's
the one that's going to be servicing the space station
among other things.
Speaker 4: Is there a philosophy here that somehow the private sector
can do a lot more than than it has done
in in areas that seem because of them because of
the size related reserved for government.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, the private sector is very good at at
optimization and an innovation. I mean, private sector is generally
better doing things than the government. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's that's fair to say.
Speaker 3: But you know, there are certain things that that that
the government that that asks through to the government, like
basic research and that sort of thing. But yeah, so
as far as uh, space, the reason that there hasn't
been a huge number of a big improvement in the
space industry, I think it's because of it's very difficult
for it is create a destruction process to to to
coming to effect because it is such a significant amount
of capital that's needed to start a rocket company, and
it's a very difficult technical challenge. And the number of
people that that really understand rocketry in the world is
a very small number. So it's it's just it's really
a huge barrier to entry and and that's why we
haven't seen the forcing function of improvement that that there
should have been over the years.
Speaker 4: And your understanding came from sort of from this was
not what you studied in college. Well, I studied physics,
but I was studying physics and studying rocket science thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it gives you the basics, It gives you
the basics. Good framework, analytical framework. So, uh, but no,
I picked it up along the way. But what is
your core competent you think you? I think it's uh technology, technology, Yeah, yeah, technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If if, if something has to be designed and invented
and then and you have to figure out how to
ensure that the value of the thing you create is
greater than the cost of the inputs, then that's that's
probably my course skill.
Speaker 4: Now bring me to the car. And I drove a
car this afternoon. So far, so good, which was terrific.
It's the Roadster. Yeah. Where does that stand you? Obviously
I've been I've been in the Google parking lot. Yeah,
you're seen a few that I've seen a few there. Yeah,
I'm sure that's true another place in Silicon Valley. I
don't know whether it's particularly a car that appeals to
people in Silicon Valley because of interest in technology and
high performance and lots of other things, or or what
whether there are a lot of rich people and who
willing to spend that kind of money for something they
think is on the cutting edge of causes A believe
in sustainable energy. Right, tell me about how where you
are in this development of this electric car which has
most of all this extraordinary sort of power.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Yeah, zero to takes sixty times a
three point nine Seguis and.
Speaker 1: The roast is extraordinary.
Speaker 4: When you think about the sports car, isn't there anything
else that's out on the road today.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In fact, on the top gear test track, our standard
roads to beats the Porsche GT three exactly, which is
one that reference, and the roads total to even better.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But you've also said, in terms of where you want
to go that that developing a high performer sports car
is not what this is about.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it is about something else. And you want to
develop a sedan. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The whole purpose behind Tesla, the reason I've put so
much of my time and money it's helping create the
business is is we want to serve as a catalyst
for accelerating the electric car revolution.
Speaker 1: The price of gas.
Speaker 3: At the pump does not reflect the true cost of
gasoline because you have a consumption of.
Speaker 1: A public good.
Speaker 3: It's one of the most It's really a common problem economos.
You have the same thing in fishing, where because there's
no cost to fishing stocks, people just over fish and
you have disaster that ensues. And here we're not paying
for the cost of this year two concentration in the
oceans and the atmospheres. We're not paying for all these
the ancillary effects of the wars and all the other
things at the gas prompt So you effectively have a
subsidy taking place at the gas comp because of that.
So the only way to bridge that is with innovation
is to try to try to make electric cars better
sooner than they would.
Speaker 4: Otherwise be this Suppose this, this is a hypothetical which
it may or may not speak to the point.
Speaker 1: But suppose fifteen.
Speaker 4: Years ago, let's say Bill Clinton as president, who talked
about the road to the twenty first cent fion and
all of that.
Speaker 1: Suppose he had said, I.
Speaker 4: Believe so much unsustainable energy that I want to make
a commitment and the federal government, using all of its resources,
will develop an electric car with appropriate battery power that
will change the face of automobile, the automobile industry in
the world. Was that very doable? Bill Clinton was elected
in nineteen ninety two, seventeen years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could have made a reasonably good electric car
around that time for a lot of investment.
Speaker 4: And should that have been done, should the US government
have made that kind of otherwise you will not be
able to change the driving habits of Americans.
Speaker 1: Was it a worthwhile expenditu or add that time, probably
would have been a worthwhile expenditure.
