ISS R&D Conference
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (8)
Transcript
0:01AnnouncerWhen I think about innovation beyond boundaries,
0:04Elon MuskI cannot think of a better representation of that concept in our generation.
0:10AnnouncerPlease join me in welcoming Elon Musk
0:13Elon Muskand ISS Program Manager Kirk Shireman to the stage.
0:22Kirk Shireman (moderator)Very good. So Elon, thanks so much for being here today. Elon commuted from the west coast this morning, so we appreciate you taking the time and coming out here and talking with us.
0:33Elon MuskAbsolutely, thanks for having me.
0:35Kirk Shireman (moderator)We've had a pretty good conference so far, at least in my opinion. Over a thousand people signed up for the first time, so a significant increase and lots of people interested in space in low Earth orbit and the International Space Station and work that's going on.
0:48Kirk Shireman (moderator)So anyway, we're very, very excited about the work that's going on and excited to have you here today too.
0:54Elon MuskGreat, thanks for having me.
0:56Kirk Shireman (moderator)So you were here a number of years ago July in 2015, it's not that long ago, I guess two years ago and had a discussion like this with Mike Suffredini.
1:06Kirk Shireman (moderator)And a lot of things have happened since 2015 for SpaceX. So can you talk about how things have gone, how they've progressed, how you're feeling about how the industry and SpaceX particularly progressed?
1:19Elon MuskSo sure. I think we are entering a new era of space exploration which is extremely exciting. And it's not just SpaceX, but there's a number of other companies that have developed new approaches.
1:39Elon MuskNASA is taking new approaches. Things which is really exciting in the way that the contracting has been done for space station recently I think is a great model that frankly should be adopted throughout government.
1:53Elon MuskI spoke a little bit about this at the Governor's Conference and was actually using the NASA cargo resupply contracting process as a really great model for government in general.
2:10Elon MuskIt's where you have two competitors, fixed price milestone based, where the hot milestones are primarily hardware oriented. And then if one of the two companies that's competing does not reach their milestones, then the remainder of the milestones are competed to another company.
2:31Elon MuskAnd that's what happened with cargo resupply. Started off with SpaceX and Kistler. Kistler made some progress, but wasn't going to get cost efficient finishing line and then Orbital Sciences was competed for the second slot and they did get across the finishing line.
2:44Elon MuskAnd now both SpaceX and Orbital are providing NASA with cargo services to the space station. And having that competitive dynamic is, I think it's just a very powerful, powerful function for getting a great outcome for NASA as the customer.
3:02Elon MuskAnd I think that that's just a. That was a Great model, really well executed. And to the degree that's applicable in other areas of NASA or the government, I think that there's the potential for revolutionary progress on that front.
3:19Elon MuskSo from a technical standpoint, the biggest thing that's happened in the last couple years, which I'm really excited about and I think makes a difference for access to space, is the landing of the Falcon 9 rocket booster and then the.
3:52Elon MuskAnd if you ever get a chance to go out to the Cave or Vandenberg to see that, I'd really recommend it. It's really pretty fun. And there'll be a lot of those flights in the remainder of the year.
4:08Elon MuskWe've got about a dozen flights still to go this year. And then after landing, reflying that same booster with minimal work to the booster. And. And we believe we can get to the point where in the not too distant future, in fact, probably by next year, where the.
4:36Elon MuskFalconic boost can be reblown within 24 hours. So.
4:49Elon MuskAnd the key to that is that all you do is inspections and no hardware is changed, not even the paint. This is very important. That's our aspiration for next year, obviously, while paying very close attention to mission assurance and reliability.
5:13Elon MuskBut we think we've got at least a technical path to achieving that. And then I think we're quite close to being able to recover the fairing. So there's a huge nose cone on the front of Falcon 9, which is a 5.2 meter diameter nose cone.
5:31Elon MuskYou can fit basically a whole sort of city bus in there and just that fairing alone with all of its systems and the acoustic damping and qualification, all that, and separation system, that's about a five or six million dollar piece of equipment.
5:49Elon MuskAnd the analogy I use with my team is like, guys, imagine we had, you know, $6 million in a pallet of cash and that was, you know, $6 million falling through the sky.
6:03Elon MuskAnd would we try to catch it? I say we do. I say we give it a shot. You know, worst case it ends up at the bottom of the ocean.
6:15Elon MuskBut maybe we do catch it and then pay $6 million.
6:17Kirk Shireman (moderator)Let me know when that pallet of cash is coming back.
6:19Elon MuskYeah, I mean, I'd like to give
6:22Announcerit a shot too.
6:22Elon MuskYou know, it might as well be a pallet of cash because it costs $6 million. So. And, but I think we've got a decent shot of recovering the fairing by the end of the year and possibly reflight by either later this year or early next.
6:39Elon MuskAnd that just leaves the upper Stage of the rocket, upper stage is about 20% of the cost of the mission. So if we get boost stage and fairing, we're around 80% reasonable.
6:53Elon MuskAnd then I think for a lot of missions we can even bring the second stage back. So we're going to try to do that. Although our primary focus will be on our Dragon over the next particular over the next year or so.
7:11Elon MuskOur Dragon 2 spacecraft, which is what will, which is the crew Dragon next generation Dragon spacecraft which has got all of the ECLSS systems and the ability to do a launch abort all the way to orbit and do an automated docking maneuver.
7:34Elon MuskSo it doesn't need to both with the aid of the arm it can do a direct docking maneuver and then that will be the, once that's operational, the new method of taking both cargo and crew to the space station.
7:48Elon MuskSo if I say what's our primary focus? It's making sure we stay on track for getting, getting crew to station. As we promised NASA around the middle of next year.
8:01Elon MuskIt's going to be real exciting. I think it's going to be great for getting the public fired up. You know, that's really, it's been a
8:07Kirk Shireman (moderator)while since we launched astronauts from US soil.
8:11Elon MuskYeah, we're all looking forward to that. Yeah. And I'd just like to thank people at NASA for giving SpaceX a chance to, to do this and just want a word of appreciation for the working relationship with NASA, which is great.
8:30Elon MuskIn fact I told the governors last week that you know, for a long time my password was I love NASA. That is actually true.
8:45Kirk Shireman (moderator)You know, you've just given, given all the hackers around the world to go work.
8:50Elon MuskHopefully I don't have like some old email account somewhere. I've got to change this. We're going to cut nine.
8:58Kirk Shireman (moderator)Very good. So how you talked a little bit about commercial crew, how is that going? I know it's, you know, flying humans, there's more systems involved, of course the risk is higher.
9:07Kirk Shireman (moderator)How is that progressing?
9:10Elon MuskYou know it's, it's been way more difficult than cargo. For sure. Yeah. I mean as soon as sort of people enter the picture it's really a giant step up in making sure things go right.
9:31Elon MuskAnd for sure the oversight from NASA is much tougher. It was thought that it wasn't tough with cargo, but it's really intense for crew. So I coming from the right motivations.
