Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being with us. You're at
Wired Science, Well, thank you for having me. I need
to first lay a little bit of a foundation here.
Two days into your physics program at Stanford University, you
quit school to start a company called zip to a
media company, which you sold a few years later for
a paltry three hundred and seven million dollars. Then four
years later eBay buys PayPal. Is that correct? A company
that you established or helped you establish as work. And
now you've taken those two enormous successes and you set
your ambition on space. How did you go from online
payment systems to building a spaceship? Essentially?
Speaker 2: Well, when I.
Speaker 3: Graduated from college, there were three areas that I thought
will be most impactful to the future of humanity. The
three were the Internet, space exploration, and then changing the
economy from a mine and burn hydrocobony based economy to
one which is cellar electric, which I think is going
to be the primary, but not exclusive means of energy
and transportation.
Speaker 1: Have we screwed it up so badly here on this
planet that our only hope is to build a new
civilization out there.
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
Speaker 3: Actually, I'm quite optimistic about the future of humanity on Earth.
Speaker 1: You are, yeah, absolutely, So what is the benefit to
humanity then to inhabit Mars, which is really what is
an ambition of yours? Well, I think if you consider
two paths, one where we're forever confined to Earth and
the other where we are space frank civilization out exploring
the stars, I think the latter is far more exciting
and will result in a richer and more diverse human experience.
How can you do that better than NASA?
Speaker 3: Well, well, you know, NATA is a customer of ours,
So there's a confusion in the public mind that perhaps
a company like SpaceX is competing with NASA, but in fact, NASA.
Speaker 2: Is a customer of ours.
Speaker 3: So we're actually providing services to NASA launch services.
Speaker 2: And when the.
Speaker 3: Shuttle retires in twenty ten, so starting in twenty eleven,
SpaceX's a rocket will replace the Space Shuttle in so
the space station with astronauts and Cogo transportation.
Speaker 1: The name of your rocket ship is called the Falcon Explorer.
Speaker 3: Is that it, Well, the Falcon nine, the Falcon nine, yeah,
is the rocket, and then the spaceship is Dragon Dragon. Yeah,
So the Falcon nine rocket lifts the Dragon spaceship. And
this Dragon spaceship is what goes to the space station
and then returns to Earth.
Speaker 1: So it transports the falcon as almost cargo.
Speaker 3: Then, so yeah, the Falcon nine is kind of like
the Semi okay or something like that, and transit the
falcon Ie booster rocket takes the Dragon spaceship to space
and drops it off. Then it goes to the space station,
but it ducks with the space station, transfers astronauts or
resupply you know, cargo, whatever whatever the case may be,
and then the Dragon spacecraft returns to Earth.
Speaker 1: Reading some of the speeches that you have given in
your your career, and you mean like that, you're particularly
twenty three years You're twenty three years old.
Speaker 2: I'm actually twelve, you're twelve.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you look terrific, But you
have said that we got law along the way with
our space program. What do you mean by that? Right?
Speaker 3: I think I think that was in some of my
congressional testament I gave a few speeches to Congress. Well,
what I mean by that is in nineteen sixty nine
we were able to go to the Moon, and here
we are over three decades later and we can barely
get to lower orbit. And I think by any measure,
that is a step backwards.
Speaker 1: Is that for a lack of leadership or technology.
Speaker 3: I think we made the wrong technological choices. And I
think there was also a lack of will at the
highest levels of government to take the next step and well,
at least go at least stay on the Moon and
peraps build a base there and then go beyond the
Moon to Mars. And if you look at the news
articles in the late sixties early seventies, the expectation was
that by now in the twenty first century, we would
have a Moon base and probably even a Mars bace.
And I think if you'd asked anyone at that point
in time whether we would be unable to go to
the Moon and have no and not have been to Mars,
think they would I think you're crazy.
Speaker 1: Do we need a leadership in that realm? Do we
need a John F. Kennedy who sets a goal for
us when he said one one day man will walk
on the moon.