Speaker 3: But the thing that really helps electric cars is lithium
my own right?
Speaker 1: And when did that come around?
Speaker 4: I mean, explain why our batteries has always been the
great dilemma for developing an electric car.
Speaker 3: Sure well, the energy contained with their battery is so
much less than it's contained in gasoline that I mean,
it's really almost it's hard to quite describe. Another way
to put it is the Tesla battery pack in the roadstuff,
which is the most advanced batory pack in the world.
The common reference is to call what is actually a
cell a battery, right, So a cell is the little
single kin of chemicals. And then if you have multiple cells,
that's that's what actually a battery. Right, That's that's virtually
what a battery means, multiple cells, multiple cells. And then
and usually as the batteries get bigger and bigger, they
get harder and harder to deal with. So the cell
that we use as a commodity cell, it's bid anywhere
pretty much and it's and it's the same sort of
thing that's in any one of a number of laptops.
That the challenge is combining those cells into and having
thousands of them, making sure they're safe, making sure that
they'll last for two hundred thousand miles or one hundred
thousand over bumps and potholes and extremes of temperature, and
safe in a crash, and that that compounds the problem massively,
and you've got to make sure the charges and temperatures
balanced across the whole thing. So the difficulty is really
at the pack level much more than it is at
the cell level, and that's really where where the single
biggest area of Tesla's expertise, although I should point out
the Tesla also has we designed to build the motor
and the power electronics, and then the software that manages
the whole thing, so that those are important too, But
the battery is the single most important thing. And the
Tesla battery pack to reference to gasoline, it weighs about
one thousand pounds and it has the energy content of
two and a half gallons of gasoline. So so that
means you've got to have a lot of charges. Well,
what that means is that but there's there's an advantage
that that. That's because the the consumption of that energy
is much more efficient in an electric car. And this
and this is I'll get to. You know why why
is the Tesla roads twice as efficient as as a Prius.
Speaker 1: Which is obviously not as sports car? Right?
Speaker 3: And the reason is because an electric motor is fundamentally
super efficient at turning energy into motion.
Speaker 1: So a good electric motor.
Speaker 3: Such as the one that we have in the Tesla Roadster,
is about ninety percent efficient at turning the Christie into motion,
whereas a gasoline internal combustion engine is somewhere typically in
the range of around seventeen or eighteen percent. Most of
what it does is generate heat. So even though it's
only two and a half gallons gasoline, that two and
a half gallons of energy content goes really far compared
with you know, if you had.
Speaker 4: If that was okay, compared to the Priest, but also
compared to the new GM volt, Right, how does it
do in comparison with the volt?
Speaker 1: The vault is a different architecture it uses.
Speaker 3: It's a plug in hybrid architecture, so it's a I
think about a forty miles or so battery back what
they say, and then there's an engine with a generator
that allows you to go beyond the forty miles, right,
and whereas ours pure electric and the strategy that we've
decided to hew to is a pure electric strategy. And
I mean, I've been criticized sometimes for responding to questions
like yours to explain why we've gone to electric, and
then people have taken that to be an attack on
on on the Vault, which is is not the case.
I I hope the Bolt succeeds, and I think it
can be a pretty good car kind of I don't
take this as an attack U totally. It's it's it's
not but that. But I just wanted to to put that.
Speaker 4: And what I hope to do in this conversation with
you is figure out what it is you've done, because
you've got a fair amount of attention, so figure out
why you're not further along than you are, or figure
out why you are and what your expectations are to
do when and where is the game for you.
Speaker 3: I think it's taken a while for the industry to
come around to this point, but I think it's it's
largely at this point, it's it's it's almost become conventional
wisdom that the future is electric cars. The only question
is this interim period, of this transitional period. But if
you look at the pace of battery improvement, it's clear
that that's what I mean, it's inevitable the future will
be entirely electric.
Speaker 4: And the iron of all this conversation is that in
the last year, a year before it's bankruptcy, General Motors
had announced that the bold you know, it was.
Speaker 1: The key to their future, right as an holm Bill company, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean one area of Christism I think that it
is valid regarding Jim is have.
Speaker 1: Them come to that conclusion.
Speaker 3: By the way, well, they should have probably done a
prius or something like that. But I think if you know,
they had the e.