9:50Elon MuskBut yeah, it's, you know, it can be a bit tough on my guys, SpaceX but you know, I know where it's coming from. It's the right motivation. And there'll be some debates, you know, going into next year about some of the detailed technical detail, but I think we really want to do everything humanly possible to make sure it goes well and, you know, triple check everything.
10:26Elon MuskAnd overall, I think it's going to, you know, really well, you know, getting like these little small technical bones of tension which, you know, we're working through those.
10:42Kirk Shireman (moderator)We're engineers.
10:43Elon MuskWe live for that. Exactly. Yeah. And some of these things are really, like esoteric. I mean, unless somebody's really in the weeds on rocket and spacecraft design, it will just sound like you're talking Greek, but ancient Greek, you know.
11:04Elon MuskBut yeah, but there's, you know, I think it's good to have these debates and overall, I'm confident that it's going to be a system that NASA feels good about and SpaceX feels good about and look forward to continuing the partnership into next year and doing a great job for NASA.
11:26Kirk Shireman (moderator)Excellent. Thank you. And of course, we're looking forward to it. We're excited about it. And as you mentioned, we're NASA's working hard with you on.
11:34Elon MuskOh, yeah.
11:37Kirk Shireman (moderator)And yeah, we're also all down in the weeds on those technical details.
11:44Elon MuskLet's see, down to the little vault of the little thing.
11:47Kirk Shireman (moderator)Oh, yeah. Where's Gerst? Gerst is here somewhere. That's Gerst's gravy, too.
11:52AnnouncerGerst.
11:52Kirk Shireman (moderator)If you can't have a dry lube bolt pitch discussion with Gerst, you know, it's not a good day.
12:02Elon MuskGerst and I have many sort of in the weeds technical discussions, actually. I love talking to Gerst, one of my favorite people in the world, actually.
12:12Kirk Shireman (moderator)There you go.
12:18Kirk Shireman (moderator)Mine too, but he's my boss, I have to say that. Let's see. So we talked a little bit about commercial crew. We have cargo supply resupply one, which you have the Dragon, which of course Dragon one, which is Berth.
12:33Kirk Shireman (moderator)And in fact, you've done a reflight recently with the Dragon.
12:36Elon MuskThanks for bringing that up because that's kind of important. Yes, it is. And again, thanks for the NASA support. God, we really should, you know, we should have made a slightly bigger deal out of it because it was the first reflow in spacecraft since the shuttle and we kind of forgot to make, you know, let people know to.
13:00Elon MuskI mean, I guess it was there in the details, but we forgot to, you know, I don't think the public even realizes that it's the first reflight of a spacecraft, of an orbital spacecraft since the Shuttle which performed very well too.
13:13Kirk Shireman (moderator)Very good clean mission.
13:14Elon MuskYes, solid. I mean now that was a case where I should in full disclosure say that it cost us almost as much. In fact probably about as much, maybe more.
13:29Kirk Shireman (moderator)We're not negotiating a contract here.
13:31Elon MuskNo, I know, I know. I've just been totally honest here. The SpaceX internal accounting said that it costs us almost as much as building a Dragon one from scratch.
13:45Elon MuskI suspect our internal accounting was probably being. Wasn't counting on things.
13:50Kirk Shireman (moderator)There were some circumstances unusual about this one. Right. This one had some. But the next one incursions and things like that. So the amount of rework on this particular.
13:57Elon MuskThis had a lot of rework, yeah. But the next one we think there's a decent shot of being maybe sort of 50% the cost of a new one and keep going my contract.
14:10Elon MuskYeah, I'm negotiating against myself here, but yeah, no, I mean we want to offer the best possible deal for NASA. It's always tough to get that top line budget to increase.
14:25Elon MuskHope it does. I think so much good could be accomplished if the NASA top line budget was increased that people have no idea.
14:40Kirk Shireman (moderator)So talk a little bit. So we talked about CRS 1 and berthing and CRS 2. Are we talking about commercial crew? CRS 2 Dragon is going to its cargo Dragon.
14:51Kirk Shireman (moderator)It's the similar outermold line of Dragon but it's going to dock and so talk about the.
14:58Elon MuskThen we'll have good commonality between the
15:00Kirk Shireman (moderator)synergisms and things like that.
15:03AnnouncerSo the.
15:03Elon MuskI mean the only thing cargo Dragon won't have is the launch escape system or it'll still have the logic associated with separating from the vehicle. So I think most likely Even Cargo Dragon 2 will be able to survive booster anomaly like that would.
15:20Elon MuskAnomaly.
15:24Kirk Shireman (moderator)We don't like that.
15:25Elon MuskYeah, well, I guess I don't like it. Anyway,
15:32Elon MuskEverything else on The Crew Dragon 2 has except the thrusters but I think in most cases actually it would still be able to survive reentry and keep the cargo safe.
15:45Elon MuskBut having that commonality is great. Yeah.
15:48Kirk Shireman (moderator)I mean going forward it seems like docking itself and if you know, even beyond testing of systems evolutions and things it might be beneficial to test on the cargo version.
16:00Elon MuskAbsolutely.
16:01Kirk Shireman (moderator)And I know you've already done some things on CRS 1 to prepare for CRS 2 and testing some TPS repair capability and things like that.
16:11Elon MuskExactly. Actually I really just like to express some appreciation for the whole CRS team because they've really allowed us to update the rocket and add crazy things like landing legs and been really fair, I think, in allowing us to iterate with the booster for the CF DRS contract.
16:41Elon MuskAnd then, as you're pointing out, Dragon 2 being used for both cargo and crew allows us to iterate with just a slight little more risk on the cargo version and prove it up for this crew on board.
16:59Elon MuskIt's really helpful.
17:00Kirk Shireman (moderator)Excellent. Let's talk about. I know we got a few more minutes here and then we'll open it up. Up to questions. But, you know, the theme here is for the conference is innovation.
17:11Kirk Shireman (moderator)And of course, we talked already about some innovations in the launch business, but what do you think needs to be. Where are the areas or the thrusts for innovation that we really need?
17:21Kirk Shireman (moderator)Both, you know, not excluding the launch, but also looking at low Earth orbit. What's in low Earth orbit? Where do we. Where do you think we as a, you know, space industry need to go and look for innovation?
17:34Elon MuskYeah, well, you know, I think for. I still believe, and I think many people do, that the real, the key to opening up space orbit, you know, Leo and beyond, is rapid and complete reusability or near complete reusability like we have with aircraft or cars or almost any form of transport.
18:07Elon MuskNow it's super hard with space because, you know, we live on a planet with pretty high gravity. This would be pretty easy if we're on Mars or something like that.
18:19Elon MuskBut Earth's gravity is really pretty, pretty high and we've got a thick atmosphere. And so reusability is tough. And you're going through, you know, sort of you're going to operate in a vacuum.
18:34Elon MuskHypersonic, supersonic, transonic, subsonic. That's just a lot of regimes for any sort of flying object to go through. But reusability, I think, is absolutely fundamental to breakthrough in access to orbit and beyond.
18:55Elon MuskLEO and beyond. Anything that can be done in that direction, I think is good.
19:04Kirk Shireman (moderator)Trying to change the economics of transportation to low Earth orbit. Right.
