Elon Musk at SXSW 2013
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (4)
Transcript
0:00InterviewerThank you and good afternoon. So we have a lot to cover. Elon does a lot of things. There is at the moment one of his spaceships docked to the space station, the Dragon spaceship.
0:13InterviewerThis is the third time that it's been docked. Second commercial one was launched last week. Many of you may have followed the launch, but there was drama. You know, there were solar panels and all this kind of stuff.
0:23InterviewerWe could follow it on your Twitter feed.
0:24Elon MuskRocket drama.
0:25InterviewerWhat's it. Can you just tell us what it's like to be Elon Musk in the control room during a launch when something happens, when there's an issue?
0:35Elon MuskWell, it's extremely nerve wracking. I mean, it's. The thing about rocket launch is that all of your work is distilled into these few minutes, particularly the first several seconds around the liftoff.
0:49Elon MuskBecause the worst thing that can happen with a rocket is if you have an engine failure or some huge failure right above the launch pad and the whole thing can come down with about a million pounds of TNT equivalent and destroy the whole launch pad.
1:05Elon MuskThat would be. That's what's going through my mind, in case you're wondering. That's actually what I'm thinking about. So when it clears the lightning towers and it's gotten further enough away from not actually destroying the launch pad, then that's one sort of go down a notch on, you know, fear and anxiety.
1:32Elon MuskAnd then after first stage separation, that's another one. And when the second stage lights up, so it's sort of going down in intensity as the rocket is going up.
1:47Elon MuskAnd the thing is that the first three rocket launches that we had failed, the first one failed quite close to the launch pad, almost destroyed the launch pad. In fact, I spent that day picking up rocket pieces off the reef, which sucks.
2:04Elon MuskSo I think there's a pretty powerfully ingrained fear response as a result of that, because three in a row just, you know, and the image of those rocket failures kind of going through my mind as I'm seeing the rocket launch.
2:19Elon MuskSo that's what's going on.
2:20InterviewerAnd then in this case, you made it through the stage separation, but then there was an issue with the solar cells. Tell me a little bit how you sort of spotted the problem, diagnosed it.
2:28InterviewerWhat does the team do? I mean, you got there in the end, but how's it working?
2:32Elon MuskYeah, so the solar panels were actually okay, but. And the rocket launch was. Went really well, so that was not a problem. Where things kind of went awry was after spacecraft separation.
2:47Elon MuskWe tried to initialize the four thruster pods. So there's four thruster pods with a combined total of 18 engines. And the system is designed with a huge amount of redundancy.
2:58Elon MuskSo it can take all sorts of failures and still complete its mission. That's the whole way it's been made. In fact, it can work with even if it has only two of the four thruster plots working, it can still do a mission.
3:12Elon MuskSo three weren't working,
3:19Elon MuskWhich was a huge puzzle. Like why are three not working? Because these things are cross strapped. So you'd kind of think that either maybe one wouldn't work or a cross strapped pair wouldn't work, but not three.
3:30Elon MuskIt was really, really strange.
3:36Elon MuskSo we have the spacecraft just going through kind of free drift in space. Like we're just tumbling, which makes it also difficult to communicate with because the antennas are like pointing every which way you can imagine.
3:50Elon MuskSo all we had was a very slight 2 kilobit, occasional 2 kilobit link that would go in and out. And that was an omnidirectional signal beaming off the NASA TDRS satellite system.
4:07Elon MuskSo in order to actually improve the. We first had to improve the bandwidth. So we actually asked the Air Force if we could have some of their long range telemetry scanners.
4:18Elon MuskWould they give us access? And we have this communication system that we call the megaproxy. So we had to recode the megaproxy to go through the Air Force long range dishes to blast the spacecraft with enough intensity to be able to upload new code to try to fix the problem.
4:38Elon MuskAnd so we wrote some new software to essentially pressure slam the two of the three oxidizer tanks that were refusing to pressurize. It turned out, I think we've figured out the problem, which is that there was a slight change made to a check valve that was in three of the tanks and on the other.
5:04Elon MuskAnd we were able to replicate that problem in the ground later. And we were able to basically have the system build up pressure upstream, then release that pressure and slam the valve.
5:19Elon MuskSo we're trying to give it the sort of the spacecraft equivalent of the Heimlich maneuver, basically. And then we got one of the pods to that looked like it was making progress.
5:31Elon MuskAnd we didn't want to unfurl the solar panels until we had at least two pods active so we could go from sort of drifting to an active hold. But then the temperatures of the solar panels, which are in these protective covers, was dropping.
5:48Elon MuskAnd it can drop to almost absolute zero if it's pointing at Dog space. So it was dropping, dropping, dropping. And we're like, okay, we better release the solar panels, otherwise they could literally freeze in place.
6:05Elon MuskAnd so we ran a simulation to see what would happen, and it was actually slightly beneficial. And it's kind of like when a skater, you know, when a skater puts their arms out, it slows down, pull them in, it speeds up.
6:18Elon MuskSo actually when the arms went out, when the solar panel arrays went out, it slowed down the rate of rotation actually slightly helped us with maintaining communication with the spacecraft.
