ISS R&D Conference
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (8)
Transcript
0:00ModeratorSo it is my great honor to introduce a man who needs no introduction. I'm not sure where he's at, but I'm sure he's going to come in here somewhere.
0:08ModeratorWhere is he? Okay, there you go. A gentleman who we can call Elon. And everybody, at least in this country will know exactly who you're talking about. But Mr.
0:18ModeratorElon Musk, he's the CEO, lead designer of SpaceX. Everyone I think knows this. SpaceX is an amazing commercial company. It's the first company to launch commercial rocket into low Earth orbit with their Falcon 1 launch.
0:39ModeratorThen in 2008, they were one of the winners of a contract to bring services to the International Space Station. They're the first commercial company to berth with the International Space Station, bringing supplies.
0:52ModeratorThey're also the first commercial company to return a sizable return vehicle with all the components still intact, which is very important to us back to the surface of the Earth.
1:03ModeratorAnd so it's an amazing company that's done a great job and continues to push the boundaries. You'll hear from Elon, but his interest really is not so much in low Earth orbit as it is going beyond low Earth orbit and making sure humanity will continue to live by exploring beyond Earth.
1:24ModeratorElon has a varied history of things that he's been involved in. This is one of the things that makes it so exciting to have this conversation with him today.
1:34ModeratorHe's not one dimensional space guy. He's involved in Tesla Motors, which he is the co founder and CEO and also a major player in the design efforts and what they choose to go build and how.
1:46ModeratorOf course he was a co founder of PayPal and Zip2. He's deeply involved in a number of other industries as well. And so it's my great honor to welcome Elon Musk to the stage.
2:12ModeratorThanks for coming, Appreciate it. Okay, well these are great chairs
2:21Elon Muskyou guys. Look at those chairs we were in.
2:25ModeratorLet's see. So Elon, you and I were going to have a little chat this morning. We said it was going to be a fireside chat. So minus the fireside, I guess we're ready again, as you heard, I've encouraged folks to ask a few questions along the way, but I have a few questions I thought to be a started.
2:42ModeratorSo the first one, which is probably on everybody's mind is perhaps you want to discuss a little bit about the recent loss of the Dragon and the Falcon 9 here on SpaceX 7.
2:54Elon MuskSure. Well, I mean I think it's obviously it's a huge blow to SpaceX and we take these missions incredibly seriously.
3:10Elon MuskEveryone that can engage in the investigation at SpaceX is very, very focused on that. And in this case, the data does seem to be quite difficult to interpret. Like whatever happened is clearly not a sort of simple, straightforward thing.
3:32Elon MuskSo we want to spend as much time as possible just reviewing the data, obviously going over it with NASA and with FAA and with a number of other customers, and just sort of seeing what feedback everyone has based on their prior experience to see if we can get to what the most likely root cause is.
3:55Elon MuskLook at both what we think most likely happened and then anything that's a close call and try to address all of those things and maximize the probability of success for future missions.
4:08ModeratorAny hints on where you think the problem lies?
4:12Elon MuskWell, I know there's media in the audience, so they all. Yeah. So you have to be careful.
4:16ModeratorYou're right, I never really learned that. But that is a lesson I'm working on.
4:23Elon MuskSo it's. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, the.
4:31Elon MuskI think we'll be able to say something more definitive towards the end of the week. At this point, really, the only thing that's really clear is that there was some kind of overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.
4:48Elon MuskBut the exact cause and the sequence of events, there's still no clear theory that fits with all the data. So we have to determine if some of the data is a measurement error of some kind, or whether there is actually a theory that matches sort of what appear to be conflicting data points.
5:12ModeratorOkay, very good. I'll just make a comment. The tweets you put out regularly, particularly when events like this happen, are really useful to everybody. We really do appreciate it.
5:22ModeratorYou'd be amazed at how many folks quote what you said and how glad they are that you just step right out and at least give some sign about what's going on and that, you know, we'll get through it, things are going well.
5:33ModeratorSo we appreciate that.
5:34Elon MuskAbsolutely. And for sure, as soon as we think we've got a clear line on what happened, and we've sort of cross checked it with as many experts as we can, and I certainly appreciate the feedback from NASA on this front.
5:48Elon MuskVery much appreciated. We'll certainly put out that story. My only reticence about saying something quite yet is I don't want to say something that subsequently turns out to be a misunderstanding of the situation.
6:03ModeratorOh, yeah, absolutely understand that. So one of the questions that I ask myself regularly is, at what point does all this government help hurt? So this event occurred and we have, you have NASA folks there from about three different programs that intend to use your services, ISS being one of them.