19:07Elon MuskReally fundamental.
19:08Kirk Shireman (moderator)You get quick reusability, the economic equation. It becomes easier to get to low Earth orbit and do more things.
19:14Elon MuskYeah, yeah. I mean, it's kind of like. Yeah, just any mode of transport. Before there was Union Pacific going across the US To California, and there's like, hardly any people in California.
19:25Elon MuskPeople thought building the Union Pacific was just crazy because you had like, nobody there. So why are we building a railroad to nowhere now? You know, California is the most populous state in the country.
19:37Kirk Shireman (moderator)Some people stopped in Texas along the way. Yeah, yeah.
19:45Kirk Shireman (moderator)Not in the summer, by the way.
19:46Elon MuskI love Texas. You know, we do A huge part of our R D in Texas. In Central Texas. A lot of people don't know about that. Near Waco we do so Central Texas we do.
20:00Kirk Shireman (moderator)You did Bosa Chica down in the south there.
20:02Elon MuskThat's right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we got a lot of activity throughout Texas.
20:08Audience MemberBuilding.
20:08Elon MuskYeah. Third launch site in South Texas near Brownsville. I think that'll, that'll give us good, you know, contingency capability. If there's a, say a hurricane coming through the Cape and we still need to get to the station, we could, you know, launch out of South Texas and that, that'll ensure continuity of service and yeah, I really spent a lot of time.
20:33Elon MuskTexas. Yeah.
20:37Kirk Shireman (moderator)All right. Traffic's not as bad as in Southern California.
20:40Elon MuskOh man, that's the biggest issue in Southern California. Traffic hell. I mean it's like, just like which level of hell are you in if you're in hell?
20:51Kirk Shireman (moderator)Yeah, Washington's trying to catch up but
20:56Elon Muskyou know, you know, I mean this is, I mean you were digging a tunnel and I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. So it's like. And the tunnel starts right across from SpaceX HQ.
21:13Elon MuskSo if you're ever out, you want to see our tunnel?
21:17Kirk Shireman (moderator)As long as you promise not to close it in after I get no problem.
21:22Elon MuskYeah, we're digging the tunnel and it's kind of like a, I don't know, it's sort of, it's like a low. Actually oddly enough it's like a little low stress activity because like everyone expects it to fail.
21:39Elon MuskAnd I mean the sort of groan worthy joke that I make about tunnels is that they have low expectations. There's no way to go but down. Yes, I can keep going.
22:02Kirk Shireman (moderator)That makes sense. You're involved in space, you're involved in tunnels, you kind of COVID Yeah, they get everything.
22:07Elon MuskThey used to call me Internet guy when I was started off in space. Hey, there's this Internet guy, he was in space, he's obviously going to fail. So then I stopped saying Internet guy.
22:17Elon MuskI think there's a transport guy, he's a trans transport guy.
22:22Kirk Shireman (moderator)So speaking of transport, you know, so today ISS is up there and really the conference is focused a lot on some of the research and developments going on there.
22:31Kirk Shireman (moderator)But and commercialization too by the way. And commercialization. At least NASA's strategy is commercialization will be fostered on ISS and then at some point in the future ISS will go away and we expect, we hope for a vibrant low Earth orbit economy at that point in time.
22:49Elon MuskThat's cool.
22:50Kirk Shireman (moderator)And I'm kind of curious what you see in terms of SpaceX and your transportation relative to that economy. What's next for commercial crew after iss?
22:59Elon MuskSure. Well, first of all I don't think the public realizes how cool ISS is. You know that is an awesome thing that's up there. You know,
23:13Audience MemberI feel like a lot
23:13Elon Muskof people, first of all, some people don't realize we have a space station. Like can I be serious? Like we have a gigantic space station. It's huge, it's really gigantic.
23:25Elon MuskI mean it's a pretty incredible structure that we have orbiting the Earth. And I think just I'd recommend like man, we've got to do something to educate the public about the awesomeness of the space station because this is pretty amazing and big like people just lose sight of like they think oh there's like a little thing, oh it's big, it's real big.
23:49Elon MuskAnd yeah, so and I was finally getting it to sort of real operational use and that was great. It's like an amazing technological achievement. So but then yeah, I think in terms of low Earth orbit stuff on the commercial side, I think there's a lot of opportunities in kind of a global Internet capability.
24:18Elon MuskSo providing Internet to parts of the world that either don't have it or where it's very expensive and not very good and the space is really good for, for providing Internet connectivity for sparsely populated or low populated regions.
24:38Elon MuskSo it's not really a threat to telcos. Actually it can take telco's lives easier because there are a lot of customers that are very hard to serve where like digging a fiber cable for two miles, they'll never pay off the investment to get to one house type of thing.
24:55Elon MuskBut for space you can really serve, serve those customers at economically sensible rates. There's Earth observation, you're getting better understanding of crops and climate and natural sort of natural disaster information and but I think the, if you want to get the public will fired up, I think we got to have a base on the moon, you know,
25:36Elon MuskThat would be pretty cool. And then going beyond that, getting people to Mars.
25:41Kirk Shireman (moderator)Yeah, certainly sending people further than we've ever sent them before I think is captivating for the people. So. Yeah, exactly, it's captivating for me. I know that.
25:48Elon MuskYeah, exactly. So yeah, just having some permanent presence on another heavenly body to be the kind of moon base and then getting people to Mars and beyond and that's the continuance of the dream of Apollo that I think people are really looking for.
26:13Kirk Shireman (moderator)Excellent. This might be a good time to go ahead and open it up for a few questions from the audience. Where are the.
26:22AnnouncerWhere?
26:22Kirk Shireman (moderator)They're on the side, I think. Microphone's on the side. I can't tell if people are. I don't know.
26:28Elon MuskThe lights are so bright, it's hard to tell.
26:30Kirk Shireman (moderator)I know this is a risk asking people to ask questions, but any questions? Looks like there's a few people lined up over here, so go ahead.
26:41Elon MuskHi, Elon over here from the uk. Pleasure to ask a question to you. My question is, how are you managing the risks associated with the Falcon Heavy and particularly the recently announced private launch around the moon?
26:58Elon MuskThank you for your time.
27:00Kirk Shireman (moderator)Sure.
27:02Elon MuskSo, first of all, I should say Falcon, hello, Heavy. That requires the simultaneous ignition of 27 orbit class engines. There's like, you know, a lot that could go wrong there.
27:20Elon MuskAnd I encourage people to come down to the Cape and see the first Falcon Heavy mission. It's guaranteed to be exciting,
27:35Elon MuskBut it's, you know, this is one of those things that's really difficult to test on the ground. I mean, we can fire the engines in the ground, but. And we try to simulate the Dynamics of having 27 instead of nine booster engines and the, you know, the airflow as it goes through transonic, like it's going to see heavy transonic buffet, Max Q.
27:58Elon MuskHow does it behave on a max Q? There's a lot of risk associated with Falcon Heavy. Real good chance that that vehicle does not make it to orbit. Want to make sure, set expectations accordingly.