6:29Elon MuskAnd so then we're able to, with that pressure slam thing, get a pod active, then a third one and then a fourth one. Then we've got all four working and we're able to continue the mission dock with the space station.
6:47Elon MuskIn fact, Dragon is currently docked with the space station right now, and if all goes well, we'll return to Earth in about a week or two.
6:56InterviewerThat sounds terrifying. Wow,
7:05Elon MuskThat was hardcore. I don't want to go through that again.
7:11InterviewerOkay, you are not just here in Austin for South by Southwest, but also to meet with the Texas Legislature to talk about possibly a launch base here in Texas.
7:22InterviewerTell us more about that.
7:25Elon MuskYes. So right now we've got two main launch locations. One is Cape Canaveral in Florida, and the other is Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And so they. Cape Naveral is good for kind of eastward launches, Vandenberg for southerly launches.
7:43Elon MuskAnd we figure we need a third launch site that's kind of a commercial launch site. You know, it's not because Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg got Air Force bases, which is cool.
7:53Elon MuskAnd it's. Obviously, there's an important need for Air Force space launch bases as there is for Air Force airports. But then there's also a need for commercial airports. And just like you wouldn't expect commercial airliners to land at an Air Force base in a normal course of events, it makes sense to have a commercial spaceport.
8:15Elon MuskAnd we need to be able to launch eastward. And we want to be close to the equator. So that basically means the potential states are Virginia through Texas, going south, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
8:33Elon MuskBecause the other thing is we need to stay on US Territory because rocket technology like we're doing is considered an advanced weapons technology. So it's very difficult to export that, if you will, to other countries.
8:48Elon MuskAnd anyways, those are our options right now. Texas is arguably the leading candidate, but we need certain legislation passed that's supportive of space launch. I don't think it's particularly controversial, but one of the things we need, for example, is we need to be able to close the beach when we're doing a launch.
9:07Elon MuskAnd Texas has the open Beaches Act. It's like, okay, you know, we can't launch if there's someone right next to the rocket, you know, on the beach. So that's, I don't, like I said, I don't think it's a particularly controversial thing.
9:23Elon MuskIt's pretty straightforward. And then we kind of need liberal protection for kind of the 1 in 10,000 person case who complains about the thing. Like we had this dude who filed a lawsuit against us for our rocket development site in central Texas near Waco.
9:40Elon MuskHe's like not even in the same county, he's in a neighboring county. And he also thinks like the CA is listening to his brainwaves. So we need like just a little bit of protection for people like that.
9:52Elon MuskSo we're not like spending a ton of time in court. So that's basically what we're asking for. It's nothing major and I think it's likely to move forward. So I think if, if things go as expected, it's likely that we'll have a launch site in Texas, which I
10:09Interviewerthink would be really cool around when.
10:15Elon MuskSo it depends on how the environmental approvals go and all that. But I think if things go well, I mean, not all of it's in our hands, so. But assuming that things go as expected, you know, there'd be a decision this year and then we'd construction next year and then probably the first launches would take place from there in two to three years.
10:37InterviewerTerrific.
10:38Elon MuskYeah.
10:39InterviewerSo Falcon 9 or the rocket that launched Dragon is traditional rocket, which is to say it's disposable bits. But you're essentially, you're ultimately focused on reusable rocket.
10:49Elon MuskYes, absolutely.
10:50InterviewerGrasshopper is the name of that. Can you talk a little bit about why reusable? What's different about reusable? And I think you probably have some things to show as well.
10:59Elon MuskYeah, absolutely. So reusability is extremely important. If you think it's important that humanity extend beyond Earth and become multi planet species and all that, I mean it's super important.
11:13Elon MuskI think it's also incredibly obvious, common sense. Like you can imagine watching like Star Trek and then they got a new starship after every trip, that would be pretty silly.
11:25Elon MuskAnd every mode of transport that we're used to, like cars, planes, trains, automobiles, horses, bikes, they're all reusable. But not rockets. And if we can't make rockets reusable the cost is just prohibitive.
11:42Elon MuskThe cost of the fuel and oxygen on a Falcon 9 is 0.3% of the cost of the rocket. So it's basically, it's a very tiny number. It's very similar to an airplane.
11:55Elon MuskSo it's how much does it cost to fuel up an airplane and how much does it cost to buy an airplane? They're very different things. So if humanity is ever to expand beyond Earth and establish a self sustaining base on another planet, it's critical that we solve this problem.
12:10Elon MuskWhether it's SpaceX or someone else, someone has to solve the problem and we can have a hundred fold reduction in the cost of spaceflight. So that's what SpaceX has been trying to do and really that's been the goal since the beginning of the company.
12:27Elon MuskSo so far I've not been very successful in that regard. But I think we kind of have a handle on it. I think we've got a design that in the simulations and in CAD and so forth, it closes like it should work.
12:44Elon MuskIf we can build that thing, it should work. And in fact, it may be worth just rolling the reusability video so people have a sense of what I'm talking about.
12:54Elon MuskI don't know where that plays, but behind us, in front of us,
13:03Elon MuskCan people in the audience see that? Oh, there you go. All right, so what you're seeing here is that the first stage, after stage separation, the first stage turns around, boosts back to the launch pad and then lands propulsively with landing gear.