Speaker 4: V one right right exactly, which didn't work, didn't work,
but didn't make it for reasons I'm not clear, right,
and you know as a marketing success.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chris Pain did a movie Who Killed the Electric
Car about it, and it was sort of trying to.
Speaker 1: Viiscia that issue.
Speaker 3: But I think it's it's notable that in that movie
it shows that the customers who had the EV one,
the cause had to be taken away from them and crushed,
and they held a candlelight vigil.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: If you have people that really love a product to
the degree that they're willing to hold a candle lit
vigil for it, that that says, hey.
Speaker 1: Maybe you should make an EV too. It certainly does
say that. You know.
Speaker 4: So the car that I drove today coached to two,
I think, I mean, I think it was a roaster
before this, this is right, second iteration of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, came came through production.
Speaker 3: What year the first roaster number one, the first first
production roster which was fully deplotment of transport.
Speaker 1: Legal and all that sort of stuff at all the standards. Yeah, Yeah,
it was Februar of last year, and that was my car.
That was the car, your car meaning what the one?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so then you decided immediately to make improvements
on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely it was. It was a little little
rough going in the beginning, and we had some issues
with some of the powertrain components. In fact, not that
not the hard stuff, but the stuff that's sort of
theoretically easier, and you know, we're able to fix those
and get get production wrapped up, and now we're at
the point where we're delivering about twenty to twenty five
cars a week.
Speaker 4: You know that Tata Motors obviously, you know, and I
know take for a moment what he's doing in India. Yeah,
developing a little sedan for twenty three hundred dollars none, right, right, right?
Where do you put that in the whole equation of
where the future of cars are?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's a good idea to have affordable cause.
Speaker 3: You know, I think I think we're with the problem
with with something something like like the Nana, which I think,
by the way, I'll say a problem. I think it's
a great idea. And Jack Russian is a gentleman. The
skull and all of those are. Yeah, it's hard not
to yeah, exactly. I think where it's going to come
challenging the futures. As the price of gasoline rises, the
cost of acquiring the car is much less of an
issue than the cost of operating in that car, right,
And uh, And I think oil.
Speaker 4: Is inevitable, it's already moving back up. And you, yeah,
do you have some assumptions in your own calculations as
to where oil will level off.
Speaker 3: I think it will exceed that the numbers we've seen
last year one hundred and forty four. Oh yeah, sure, absolutely,
I think we'll see it sort of approach two hundred
dollars and beyond.
Speaker 1: By twenty ten, eleven, twelve somewhere.
Speaker 3: Now, I'd say, whenever the next boom is so as
they say the next boom is four years from now,
it'll be around that around that point.
Speaker 4: Of all your businesses, which one do you care the
most about?
Speaker 3: Well, right now my time is split roughly evenly between
Tesla and SpaceX, so it's I guess it would be
pretty pretty even between the two. And that Solar City
is doing great on its own, and the two co
founders that are living to Peter Rve have done a
phenomenal job and thankfully it requires very little my attention
right now.
Speaker 4: The reason to create a sports car a roaster as
the first stage of this is because it attracts attention
or what oh.
Speaker 1: So good, great, great question.
Speaker 3: So because I feel often misinterpret why we have created
a sports car because they will say.
Speaker 4: You know, the implication will be cars for rich guys,
is that I saw the energy from.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, And they would sort of like that that
I feel that there was somehow a shortage of sports cars.
Speaker 1: For rich guys or something like that.
Speaker 3: And that was the part and not only if you're
if any new technology is expensive when it starts out,
and you can point pretty much anything. And and because
the first thing that that you, the engineers are trying
to do is make it work. And then when you
made it work, make it work, then you optimize and
new optimize and new optimized. And you look at the
early days of computers or cell phones or almost anything,
even the early days of gasoline cars. There used to
be toys for rich people until they were made affordable
and mass products. Yeah, and and and and then you
combine them with and and then you combine that with
the fact that we were just a little startup and
you know, there's there's just no way that we could
afford a billion dollars to make a giant car plant
that that would uh make you know, hundreds of thousands
of cars a year, because that's the kind of volume
you have to get to to make to make cheap cars,
and uh and then and it's also the first iteration
of technology.
Speaker 1: So we had both a.