28:13Elon MuskI hope it makes it far enough away from the pad that it does not cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest. And yeah,
28:35Elon MuskVery exciting. Major pucker factor, really. That's like the other way to describe
28:39Kirk Shireman (moderator)it, you know, that dwindles the amount of people who want to ride on that the first time.
28:44Elon MuskYeah, well, smaller cat. There's still people and full disclosure here, man, full disclosure. You know, I think Falcon Heavy is going to be a great vehicle. There's just like so much that's really impossible to test on the ground.
28:59Elon MuskAnd we'll do our best. And it actually ended up being way, way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought. Because at first it sounds really easy. Just stick two first stages on as triathlon boosters.
29:13Elon MuskYeah, how hard can that be? But then everything changes. All the loads change, change. Aerodynamics totally change. You've tripled the vibration and acoustics. So if you sort of break the qual levels on so much of the hardware, the amount of load you're putting through that center Core is crazy because you got two super powerful boosters also shoving that center core and it's like, so we have to redesign the whole center core airframe.
29:45Elon MuskIt's not like the Falcon 9 because it's going to take so much load. Then you got the separation systems and yeah, it just ended up being really way, way more difficult than we originally thought.
30:00Elon MuskWe were pretty naive about that. But the nice thing is it's fully optimized. It's about two and a half times the payload capability of a Falcon 9. So, you know, it's well over £100,000 to LEO payload capability.
30:22Elon Musk50 tons. Could even get up to a little higher than that if, you know, if optimized. And the nice thing is that does have the throw capability to toss a dragon to in a loop around the moon and then dragging to itself.
30:41Elon MuskThe heat shield is designed with a huge amount of margin. So it's got enough margin to handle lunar reentry and particularly if we do initial velocity scrub, do sort of at least one pass to scrub velocity and then come in on the second pass.
31:03AnnouncerYeah.
31:03Elon MuskBut no question, whoever's on the first flight, brave.
31:09Kirk Shireman (moderator)Yes.
31:11Elon MuskGreat.
31:14Kirk Shireman (moderator)Let's see. Let's go over here to this side here. Is there a question from over here?
31:18AnnouncerHey, Elon. Ted Tagami with educational company called Magnitude IO. I had the good fortune of meeting you back in September watching your five son launched their own rockets. Black Rock Desert.
31:29Elon MuskOh yeah.
31:29Audience MemberCool.
31:30Elon MuskYeah, that was fun.
31:32AnnouncerAnd since then, we've actually had the great fortune of sending students payloads up to the International Space Station. And we're now working with CASIS to extend that. We'd like 50 million students to get on the International Space Station, their experiments on the space station by 2014.
31:48AnnouncerSo my question to you is more about the innovations in education and your thoughts. That same year that I met you and your sons, you announced Ad Astra.
31:56Audience MemberOh yeah.
31:57AnnouncerAnd before the advent of neural lace gets fully implemented, what are your thoughts on the innovations in education today?
32:04Elon MuskThank you. Just the thoughts on education. Well, I think there's maybe there are definitely some good schools out there. But I think some of the mistakes, at least in my opinion that I see being made in education is that people, the teachers do not explain why kids are being taught a subject.
32:33Elon MuskYou just sort of get dumped into math and like, why are you learning math? What's the point of this? It seems like some, you know, for some people, like maybe it's.
32:41Elon MuskI don't know why I'm being asked to do these strange Problems. But the why of things is extremely important because our brain has evolved to not to discard information that it thinks has no relevance.
32:59Elon MuskSo then, if on the one hand you're being asked to memorize or learn, say, formulas, but you do not know why this is the case, then you have this cognitive dissonance of it seems irrelevant.
33:13Elon MuskBut I'm being told to remember it, so I'll be punished, so I better remember it. But so the why of things is very important. And then being able to.
33:24Elon MuskAnd then picking kind of a problem and then using various educational tools to solve that problem, like using math or physics or economics to solve that problem, is far more engaging than teaching the tools.
33:42Elon MuskYou know, it's the difference between. If you say, well, we're going to take apart this engine and see how it works and put it back together again. And then in order to take the engine apart, we need wrenches and screwdrivers and a winch and allen keys and whatnot.
34:03Elon MuskAnd a. And then in the course of solving the problem of taking the engine apart and putting it back together, you learn about wrenches and screwdrivers and all the tools that you need.
34:13Elon MuskAnd then now you understand the relevance. This is why wrenches are important. If you had a class on wrenches, you'd be like, why does this not seem that great?
34:28Elon MuskSo tying it to solving a problem is, I think, very powerful for establishing relevance and getting kids excited about what they're working on and having the knowledge stick.
34:44Kirk Shireman (moderator)Yeah, to some extent, building a cubesat or flying an experiment on ISS is like that, right? You've got the why or the relevance and the curiosity. And in terms of building that device or that experiment, I think there's also really is cool.
35:01Kirk Shireman (moderator)It ties to the. It gives you a really concrete example of what you're learning and why.
35:07Elon MuskYeah, exactly. I think things like cubesats, Exactly. Because, okay, what is a solar panel? How does orbital dynamics work? How do we power this thing? How do batteries work?
35:22Elon MuskElectronics, control systems? And you need to. Then you're like, oh, we want to make our satellite work. That's why we need to understand all these disciplines. So I think it's like cubesat.
35:33Elon MuskStudent cubesats are great. Like things like design, build, fly for model airplanes or Formula sae. We've got a design and build a kind of a race car and race study.
35:47Elon MuskAnd so people that. I think those things are very powerful for learning as learning tools. Yeah, it's very cool.
35:53Kirk Shireman (moderator)All right, thank you. I see over here another question.
35:57Audience MemberHi, my name is Jacob and I actually live near the Cape. So my question is not much of a tech question, but more of what your prediction is. So about maybe 100 years after we develop sustainable colonies on Mars.
36:10Audience MemberDo you think, and of course many other countries will also try to get to Mars, that there would be like a conflict for the best resources on Mars, like in, I guess you could say in sort of like a interplanetary warfare if you know what I'm trying to think of.
36:30Kirk Shireman (moderator)This sounds like a video game, doesn't it?
36:33Elon MuskIt's an idea. Mars attacks.
36:40Elon MuskI think it's some pretty open territory on Mars. So there's, I don't think we're going to be, there's going to be any kind of scarcity. There's like a lot of land on Mars.
36:54Elon MuskNot many people
36:58Kirk Shireman (moderator)unless they're hiding on the backside.
36:59Elon MuskYeah, no, I mean they're pretty clever. If there are people on Mars, man, they are way cleverer than us because they're hiding.
37:07Audience MemberWell, so
37:12Elon Muskyeah, no, there's plenty of land on Mars. I mean, you know, the history of human civilization does contain a lot of war. So I don't think we, you know, you go to Mars and that, you know, be war free forever.
37:26Elon MuskBut there's certainly not going to be a resource based conflict due to scale capacity of resources on Mars.
37:32Kirk Shireman (moderator)I think we're going to go to Mars as a multinational effort too. Right. So it's not one country going and another country going and then they're fighting over wars.