13:23Elon MuskIt's kind of how rocket should land.
13:35Elon MuskThat's the upper stage. This is the quick version of the video, obviously. And then you're seeing dragon version 2. So dragon version 2 will land on thrusters with landing gear as accurately as a helicopter.
13:51Elon MuskSo you can land anywhere on earth with the accuracy of a helicopter.
13:55InterviewerOne last question about space before we turn to cars. You've talked before about how you decide to get into this. You were, you founded, you co founded PayPal. You don't really, I mean, you have a physics degree, you know something about, about, you know the underlying mechanics, but you didn't have any space experience, right?
14:13InterviewerYou decided, I think on a train to go to Mars and decided that you could out compete NASA or that you could get to Mars, you could get to space faster, cheaper, better than the, one of the largest, the largest space agency in the world.
14:28InterviewerHow did you get that confidence so.
14:36Elon MuskWell, I think first of all, I should say maybe give some of a preface to what happened before starting SpaceX. In fact, the way I sort of got into space was.
14:53Elon MuskI was really disappointed that we had not sent anyone to Mars, that we had not progressed beyond Apollo. And I kept waiting for when we would, and it just didn't happen.
15:02Elon MuskYear after year, a friend of mine asked me about what I wanted to do after PayPal. And I thought, well, you know, I was always curious about space, but I didn't think about that there was anything I could do in space.
15:14Elon MuskAnd I went to the NASA website to just see when are we going to Mars? And I couldn't find find that out. I thought maybe it was there, but I well hidden or something.
15:30Elon MuskSo then I thought, well, perhaps this is a question of will. Is there sufficient will to do this? And the first idea I came up with was actually to do a philanthropic mission to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars with seeds and dehydrated gel that would hydrate upon landing.
15:49Elon MuskAnd you'd have this cool greenhouse with these green plants on a red background. That would be the money shot. And then, you know, people like precedents and superlatives. So it would be the first life on another planet furthest that life's ever traveled.
16:06Elon MuskAnd that would get people excited. And you also learn a lot about what it took to support Earth plants in a greenhouse on Mars. The whole purpose of that was to get people excited about sending people to Mars and increase NASA's budget.
16:24Elon MuskSo that was my whole goal. I was going to basically torch. Yeah,
16:32Elon MuskIt had nothing to do with competing with NASA. In fact, my goal was to increase their budget. And I should say that today NASA is our biggest customer. We've got almost 50 launches, and about a quarter of those are for NASA, but 3/4 commercial, but 1/4 NASA.
16:57Elon MuskAnd NASA's been incredibly supportive and helpful. And we wouldn't be where we are today with that point without the help of NASA. So it's really got nothing to do with competing with NASA.
17:05Elon MuskIt's really just about what do we need to do to have an exciting, inspiring future in space. That's what I think really matters.
17:13InterviewerBut at the end of the day, you didn't end up raising the money to pay NASA to the mission. You ended up building your own company and ideally to do it cheaper than governments could.
17:24Elon MuskYeah. So I was able to figure out how to get the cost of the spacecraft and the greenhouse and the communication system way less than it normally would cost for such a thing.
17:38Elon MuskI got stuck on the rocket and I went to Russia three times to try to buy a couple of their biggest ICBMs.
17:52Elon MuskThis is about. This is in 2001, late 2000, 2001 and 2002. It was definitely an interesting experience and I sort of got the feeling I could have bought the nuke too, but didn't want to go there.
18:12Elon MuskThen when I got back from the third trip to Russia, that's when I thought, okay, look, even if we do, even if we buy these ICBMs from Russia,
18:30Elon MuskI thought my initial supposition was wrong. And so what I thought really was that we'd lost the world to explore, that we'd lost the world to push the boundary.
18:41Elon MuskAnd in retrospect, that was actually a very foolish error because the United States is a nation of explorers. The United States is a distillation of the human spirit of exploration.
18:53Elon MuskIt's ludicrous to actually, in retrospect, to have made such an assumption, but people need to believe that it's possible and that it's not going to bankrupt them. They're not going to have to give up something important like health care.
19:08Elon MuskYou know, it's going to be a cost that isn't going to meaningfully affect their standard of living. And I think the United States would absolutely be super, super excited about sending people to Mars.
19:20Elon MuskAnd I think a lot of people really wish that that would occur anyway, so that was, that was what I came to the conclusion of. And I thought, well, if we don't make a difference in the cost of the rocket, of the transport system, it's all, it doesn't matter.
19:36Elon MuskIt's not. Like I said, it's not a question of will, it's a question of way. And so that's when I came back and started SpaceX. But when I started SpaceX, it wasn't with the perspective of like, we'll just, you know, take over the world with awesome rockets.
19:51Elon MuskI don't know what the frick I was doing. I was like, clueless. I thought the most likely outcome was that we would fail. And the first three rockets did fail, so.
20:03InterviewerAnd you put all your money into
20:04Elon Muskit between Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity all in. Yeah, that wasn't the plan at the beginning, by the way.
20:16InterviewerAnd Peter Thiel says we don't think big anymore. He must have interesting conversations with him about that.
