60 Minutes (2012)
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (3)
Transcript
0:0160 Minutes Correspondent60 minutes. Rewind. In the history of space flight, only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back to the Earth. The United States, Russia, China, and Elon Musk.
0:1860 Minutes CorrespondentMr. Musk is a wealthy Internet entrepreneur who has vowed to revolutionize space exploration by bringing down the astronomical costs. And that can't happen fast enough for NASA, which retired the shuttle last summer and now has to pay its old rival Russia to fly American astronauts into space.
0:3960 Minutes CorrespondentMusk is one of the contenders vying for a NASA contract to build America's next manned spacecraft, a contest he believes he has the right stuff to win.
0:5860 Minutes CorrespondentWhen the final shuttle mission ended last July, for the first time in three decades, the United States had no way to launch astronauts into space. It was the end of one era and the beginning of another.
1:1560 Minutes CorrespondentInstead of NASA designing the next manned spacecraft, the White House decided that private industry should design, build and fly it, opening space to commercial development. One of the companies vying for that contract is Space X.
1:3160 Minutes CorrespondentElon Musk is the founder and CEO. Is what we are experiencing at this moment in time the turning point in man's reach for space? Going from governments to private companies like yours?
1:46Elon MuskI think we're at the dawn of a new era and I think it's going to be very exciting. What we're hoping to do with SpaceX is to push the envelope and provide a reason for people to be excited and inspired to be human.
1:5760 Minutes CorrespondentMusk is 40 years old, a naturalized American citizen, and reportedly worth nearly $2 billion. He isn't your typical corporate CEO. As a teenager, he wrote computer games in his native South Africa before immigrating to the US and to Silicon Valley, where he was one of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs.
2:2060 Minutes CorrespondentThe the co founder of PayPal.
2:23Elon MuskLadies and gentlemen, Mr. Elon Musk.
2:2960 Minutes CorrespondentDespite a chorus of skeptics, Musk built a car company called Tesla that turns out 5,000 high end all electric cars a year. Another Musk company sells solar power systems.
2:4460 Minutes CorrespondentBut his lifelong passion is space. And when eBay bought PayPal in 2002, Musk started looking for ways to launch his new fortune into orbit.
2:55Elon MuskI went to Russia to look at buying a refurbished icbm, which is a very trippy experience. It was very bizarre. And when I tell people that, like what?
3:0960 Minutes CorrespondentMusk made three trips to Russia trying to buy an intercontinental ballistic missile called the Dnieper. His plan was bizarre. Put a greenhouse on the rocket, landed on Mars and beam back the pictures.
3:25Elon MuskIt'll get people really excited and that would recharge human space exploration. That was my original idea.
3:3060 Minutes CorrespondentYou just wanted to get people interested in space again?
3:33Elon MuskYes.
3:3360 Minutes CorrespondentCapture the imagination.
3:34Elon MuskYes, that was the idea.
3:3660 Minutes CorrespondentTurns out the Dnieper was so expensive his idea never flew. So Musk decided that the only way to get an affordable rocket was to build it himself. And he started SpaceX.
3:49Elon MuskThe odds, me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.
3:5760 Minutes CorrespondentWhy even begin?
3:59Elon MuskWhen something is important enough, you do it even if it's not in your favor.
4:0360 Minutes CorrespondentHow much of your personal fortune have you poured into this?
4:06Elon Musk$100 million.
4:0760 Minutes Correspondent$100 million into something that you did not believe would work at the beginning?
4:12Elon MuskYes.
4:1360 Minutes CorrespondentMusk truly believes that low cost space exploration is essential to the survival of mankind.
4:20Elon MuskI think it's important that humanity become a multi planet species. I think most people would agree that a future where we are a space faring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.
4:35Elon MuskThat's really why I started SpaceX.
4:3860 Minutes CorrespondentSpaceX is housed in a sprawling factory near Los Angeles where fuselages for Boeing 747s used to be built. From its beginning 10 years ago, its goal has been revolutionary change in rocket and spacecraft manufacturing.
4:5660 Minutes CorrespondentNow tell me, what's that big piece right up there?
4:59Elon MuskThat's the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket.
5:0360 Minutes CorrespondentInstead of multiple companies building parts all across the country, SpaceX builds most of its rockets and spacecraft in house, based on Musk's belief that it's more efficient and lowers costs.