6:29ModeratorYou have the FAA that's involved, the range folks are there without feeling like you're giving your customers a hard time. How is that interaction and what should we consider doing differently so that we, in those areas where we can help, we are helpful, and in those areas where we're really keeping you from getting your job done, we can modify ourselves?
7:03Elon MuskYeah, actually, I think the interaction with NASA has been great thus far. The biggest challenge is there are a lot of inquiries coming in simultaneously. So it's hard to sort of keep, you know, respond to everyone right away.
7:21Elon MuskBut actually it seems to have gone fairly well. The biggest thing that's needed in the sort of short term is the ability to sort of gather all the data, create a very precise timeline.
7:31Elon MuskSo, you know, by the millisecond we know what each sensor was reading and we can correlate that with ground video. And actually one of the biggest challenges is matching the things to the exact time.
7:45Elon MuskBecause when you're talking about a matter of milliseconds, being able to say what is the ground track video compared to the data as received by the, you know, by the ground station from the rocket, and then taking into account for exactly the actual time taken to generate a packet of information, when was that sensor read, when was it encoded into a packet, and when was that packet sent to the ground?
8:16Elon MuskWhen you're dealing in milliseconds that all that stuff actually makes quite a big difference. So that's the biggest sort of effort we've been engaged in thus far, is just putting together a super detailed timeline and then just making sure that we have the sequence of events down as precisely as possible.
8:36Elon MuskThat's what we're working on. But actually, certainly with the interaction we've had with NASA and with us has actually been quite good thus far. And we've explained that this is what we're doing.
8:49Elon MuskAnd then we very much welcome any feedback or input or review of the data that would lead us to a better understanding of the circumstances.
8:59ModeratorI thought we had a very productive discussion back when we had the Engine 1 anomaly. And so I found it to be very useful. But that's a perspective from a NASA perspective.
9:11ModeratorSo it's always interesting to know your perspective.
9:14Elon MuskYeah, it seems to be quite good actually right now.
9:17ModeratorSo you're building the last couple launches, you've had landing legs and you've been working on landing the first stage back eventually to shore. Can you talk a little bit about that and what your vision is for that and for SpaceX in general as you go forward.
9:34Elon MuskSure. Well, the overarching goal of SpaceX is to try to advance the state of space transport, advanced space transport technology, to the point where, well get as far along the path as we can to where space travel is hopefully commonplace at some point in the future and where we can send large numbers of people and cargo to other planets.
10:01Elon MuskAnd you know, it's like that's the sort of thing that needs to happen for humanity to have a great future in space is to. So we want to keep pushing that.
10:08Elon MuskI think key to that future is reusability. So that's why we've worked quite hard on reusability. Unfortunately we haven't succeeded yet. In fact, the last launch ironically was we actually had the best chance of landing the vehicle on the sort of drone ship that's keeping station in the Atlantic.
10:34Elon MuskSo we're actually quite sort of geared up for hopefully this would be a really great launch. And unfortunately ended up being the opposite on my birthday of all things.
10:44Elon MuskIt was a real downer. You'll remember it though, definitely low point. But I do think in the future launches that we've got a decent chance of, of landing on the ship and then bringing the boost stage back to land.
11:05Elon MuskAnd then the next challenge of course is trying to figure out how to efficiently effectively reuse it. And it is designed for easy reuse in theory, but we've got to see what the stage looks like when it comes back in one piece.
11:23Elon MuskWe have been able to over the last few years do a number of vertical takeover landing tests of hardware that's essentially in the flight configuration. So we know we can handle the terminal phase if, you know, if things go right, we can take off land, no problem.
11:41Elon MuskSo it's just a question of completing all of the pieces and hopefully later this year we'll be able to do that. But that's key. But of course that doesn't address upper stage reuse, but it addresses boost age reuse, which is sort of 70% to 80% of the cost.
12:03Elon MuskBut I think would be a great step towards lowering the cost of space transport.
12:10ModeratorSo, you know, if you look at your history, I guess Zip2, PayPal, these are largely software type efforts now. You've got Tesla electric cars, you're building a battery plant, a Solar City.
12:29ModeratorI guess you're involved in Solar City. So why space? This seems space to me and just what I rate with you seems to be more of A passion and the others are businesses, but I can't tell why space.
12:42ModeratorWhy are you, why do you think it's important for us to be sure
12:45Elon Muskhave quick access to lower authority? Well, the, I mean actually technically, I mean with, with the Tesla and SolarCity, they're about helping to solve the sustainable energy problem. And so we're trying to make progress on that front on the, with those companies, with, with SpaceX, it's trying to help solve the kind of space faring problem.
13:12Elon MuskI mean I, I think that a future where we're a spacefaring civilization and a multi planet species is a very exciting, inspiring, awesome future. And in order for that to happen, we've got to dramatically improve the cost of spaceflight.