20:23Elon MuskWell, you know, Peter's been a big supporter actually, so he's, he invested in SpaceX at a, at a very important time in 2008, before we reached orbit. So after our third failure, but before our first success.
20:38Elon MuskSo, you know, big credit to Peter and Luke Nosek and the other guys at Founders Fund, basically my buddies from PayPal. My buddies from PayPal saved my butt. It was really, really good.
20:55InterviewerSo let's talk about cars. Many in the audience may recollect the notorious New York Times review of the Model S. Yes, exactly. Of the Model S earlier this year.
21:09InterviewerAnd your reaction to that review and the Times reaction to your reaction and the effect on your share price and on orders and all that. Without rehashing the review or the facts, I'd like you to just do postmortem, the entire experience.
21:27Elon MuskWait, how do I not do I do a postmortem without any facts or anything. Post.
21:32InterviewerPost mortem. Post mortem. Your reaction to the review and what, you know, put you on the couch. And what would you do differently today, having seen the way it all played out?
21:47Elon MuskWell, I think.
21:54Elon MuskI think there's one thing I didn't do, and maybe still should, which is to post the rebuttal to the rebuttal. Because I withheld that and waited for the public editor.
22:08Elon MuskI sent that information to the public editor, waited for her to do her sort of thing, and she came down kind of on the side of Tesla. With respect to the fact that the article was an error, but disagreed on the motive, on the ethics.
22:24Elon MuskYes.
22:27InterviewerYou impugned both facts and ethics.
22:30Elon MuskI did, yes. And I think it was. I think it was. I would call it a low grade ethics violation. Not like a big one. I don't think he thought he was doing anything particularly terrible, but I would call it a low grade violation.
22:47Elon MuskNot of the Jason Blair, you know, crazy fabrication variety, but I would call it a low grade. It was not in good faith. That's an important point. And I probably should have posted that rebuttal to make that clear, but I didn't do it.
23:07Elon MuskThat's what I regret.
23:09InterviewerSo the only change you would make is that the very last bit, the rebuttal that you wrote but has not been published. You would get out there.
23:16Elon MuskMaybe I should. You would get out there, yeah.
23:18InterviewerSo you would continue to use the same language in the same way.
23:21Elon MuskI don't think the language was inaccurate. I really don't.
23:28InterviewerYou've often.
23:34InterviewerYou've often said that one of your management techniques, one of the secrets of your success is that you listen to negative feedback.
23:39Elon MuskYes.
23:41InterviewerWas the Times review not. Didn't fall into the category of negative feedback?
23:46Elon MuskI have no problem with negative feedback. I have a problem with. Nor do I have a problem with critical reviews. If I had a problem with critical reviews. I would spend all my time battling critical reviews.
23:56Elon MuskThere have been hundreds of negative articles. Hundreds. And yet I've only spoken out a few times. I don't have a problem with critical reviews. I have a problem with false reviews.
24:08InterviewerAll right. One of the technologies that you had to, you know, basically develop to near perfection, or at least, or at least work on hardest was lithium batteries. For the electric cars that run on lithium batteries, safety has always been an issue, accidents have, etc.
24:26InterviewerRecently Boeing had fires with their lithium batteries. And the MVS and the Dreamliners now out of service because of that. You volunteered to help the Boeing executives, I guess, diagnose and redesign.
24:39Elon MuskYeah.
24:39InterviewerCan you talk a little bit about what they did wrong, what you would have done differently, and what do you think the future of, you know, Boeing and others airline batteries are going to be?
24:48Elon MuskSure. Well, first of all, on the Boeing front, I mean, Obviously even though SpaceX and Boeing compete on the space side, we have no competition on the commercial airliner side.
24:57Elon MuskAnd some of the comments that I made about Boeing have somehow been interpreted as an attack on Boeing when it is in fact not an attack on Boeing. The only reason I actually, I mean, the main reason I should say I offered help was that there's a friend of mine, Richard Branson, whose airline is suffering as a result of this lithium ion and he was mentioning that he's losing hundreds of millions or his airline is as a result of this problem.
25:24Elon MuskI said, well, I think we could probably help. And then he said, oh great, well, let me connect you with the chief engineer of the 787. I said, cool, we're happy to help.
25:33Elon MuskSo I provided some advice and hopefully that'll be helpful. And I said we're also happy to actually do the solution if you want. And they haven't taken us up on that offer, but we're happy to help either in advisory capacity or to do the solution.
25:54Elon MuskWhatever would result in the787 getting back to flight sooner. We're just trying to be productive and helpful. I think in the case of the battery, Boeing doesn't have a ton of in house battery expertise, so they, they outsourced the battery and then you had a whole bunch of kind of nested outsourcing where they outsourced the factory system and then that got outsourced to another company, then to another company, and then to a whole bunch of other companies and you're like four layers deep before you actually got to any hardware.
26:33Elon MuskAnd so that resulted in, I think, kind of a breakdown of communication. From an architectural standpoint, the fundamental issue is that the, is that I think is that the cells are too big, the battery cells are too big and the gaps between the battery cells are not big enough.
26:53Elon MuskAnd the problem with a big battery cell is that the thermal pathway is in a worst case scenario is very long. So you have to say, well, if there's a hot spot in the battery, can it get its heat out?
