PBS Wired Science Interview
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (3)
Transcript
0:02NarratorElon Musk is a dropout and a billionaire. After receiving an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, he dropped out of the Stanford PhD program in physics. He wound up CEO of PayPal, which eBay bought for $1.5 billion in 2002.
0:20NarratorWith his fortune made in the virtual world, he's created Tesla Motors and SpaceX in the real world. Named for Nikola Tesla, the eccentric Serbian born inventor of alternating current, Tesla Motors will roll their first 100 all electric cars out factory doors this summer.
0:38NarratorSpaceX, one of many new ventures aimed at commercializing outer space, was recently awarded a $278 million NASA contract to build and operate launch vehicles and crew capsules to service the International Space Station and
0:53Interviewertake America back to the moon. Elon, thank you so much for being with us here at Wired Science.
0:58Elon MuskWell, thank you for having me.
0:59InterviewerI need to first lay a little bit of a foundation here. Two days into your physics program at Stanford University, you quit school to start a company called Zip to a media company, right.
1:11InterviewerWhich is sold a few years later for a paltry $307 million. Then four years later, eBay buys PayPal. Is that correct? A company that you established or helped to establish as one of your others?
1:25Elon MuskYeah.
1:26InterviewerAnd now you've taken those two enormous successes and you've set your ambition on space. How did you go from online payment systems to building a spaceship essentially?
1:41Elon MuskWell, when I graduated from college, there were three areas that I thought would be most impactful to the future of humanity. The three were the Internet, space exploration, and then changing the economy from a mine and burn hydrocarbon based economy to one which is solar electric, which I think is going to be the primary but not exclusive means of energy and transportation.
2:01InterviewerHave we screwed it up so badly here on this planet that our only hope is to build a new civilization out there?
2:09Elon MuskNo, not at all. Actually, I'm quite optimistic about the future of humanity on Earth.
2:13InterviewerYou are?
2:13Elon MuskYeah, absolutely.
2:14InterviewerSo what is the benefit to humanity then to inhabit Mars, which is really what is an ambition of yours?
2:21Elon MuskWell, I think if you consider two paths, one where we are forever confined to Earth and the other, where we are a space frank civilization out exploring the stars.
2:28Elon MuskI think the latter is far more exciting and will result in a richer and more diverse human experience.
2:35InterviewerHow can you do that better than NASA?
2:40Elon MuskWell, you know, NASA is a customer of ours, so there's I think, a confusion in the public mind that perhaps a company like SpaceX is competing with NASA, but in fact NASA is a customer of ours, so we're actually providing services to NASA launch services.
2:56Elon MuskAnd when the shuttle retires in 2010. So starting in 2011, SpaceX's rocket will replace the space shuttle in servicing the space station with astronauts and cargo transportation.
3:11InterviewerThe name of your rocket ship is called the Falcon Explorer, is that it?
3:15Elon MuskWell, the Falcon 9.
3:16InterviewerThe Falcon 9, yes. It's a rocket.
3:18Elon MuskAnd then the space. The spaceship is Dragon. Dragon, yeah. So the Falcon 9 rocket lifts the Dragon spaceship and this Dragon spaceship is what goes to the space station and then returns to Earth.
3:27InterviewerSo it transports the Falcon as almost cargo then.
3:30Elon MuskSo yeah, the Falcon 9 is kind of like the, the semi.
3:33InterviewerOkay.
3:33Elon MuskOr something like that. And it trans. The false Falcon 9 booster rocket takes the Dragon spaceship to space and drops it off. Then it goes to the space station, docks with the space station, transfers astronauts or resupply cargo, whatever the case may be, and then the Dragon spacecraft returns to Earth.
3:57InterviewerReading some of the speeches that you have given in your career and how old you mean like you're practically 23 years? You're 23 years old?
4:05Elon MuskI'm actually 12.
4:06InterviewerYou're 12? I was going to say you look terrific. But you have said that we got lost along the way with our space program. What did you mean by that?
4:16InterviewerRight.
4:16Elon MuskI think, I think that was in some of my congressional testimony. I gave a few speeches to Congress. Well, what I mean by that is in 1969 we were able to go to the moon and here we are over three decades later and we can barely get to low Earth orbit.
4:31Elon MuskAnd I think by any measure that is a step backwards.
4:35InterviewerIs that for a lack of leadership or technology?
4:39Elon MuskI think we made the wrong technological choices. And I think there was also a lack of will at the, at the highest levels of government to take the next step and go, well, at least, at least stay on the moon and passport a base there and then go beyond the moon to Mars.
4:55Elon MuskAnd if you look at the, the news articles in the late 60s, early 70s, the expectation was that, that by now in the 21st century, we would have a moon base and probably even a Mars base.