Speaker 2: Do we need that.
Speaker 1: Kind of leadership for this technology to move forward in
that big step.
Speaker 3: I do think it's it's very important the president set
the priority and and determine that the goal.
Speaker 2: Uh you know that that reals nation will all aspire to.
Speaker 3: And you know, George Bush has his pluses and minuses,
but at least one plus is that he has helped
to steer the space program in a direction that that.
Speaker 2: More or less makes sense. You know.
Speaker 3: The only thing I would I would sort of argue
with is that I don't think we should be going
back to the Moon.
Speaker 2: I think we should be focused on Mars. I think
we saw the Do.
Speaker 1: You think that's a mistake focusing on the Moon?
Speaker 3: I do think I do think we should rather go
I think we should rather be focused on on Mars.
You know, the Moon is kind of like it's kind
of like the Arctic, and it's just it's just a
very barren place and very very little resources.
Speaker 2: It's small, it's not it's not really a place.
Speaker 3: That we could establish of the human civilization.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a there's a feeling of been there,
done that too with the Moon.
Speaker 3: Yes, we saw that movie of the Sexies, you know,
and the room makes never as good.
Speaker 1: Did we really go to the Moon?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 3: Yes, we definitely just wanted to the government is incapable
of suppressing a conspiracy of that.
Speaker 2: Mantor of that newture.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, This ambition to explore space absolutely entrepreneur. There's
there's quite a bit of competition out there. There's Jeff
Bezos with Blue Origin, There's Richard Branson with his Virgin
Galactic and I'm not talking about NASA either. There's Paul Allen,
there's the European Space Agency in Boeing and Lockheed Martin,
the Chinese, the Russians. Let's just throw all of them
into this a competitive field. How is SpaceX different? How
do you think you'll sort of surpass them?
Speaker 3: Well, you know you've You've listed a wide range of
entities there, and I think the differences are really different
depending upon which one you're referring to.
Speaker 1: The Well, let me ask you this question. Who is
your competition?
Speaker 2: We have no serious competition, No, not presently.
Speaker 1: Who's chasing you?
Speaker 3: Well, if you mean chasing and have and has a
serious chance of catching, then I think none that I'm
aware of. And by the say you guys kind of
a hack, then well, what Branson is doing, by the way,
I'm great admirer at Branson is really a much smaller
technological challenge.
Speaker 2: So their craft.
Speaker 3: Would be suborbital, so it would go to about mark three.
Our craft is orbital, it goes to mark twenty five,
so twenty five times to speed of sound. But that
doesn't describe the whole scale of difficulty because the energy
required to get those philosophies scales as the square of
the velocit. So to do what Branson is doing, you
need to say about nine units of energy. To do
what we're doing, you need six hundred and twenty five
units of energy. The difference is monumental, and then when
you Rehanner you have to you have to burn off
all that energy, so that double's the problem.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: So what Branson is known for a technological standpoint is
building something that can cross the English Channel. What we're
building is something that can circ navigate the globe. It's
a very different scale of technological difficulty. I still think
what he's doing is great, and by the way, I
bought a ticket on his effort. Yeah, yeah, I still
think it's great, but it's not in the same league technologically.
Speaker 1: So you're not particularly worried.
Speaker 3: Certainly, not about no sileinly not about that. Now, the
things that worry me are are we going to make
a mistake? The things that can really hurts face x
are I mean, our own foolishness, our own errors can
hurt us, but not none of the competition that I'm
aware of.
Speaker 1: So generally you're worried about what's in front of you,
not the other guy, And in fact, you probably don't
think about them in terms of how they criticize you
or what they think about you.
Speaker 3: I don't think, actually, I don't think there's much criticism.
I mean Boeing and Lockied of course that they would criticize,
but I don't think any of the entrepreneurial guys would
criticize what we're doing. And it certainly possibly I think,
you know, what Jeff Bezos is working on could ultimately,
I mean, he does have aspirations to get to over
and beyond. It's just that what they're doing right now
is sub orbittal and at the sort of lower technology level.