27:06Elon MuskAnd if it's deep in a cell, it can't do that. And it's also hard to thermally condition the cells. The life of the pack will be, will be dependent upon on the temperature, not the average temperature, but the worst temperature at any point in any cell.
27:23Elon MuskSo you want to really even that temperature out. That's why Tesla is a fan of having lots of small cells and then actively cooling each cell to keep the temperature even and make sure that if hotspot does develop, it's a very short pathway to the cooling system and it can, you know, take care of it.
27:41Elon MuskAnd you also want to make sure that it's. I'm getting quite technical here, sorry, it's, it's passive propagation proof. So if even if you're active quite cooling system fails and you get thermal runaway in a cell, that thermal runaway event can't cascade into a neighboring cell and you get the thermal domino effect.
28:02Elon MuskRight. I mean it's not super complicated. So.
28:11Elon MuskIt just. If you have big cells you want big gaps and ideally you want, you don't want big cells, but if you do, you want big gaps, small cells, small gaps.
28:24InterviewerI mean, so I mean this is really important because the whole thing about this new generation of airplanes is that they're light, they use composites, they use electronics rather than mechanical systems and so electricity drives the whole thing.
28:36InterviewerSo basically my understanding is that you need lithium batteries in the sky. It just doesn't work any other way. And your point is it can be done?
28:42Elon MuskOh, totally can be done, yeah. Like lithium's getting a bit of a bad name here. Lithium is obviously the way to go. I mean people have lithium ion batteries in their cell phones and their laptops.
28:52Elon MuskI mean, I don't think anyone's panicking here with the fact that they've got a lithium ion battery, you know, next to a sensitive region probably of their body, you know.
29:03InterviewerGot it. Well, just staying on power for one last set of questions before we. Well, before I return you your life, which seems insane.
29:13Elon MuskIt is insane.
29:16InterviewerYou're also chairman of SolarCity, which I believe is America's largest solar installer. You know, so space transportation, energy, picking off the big ones there. Now, you know, solar got a bad name over the last few years because of the cylinder meltdown, et cetera.
29:33InterviewerBut you know, my sense that people different are not different. Differentiating between the making of solar cells and the using of solar cells and, and the Chinese competition and the glutting of the market on the supply side is what Solyndra what got Solyndra in trouble.
29:46InterviewerThey couldn't compete with the falling prices. But you're a consumer of solar cells, right? So how do you see, you know, Chinese Chinese competition and sort of the glut of solar, of solar cells on the market?
29:57InterviewerWhat's that your view?
29:58Elon MuskI mean, I think what China's doing in the solar panel arena is awesome because they're lowering the cost of solar power for the world and they have these huge gigafactories that they created out in the Chinese desert and with a ton of funding from the Chinese government.
30:15Elon MuskSo it's like a giant donation from the Chinese government. Like, thanks, that's awesome. You know, and you know, people sort of complain about Solyndra, but I mean, obviously anyone who's been involved in the venture world knows that you don't bet a thousand.
30:28Elon MuskThere's some companies that die. The only reason we know about Slender is because became a political football. And I mean there are other solar panel manufacturers that are still doing reasonably well.
30:41Elon MuskBut it is tough when you're competing. I mean, I think a good rule of thumb is don't compete with China with a commodity product. You're really asking for travel in that scenario.
30:57Elon MuskAnd it's really super Easy to make 15% efficient or standard efficiency solar panels. It's super easy. It's like easier than making freaking drywall at this point. So it's like, does anybody think we should be competing with China in drywall manufacturing?
31:11Elon MuskOkay, probably not. So that's the thing. The hard part of solar power is not the panel. It's actually the whole system. It's basically designing something that's going to fit on a particular rooftop.
31:28Elon MuskBecause you have all these heterogeneous rooftops, then you've got to, you've got to mount the system, you've got to wire it up, you've got to connect it, the inverters connect it to the grid.
31:38Elon MuskYou've got to do all the permitting. I mean, it's a bunch of like thorny, unglamorous, stupid problems. But if somebody doesn't optimize them, they're still going to cost the time, ton of money.
31:48Elon MuskAnd a lot of them are really not. They're not fun problems, they're not, you know, exciting problems to optimize, but they are the problems that actually matter in the cost of solar power.
31:59InterviewerSo it's really more like, you know, like a roofing contractor than it is semiconductor company.
32:05Elon MuskI mean, what you're doing is you're putting a second roof on a building.
32:08InterviewerYeah.
32:09Elon MuskOkay. So. And you've got to do it at scale and then you've got to manage all these systems because there's still some. I mean, even though the after sales service is small, when you've got like hundreds of thousands of systems, that's still a lot to manage.
32:24Elon MuskAnd so what SolarCity really is, is a giant distributed utility and it's working in partnership with the house and business and in competition with the big sort of monopoly utility.
32:44Elon MuskI mean, I think it's like literally power to the people. Okay. It's like literally. So I think it's really awesome because utilities just never had any competition before and now they're like, they have to actually think about the cost of power and figure out better ways to do it and that kind of thing.
33:00Elon MuskI think it's really great. And the credit there is really due to Lennon and Peter Rive, co founders. I mean, I throw in a few ideas every now and then, but mostly it's just about showing up at the board meeting to hear the good news.