5:07Elon MuskAnd I think if you'd asked anyone at that point in time whether we would be unable to go to the moon and have. No, not have been to Mars, I think they would, they would think you're crazy.
5:18InterviewerDo we need leadership in that realm? Do we need a John F. Kennedy who sets a goal for us when he said one, one day a man will walk on the moon?
5:29InterviewerDo we need that kind of leadership for this technology to move forward in that big step.
5:34Elon MuskI do think it's very important. The President set the priority and determined the goal that we as a nation will aspire to. And, you know, George Bush has his pluses and minuses, but at least one plus is that he has helped us to steer the space program in a direction that.
5:55Elon MuskThat more or less makes sense. You know, the only thing I would. I would sort of argue with is that I don't think we should be going back to the moon.
6:01Elon MuskI think we should be focused on Mars. I. We saw the.
6:04InterviewerDo you think that's a mistake, focusing on the moon?
6:06Elon MuskI do think. I do think we should rather go. I think we should rather be focused on Mars. You know, the moon is kind of like. It's kind of like the Arctic.
6:14Elon MuskIt's just. It's just a very barren place. Very, very little resources. It's small. It's not. It's not really a place that we could establish another human civilization.
6:25InterviewerThere's a. There's a. There's a feeling of Ben there done that too. With the moon.
6:28Elon MuskYeah, we saw that movie in the 60s. You know, the remake's never as good.
6:32InterviewerDid we really go to the moon?
6:34Elon MuskYes, we did.
6:35InterviewerWe definitely just wanted to check.
6:38Elon MuskThe government is incapable of suppressing a conspiracy of that nature.
6:42InterviewerOf that nature. Okay, good. This ambition to explore space.
6:47Elon MuskAbsolutely.
6:49InterviewerThere's quite a bit of competition out there. There's Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin. There's Richard Branson with his Virgin Galactic, and I'm not talking about NASA either. There's Paul Allen.
7:00InterviewerThere's the European Space Agency and Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The Chinese, the Russians, let's just throw all of them into this.
7:07Elon MuskEveryone's doing it.
7:08InterviewerCompetitive field. How is SpaceX different? How do you think you'll sort of surpass them?
7:14Elon MuskWell, you know, you've listed a wide range of entities there, and I think the differences are really different depending upon which one you're referring to. The.
7:27InterviewerWell, let me ask you this question. Who is your competition?
7:31Elon MuskWe have no serious competition.
7:36InterviewerNone.
7:37Elon MuskNot presently.
7:39InterviewerWho's chasing you?
7:44Elon MuskWell, if you mean chasing and have. And has a serious chance of catching, then I think none that I'm aware of.
7:57InterviewerKind of a hack, then.
7:58Elon MuskWell, what Branson's doing, by the way, I'm a great admirer of Branson, is really a much smaller technological challenge. So their craft would be suborbital. So it would go to about Mach 3.
8:15Elon MuskOur craft is orbital. It goes to Mach 25. So 25 times the speed of Sound. But that doesn't describe the whole scale of difficulty because the energy required to get to those velocities scales as the square of the velocity.
8:27Elon MuskSo to do what Branson is doing, you need say about nine units of energy. To do what we're doing, you need 625 units of energy. The difference is monumental.
8:36Elon MuskAnd then when you re enter, you have to burn off all that energy. So that doubles the problem really. So what Branson is doing from a technological standpoint is building something that can cross the English Channel.
8:48Elon MuskWhat we're building is something that can circumnavigate the globe. Very different scale of technological difficulty. I still think what he's doing is great. And by the way, I bought a ticket on his effort.
8:59InterviewerYou did?
9:00Elon MuskYeah, yeah. So I still think it's great, but it's not in the same league technologically.
9:05InterviewerSo you're not particularly worried?
9:07Elon MuskCertainly not about. No, certainly not about that, no. The things that worry me are, are we going to make a mistake? The things that can really hurt SpaceX are, I mean, our own foolishness, our own errors can hurt us, but none of the competition that I'm aware of.
9:24InterviewerSo generally you're worried about what's in front of you, not the other guy. In fact, you probably don't think about them in terms of how they criticize you or what they think about you.
9:35Elon MuskI don't think, actually, I don't think there's much criticism. I mean, Boeing and Lockheed, of course they were criticized, but I don't think any of the entrepreneurial guys would criticize what we're doing.
9:46Elon MuskAnd it's certainly possible. I think what Jeff Bezos is working on could ultimately, I mean, he does have aspirations to get to orbit and beyond. It's just that what they're doing right now is suborbital and at the sort of lower technology level.
9:58Elon MuskWhat I think about at SpaceX is really entirely what are we doing to ensure that our rocket is going to be successful and that we are truly optimizing the cost and ensuring higher liability?