Speaker 3: Volume problem and a new technology problem, and so that
naturally that you have to reach scale. You have to
reach scale, and you have to work the bugs out
of the system, and so you've got to make it
and you want to make mistakes at a small scale.
Speaker 4: Okay, So how's that going. Reaching scale and being able
to create a marketing, a business plan, they'll enable you
to reach a large audience, you know, and create and
continue the development of the technology.
Speaker 3: They'll make it even more attractive. It's going really well. Actually,
so it was. We had a few bumpy, bumpy years
in the beginning, but at this point we're producing at
a steady state of about an annualized production rate of
about a thousand roads to sports cause a year. We
unveiled at saidan a few months ago, which is a
much more functional car, and it's a fifty thousand dollars car,
so it's basically it's about half the price of the
roads and.
Speaker 4: The production run, say for the year twenty ten, for
the roads, that will be about one thousand, and for
the sedan.
Speaker 1: The sedan is only coming out in two years.
Speaker 4: Twenty eleven will be the first year, right, and what's
the projection for that.
Speaker 3: We're expecting to do twenty thousand units a year for
the Sedan. It's always difficult to predict these things exactly,
but our target is we'll produce a total of about
one hundred thousand of them in about twenty thousand a year,
and they're going to be many variations on that. We'll
do an suv and we'll do you know, other things,
and then we'll do our third generation platform beyond the.
Speaker 1: Sedan.
Speaker 3: The model of Sedan will be a sub thirty thousand
dollar car. So we're trying to get to mass production
as soon as we possibly can. And but that's both
from the cars that we make ourselves as well as
the cause we do in partnership with others, like the
Dialer deal you may have read about.
Speaker 1: And so how do you measure the odds of success personally?
Speaker 3: I would say success for me for Tesla is that
we've accelerated the advent of electric cars by at least
five years.
Speaker 4: That's at the goal to accelerate the advent of electric
cars or to create a great electric car company.
Speaker 1: I think the two are anonymous. I mean or I
mean that you do one, you do the other.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, And why is it that it's happening by
a guy who created a startup in two thousand and three,
rather than a whole range of sort of industrial autombile
companies around.
Speaker 1: The world, not just here.
Speaker 4: Theod is a successful car company and their own Chrysler right.
Speaker 3: Well, disruptive technology like where you really have a big
technology discontinuity, it tends to come from new companies. You know,
you could ask the same question of why does Google
come from Google?
Speaker 1: Larry and Lari.
Speaker 3: By the way, I've known Larry since before he got
venture funding for for Google.
Speaker 1: Man is he But is he an investor in Tesla?
He is, Larry?
Speaker 3: Answergar investors in Tesla and they drive them or don't drive? Yeah,
they drive them?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Uh it because some of the criticism that comes at
you and the company now is that that you went
out to seek a lot of external financing and did
not reach your goals.
Speaker 1: Well, we we're taken as longer to reach our goals.
Speaker 4: But what was it raise one hundred million to raise
forty or what was it?
Speaker 1: What was the goal? Well?
Speaker 3: I think it's you know, some of some of the
stumbles were were silly mistakes we made ourselves.
Speaker 1: Some of them were market externalities, and.
Speaker 3: We were getting ready to raise or we're in the
facets of raising about one hundred million dollars round. That
began in sort of the summer of last year and
then ran into uh, you know four or five hurricane.
Speaker 1: An economic circumstance that took everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so so that that forced us to scale
back our plans a little bit. We had to do
a layoff, and we had to raise the money internally
from existing investors. I had to put up a lot
of the money personally, and uh think there was just
no money and so that that was it was sort
of a hair raising time for the company. But at
this point we're actually in good shape. We expect to
be profitable in the third quarter.
Speaker 1: And that comes from the success of the roaster, yeah,
and the roads.
Speaker 3: Then we also have a power train supply business to
Diamoner as well for the electric smart that we're doing
with them.
Speaker 1: Make the smart car an electric car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the smart car was always intended to
be an electric car, but they can never get they
can never get the battery right. So a year and
a half ago we met with Daimler and that I
was trying to convince them to work with us. We actually,
I mean we've really tried hard to work with a
lot of different car companies and what happened, Well, I
guess they think, well, this took the attitude of what,
you know, what if some little startup in Silicon Valley
know that that that.