13:34Elon MuskAnd that's why SpaceX exists, is to try to try to lower the cost of spaceflight, which we've made some progress in doing. But still, I would call our improvements thus far evolutionary.
13:46Elon MuskNot revolutionary. But with a lot of continued work, I think there's the potential for order of magnitude or greater improvements, reusability being key to all of that, of course.
14:03Elon MuskAnd yeah, and then hopefully, you know, we want to see if we can keep improving the cost of space flight and eventually that trend is in the right direction.
14:12Elon MuskIt could be leading to a city on Mars and certainly along the way a lot of activity in low Earth orbit and the moon and lots of other exciting things.
14:25ModeratorSo one of the things we're trying to do with the International Space Station is try to figure out which industries will prosper from the use of low Earth orbit to try to understand or help grow an economy essentially in low Earth orbit.
14:43ModeratorAnd folks who are doing that are all taking risks today. Our job is to try to reduce the risk as much as we can near term so that they can get the information they need to really have a business case for the future.
14:57ModeratorBut everyone's trying to calculate a risk. So is there an Elon Musk philosophy of risk versus benefit? And when you, when you think is the right time to jump in, what is your thought on, on how to approach new industries, innovative areas and when's the right time to jump in or not?
15:20ModeratorOr do you just. Is there no crystal ball or is it a crystal ball or a Ouija board? I mean, how do you figure out what you should go after?
15:29Elon MuskWell, definitely the Ouija board, of course, much more reliable than the crystal ball. So the. Yeah, I mean, I don't really like risk for risk's sake or anything. And I do think that things are very risky with a low Chance of success.
15:55Elon MuskBut if you want to try to come up with an introvert breakthrough, that's kind of, that's going to be how it is. Anything which is significantly innovative is going to come with a significant risk of failure.
16:11Elon MuskBut, you know, you've got to take big chances in order for the potential. Potential for a big positive outcome. And you know, just, I mean, if the outcome is exciting enough, then taking a big risk is worthwhile.
16:29Elon MuskIt's really how I approach it. But then once executing down a path, I actually do my absolute best to reduce risk, you know, because. Or to improve the. Another way of saying it, to improve the probability of success.
16:42Elon MuskBecause when you try to do something that is very, very risky, you have to spend a lot of effort trying to reduce that risk as you embark down that path.
16:56Elon MuskI mean, When I started SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were very low. I thought we'd most likely fail, but I thought, well, we should give it a try nonetheless.
17:11Elon MuskAnd then I'm not sure if you know what preceded SpaceX or why I got into the space.
17:21ModeratorI remember you trying to purchase a vehicle too, from a Russian cop. Yeah, that's right. Is that what you're talking about?
17:26Elon MuskWell, actually it was. The reason I got into space was to try to increase NASA's budget.
17:35ModeratorWell, God bless you, Dave.
17:45Elon MuskSo I'll tell you. So the roundabout way I thought that might be accomplished was I thought, well, if NASA's budget was larger than we could do more in space exploration.
17:56Elon MuskAnd I thought, well, what? Particularly if we could get the public excited about sending people to Mars. And I thought, well, if I could do a small greenhouse and send that to the surface of Mars with seeds and nutrient gel, and you hydrate the gel on landing, you have a little miniature greenhouse and then you'd have.
18:15Elon MuskThe public tends to get excited about precedents and superlatives. So it'd be like the sort of first life on Mars, the furthest life's ever traveled. And you get people sort of excited about, well, but we should send people there like the hell of plants.
18:28Elon MuskWe should send people. And then I thought, well, if that could get the public really excited about sending fuel to Mars, then that would translate into congressional support for a bigger NASA budget.
18:41Elon MuskThat was the goal. And then I didn't have enough money to buy and I thought that that outcome would have 100% chance of no commercial success, so 100% chance of losing all the money.
18:54Elon MuskSo. So compared to that, SpaceX, which I thought maybe had a 10% chance of success. That was an improvement.
19:05Elon MuskThere you go.
19:06ModeratorWell, that makes good sense. So are you still thinking about that? I do remember that conversation. This was the idea where you used Martian regolith. You send these self contained habitats.
19:16ModeratorNot habitats, pretty things and grow like
19:20Elon Muska meter across or something.
19:22ModeratorBut just to prove the concept.
19:24Elon MuskYeah, just to get, I mean the real goal was to get the public excited. You get some engineering data about what does it take to maintain a little habitat on Mars type of thing.
19:34Elon MuskBut the main thing would be to get the public excited and you know, get people to be, you know, the public to be in favor of a bigger NASA budget.
19:42Elon MuskThat was the goal.
19:44ModeratorWell again, God bless you, that's a worthy goal. I hope you don't stop. So commercial crew. So you've been selected as one of the providers for the commercial crew.