37:41Kirk Shireman (moderator)I think it's countries going together and so I think we're more likely to be peaceful in that scenario as well.
37:49Elon MuskYeah, but you know, I'd actually advocate for, I think it's fine if countries get together to form teams, but I think it's actually probably better if they're at least, you know, at least two or three country coalitions going to Mars in a friendly way and competing to see who can make the most progress.
38:11Elon MuskIf you look at like say the Olympics, it would be pretty boring if everyone just linked arms and crossed the finishing line at the same time. Friendly, but it would, you know, not
38:23Kirk Shireman (moderator)be more like the opening ceremonies.
38:25Elon MuskYeah, yeah, exactly. So I think friendly competition is a good thing. Yeah, very good.
38:31Kirk Shireman (moderator)Well, I think, you know, NASA wants to be part of one of those coalitions with the United States. And so I know we're actually trying to build such a coalition.
38:38Kirk Shireman (moderator)Now let's see from over here, another question.
38:42Elon MuskHi, I'm Yotam Ariel, founder and CEO of Bluefield. We are deploying methane tracking Microsatellites and my question to you. I hope to learn your thoughts on advancing remote sensing capabilities of critical gases on Earth and on Mars.
38:59Audience MemberThank you.
39:01Elon MuskThat's a pretty esoteric question. Remote sensing of gases. Yeah, I think that's something that's going to be important. Mars has a number of trace gases that are pretty helpful.
39:16Elon MuskIt's very helpful that Mars has CO2 and nitrogen and argon. Those are like really helpful gases to have in the atmosphere. It's mostly CO2 but that little bit of nitrogen and argon can be pretty helpful.
39:31Audience MemberYeah.
39:33Elon MuskAnd other, and whatever other trace gases we can get out of the atmosphere.
39:35Kirk Shireman (moderator)I don't know. We always say Mars has just enough atmosphere to. It's not enough to be really helpful in terms of aerobraking, but it sure makes it a lot harder.
39:44Kirk Shireman (moderator)So it's just enough to be, to be difficult. But in terms of institute research utilization, you know, when you get there to be able to build to get your oxygen and hopefully we'll have water, get hydrogen, manufacture hydrogen on the planet.
40:00Kirk Shireman (moderator)So hopefully there's enough resources that'll we don't have to carry everything with us.
40:04Elon MuskWell, the nice thing having if you, if you've got H2O and CO2, you can build hydrocarbons of any kind. So you can build plastics, you can build short chain, long chain hydrocarbons.
40:19Elon MuskThe current SpaceX thought for kind of a Mars transport vehicle is primarily methane based system because you get to have a kind of a smaller, I mean the tanks are half the size with, with methane.
40:35Elon MuskSo and yeah, but and Mars with a CO2 atmosphere and a lot of water ice is great for that. Going beyond Mars, I think there's a lot of merit for hydrogen because then you only need water.
40:51Elon MuskBut that's also our current thinking on that front.
40:54Kirk Shireman (moderator)So speaking of that, last year at Guadalajara at the IAC conference you talked about about plans to go to the Mars and I know you guys have been working on that since then.
41:03Elon MuskYep.
41:05Kirk Shireman (moderator)So you plan at some point to talk about that work publicly?
41:09Elon MuskYeah, I'm thinking probably the upcoming ISC in Adelaide might be a good opportunity to do the updated version of the Mars architecture because it's evolved quite a bit since that last talk.
41:25Elon MuskYeah, I might ask for questions to be collected of time and for that IAC
41:34Kirk Shireman (moderator)good strategy.
41:35Elon MuskThere was some very enthusiastic people to the MIC at the ISU last time. But the key thing that got to be figured out is like how do you pay for this whole something to go to Mars that's super Expensive.
41:53Elon MuskAnd I kind of think by kind of, you know, if we downsize the Mars vehicle, you know, make it capable of doing Earth orbit activity as well as, you know, Mars activity, then, you know, maybe we could pay for it with, by using a activity.
42:18Elon MuskThat's one of the key elements in the new architecture. It's similar to what was at isc, but it's a little bit smaller. Still big. But I think this one's got a shot at being real on the economic front, you know, that's the trick.
42:43Kirk Shireman (moderator)All right, let's see. I think another question from over here.
42:45Audience MemberHi, Elon, Eva, Jane Lark. I have mostly one important question and one little aside. Can you talk a little bit about your R and D strategy for your companies and is it all focused on short term problem solution or how much and in what fashion do you allocate time and money towards R and D spending on some of the long term goals you're working at?
43:08Audience MemberAnd then just as a little aside for the boring company, are you looking at not only as a habit, as a transportation, but potentially as a habitat company for not just tunnels, but habitats on Mars or the moon?
43:23Elon MuskYeah, actually. So I do think like getting good at digging tunnels could be really helpful for Mars because like once you got a kind of a, it would be a different optimization for, you know, Mars boring machine versus an Earth boring machine.
43:39Elon MuskBut for sure there's going to be need to be a lot of ice mining on Mars and mining in general to get raw materials and then along the way building underground habitats where, you know, you get good radiation shielding and you kind of have, you know, as much.
44:02Elon MuskI mean, you could build really an entire city underground if you wanted to. I think people are still going to want to go to the surface, you know, from time to time.
44:09Elon MuskBut you can build a tremendous amount underground with the right boring technology on Mars. So I do think that there's some overlap in that technology development arena. And then R and D, you know, I try to spend as much on R and D as we can at my companies.
44:33Elon MuskSo we really max out R and D. I mean, I spend most of my time on engineering. That's probably 80% of my week is engineering meetings. And so, you know, any money that we get in revenue, we put that right back into R D.
44:55Elon MuskAnd some of it is longer term. Yeah, you know, like for example, the Mars vehicle looking at some, doing some Mars communication stuff potentially with NASA and. Yeah, but I'm super pro R and D engineering is my most fun thing.
45:21Elon MuskSo try to dial that to the max
45:26Kirk Shireman (moderator)over here.
45:27Audience MemberHi, my name is Chris LaFleur. I work for Congress for Representative John Conyers. A couple days ago, I read about you talking about artificial intelligence and the dangers of it and how as a businessman you are totally against regulation and stuff like that, but as a, you know, a human being, you think it's critical that we get ahead of this issue.
45:48Audience MemberYeah. Can you please elaborate on, like, why? What are you seeing that we don't get to see and what as a policymaker, I should be looking to do to sort of, I guess, protect us all?
46:04Elon MuskSure. Well, I think it is difficult to appreciate just how far artificial intelligence has advanced and how far it is advancing because we have a double exponential at work.
46:20Elon MuskWe have an exponential increase in hardware capability and we have an exponential increase in software talent that is going into AI. So whenever you have a double exponential, it's very difficult to predict.
46:36Elon MuskPeople's predictions are almost always going to be too conservative in terms of thinking it'll be further out than it is. You know, you start to see things like, I don't know if you've seen, like the videos where you can sort of really quite accurately video simulate someone and put words in their mouth that they never spoke.
46:59Elon MuskUse Google List. It's really pretty amazing. And then they had something called a generative adversarial network, had two of them compete with one another to make the most convincing video.