33:12Elon MuskThose guys are just doing such an awesome job.
33:16InterviewerSo you are CEO and CTO of SpaceX. So not just running the company, but you're actually chief technology officer as well. You are CEO and chief product designer for Tesla.
33:27InterviewerSo not just running the company, but design, designing the cars. And you're chairman of SolarCity. What is your life like?
33:36Elon MuskIt's very busy and I'd actually like to take it down just a scooch, honestly, because there are all these, I mean, these things that last few years have been really, really great.
33:52Elon MuskBut then there were a number of years that suck horribly and I'd like to just not have it be so extreme. And like last year was a year of great achievement, but honestly, I didn't have that much fun.
34:07Elon MuskIt sucked. I didn't have that much fun. My new year's resolution was to have a little bit more fun this year. So, hey, I'm at South by Southwest.
34:22InterviewerAnd you have five children.
34:24Elon MuskI do. They're awesome. Kids are awesome, by the way. You guys should all have kids. Kids are great.
34:31InterviewerHow much do you see them?
34:33Elon MuskI don't see them enough actually. But what I find is that I'm able to be with them and still be on email because they don't need constant interaction except when we're talking directly.
34:45Elon MuskSo I find I can be with them and still be working at the same time.
34:51InterviewerWait, are you saying you can do email while you're with your children?
34:54Elon MuskYeah, absolutely, sure.
34:58InterviewerWow.
34:59Elon MuskI mean, not all the time, but a lot of the time. That's why it's handy to have a phone. You can sort of do email in interstitial moments. In the absence of, of that, I would not be able to get my job done.
35:15InterviewerWow, that's impressive. We are. I have five children. I can't do email while I'm with my children. It's not good for the children and it's really not good for the email.
35:27Elon MuskI do have to have a nanny there, otherwise they'll kill each other.
35:31InterviewerSo, yeah, we are going to turn to audience questions at this point. Just a reminder that if you tweet your questions, ask Musk. There's a team in the back that will be selecting the other ones that we haven't already covered and seem interesting.
35:47InterviewerAnd I get them in front, maybe you can see them as well. So ask the first one from David Solis. He asks, when it comes to researching, analyzing entrepreneurial opportunity, how do you go about qualifying or legitimizing presumably the idea?
36:01Elon MuskSure.
36:06Elon MuskWell, I'm not sure I'm the best guide here because things that I've chosen have not been. I've not been trying to optimize on a risk adjusted return basis. So there are like.
36:22Elon MuskI would not say that I went to the rocket business, the car business or the solar business thinking that it's a great opportunity. I just thought that something needed to be done in these industries in order to make a difference and that's why I did it.
36:43Elon MuskBut in general, I do think it's worth thinking about whether what you're doing is going to result in disruptive change or not. If it's just incremental, it's unlikely to be something major.
36:57Elon MuskIt's got to be something that's substantially better than what's gone on before.
37:04InterviewerThat cues up our next question. Really? Well, this is from Craig Legrese. Space, automotive, finance, energy. You've disrupted major industries. What would you do if you had a free reign over education?
37:18Elon MuskWell, I think that the way that we currently do education is wrong. And, and when you see something like the Khan Academy and so forth, I think that's probably going in the right direction.
37:28Elon MuskGenerally you want education to be like as close to a video game as possible. Like a good video game. You do not need to tell your kid to play video games.
37:38Elon MuskThey will play video games on autopilot all day. So if you can make it interactive and engaging, then you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do.
37:54Elon MuskSo I think that's how it should be. And it shouldn't be that you've got like these grades where people move in lockstep and so everyone goes through, you know, goes like normally you'll go through English, math, Science and so forth from like fifth grade to sixth grade to seventh grade.
38:11Elon MuskLike it's an assembly line. But. But people are not objects on an assembly line. That's a ridiculous notion. People learn and are interested in different things at different paces.
38:24Elon MuskSo you really want to disconnect the whole grade level thing from the subjects, allow people to progress at the fastest pace that they can or are interested in in each subject.
38:38Elon MuskIt seems like a really obvious thing. I mean, I think like most teaching today is a lot like vaudeville where and as a result it's just not that compelling.
38:49Elon MuskIt's like somebody standing up there and lecturing to you and they've done the same lecture several years in a row. They're not necessarily all that engaged or in doing it.
38:58Elon MuskAnd you compare that to say, Batman, the Dark Knight, okay? And then you've got like the world's best special effects, you've got the world's best director, screenwriter, multiple cuts, amazing editing, and that's amazing.
39:15Elon MuskBut imagine if instead you had the local town aspiring actor do a one person play version of that. That would not be compelling.
39:29InterviewerDo you agree with Peter Thiel about the unnecessary necessariness of university higher education?
39:37Elon MuskI do agree with Peter's point that a university education is often unnecessary. That's not to say it's unnecessary for all people, but I think you probably learn about as much or the vast majority of what you're going to learn there in the first two years.
39:56Elon MuskAnd most of it is from your classmates because you can always buy the textbooks and just read them like nobody's stopping you from doing that. Or go online or go online now.