19:54ModeratorCan you tell us a little bit about where that's headed for you as a company and perhaps maybe how it's affected your company? If it has, if it's changed anything in how you approach space.
20:08Elon MuskThings seem to be going fairly well on the commercial crew front. I mean the, I mean overall, I mean there are small disagreements here and there but overall I think we very much agree with the way it's being done.
20:24Elon MuskAnd yeah, I think it's pretty, pretty good. I mean there are a few things where like it seems like the amount of sort of mass and volume reserved for poop is too high.
20:41Elon MuskSorry, I don't know if that's like, but that's, you know, like little things like that. We're like well are they really going to do that much? But it's quite large volume, it really is.
20:55Elon MuskSo really they're pretty small disagreements. So I think it seems to be pretty sensible. And then we did the launch abort test earlier this year which at the came, which actually went pretty well.
21:14Elon MuskAnd yeah, so things are going along, getting pretty exciting. And yeah, I think there's also some potential use for Dragon 2 as a science delivery platform, you know, going to sort of delivering payloads to Mars or other places.
21:34Elon MuskWe're in just discussion with other parts of NASA about some of those ideas because the propulsive landing, you know, it could really lower the cost of getting science instruments to various places in the solar system.
21:47Elon MuskSo it's kind of exciting.
21:48ModeratorSo I'm going to come back to that in just a second. But commercial, the crew vehicle versus the Dragon cargo vehicle, clearly there are some significant differences. Fairly innovative approach I think to abort testing where traditionally you've seen the Jetson rocket On top, it's a puller versus the pusher technique where you utilize fuel that you otherwise would use for the on orbit.
22:14ModeratorBut of course you're not going there. So very innovative approach. Are there other areas where you feel like you're from an innovation standpoint you're making some significant strides with the crew vehicle?
22:28Elon MuskYeah, I think the big items for. Well, the biggest item really for Dragon 2 is the ability to do a propulsive landing. And it's basically having heavy thrusters on board.
22:44Elon MuskSo those same heavy thrusters can then do the abort but retain the engines. So instead of in a normal sort of crude machine like say take the Soyuz for example, they'd have a tractor motor on the nose of the vehicle that would have to be basically a rocket engine on the nose.
23:04Elon MuskThey would have to be discarded on every flight, which is a potential reliability issue. And then you have obviously unable to reuse the abort system and yeah, and it adds bunch of mass.
23:22Elon MuskBut then in addition, those same thrusters can be used for propulsive landing. So you can achieve a precise propulsive landing which on land or water, which is I think a significant improvement.
23:39Elon MuskAnd I mean it's sort of also, it's sort of like it really, I think feels. Feels more like the future to have that capability. And then as I mentioned before, it can be extended to do payload delivery to the moon or Mars or other places because of the generalized capability of propulsive landing to land almost anywhere.
24:04Elon MuskVery good.
24:05ModeratorSo let's go back to Dragon. At one point you had a conversation, talked a little bit about something I think was referred to as Dragon Lab, where you go to low Earth orbit and do what I assumed was sortie kind of research and then bring the vehicle back.
24:19ModeratorAre you still pursuing that or something like that? Is this an area where you think that there is potential.
24:26Elon MuskI think that there is some potential for. To essentially just take things to low Earth orbit and then bring them back after a few weeks or something like that.
24:37Elon MuskIt's, it's not a huge area of attention at SpaceX, but I think we might do a few missions like that. But yeah, I mean Dragon is very much sort of, its primary optimization is as a transport vehicle to and from the space station.
24:57Elon MuskAnd so things like Dragon Lab and then the science delivery platform, I think are interesting extensions of that. And I think as Dragon 2 first flies and then gets into regular flight, I think there probably will be some more applications that people can think of.
25:14Elon MuskParticularly since with Dragon 2, the reusability of the vehicle should Be quite high. So if we have reusability of the Dragon spacecraft and reusability of the booster and somebody's willing to sort of do a bunch of flights with the fully reused system, there's the potential for much lower cost access to space.
25:40Elon MuskThere is a bit of a chicken and egg challenge because, like, there's a certain amount of fixed costs that have to be carried no matter what. So the marginal cost of launch or the cost of each subsequent launch can drop quite significantly.
25:55Elon MuskAs long as the launch rate per year is high, it stays up. Yeah.
26:00ModeratorOf course, that adds other challenges to the system.
26:03Elon MuskYeah.
26:03ModeratorTrying to fly as often as you.
26:05Elon MuskAs you need to to make that. Yep.
26:08ModeratorWell, let's see. I don't want to bore everybody with all my questions. And we had talked about if folks had any questions in the audience. Let's see this. Oh, wow.
26:17ModeratorThey're not bashful.