5:1560 Minutes Correspondent1400 engineers and skilled technicians work here building engines, rockets, space capsules, creating mostly from scratch the thousands of components that are the guts of a rocket.
5:30Elon MuskSo what that means is raw metal comes in and then we build the engines, the airframe, the electronics, and we integrate all of that together. And that's all done more or less under one roof.
5:4360 Minutes CorrespondentMetal comes in one end of this factory, spaceships come out the other.
5:47Elon MuskYes.
5:4860 Minutes CorrespondentFinal assembly takes place at the Cape Canaveral launch pad.
5:51Elon MuskIf the margin is there and we don't then have margin to the fourth power, that's fine.
5:5660 Minutes CorrespondentMusk has college degrees in business and physics, but SpaceX is his first venture in aerospace. He builds himself. And as chief designer and chief technology officer, how did you get the expertise to be the chief technology officer of a rocket ship company?
6:14Elon MuskWell, I do have a physics background that's helpful as a foundation. And then I read a lot of books and talked To a lot of
6:2160 Minutes Correspondentsmart people, you're self taught.
6:24Elon MuskYeah, well, self taught, yes, meaning I don't have an aerospace degree.
6:2860 Minutes CorrespondentSo how did you go about acquiring the knowledge?
6:31Elon MuskWell, I, like I said, I read a lot of books, talked to a lot of people and have a great team.
6:3660 Minutes CorrespondentHis team is a mixture. There are newcomers, mostly 30something engineers, some of them straight out of college. And then there are the skilled technicians and aerospace veterans. Former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman spent three months aboard the space station and flew on one of the final shuttle missions.
6:5560 Minutes CorrespondentHe was brought in to help oversee the company's manned space work. You know, I'm curious, you have so much background in engineering, you could have easily gotten a job at Boeing or at Lockheed, but you came here.
7:08Elon MuskIf you had a chance to go back in time and work with Howard Hughes when he was creating twa, if you had a chance to be there at that moment when it was the dawn of a brand new era, wouldn't you want to do that?
7:19Elon MuskI mean, that's, that's why I'm here
7:2160 Minutes Correspondentand that's why most of the engineers we met are here. Building spaceships is the chance of a lifetime. If you reach the point of having a successful manned flight, what will you have proven?
7:33Elon MuskWe're not doing it to prove anything, you know, we know it can be done.
7:3860 Minutes CorrespondentWe're just trying to do it a
7:39Elon Musklittle bit differently, a little bit faster and to push the, push the fence a little bit farther out and then we can all go. I mean, I want to go into space.
7:46Elon MuskI assume most people here do as well.
7:4860 Minutes CorrespondentHow many want to ride? Okay, everybody wants to go.
7:53Elon MuskI'm not so sure.
7:5560 Minutes CorrespondentFirst stage sequence initially, 3, 2, 1. Four years after starting, SpaceX rolled out its first rocket, an unmanned booster called the Falcon 1. Falcon has cleared the tower, but the first three test flights failed to reach orbit.
8:14Elon MuskWe are hearing from the launch control center that there has been an anomaly on the vehicle.
8:2060 Minutes CorrespondentWhen you had that third failure in a row, did you think, I need to pack this in?
8:27Elon MuskNever.
8:2960 Minutes CorrespondentWhy not?
8:30Elon MuskI don't ever give up. I mean, I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.
8:3660 Minutes CorrespondentIt turned out that the third failure was caused by a two second glitch in the timing. Eight weeks later, Musk bet the company on another flight.
8:49Elon MuskWe have liftoff.
8:5060 Minutes CorrespondentAnd this time around, everything worked perfect.
8:55Elon MuskIf that fourth launch hadn't worked, that would have been it. We would have not had the resources to mount a fifth.
9:0160 Minutes CorrespondentYou couldn't have gone on at that point?
9:03Elon MuskYes, death Would have been, I think, inevitable because we did not have the resources to. To mount a fifth launch.
9:1060 Minutes CorrespondentThis is a tricky business.
9:13Elon MuskYeah, the. Yeah, I wish it wasn't so hard.
9:2060 Minutes CorrespondentThe story will continue after this.
9:3160 Minutes CorrespondentIn 2010, SpaceX tested a larger, more powerful nine engine rocket called the Falcon 9 and an unmanned cargo capsule known as Dragon. It was the first privately developed rocket designed to carry cargo and eventually astronauts to the space station.