What I think about at basics is really entirely what
are we doing to ensure that our rocket is going
to be successful and that we are truly optimizing the
cost and ensuring a higher liability. I mean, that's just
a very very difficult problem. There's a reason why there's
an atomatic expression about rocket science being hard.
Speaker 2: It really is really hard.
Speaker 1: So rocket science really is rocket science.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks hard, and it's harder than it looks.
Speaker 1: What's the big goal here, what's the long term plan?
Speaker 3: Well, that the long term ultimate objective, the holy grail
is we would like to help make life multiplanetary.
Speaker 1: That's really what we'd like to do, so establish societies
on as many any planets as possible.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think there's only one possibility. But yeah,
I mean even if we can just go from one
planet to two, I think that's a pretty big step.
Speaker 2: And you'll start with well Mars. Mars is the only Bible.
Speaker 1: Viable planet, so multiplanetary life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, helped make life multiplanetary. I think that's an important thing.
Speaker 1: I don't think your goal is big enough. Hah, Yeah,
it's ambitious.
Speaker 3: Well, like I said, we don't expect to do it
single handedly, but we certainly would like to help make
it happen.
Speaker 1: It's fair to say you've made a fortune.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so if you have any reasonable standard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, those who work in science probably
understand your trajectory. But there are those who are watching?
Who would think if I made that money, I'd sit
on a beach, I'd drink beer, and I would just
watch the sunset, kind of like a Corona beer commercial.
Have you ever thought about that as a career option?
Speaker 3: You know, I find that really pretty boring, So that
would be torture. If I had to do that every day,
that would really be pretty awful for me.
Speaker 1: Is there something about startup businesses that really fuels your
desire to work?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess I really need to be preoccupied to
something and if I'm just sort of sitting there relaxing,
I can only do that for a very short period
of time and then it becomes unbearable.
Speaker 2: Although startups definitely have their highs and lows.
Speaker 3: And as a friend of mine, who is a good phrase,
you know, a startup business is like eating glass and
staring into the abyss.
Speaker 1: What is the criteria that you established for yourself or
a startup?
Speaker 2: I mean, why one business over another?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, for me, it's always about does what I'm doing matter?
If we are successful, does it matter to the world?
And so there are easier ways to make money than
starting a rocket company, or say a car company, or
even when I started an Internet company, because when I
started the first Internet company, nobody had made any money,
and it wasn't clear that anyone would make any money.
It was simply from the perspective of the Internet being
a very important thing and something that needed to be built,
and so I wanted to.
Speaker 2: Help hold it.
Speaker 1: Well, you touch upon something that's interesting is that there
is a benefiting humanity is a very integral part of
your criteria no matter what you're starting up. Yes, absolutely,
really not everybody has that as a prime interest, but.
Speaker 3: I think that's that's probably relatively unusual, although there are
many people that I know in Silicon Valley for whom
that is a significant motivation.
Speaker 1: You said in your endeavor here to explore space that
we are committed to failing in a new way, if
nothing else. What did you mean by that? Just just
how it sounds.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we're I mean we're committed to succeed.
Speaker 3: Really, but if we do fail, I would hope that
greatly stads to the body of knowledge such that those
who follow may make few mistakes.
Speaker 1: Now, if Mars were not enough you you are busy
here on earth, the world is not enough.
Speaker 2: That's for you?
Speaker 1: Where what have you no limits? My friend? Here on earth.
You are establishing a presence, certainly with Tesla Motors. Tell
us a little bit about that. This is your electric
car company wreck right, and this is no this is
no hybrid car you could buy on a car lot.
This thing goes from zero to sixty and four seconds?
Speaker 2: Is that? Yes? Absolutely is zero sixteen under four seconds.
Speaker 3: It's faster, a better acceleration than any port currently in
production and any Ferrari except the end Zoe.
Speaker 2: And it's twice the energy efficiency of a Prius.