26:18Elon MuskThat's good.
26:18ModeratorSo I don't know if we're going to need microphones, but I'll start here.
26:24Audience MemberSo I came from Italy. I would like to ask a question, which is I'm coming from the solar energy.
26:38Audience MemberBecause you are like a kind of mentor and a visionary and you give hope to a lot of people around the globe because when they see you, they realize that they can realize their dreams.
26:52Audience MemberBut my question is different. When you are a dreamer, when you are. When you are a dreamer, when you are a visionary, of course you have your vision. But there are moments that sometimes maybe you stop believing in this vision, especially in the moments of some problems or failure.
27:15Audience MemberSo could you tell me, and could you tell also to thousands of people who maybe will be motivated by your answer, what keeps you fighting for your vision? What helps you to reach your dream?
27:34Elon MuskWell, I mean, I think I'm kind of constitutionally just geared to just keep going. I don't know. It's. Yeah. I mean, it just. I don't know. I mean, certainly there are times when things don't go well and then that's quite dispiriting, for sure.
27:58Elon MuskAnd so then it's difficult to proceed with the same level of enthusiasm. But I do think, like, I do think the things that we're doing are, you know, pretty important to the future.
28:13Elon MuskAnd if we don't succeed, then, you know, there's. Well, it's not clear what other things would succeed. And if we don't succeed, then we will be certainly pointed to as a reason why people shouldn't even try for these things.
28:28Elon MuskSo I think it's important that we do whatever is necessary to keep going.
28:34Audience MemberOkay, and last question, last question. So in 2004, when you are going to Barumen with your cousin, you were thinking there is a sun and let's make energy out of it.
28:48Audience MemberAnd I would like to ask you, why do you believe so in solar energy and in clean tech energies and also in sustainable energy. And the last question, I will not ask any more questions.
29:02Audience MemberWhat will be the role of solar in the exploration of Mars?
29:06Elon MuskSure. I think solar energy is probably fairly significant for Mars. And what's going to be quite important is having a very lightweight solar system that both volumetrically and gravimetrically dense.
29:26Elon MuskSo actually sort of playing with the different concepts, like you know that like thing, that party thing where you plate it and it rolls out the thing, like one of the solar concepts is to have like a big roll that you just basically inflate and it rolls out with like really thin solar panels on it.
29:53Elon MuskBut it's going to be pretty important because really you either got to do that or nuclear. And you know, nuclear has, has its challenges but for solar it's pretty straightforward.
30:06Elon MuskSo I think, I think solar is very important to the future exploration of Mars for sure.
30:11Audience MemberSo thank you and I wish you that your next birthday is very successful.
30:15Elon MuskThanks.
30:15Audience MemberThank you so much.
30:17Elon MuskOkay, let's go, let's go.
30:20ModeratorOkay, go ahead. Bouncing.
30:22Audience MemberMy name is Valentin Novarev. I am from the United Rocket and Space Corporation which shortly will become a part of state corporation Roscosmos. So I made this long quest to the west because I'd like to ask one question of Elon Musk.
30:41Audience MemberWhat is his secret? To become a successful businessman in space industry and then coming back to Russia to tell Russian businessmen there is a way to become a tycoon in space industry.
30:56Audience MemberSo seriously speaking, I'd like to ask you, when you started your business, was the government your partner? Was it useful in what areas? And so there are always two sides of the coin.
31:12Elon MuskSure.
31:14Audience MemberAs there were times when you had to fight bureaucracy. Thank you.
31:20Elon MuskSure. Well, I should say with respect to starting a space business, it's definitely not the easiest environment to start a business. I think if most people were to rank order, what's the highest return on investment?
31:38Elon MuskI mean space would not be very good. I mean it's, I'm very pro space. So it's like I, you know, but it's, I mean it's just true that like if you, you know, start a hedge fund or if you're in like many other industries, then it's much easier to make money than the space industry.
31:58Elon MuskThis is not the easiest one to make money in. Yeah, car industry, also quite difficult.
32:16Elon MuskSo the, in fact, I mean, when starting SpaceX, the joke, I heard the joke, this joke so often it was ridiculous. The joke was how do you make a small portion in the space industry?
32:29Elon MuskThe punchline of course being start with a large one.
32:39Elon MuskYeah, I got to a point, I'd heard the joke so many times that I would just get to the punchline and say like, well, I wanted to figure out how to turn a large fortune into a small one.
32:46Elon MuskThat was my goal. And they're like, wow, how did he know that? So, yeah, I mean, I do think there is opportunity in space, but it is, it's tough going.
33:02Elon MuskI think if SpaceX and other companies can lower the cost of transport to orbit and perhaps beyond, then there's a lot of potential for entrepreneurship at the destination. I mean, you can think of it like the Union Pacific Railway.