10:12Elon MuskI mean, that's just a very, very difficult problem. There's a reason why there's an idiomatic expression about rocket science being hard. It really is really hard.
10:20InterviewerSo rocket science really is rocket science?
10:23Elon MuskYeah, it looks hard and it's harder than it looks.
10:27InterviewerWhat's the big goal here? What's the long term plan?
10:31Elon MuskWell, the long term ultimate objective, the Holy Grail, is we would like to help make life multiplanetary. That's really what we'd like to do
10:40Interviewerso establish societies on as many planets as possible?
10:46Elon MuskWell, yeah, I think there's only one possibility, but yeah, I mean, even if we can just go from one planet to two, I think that's a pretty big step.
10:52InterviewerAnd you'll start with, well, Mars. Mars is the only viable planet, so multi planetary life.
11:01Elon MuskYeah. Help make life multi planetary. I think that's an important thing.
11:05InterviewerI don't think your goal is big enough. Ha. Yeah, it's ambitious.
11:10Elon MuskWell, like I said, we don't, don't expect to do it single handedly, but we certainly would like to help make it happen.
11:15InterviewerIt's fair to say you've made a fortune.
11:17Elon MuskYeah, I think so. By any reasonable standard. Yeah.
11:19InterviewerAnd you know, those who work in science probably understand your trajectory, but there are those who are watching who would think if I made that money, I'd sit on a beach, I'd drink beer and I would just watch the sunset.
11:33InterviewerKind of like a Corona beer commercial. Have you ever thought about that as a career option?
11:37Elon MuskYou know, I find that really pretty boring. So that would be torture if I had to do that every day. That would really be pretty awful for me.
11:44InterviewerIs there something about startup businesses that, that, that really fuels your desire to work?
11:53Elon MuskWell, I guess I really need to be preoccupied with something and if, if I'm just sort of sitting there relaxing, I can only do that for a very short period of time and then it becomes unbearable.
12:06Elon MuskAlthough startups definitely have their highs and lows. There's a friend of mine who has a good phrase. You know, a startup business is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.
12:15InterviewerWhat is the criteria that you establish for yourself for a startup mean?
12:20Elon MuskWhy one business over another?
12:21InterviewerYeah.
12:23Elon MuskWell, for me it's always about does what I'm doing matter? If we are successful, does it matter to the world? And so there are easier ways to make money than starting a rocket company or say a car company or even when I started an Internet company.
12:40Elon MuskBecause when I started the first Internet company, nobody had made any money and it wasn't clear that anyone would make any money. It was simply from the perspective of the Internet being a very important thing and something that needed to be built and so I wanted to help.
12:53Elon MuskHold it.
12:54InterviewerWell, you touch upon something that's interesting is that there is a, that benefiting humanity is a very integral part of your criteria, no matter what you're starting up.
13:04Elon MuskYes, absolutely.
13:05InterviewerReally? Not everybody has that as a prime interest.
13:09Elon MuskNo, I think that's, that's probably relatively unusual. Although there are many people that I know in Silicon Valley for whom that is a significant motivation.
13:16InterviewerYou said in your endeavor here to explore space that we are committed to failing in a new way, if nothing else. What did you mean by that? Just how it sounds.
13:27Elon MuskWell, I mean, we're committed to succeed, really. But if we do fail, I would hope that we at least add to the body of knowledge such that those who follow may make few mistakes.
13:40InterviewerNow, if Mars were not enough, you
13:43Elon Muskare busy here on Earth, the world is not enough. That's right.
13:49InterviewerHave you no limits, my friend? Here on Earth you are establishing a presence certainly with Tesla Motors. Tell us a little bit about that. This electric car company, correct?
14:01Elon MuskRight.
14:01InterviewerThis is no, this is no hybrid car you could buy on a car lot. This thing goes from zero to 60 in four seconds.
14:08Elon MuskYes, absolutely. Zero to 60 in under four seconds. It's faster, better acceleration than any Porsche currently in production and any Ferrari except the Enzo. And it's twice the energy efficiency of a Prius.
14:20Elon MuskSo you really have the model high ground and you get to leave the Ferrari guy in your dust.
14:27InterviewerWell, let me ask, it's hard to beat, let me ask the obvious. Well, and you don't look like one of those guys who's trying too hard in a Ferrari.
14:33Elon MuskAbsolutely, yeah. You don't look like a jerk, you know,
14:38Interviewerin a bright banana yellow Lamborghini or something.
14:43Elon MuskThere's something I should point out about Tesla which is we didn't, you know, Tesla is first car, is a sports car. Not because we think the world likes for a sports car, but because it is the right entry point for the market.