Speaker 3: So it's you really have the moral high ground and
you get to, you know, leave the Ferrari guy in
your dest So.
Speaker 1: Well, let me start to be let me ask the obvious. Well,
and you don't look like one of those guys who's
trying too hard in Ferrari.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, you don't look like a jerk, you know you.
Speaker 1: Up right banana yellow Lamborghini or or absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean this something I just point out about Tesla,
which is we didn't you know Tesla is the first
car is a sports car, not because we think the
world lacks for a sports car, but because it is
the right entry point for the market. If you have
a new technology, the right place to enter is high
unit cost, low unit volume. Just as you know when
a new cell phone come out comes out, or a
new a new laptop or or some some new thing,
it tends to be expensive at first because they're figuring
out all the issues and it takes time to optimize,
and then over time that that technology will become cheaper
and cheaper. And so the model two of Tesla, UH,
maybe I'm leaping ahead here, but Model two of Tesla
is a forty nine thousand dollars four door, five passenger sedan,
and that's that's going to be obviously a much broader
market segment that that that can make use of that car.
And then model three is intended to be around a
thirty thousand dollars price point, and so that's that's really
affordable by by almost everyone who's who's who can buy
a new car. So the idea is to drive to
mass market as rapidly as possible, but only at the
pace at which the technology matures.
Speaker 1: So is Henry Ford and someone you admire.
Speaker 3: Well, I think Henry Ford made some very important contributions
to UH to business and obviously, you know, moving moving
manufacturing line and that sort of thing. So I think
you certainly worthy of admiration. Here's a bit of an
out duct, but you know, certainly noteworthy. But the interest
in Tesla's is not from the perspective of, you know,
the world needs another car company. It's more from the
perspective of we have a very important environmental problem that
needs to be addressed, which is driven by the burning
of fossil fuels and the increasing K two concentration in
the atmosphere and global climate change, which I think is
going to be one of the most significant issues of
the twenty first century. And the only way to really
get around that, in my view, is really with an
electric vehicle, and then you need to pair that up
with a zero mission power generation method such as solar power.
Speaker 2: I think is solar power is going to be a
really big deal.
Speaker 1: Tesla is not a hybrid car.
Speaker 2: Tesla's pure electric, pure electric.
Speaker 1: So help connect the dots from me, why aren't we
seeing Tesla cars on the car lots?
Speaker 3: Then, well, what's keeping the day them yet? So we're
just finishing up the development right now.
Speaker 1: And anybody can buy this, Yes, how will you?
Speaker 3: Actually we've almost sold out of two thousand and seven productions.
So if somebody doesn't want to buy next year's model,
they better act quickly.
Speaker 1: One of the primary complaints about hybrid vehicles is they're
not fast enough. You seem to overcome.
Speaker 3: You won't have any trouble with this. In fact, really
there's something uniquely better about electric vehicles, which is that
the talk response is immediate. So if you want to
pass someone, I mean you just the response to the
car is very immediate. It's just it's more fun to
drive an electric car than it is to drive a
gasoline car.
Speaker 1: You know, I was going to say that Tesla the car,
the name of the car company is no coincidence, is it.
We'll explain a little bit about that, right.
Speaker 3: The company is named after Nicola Tesla, who was an inventor.
He was originally from the sort of the area of
Yugoslavia and Europe, but he moved to America when he
was young and was an inventor of the ac induction motor.
Invented a lot of the principles of magnetism. So he
was a great man, a great, great inventor, and so
the company is named in honor of him.
Speaker 1: So these cars, the Tesla Roadster the first the first
issue of the Tesla Roster available in two thousand and seven. Yes,
in the spring the summer. How do you get on
the waiting list?
Speaker 2: Well, you buy the car.
Speaker 3: You basically put down a deposit, and we've actually can
you do that through the web. Yeah, we'll have by
the way customer centers all around the country. So we'll
have one in La, one of the various Cargo Miami,
New York, and eventually nationwide customer centers where somebody does
want to see the current person take a test drive
or see the car being worked on. I mean, we
have this idea for the way that the car is
a service, that it should be a really really pleasant experience.