40:08Elon MuskFor a lot of companies, they do want to see the completion of the degree because they're looking for someone who's going to persevere and see it through to the end.
40:19Elon MuskAnd that's actually what's important to them. So it really depends on what some goal is if the goal is to start a company, I would say no point in finishing college.
40:30Elon MuskIn my case I had to, otherwise I'd get kicked out of the country. So that was important.
40:38InterviewerAlthough you went on got a master's degree as well.
40:41Elon MuskRight. I came out to Silica Valley to do a PhD at Stanford in applied physics and material science to work on ultra capacitors for using electric cars. And that's what I was going to do.
40:52Elon MuskAnd then I started to put that on hold to start a company. But since I already had my undergrad, I could then get an H1B visa and that kind of thing.
40:59Elon MuskSo H1B visa requires a degree, but other than that I would have. If that wasn't the case I probably would have stopped education sooner.
41:08InterviewerDid you not go to Wharton?
41:09Elon MuskYeah, yeah, I did dual undergrad in physics and business at Wharton. I see, yeah, but it was undergrad not understood.
41:17InterviewerAnother question from the audience from Dan Griffiths. Fill in the blank. You will be disappointed if blank does not happen in your lifetime.
41:30Elon MuskWell, probably the most thing I'd be disappointed is if humanity doesn't land on Mars. In my lifetime I'd be really disappointed. That would be, you know, that would be probably be my biggest disappointment.
41:44Elon MuskAnd yeah, I think that's the thing I'm most concerned about because we're at this Obviously that's what SpaceX is working on. So I'm not trying to be self serving here, but it's just I kind of worry that we've hit this.
42:00Elon MuskI don't know whether our technology level will keep going or subside. And, and for the first time in four and a half billion years, the technology level is at the point where we can extend life to another planet, make life multi planetary.
42:16Elon MuskAnd I think it's too easy to take for granted that it's going to stay above that level. And if it doesn't and it falls below that, will it return?
42:27Elon MuskWho knows? The sun is gradually expanding and in about, you know, roughly 500 million years, maybe a billion years to the outside, the oceans will boil and there will be no meaningful life on Earth.
42:44Elon MuskI mean it might be like some, you know, chemotrophs or ultra high temperature bacteria or something, but nothing that can make a spaceship.
42:56Elon MuskAnd that's like, if you think of like Maybe it's a 500 million year time frame, that's only a 10% increase in the lifespan of Earth. So if humanity had taken an extra 10% longer to get here, it wouldn't have gotten here at all.
43:13Elon MuskYeah. And so Far we haven't seen any signs of life from other worlds that we haven't detected anything. Hopefully we do, hopefully it's not a warship coming towards us.
43:28Elon MuskBut I just think that's the thing that really concerns me. We need to get this done and then that is the best thing we can do to ensure the continued existence of humanity.
43:46Elon MuskSo that's why I would say that's the most important thing.
43:49InterviewerDo you, do you personally,
43:56InterviewerDo you personally want to step foot on Mars?
43:59Elon MuskI do personally want to step foot on Mars, but honestly I would be doing this even if I knew there was no chance of me going to Mars, because I think, like I said, I think it's just important that we are on a path to getting there.
44:14Elon MuskSo I, I would like to go at some point. I'll go if I'm certain that SpaceX will be fine without me and that path will continue. You may have heard me, some of you all may have heard the joke I've made before, which is like, you know, I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact.
44:36Elon MuskSo
44:39Intervieweranother question from the, the audience, we just lost that one. There was like, I don't remember who had asked this question, but the question was, which do you think is going to have more impact on the world, SpaceX or Tesla?
44:56Elon MuskWell, I think if we look back or if historians, if I were to look back on the impact of Tesla in many years from now, I think it would be that Tesla, hopefully Tesla advanced the advent of sustainable transport by something like a decade, maybe, maybe two decades.
45:24Elon MuskBut I do think electric cars are inevitable. In fact, I think all modes of transport will go fully electric with the ironic exception of rockets. So that's, that's what I think.
45:37Elon MuskAnd then for SolarCity, perhaps something similar on the energy production side, sustainable energy production, then for SpaceX, hopefully SpaceX develop, develops the technology necessary to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars.
45:54Elon MuskAnd I mean, I think that's, you know, a bigger impact, but rather the, what SolarCity and Tesla are about are solving what I think is the most pressing terrestrial concern, which is the sustainable production and consumption of energy or helping solve it.
46:13Elon MuskI mean there are many people solving it and then what SpaceX is about is helping solve the biggest non terrestrial problem, which is the extension of life beyond Earth.
46:24Elon MuskSo those are how I see it.
46:26InterviewerWe have two related questions. One that's no longer on the screen and another one that is the first was what was the best advice you ever got? And the second, and maybe you can join them in your answer is, you mentioned working with your friends Peter Thiel and Richard Branson, who influences and inspires you.
46:44Elon MuskSure. Well, I'm inspired by a lot of historical figures. Like, one of my favorite guys is my Ben Franklin. You know, I just think he's, you know, he's a really good guy.
46:57Elon MuskI mean, he was a scientist and he also, I mean, worked in obviously publishing and the political sphere, but he kind of like, he just thought about, like, what are the problems that need to get solved?