33:20Elon MuskBefore there was the Union Pacific Railway, it was real hard to have commerce between the west coast and the East Coast. It would go by wagon or a really long sailing journey.
33:31Elon MuskBut once there was the transport, then there were huge opportunities. And now look at sort of, you know, California and Washington State and all the industries that have been created in Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
33:44Elon MuskBut you've got to have that fundamental transport element. Otherwise there's just, it's really tricky. So we're trying to establish that transport element, make it easier to get to low Earth orbit and hopefully in the future make it easier to get to the Moon or Mars.
34:02Elon MuskAnd I do have this long term vision of like, if there was affordable transport to a place like Mars, I think the entrepreneurial opportunities would be phenomenal, you know, because there'd be people that would want to create everything from the first pizza joint to the first iron ore factory to be like just an enormous amount of opportunity for people to create things on Mars.
34:24Elon MuskAnd there'll be different things on Mars. Some of the things on Mars would be different that we don't even imagine on Earth. It'd be very exciting. So I think that's really key to making things happen in space is you've got to have someplace, you gotta have someplace to go and someplace, some way to get there.
34:46ModeratorSo along those lines, you read Andy Ware's book, the Martian?
34:50Elon MuskYeah, yeah, it was good. What did you think? I thought it was pretty excellent. Certainly one of the most realistic books on Mars that I've read. I mean, like, there were a few things like the wind force on Mars is not really that high.
35:05Elon MuskIt's not going to knock you over or anything. It's obviously high velocity, but low force. But overall I thought it was pretty cool and apparently it's been made into a movie and everything.
35:17ModeratorYou don't have a cameo on that one too?
35:19Elon MuskI don't have a cameo on that one. I'm a little worried that it might not make people too keen on going to Mars.
35:28Elon MuskThis looks really hard. I think we need a show about how Mars is awesome and it's like the Wild west and you got the gunslingers and the cool cowboys and that kind of thing.
35:41ModeratorAll right, maybe you got to write a book too. Let's see. There's a question over here.
35:45Audience MemberGo ahead. Hi there, my name is Anita Goel. I'm here out of Harvard and mit, run a company called nanobiosym. So in your vision and dream to achieve low cost space travel, how do you allocate your investments between engineering and essentially driving down the cost of existing technology versus investing in new breakthrough physics.
36:10Audience MemberThings like breakthrough propulsion, physics, anti gravity. What's your vision in the bifurcation of those two kinds of portfolios?
36:18Elon MuskWell, we don't spend a ton of time on new physics. I think with current physics there's huge potential. So rather than rely on a breakthrough, which really, it's difficult to envision what that breakthrough would exactly be or even inexactly be, I'm quite confident that with what we know of current physics, sort of just going with kind of where the standard model of physics is today, that there are dramatic improvements possible in space flight.
36:58Elon MuskAnd I think with the, you know, certainly with, with Falcon 9, I think we make improvements. And then with our next generation rocket system, which is still, you know, many years away, that'll be a deep cryo methal ox system, I think, I think we can achieve full reusability.
37:18Elon MuskAnd that, that's really, that's a, that's a huge potential for, you know, know, like maybe a two order of magnitude reduction in the cost of spaceflight. So as far as RD is concerned, we hire great engineers as fast as we can find them.
37:41Elon MuskSo it's like the, it's not that easy to find, I should say great engineers with the sort of like the right mindset and everything. We hire at the maximum rate that we can find people that we think would really be an asset to the team.
37:56Elon MuskSo there's no limitation on that. Okay, over here. Hi, my name is Zachary Malt, I'm a student from BABSON College. I just want to say it's an
38:04Audience Memberhonor to be here.
38:06Elon MuskI read Ashley Vancy's biography about you, and one thing that really was intriguing to me was the Super Draco engine for the Dragon V2 that was used printed out of a 3D technology.
38:15Elon MuskDo you envision using that technology more in the future when you first space exploration? And do you think they'll, how will that affect the costs in terms of getting to Mars, anything like that?
38:26Elon MuskYeah, absolutely. So, as you alluded to, we actually print the Super Draco engines. So they're printed out of titanium. And that actually allows us to reduce the cost of those engines quite a bit.
38:45Elon MuskIn particular because we can print integral cooling channels. So when you've got an hourglass chamber and you've got cooling channels in the wall of the chamber where the whole wall consists of cooling channels, it's only quite difficult to create that thrust chamber or nozzle because you've got to create an inner jacket, outer jacket kind of machine, the, the inner jacket, and then braze the whole thing together.
39:11Elon MuskIt's a real pain. And you've got a bunch of joints in there to make it all work. So with printing, you can print something that you can't make by any other means.