Speaker 1: We don't know or couldn't do, and what would.
Speaker 3: You say to them, Well, we'd say, drive our car
and look at our technology. And I don't know, it
just never seemed to sort of sink in. But the
diamer uh that put diamelet did. Actually, so I I went,
I went through Stuttgart, went out on the way to
India actually uh and met with the doctor Waver, the
head of Global R and D and and and we
had conversations.
Speaker 1: Said, well, what does it take for us to to
work together. We'd love to do something.
Speaker 3: We'd love to do something with, you know, an affordable
mass market car that you know we ourselves couldn't do
right now because we don't have the cast of it. Yeah,
and and and so I said, what about you know
what what about electric smart?
Speaker 1: And because the Smart was always intended.
Speaker 3: To be an an electric car, and and and what
would take for us to work together? And he said, well,
if you could do a prototype that would that would
really go a long way. So we did. We worked
really hard. The power trying team led by JB. Stravel
don awesome job. And forty days later when when when
they came out to visit, we said here's the car,
take a drive, and they really liked what they saw,
and so what did they do?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 3: Then they said, okay, well let's let's take it sort
of another step further, and that they gave us a
little little R and D contract and eventually got to
the point where where we got a contract for to
supply it thousand cars for them and then if we
do well and that we'll we'll potentially go into you know,
tens of thousands of cars.
Speaker 1: So so that but this is a car.
Speaker 3: That everyone could afford and and could hopefully come quite soon.
Speaker 4: Do you have a profile of the people who you
think will want to buy these roasters?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's it's the kind of person who who likes
the performance car.
Speaker 1: Maybe they want a Porsche or you know.
Speaker 4: You know Lamborghini or you know this car is actually
faster than Lamborghini zero sixty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's I think faster than almost almost
anything anything I know of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's like things that the really sort
of million dollars supercars. Obviously those will those will be
like Frienzo exactly. But but it's it's pretty much faster
than any normal, normal sports car, and.
Speaker 1: And it's really easy to drive.
Speaker 3: If you want a hyperformance car with a clean conscience,
this is the only option. And the sedan is going
to be for someone that wants a great sedan and
also you know, clean conscience, and it's it's going to
be cheap and operate.
Speaker 1: Then.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you are, as you well know, a controversial
guy as well.
Speaker 1: I try to I try not to be controversial. Controversy
it finds you.
Speaker 4: It finds you because you think big. You're a software
guy who has been successful in the private sector. Yeah,
you know, and see no reason you can't do things
that other people have not been able to do. No,
a lot of how large the corporate enterpise create the
best electric car or be put privately astronauts in space,
which you say you will do in two years.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it sort of depends on when NASA asked
us to do that. If so, if NASA tunes on
the access to do that this year, which we're hopeful
that they will. The White House has a convened a
panel on the future of human spaceflight that that panel
is going to make their recommendations in a few months.
Speaker 1: I hope though some of those recommendations will be favorable to.
Speaker 3: SpaceX, because the alternative is, if SpaceX doesn't do it,
we will be entirely dependent on the Russians to carry
our astronauts to the space station after twenty ten, and
billions of dollars will be spent on essentially a soul
source situation to the Russians, which I think is outrageous.
Speaker 4: And you haven't taken advantage of the opportunity to do
in space yourself, have you?
Speaker 1: No? I have not. Have you wanted to?
Speaker 3: If it was if it was purely a matter of
personal interest, I would I would have done it already.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I do want it, I want interested
in that or no is expressed some interesting, some interesting.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, I would like to go at some point,
but it's I'm also in the point where it's difficult
for me to take personal risks.
Speaker 1: I used to take a lot of personal risks of children.
Speaker 3: I've got my kids and responsibilities for the companies as well,
and so if I, if I do things for they
have personal risk. At this point, I risked more than
my own moment.
Speaker 1: You've had.
Speaker 4: How many trips do you have? One set of trips
on one set of twins?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have the twins Smithy in New York.
Speaker 1: Actually, so they like they like the car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they can't drive and they can't go on
the road, so because it doesn't you know, it's not
very kit friendly, but.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's not very good friendly. You're right.
Speaker 4: The Sedan will be ideal for them. So much success
to you. Thank you for coming, thank you for joining us.
See you next time.