47:07Elon MuskAnd worked on those. He just seemed like a good guy all around. So I like him. And I like just the historical figures, like in science and literature. And I'm a huge fan of Churchill and obviously Tesla.
47:27Elon MuskWe named Tesla after Nikola Tesla. Better than Musk Motors. And actually, I haven't named any product or company after myself, but that maybe gives a sense of. I think Tesla is someone who deserves a lot of recognition and.
47:46Elon MuskSorry, what was the.
47:47InterviewerWell, they're all dead.
47:49Elon MuskAny living figures? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a friend of mine, Larry Page. I think what Larry's doing. And Sergey at Google, I really admire what they've done.
48:05Elon MuskI think, obviously he's recently dead, but Steve Jobs, who doesn't admire Steve Jobs? I think Jeff Bezos is doing some
48:12Interviewergreat things, among others, competing with you.
48:16Elon MuskYes, but that's a good thing. In fact, every time I see Jeff Bezos, I say, why aren't you doing more in space?
48:25InterviewerThe other half of the question was the best advice you ever got.
48:27Elon MuskBest advice I ever got. Well, I think the. The physics training is a very good training where it's a good framework for reasoning, where you're trained to think about first principles and reason from there.
48:48Elon MuskAnd that means boiling things down to the most fundamental truths and then connecting those truths in a way to try to understand how reality is. Because, you know, physics has this problem where they're trying to figure out things like that are totally counterintuitive.
49:03Elon MuskAnd so they had to have a framework for getting there. Like quantum mechanics is incredibly counterintuitive, but it's true. And so you had. So physics developed a framework for figuring out things that aren't obvious.
49:17Elon MuskAnd that's why I think it's a lot of advice. But it's the right framework. And then just in general, critical thinking is good. Examining whether you have the correct axioms or the most applicable axioms.
49:34Elon MuskDoes the logic necessarily connect? And then what are the range of probable outcomes? Outcomes are usually not deterministic. They're a range. And so you Want to figure out what those probabilities are and make sure, ideally that you're the house, you know, it's fine to take, it's fine to gamble as long as you're the house and you know.
50:02Elon MuskAnd a subset of that is to listen to critical feedback, which you alluded to earlier. Voice solicit critical feedback, particularly from friends, because generally they will be thinking it, but they won't tell you.
50:16Elon MuskYeah,
50:19InterviewerA question here from any news or development on your hyperloop idea and you might explain what your hyperloop idea is.
50:27Elon MuskHaha. Well, what I've said is that I'm putting the hyperloop stuff on hold until I get Tesla to profitability. Because I think if I was an investor in Tesla and they heard me sort of spouting off about the hyperloop before I got the company profitable, they were like, hey, you know, go do your job.
50:48Elon MuskSo that's what I'm doing. I think once Tesla is in a, you know, has been profitable maybe for at least for a quarter, maybe two quarters, then I'll, I'll talk about the hyperloop.
50:59Elon MuskBut I think it could be an interesting way to. It would be an interesting way to travel really quickly from one city to the next.
51:07InterviewerQuickly. Explain just in one sense what a hyperloop is.
51:10Elon MuskWell, it would be something that would be, I'd say, twice as fast as a plane, at least in terms of total transit time, maybe a little faster. It would be immune to weather, incapable of crashing, pretty much, unless there's like a terrorist attack.
51:31Elon MuskAnd the ticket price would be like, let's say, half that of a plane. So it'd be better in every way.
51:39InterviewerTerrain of some sort, though
51:43Elon Muskit's not exactly a train. It would be a new mode of transportation that doesn't currently exist.
51:49InterviewerTerrestrial.
51:50Elon MuskTerrestrial, yeah.
51:52InterviewerOkay.
51:52Elon MuskUnderground, above ground could go either a
51:56Interviewerkind of subway, perhaps.
52:00Elon MuskI think the capital cost would be less if it's mostly above ground. But you can go underground too.
52:06InterviewerAll right, maybe. Last question. What's the biggest mistake you've ever made? And this is from Alexi Hill. What's the biggest mistake you've ever made? And how did you move forward?
52:17InterviewerLooking back, was it really that big a deal?
52:21Elon MuskBiggest mistake? I've made lots of mistakes. Some of them, some are pretty big.
52:39Elon MuskI mean, it's hard to say because things have worked out pretty well in the end. So how big of a mistake could it have been, as the question is really asking?
52:50Elon MuskI did lots of dumb things at my first company and at paypal and,
53:00Elon MuskYou know, I think sometimes, yeah, I don't know, there's so many. I'm hard pressed to say this is the biggest one, you know, give us one or two. Okay.
53:26Elon MuskOkay, sure. So there the biggest mistake in general that I've made, and I'm trying to correct for that, is to put too much of a weighting on somebody's talent and not enough on their personality.
53:44Elon MuskAnd I and I've made that mistake several times. In fact, I'm not going to make that mistake again. Then I would make it again. And I think it actually matters whether somebody has a good heart.
53:57Elon MuskIt really does. And I've made the mistake of thinking that sometimes it's just about the brain.
54:11InterviewerOn that heartfelt note, we're done. Please join me in thanking Elon Musk.
54:17Elon MuskThank you.