47:14Elon MuskSo one would generate the video and then the other one would identify where it looked fake, and then the other one would fix that and then and go back and forth to the point where couldn't tell which one was the real video, which was the fake one.
47:33Elon MuskAnd obviously there have been some very public things like the defeat of AlphaGo or defeat of Go by AlphaGo, the world's best GO champion. People thought defeating GO was either never or 20 years away.
47:48Elon MuskThat was world's best GO player was defeated. And now that same AlphaGo system can defeat the top 50 players simultaneously with 0% of chance of them winning. And that's one year later.
48:04Elon MuskSo the degrees of freedom to which artificial intelligence is able to apply itself are really increasing, I think by 10 orders of magnitude a year. That's really crazy. So I think, and we're starting, and this is on hardware that is really not well suited for neural nets.
48:32Elon MuskYou know, like a GPU is maybe an order of magnitude better than a cpu, but something. But a chip that is designed optimally for neural nets is an order of magnitude better than a gpu and that is there are a whole bunch of neural net optimized chips coming out either late this year or next year.
48:57Elon MuskSo I think, I think part of the role of government is to make sure the public is safe, like to take care of public safety issues. So I think the right move is to establish some government regulatory agency which at first is just there to gain insight.
49:19Elon MuskSo it's not about like shooting from the hip and just putting in rules before anyone knows anything. But you got to set up the agency, it's got to gain insight.
49:29Elon MuskOnce that insight is gained, then start applying rules and regulations. We have that for the, you know, for aircraft, the faa, we've got that for cars with that for, you know, drugs, for food.
49:44Elon MuskAnd I don't think anyone wants the FAA to go away or FDA to go away or you know, any of those regulatory agencies. I think we just need to make sure people do not cut corners on AI safety.
50:00Elon MuskIt's going to be a real big deal and it's going to come on like a tidal wave.
50:07Kirk Shireman (moderator)All right, thanks. I see over here. Question.
50:12Audience MemberGood afternoon. My name is Anna and I'm a film director and VR producer and I'm currently working on a film, on a documentary film about future scenarios for humanity which actually brought me to this amazing conference where I can learn and complete my research on the space exploration area.
50:31Audience MemberAnd in the previous three days there was a lot of talks which is I think an extremely beautiful phenomenon about this kind of dual philosophy behind space exploration and space solutions, about solutions that are coming back to earth that can benefit humankind in a very, very wide area.
50:51Audience MemberAnd today we've been talking about the commercialization of the space area and it brings a lot of questions to me about social responsibility behind gigantic companies that would actually probably take over how the space industry would develop in the nearest future.
51:11Audience MemberSo I'm very curious how you see in long term these companies kind of benefits for people or social goals for SpaceX and especially in the context that you are an entrepreneur that invests in infrastructure and transport hard solution that would probably change the way most of us live and the way we communicate with each other.
51:38Audience MemberSo I'm very, very curious how you see that in terms of long term mission, long term philosophy and what would be your advice or maybe kind of security signal for other of your colleagues and for all of us?
51:56Kirk Shireman (moderator)Sure.
52:01Elon MuskI'm not sure I fully understood the question.
52:07Audience MemberThe
52:11Kirk Shireman (moderator)yeah.
52:11Elon MuskOr the answer.
52:14Audience MemberYes, I, I think mainly about long term benefits from the R D endeavors that your companies would conduct that could actually be Also not only serving, building a service that can be useful for business or for people, but also benefit especially societies in a wider context.
52:34Audience MemberAnd also knowing that it will probably the industry, the commercial industry in space would probably develop very quickly and it will grow. How do you see the social responsibility of the companies who actually do that?
52:48Audience MemberAnd where are the limits of what can be done, what should be done the same way as you think about for example, open AI mission in the area of AI development.
52:59Audience MemberSo can you could be translated into space industry endeavors?
53:04Elon MuskWell, I think there's a, a pretty big social benefit or civilizational benefit to being a multi planet civilization, you know, that dramatically increases the probable lifespan of human civilization.
53:19Elon MuskIf we are a multi planet species versus a single planet species, sometimes that is misinterpreted as well. Shouldn't we just focus everything on Earth? It's like, well, you know, but we should focus almost everything on Earth.
53:32Elon MuskBut I think there should be maybe 1% or 2% of our resources that are applied to making life multi planetary because there's certain irreducible risks on Earth. It's possible in the future that there's some global war that knocks us back many levels of technology.
53:53Elon MuskYou know, certainly if it was a major nuclear war, it would. And this just so the general decay of societies over time. We see this throughout history. You know, if you look at ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, you know, they had peak technology levels and, and for reasons that aren't obvious, just declined.
54:20Elon MuskAnd you know, so I think just having being a multi planet civilization, having human bases throughout the solar system, I think first of all, I think that's very exciting and inspiring and there need to be things that are exciting and inspiring and make you look forward to waking up in the morning.
54:44Elon MuskLike, it's like, yay, the future is exciting. This is underappreciated, like tunnels, sorry, hands are sweet and you know, but there's got to be things that make you excited about life.
55:06Elon MuskIt can't just be problem solving one sort of miserable problem after another. It's got to be like, I'm fired up about the future and here's why. And space is one of those things that does that for people all around the world.
55:20Elon MuskYou know, when Apollo 11, when they landed on the moon, I mean that was something for all of humanity. It really was. People would, it feels like one TV 50 miles around.
55:33Elon MuskPeople would walk, you know, they'd walk 50 miles just to go find that one TV to watch it happen. So you know, sometimes people think, what about, what about the poor nations of the world, they're like, you know what inspire inspires them too.
55:48Elon MuskAnd we need things like that. We don't have enough of them.
55:54Kirk Shireman (moderator)All right, thank you. Over here.
55:58Elon MuskHi Elon, quick question. I heard that Dragon is no longer
56:02Kirk Shireman (moderator)planned to land propulsively.
56:04Elon MuskIs that true? Yeah, that was a tough decision. Dragon is capable of landing. Dragon 2 is capable of landing propulsively and technically it still is, although you'd have to land it on some pretty soft landing pad because we deleted the little legs that pop out of the heat shield.
56:31Elon MuskBut it's technically still capable of doing it. The reason we decided not to pursue that heavily is it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that for safety, particularly for crew transport.
56:48Audience MemberAnd then
56:52Elon Muskthere was a time when I thought that the Dragon approach to landing on Mars, we've got a base heat shield and side mounted thrusters, would be the right way to land on Mars.
57:03Elon MuskBut now I'm pretty confident that is not the right way and that there's a far better approach and, and that's what the next generation of SpaceX rockets and spacecraft is going to do.
57:26Elon MuskSo yeah. So just the difficulty of safely qualifying Dragon for propulsive landing and the fact that from a technology evolution standpoint, it was no longer in line with what we were confident was the optimal way to land on Mars.
57:45Elon MuskThat's why we are not pursuing it. It could be something that we bring back later, but it doesn't seem like the right way to apply resources right now.
58:01Elon MuskHi Elon, my name is Elia overby. I'm a PhD student studying genomics. We've all together made a lot of technological progress on space systems. My question isn't about the technology, it's about the biology.