9:49Elon MuskMVAC ignition confirmed 3.2 kilometers per second.
9:5360 Minutes CorrespondentIn its first test flight, the Dragon capsule performed flawlessly, orbiting the Earth twice before splashdown in the Pacific. The first time a private company had launched and recovered its own spacecraft.
10:0760 Minutes CorrespondentAnd this is a historic spacecraft.
10:11Elon MuskIt is, yeah.
10:1160 Minutes CorrespondentWe came across the Dragon capsule while Musk was showing us around. You know what I noticed about your cargo ship is that it has windows.
10:20Elon MuskYeah, absolutely. The windows are there in case there's an astronaut on board who wants to look out.
10:2560 Minutes CorrespondentBut people don't put windows in cargo ships.
10:27Elon MuskThat's right, exactly.
10:2960 Minutes CorrespondentSo what that tells me is that this was never intended to be only a cargo ship.
10:32Elon MuskNo, no. The Dragon was always designed to carry astronauts.
10:3660 Minutes CorrespondentMusk says a manned version of the Dragon capsule will be safer than the space shuttle and a lot cheaper. Engineers are already designing escape rockets, life support equipment and computer guidance systems.
10:4960 Minutes CorrespondentThey were studying seating for seven when we were there. Do you believe that your rocket will be the next American rocket to take an astronaut into space?
11:01Elon MuskI believe that is the most likely outcome, yes.
11:0360 Minutes CorrespondentThat sort of confidence has not exactly endeared him to the space establishment or to his competitors. There are people who've been in the rocketry business for decades who say about you that you don't know what you don't know.
11:19Elon MuskWell, I suppose that's true of anyone. How can anyone know what they don't know?
11:2560 Minutes CorrespondentBut when critics say, you can't do this, your answer to them is, we've done it. He's done it in partnership with NASA, which has given SpaceX technical advice and a contract worth up to $1.6 billion, mostly for 12 cargo flights to the space station.
11:4260 Minutes CorrespondentBut SpaceX's lack of experience bothers some NASA legends like Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan. They've testified to Congress that the Obama administration's drive to commercialize space could compromise safety and eventually cost the taxpayers.
12:0060 Minutes CorrespondentNow is the time to overrule this administration's pledge to mediocrity. You know, there are American heroes who don't like this idea. Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan have both testified against commercial space flight in the way that you're developing it.
12:1860 Minutes CorrespondentAnd I wonder what you think of that.
12:21Elon MuskI was very sad to see that because those guys are. Yeah, you know, those guys are heroes of mine. So it's really tough, you know, I wish they would come and visit and see the hardware that we're doing here and I think that would change their mind.
12:3760 Minutes CorrespondentThey inspired you to do this, didn't they?
12:40Elon MuskYes.
12:4260 Minutes CorrespondentAnd to see them casting stones in your direction,
12:49Elon Muskdifficult.
12:5160 Minutes CorrespondentDid you expect them to cheer you on?
12:55Elon MuskCertainly hoping they would.
12:5760 Minutes CorrespondentWhat are you trying to prove to them?
12:59Elon MuskWhat I'm trying to do is to make a significant difference in spaceflight and help make spaceflight accessible to almost anyone. And I would hope for as much support in that direction as we, as we can receive.
13:1560 Minutes CorrespondentPresident Obama made his support clear when he visited SpaceX's launch site just before Falcon 9's first test flight. As this animation shows, Elon Musk's next flight will be far more ambitious, carrying cargo all the way to the space station.
13:3260 Minutes CorrespondentIt was scheduled to fly in February, but it's taken longer than expected to perfect the flight software. The flight will be a complicated rendezvous with a space station that is moving 17,000 miles an hour, 240 miles above the Earth.
13:4860 Minutes CorrespondentOkay, so it looks like our burn performance is nominal in the SpaceX mission control flight simulations are continuing, and if all goes well, SpaceX will begin routine space station cargo deliveries later this year.
14:0260 Minutes CorrespondentBut the big prize is winning the NASA contract to build America's next manned spacecraft. And Elon Musk is facing stiff competition.
14:12Elon MuskI'm probably not the guy that most people would bet on who wins. It's like a little kid fighting a bunch of sumo wrestlers. Usually the sumo wrestlers win. We're a little scrappy company.
14:25Elon MuskEvery now and again, little scrappy company wins. I think this will be one of those times.