So we have you know, some some some somewhere between
like a Starbucks and Apple store. So you go in
and you see the car being car's being worked on
behind a glass partition that would be your car you're
watching or somebody else's can. But it's really clean, it's
really clean, present bright. It'll be sort of a you know,
coffee bar available, you know, just to we really want
to have a very pleasant experience that that you don't
typically get if you go into a dealership.
Speaker 1: Have you heard from Toyota, Have you heard from General
Motors and Ford saying use the company for sale?
Speaker 3: Nobody's actually made a formal offer. But the interesting you know,
I think one of the one of the biggest values
that Tesla can Can can provide is serving as an
example to the rest of the auto industry because right now,
the order interest, you know, the big car companies believe
that a bible electric vehicle is not possible and be
if even if it was, people would buy it. So
we need to show that that need of those are true,
that the technology works, that people want to buy it,
and that will be the most effective way of really
driving change in the in the order industries by serving
as an example in that matter. And if we were
to sell the company to one of one of the
big car compans, I think it would really slow things down.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, you think so. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You're very busy enterprising the part of your company that
will explore space. You're very busy with this car company.
Where do you find time to be CEO of two
companies that size well.
Speaker 3: I should correct you that I'm CEO of SpaceX and
I'm chairmingan c of SpaceX and that is really my
day job.
Speaker 2: So I spend eighty percent of my time on SpaceX.
Speaker 3: Okay, I am the chairman and the principal owner of
Tesla Motors, but I do not run it on a
daily basis.
Speaker 1: You don't run that on a daily basis. Well, that
was really the question was how do you do how
do you run those two large enterprises on a daily basis?
I is it a couple of phone calls or the
Tesla f So how's it going? I'm busy without her
space right now, you guys got that covered.
Speaker 3: I spent about I spent about two two to three
days a month on Tesla related business and almost all
the rest of the time is on SpaceX.
Speaker 2: So SpaceX is very much my my day to day job.
Speaker 3: And then I provide product guidance, strategic guidance, and obviously
funding for for Tesla. Like Steve jobs, right, so he
runs Apple on a daily basis, but he also, you know,
has overside over Pixar's.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like that.
Speaker 1: And in your day to day and this is this
is one of those silly lifestyle questions. But how early
do you get up in the morning and where do
you go to work? Physically. Is it an office?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I go to work at SpaceX.
Speaker 1: How hourly do you get up in the morning?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not an early morning person, so so
a young like for young engineers and for inventors and creators,
they can sleep in until ten or eleven.
Speaker 2: We have no fixed hours at SpaceX.
Speaker 3: And I mean my personally, I would I tend to
get up around seven thirty or eight and be a
the office around you know, nine, nine thirty.
Speaker 2: But then I tend to state about it till about
eight pm. Okay.
Speaker 1: College students across America are saying, oh rats, I thought
he was going to say, like noon. But then you
go into an office and you sit with in a
separate office away from those who are working, or.
Speaker 2: Do you sit with No, I just have a cubicle
at SpaceX.
Speaker 1: You have a cubicle yeah, And are you surrounded by
your colleagues there?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: What is your hope in terms of the impact you
will leave on culture, this civilization, this world, global civilization.
What is it that you hope to leave here?
Speaker 3: Well, I think what I'd like to do is help
solve some important problems. So I think, in a small way,
help build the Internet, and then with respect to the
global warring problem that the transition from away from oil
and other hydrocobons to something which is clean and sustainable.
Speaker 2: I hope to have an impact there.
Speaker 3: And then with respect to space, I hope to have
an impact in helping make humanity a multiplanet species.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, thank you so much for being with us
at wire Science. Let me get a straight CEO of
SpaceX and chairman of Test the Motors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got other titles, but that's about. That's about
right now.
Speaker 1: I think that you're doing You've done very well. Thanks
for listening. See you in the next episode.