39:20Elon MuskSo it actually ends up being lighter and cheaper than if we built it by traditional methods for our next generation engine, which we call the Raptor, which as I mentioned, is sort of a, it's, it's a deep cryomethalox.
39:36Elon MuskSo what I mean by that is the methane and oxygen are cooled to close to their freezing point. So not far from their freezing point, as opposed to close to their boiling point, which is normally the case.
39:54Elon MuskFor that engine. We're trying to print as much as possible. The biggest limitation on 3D printing right now is the, the size envelope. So there's a limit on how big we can print something.
40:07Elon MuskBut we're able to print the turbo pump components and much of the injector, not the whole thing, but many of the critical parts we can print. So that actually helps us in speeding up the development.
40:20Elon MuskSo instead of waiting for castings to be developed, which can take several months, and then if the casting is wrong, you've got to iterate on the casting and each iteration can take several months.
40:32Elon MuskWith printing, those iterations can be reduced to a matter of weeks or months. So that actually helps with the speed of development as well. Let's see over here. Hi, I'm Ross Bunchrock with a company called Highorbit.
40:51Elon MuskI wondered if you could Give us
40:53Moderatora little bit of an update on what's going on with the Hyperloop.
40:56Elon MuskAnd is there any overlap between the
40:58Moderatorwork you're doing with SpaceX and hyperloop technology?
41:02Elon MuskYeah, SpaceX is not. Neither I nor SpaceX are doing anything to try to commercialize the hyperloop. There are I think at least two, maybe more than two companies that have formed that are completely independent of me or SpaceX that are working towards commercializing the hyperloop or the hyperloop idea design.
41:24Elon MuskWhat SpaceX is doing is we're going to just create a little student competition for hyperloop ideas. So kind of like around the way that Formula SAE works, where students come up with a design and compete against each other to design the best pod.
41:43Elon MuskSo what SpaceX will do is just construct about a mile long low pressure tube, nearly vacuum tube, basically, in which students can kind of race their pods. So it's just basically to support, get students excited about engineering.
42:08Elon MuskThat's the only involvement to SpaceX and myself with the hyperloop at this point.
42:14Audience MemberOver here. Hello, I'm Paola Castagno, I'm a sociologist and I'm writing a book about the International Space Station. How would you describe the scientific value of the International Space Station?
42:27Audience MemberAnd where would you draw the line between luxury and need when it comes to space exploration?
42:35Elon MuskWell, I mean, for space. I mean, I really spend all of my time thinking about just how to get to the space station. To be honest, I actually hadn't even really seen a proper movie of the inside of the space station until I went to see a preview of the new IMAX thing that's coming out.
42:55Elon MuskAnd it's amazing. Like when that space station IMAX movie comes out, people are going to get blown away. It's awesome. I actually brought my whole team at, at SpaceX to go see the preview of the IMAX movie.
43:13Elon MuskAnd I mean, it is a very unique laboratory because this is the only thing that's in sort of microgravity that's above the Earth's atmosphere and you can learn a lot about basically human physiology and do experiments that you can't really do any other lab.
43:37Elon MuskAnd you know, and you can have bring scientists up and they can actually work in this incredibly unique lab. So I think that there's a lot to be gained there.
43:49Elon MuskAnd I think it just, you can't sort of, you know, ignore the coolness factor of it. Like that's like, people think it's pretty cool, so I think it's pretty cool.
44:03Elon MuskAnd you know, the public want to have something going on in space that involves people and. Yeah, and it's. It's just. I don't know, it's the coolest thing going on in space.
44:18Elon MuskSo there's a lot of value to that.
44:22ModeratorYou know, we tried to. Cell's the wrong word. It's the word we use, but cell's really the wrong word. We're trying to get people to recognize that there's a platform in low Earth orbit and that this is important.
44:38ModeratorWhat's done in low Earth orbit has benefit to those of us on Earth that will never actually go to space. But in doing that, you're trying to get their interest level level.
44:49ModeratorAnd part of their interest level is the cool factor that you talked about. And I've always kind of struggled with that being sort of black and white. I understand the purpose in my head.
45:01ModeratorThat's why I joined NASA. Right. But over the years, this is one of the things that I've started to recognize as important. So my question to you is, did we.
45:11ModeratorI've heard a rumor that for the suits for commercial crew, that you wanted to play a role in that, and so is that true? And is there some reason behind the design of the suit that you want to personally be involved in other than crew safety?
45:26Elon MuskYeah, I think we've actually spent a lot of effort on the spacesuit design, on both the functionality and the aesthetics. But I think just getting. It's actually really hard because if you just sort of optimize functionality, it's one thing.
45:44Elon MuskIf you optimize for aesthetics, it doesn't work like, you know, those things that you see in movies, they don't work. So it's like, ok, how do we make something that looks cool and works?