58:14Elon MuskWhat are the principal biological concerns you
58:17Audience Memberhave about human health on long duration
58:19Elon Muskmissions such as a mission to Mars? And have you identified any solutions to these problems? Well, I say going to Mars is not for the faint of heart and it's risky, dangerous, uncomfortable, and you might die.
58:40Elon MuskNow, do you want to go?
58:42Audience MemberYeah,
58:46Elon Muskyou know, and for a lot of people the answer is going to be hell no. And for some it's going to be hell yes. So, you know, there will be issues.
58:58Elon MuskI don't think it's like it's going to be a case of like you get irradiated to death along the way. I don't think that's the case at all. You know, the radiation level is sort of roughly, you know, in worst case scenario, really kind of about equivalent to smoking on the Way there.
59:14Elon MuskNow smoking is pretty bad, but I think with some moderate shielding we can cut down on a large percentage of the incremental radiation and that should be enough that the sort of marginal risk of cancer is not something that is going to be a showstopper.
59:42Elon MuskThat's my best assessment to date, certainly learning a lot about solar winds and fast particles and whatnot. And one of the things I learned recently that I didn't quite understand is that the, I always thought of the particles from the sun, the sort of solar wind is going kind of straight up from the sun, but they follow the magnetic field lines so you actually can get the particles coming at you from the, the side even though, you know, kind of at a directional thought of goal to the sun.
1:00:20Elon MuskSo you do need some, some amount of protection at least on, yeah, on kind of four, four or five sites anyway. But I don't think it's, it's not a showstopper but it's, it's definitely, you know, if safety is your top goal, I wouldn't go to Mars.
1:00:43Kirk Shireman (moderator)You know, there's a, there's a bunch of work going on ISS right now to understand the risk to the humans for long duration, certainly within. We're in the Van Allen Belt, so the radiation environment is different but, and all part of it is understanding what happens to the humans the longer you stay.
1:00:56Kirk Shireman (moderator)So so far we've had humans stay a little bit longer than a year and that's it. So in the history of the species they've, we've had someone off the planet for a little more than a year and we're talking three years to go to Mars.
1:01:08Elon MuskWell, you know, I think you can
1:01:09Kirk Shireman (moderator)get the, perhaps, perhaps shorter but it's in the years, it's, you know, it's so there's potential for things out there that we haven't found yet and so we'll learn more as we go along.
1:01:22Kirk Shireman (moderator)Hopefully learn more before ISS is done.
1:01:24Elon MuskYeah, it's interesting actually the, you know, you know, Mars is only in the same sort of rough quadrant of the of Earth roughly six months every two years. By same I mean sort of slightly offset because it's like a transfer quadrant.
1:01:42Elon MuskBut if you can get the ship to and from Mars inside that six month window, then you get to reuse it twice as often. So there's actually a lot of merit to being able to get to Mars in under three months if you can
1:01:59Kirk Shireman (moderator)get there quick and back of course could make some bigger, bigger vehicle and resupply. So anyway, interesting problem that I'm sure we'll work on here as we go forward.
1:02:11Elon MuskA lot of Earth orbit refueling or it's not really mostly oxygen, but it's propellant reload. There's no good word for propellant. For fuel plus oxygen. Prop, I guess prop load.
1:02:26Kirk Shireman (moderator)We'll have to invent a new word.
1:02:27Elon MuskRight, that's it.
1:02:30Kirk Shireman (moderator)Okay, a question over here.
1:02:33Audience MemberDmitry Stardew of Homes in Los Angeles. First, thank you very much for digging those tunnels. They will be really handy during Olympics. My question is like with Tesla cars, will we see you riding the crew module to ISS and back?
1:02:50Audience MemberThank you.
1:03:03Elon MuskI would like to at some point. I would like to, yeah, I think assuming things work out, you know, I'd like to, yeah, maybe three or four years, something.
1:03:20Elon MuskYeah, be great.
1:03:26Kirk Shireman (moderator)All right, we'll put you down the manifest.
1:03:28Elon MuskOkay,
1:03:32Kirk Shireman (moderator)next question over here.
1:03:34Audience MemberHello, I'm Anna Sophia Baguraev and I have kind of a follow up on the biology question from before. It is one thing to say, obviously it's not going to be a safe experience to go to Mars, but there are some technologies essential, especially if we're looking to putting humans there permanently, that are going to have to be developed with biological capabilities.
1:03:55Audience MemberSpeaking of like flight suits, habitats, eventual artificial biospheres for people to live in, do you see your company playing a part in the development of those technologies? Do you see biology having a place in SpaceX's work?
1:04:07Audience MemberOr will that be outsourced to other unrelated companies?
1:04:11Kirk Shireman (moderator)And before you answer, you should know that Anna Sophia over here won a jeans in space competition and flew on a SpaceX Dragon. And I said was that SpaceX 10?
1:04:22Kirk Shireman (moderator)When was that?
1:04:23Audience MemberEight.
1:04:23Kirk Shireman (moderator)SpaceX eight. So as, yeah,
1:04:32Kirk Shireman (moderator)And a very smart young lady, I think, in fact I think she's smarter to me in high school than I am now. So anyway, so good luck with your answer.
1:04:41Audience MemberSure.
1:04:44Elon MuskBiology obviously has a significant role to play in any kind of permanent Mars base or city. I mean for SpaceX we're trying to make sure we can get people there reliably at a cost they can afford and get cargo there at the right cost number because there's kind of a threshold cost per ticket or cost per ton to the surface of Mars, below which a self sustaining city can develop and above which it cannot.
1:05:20Elon MuskThat sort of critical sort of economic and technical threshold is what we're focused on at SpaceX. I think we'll probably have to do a pivot of work on propellant depot, basically a propellant plant on Mars.
1:05:38Elon MuskBut then our intent is to, you Know, we don't want to get in the way of what others are doing. We want to make sure that, let's say, if somebody makes an investment or wants to do something on Mars, create a business or do some scientific endeavor, that SpaceX does not compete with them, you know, because they need to feel like, okay, we're not going to just go in and compete with them arbitrarily.
1:06:06Elon MuskWe want to make sure that they feel it's going to be a fruitful environment to be, you know, to go there and do something special. So our focus is going to be on transport, kind of fundamental utilities, survivability, and we'll do more if we need to do more.
1:06:29Elon MuskBut we want to make sure that lots of people can go and do all sorts of things on Mars or the moon and not feel like SpaceX is going to do anything but try to help them.
1:06:40Elon MuskWe don't want to interfere or compete. They've got to feel like the opportunity is there.
1:06:49Kirk Shireman (moderator)Next question. Over here.
1:06:51Audience MemberHi Elon, My name is Tracy and I'm not here for any reason related to my career or to my area of study. I'm actually here as a very cool and only slightly overbearing mother to my 10 year old daughter Harper and a sister to my 14 year old brother Ben, who are both in the audience today and who think of you the way that I guess I, I thought of Madonna at the same age.
1:07:20Elon MuskWell,
1:07:25Elon MuskThat's some high praise there.