46:02Elon MuskAnd with a key goal here of being that, you know, when people see that spacesuit, you want them to think, yeah, I want to wear that thing one day.
46:14Elon MuskYou know, that looks awesome. So that's the reason for it. Very good.
46:21ModeratorLet's see. We'll do a couple more questions and then let's. Can we get back in the back here, or do we have somebody else here already with the microphone?
46:30ModeratorAll right, go ahead. Thank you. And we'll do one more after that.
46:33Audience MemberAlex. I'm Alex Perlman. I'm with Boston Magazine and I'm writing for Vice today. I was hoping that you could give us a little bit of an update on the most recent news with the idea of putting satellites to provide Internet to developing countries and unconnected people.
46:50Audience MemberThanks.
46:52Elon MuskSure. So we're still at the early stages of sort of a big Leo Constellation communication idea and we're hopeful, hopefully going to launch. I get a test satellite next year and I think the long term potential of it is pretty great.
47:13Elon MuskBut I don't want to overplay or overstate things quite, or any stage of the game really. But the long term goal is to, to create a comprehensive global communication system that provides high bandwidth, low latency connectivity anywhere in the world and provides cross links through the satellites so that you can have improved long distance Internet.
47:45Elon MuskOne of the things that sort of your eyes when you look at this is that you can actually have a more direct path through space and you can. And photons move faster depending upon what fiber optic material they're running through.
48:03Elon MuskPhotons actually move about 40 to 50% faster in vacuum than they do in fiber optic cables. And if you look at the way that the fiber optic cables go, they trace the outlines of the continents and they go through many repeaters and routers and everything.
48:22Elon MuskSo if you want to say communicate from a server in California to one in South Africa, it's a very, very long route and so very roundabout path and it's high latency, low photonic speed and you could actually have that communication be quite a bit faster if it's in space.
48:44Elon MuskSo I think there's the potential for doing a fair bit of long distance Internet activity as well as providing bandwidth broadly. But it's also worth saying that a lot of companies have tried this and kind of broken their pick on it.
49:02Elon MuskAnd I think we want to be really careful about how we deliver it, about trying to make this thing work and not overextend ourselves. So we're being fairly careful about it.
49:16Elon MuskBut I do think this is something that should be built and would be quite good to have.
49:22Audience MemberWhat are you looking to do differently than others?
49:27Elon MuskWell, in our case, the communications technology would be substantially more advanced. In the past with say temps like Teledesic, the electronics of the day were very low bandwidth. I mean they were really analog or barely digital and they weren't very high bandwidth.
49:51Elon MuskSo it really didn't compete with terrestrial phones. In the case of Teltez, they were looking to compete with or to address cellular needs. The system we're talking about would not attempt to compete with cellular needs.
50:05Elon MuskSo for example, it wouldn't compete directly with say Iridium, which is, which can talk directly to a handset. Our system would seem to seek to talk to a small user terminal that's about the size of a pizza box.
50:21Elon MuskOr much like, you know, current dishes that are the satellite dishes. But it will be flat because we have phased ray antenna that's tracking the satellites. But you could mount it in a window or just anywhere outside.
50:36Elon MuskAs long as you can see the sky, it would work.
50:40ModeratorSee back here. We'll take our last question back here. Hey, Elon, thanks for coming out. I would like to show you we brought a virtual reality camera here to record for the first time.
50:53ModeratorWe have a small startup in San Francisco called SpaceVR, and we believe that virtual reality is the future of space exploration because you can put people on the very cutting the very front of every exploration mission.
51:07ModeratorIs that something that you've given much thought or have any opinions on?
51:11Elon MuskWell, I've received the virtual reality demos at Oculus and at Valve, and it's pretty impressive. You can sort of imagine if that's extrapolated into the future, it's really going to super feel like you're there.
51:28Elon MuskAnd I wonder if some people are never going to want to take that off. Honestly, it's like, it's pretty. I mean, it's pretty entrancing. But I do think it'd be quite, quite exciting to do that for space as well.
51:44Elon MuskYeah. Do you have a set up here? Okay. It's right there. Wow. Okay, cool.
52:01Elon MuskOkay. Are you based in. Where are you based? Okay, I think maybe today is going to be tricky, but maybe since you're based in California, we could arrange something in the coming weeks.
52:23ModeratorAll right, let's see, Elon. We'll call it a conference. I wanted to first thank you very much. You've been very generous with the attention time and we, you know, from the moment I called you, you were all in and it's really this open conversation and your thoughts on what's in front of us that really excites us all in this room.
52:49ModeratorSo thank you very much for your time. We really appreciate it.
52:52Elon MuskThank you. Thanks for having me.