1:07:29Audience MemberIn the spirit of that, I wanted to get your advice for two kids who are very interested in space and engineering and entrepreneurism. Thank you, thank you. I'm sorry, space engineering and entrepreneurialism.
1:07:45Kirk Shireman (moderator)What's your advice?
1:07:46Audience MemberWhat's your advice?
1:07:47Elon MuskYeah, well, you know, there's a lot of technical problems to solve. So I guess if we sort of, you know, started studying kind of engineering and physics and biosciences and that kind of thing would be the way to go.
1:08:03Elon MuskYeah, there are going to be a lot of problems to solve to make a city work on Mars. We were thinking of just as a, well, sort of a semi joke, putting a job description on our website for Urban Planner in brackets, Mars.
1:08:23Elon MuskBut there's going to be just tremendous amount of problems solved. There'll be, there's a lot of building, building and problem solving. So those are like the right, you know, skills to work on if someone's interested in going beyond Earth or, you know, space in general.
1:08:42Kirk Shireman (moderator)Thank you. We're glad you're here. Glad your kids are here too. They're the future for all of us. So thanks for coming. See over here.
1:08:52Audience MemberHi, my name is Gerard Valle, NASA Johnson Space Center. And my question is, in your quest to colonize Mars, do you foresee utilizing expandable spacecraft modules as a stepping stone
1:09:08Elon Muskor even a final utilization? Well, I think there's definitely going to be inflatable things on Mars itself. An attorney there, there might be some amount of inflatable, but we're not currently baselining that on a mod itself.
1:09:31Elon MuskI think there'd be quite a lot. Yeah. Okay, thank you.
1:09:38Kirk Shireman (moderator)Inflatable and perhaps just building it with the materials it's already present.
1:09:43Elon MuskExactly. Local materials are key.
1:09:45Kirk Shireman (moderator)You don't have to carry it with you. Yeah, tunnels, tunnels. You got to get that tunnel, that boring machine there though. That's going to be.
1:09:55Elon MuskWell, right now the Earth ones are really heavy. Like really heavy, right?
1:09:59Kirk Shireman (moderator)Well, they're not built by aerospace engineers.
1:10:02Elon MuskYou're not worried about weight for a Earth tunneling machine, you, like, actually want one that's nice and heavy. But a Mars one, you'd have to redesign it to be super light.
1:10:11Elon MuskThat's a tricky one. And then just take into account the different conditions on Mars and everything.
1:10:18Kirk Shireman (moderator)It's interesting the, you know, the Curiosity rover and the tires being chewed up by the sharpness of the, of just of the dirt of the gravel there. It's a very foreign environment to us and even in very subtle ways.
1:10:32Kirk Shireman (moderator)Yeah, let's see. Next question over here.
1:10:35Audience MemberHi, Ellen. My name is Profilochandra. I'm a regenerate medicine and scientists from Wake Forest University. My question is regarding your company Neuralink, that makes brain machine interfaces. So what do you think this technology, how is it useful for humans when they, you know, go into low Earth orbits or even deep space explorations?
1:10:57Audience MemberAnd do you have any plans in that direction?
1:11:01Elon MuskWell, the reason for. The reason I wanted to create neuralink was primarily as an offset to the existential risk associated with artificial intelligence. I think we will. Human intelligence will be not, I mean, will not be able to beat AI So then if, you know, as the saying goes, you can't beat him, join them kind of thing.
1:11:26Elon MuskSo I think having some basically find a way to link, you know, human will en masse to the outcome of, of AI having AI be an extension of individual human will, that's really the point of neuralink.
1:11:46Elon MuskNow along the way, I think there'll be a lot of good that's achieved in addressing any, any brain damage that's, you know, as a result of a stroke or a lesion or or something congenital or just loss of memory when you get old, that kind of thing.
1:12:05Elon MuskAnd that'll happen well before it becomes a sort of brain AI symbiote situation. So you'll see it coming. It won't happen all of a sudden. But yeah, I do think it increases the long term relevance of human exploration.
1:12:33Elon MuskAnd yeah, and yeah, I think it's for me it increased my motivation long term that it doesn't just need to be done by robots, you know. Yeah, I don't know if that answers your question.
1:12:55Elon MuskDoes that answer your question? Oh, yes.
1:12:57Audience MemberOkay.
1:12:57Elon MuskOkay.
1:12:59Kirk Shireman (moderator)All right, let's see.
1:13:00AnnouncerMaybe we're.
1:13:00Kirk Shireman (moderator)One more question here and we'll wrap it up on the left here.
1:13:04Audience MemberOkay. Hi, Kala from Space Nation. As we are building the first global astronaut training program for everyone, my question relates what, what you earlier said about the International Space Station and how it's a shame that it's not better known around the world as probably compared for example the shuttle program.
1:13:24Audience MemberSo, and thinking that in the future we need thousands and more space pioneers. So how do you see the significance of this public engagement and especially in the time where we have more and more tools to do that and, and do you have specific plans on that and how you see that affecting accelerating or does it have that kind of effect for the whole humanity's transition to space and the new space era?
1:13:53Elon MuskSure. Well, I think just getting more human spaceflight is going to automatically engage the public. As you point out with the space shuttle, there was a lot more engagement with when the space shuttle was launching.
1:14:08Elon MuskI think if the public sees some path, even if it's long term, where they themselves may be able to go to orbit or beyond or to the moon or Mars, I think their interest level increases dramatically and it may not be even that they want to go, but they have a son or a daughter, brother or friend that really wants to do it and so they want to support their friends and family in that ambition.
1:14:41Elon MuskBut it really needs to be something ultimately that looks like it's going to be accessible to a large number of people and then I think we'll get a large number of people engaged.
1:14:52Kirk Shireman (moderator)One of the things about engagement too, I think for the US Anyway will be we haven't people launched from the United States. So I can't tell you how people around the world said, you know, oh, you guys are still flying?
1:15:03Kirk Shireman (moderator)Well, absolutely, we never stopped flying. We've had people living on board ISS, you know, for almost 17 years and. But they don't see the smoke in the fire, right?
1:15:14Kirk Shireman (moderator)They see that, they said they knew, they turn on the TV and there's a shuttle going and it's got seven people on board and they see it. And nowadays, at least in the us, it's half a world away.
1:15:24Kirk Shireman (moderator)So here in a week, a week from Friday, we'll be launching three people. But it doesn't feel the same as if it was happening in our backyard in Florida.
1:15:35Elon MuskAbsolutely.
1:15:36Kirk Shireman (moderator)So we're looking forward to that happening very soon here in the US and we wish you the best of luck. Thanks very much for being here today. Thanks for joining the conference.
1:16:00Kirk Shireman (moderator)You're a big part of ISS and a big part of the research and development that goes on on iss. So thanks very much.
1:16:05Elon MuskI'm glad you've been able to be helpful and thanks for having me. I'd like just to extend my thanks
1:16:11Audience Memberalso for an incredibly insightful and frank discovery discussion that you guys have had with the group. So we really, truly appreciate it. And tunnels are cool, too.