14:54Elon MuskIf you have a new technology, the right place to enter is high unit cost, low unit volume. Just as you know, when a new cell phone come out, comes out, or a new, a new laptop or some new thing, it tends to be expensive at first because they're figuring out all the issues and it takes time to optimize and then over time that that technology will become cheaper and cheaper.
15:16Elon MuskAnd so the Model 2 of Tesla, and maybe I'm leaping ahead here, but Model 2 of Tesla is a $49,000 four door, five passenger sedan. And that's, that's going to be obviously a much broader market segment that can make use of that car.
15:32Elon MuskAnd then Model 3 is intended to be around a $30,000 price point. And so that's, that's really affordable by, by almost everyone who can buy a new car. So the idea is to drive to mass market as rapidly as possible, but only at the pace at which the technology matures.
15:49InterviewerSo is Henry Ford someone you admire?
15:53Elon MuskWell, I think Henry Ford made some very important contributions to business and obviously, you know, moving, moving manufacturing line and that sort of thing. So I think he's certainly worthy of admiration.
16:04Elon MuskHe was a bit of an odd duck, but, you know, certainly noteworthy. But the interest in Tesla is not from the perspective of, you know, the world needs another car company.
16:14Elon MuskIt's more from the perspective of we have a very important environmental problem that needs to be addressed, which is driven by the burning of fossil fuels and the increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and global climate change, which I think is going to be one of the most significant issues of the 21st century.
16:32Elon MuskAnd the only way to really get around that in my view is really with an electric vehicle. And then you need to pair that up with a zero emission power generation method such as solar power.
16:44Elon MuskI think solar power is going to be a really big deal.
16:46InterviewerTesla is not a hybrid car.
16:49Elon MuskTesla is pure electric.
16:50InterviewerPure electric. So help connect the dots for me. Why aren't we seeing Tesla cars on the car lots then? What's. Well, we keep them.
16:56Elon MuskWe haven't made them yet. So the car, it's. We're just finishing up the development right now.
17:00InterviewerAnd anybody can buy this. Yes.
17:02Elon MuskHow will you actually almost sold out of 2007 production. So if somebody does want to buy next year's model, they better act quickly.
17:09InterviewerOne of the primary complaints about hybrid vehicles is they're not fast enough. You seem to overcome.
17:15Elon MuskYou won't have any trouble with this. In fact, really it's, there's something uniquely better about electric vehicles which is that the torque response is immediate. So if you want to pass someone, I mean you just.
17:30Elon MuskThe response of the car is very immediate. It's just, it's more fun to drive an electric car than it is to drive a gasoline car.
17:37InterviewerYou know, I was going to say that Tesla, the car, the name of the car company is no coincidence, is it? Explain a little bit about that.
17:43Elon MuskRight. The company's named after Nikola Tesla, who is an inventor. He was originally from the sort of the area of Yugoslavia and Europe, but he moved to America when he was young and, and was an inventor of the, the AC induction motor.
17:59Elon MuskInvented a lot of the principles of magnetism. So he was a great man, great, great inventor. And so the company's named in honor of him.
18:07InterviewerSo these cars, the Tesla Roadster. The first, the first issue of the Tesla Roadster available in 2007. Yes, in the spring, the summer how do you get on the waiting list?
18:18Elon MuskWell, you buy the car. You basically put down a deposit, and we've actually.
18:22InterviewerCan you do that through the Web?
18:24Elon MuskYeah, we'll have, by the way, customer centers all around the country. So we'll have one in la, one in Bay Area, Chicago, Miami, New York, and eventually nationwide customer centers where somebody does want to see the car in person, take a test drive, or see the car being worked on.
18:40Elon MuskI mean, we have this idea for the way that the cars are serviced, that it should be a really pleasant experience. So we have, you know, somewhere between, like, a Starbucks and an Apple Store.
18:50Elon MuskSo you go in and you'd see the car being. Cars being worked on behind a glass partition.
18:54InterviewerThat would be your car you're watching.
18:55Elon MuskYeah. Or somebody else's. And. But it's really clean. It's really clean. Present brightly. Sort of a, you know, coffee bar available. You know, just a. Really want to have a very pleasant experience that.
19:06Elon MuskThat you don't typically get if you go into a dealership.
19:08InterviewerHave you heard from Toyota, have you heard from General Motors and Ford saying, is the company for sale?
19:15Elon MuskNobody's actually made a formal offer, but the interest. You know, I think one of the biggest values that Tesla can provide is serving as an example to the rest of the auto industry, because right now, the auto industry, you know, the big car companies believe that a, viable electric vehicle is not possible, and B, if, even if it was, people wouldn't buy it.
19:35Elon MuskSo we need to show that neither of those are true, that the technology works, that people want to buy it, and that will be the most effective way of really driving change in the auto industry, is by serving as an example in that matter.
19:48Elon MuskAnd if we were to sell the company to one of. One of the big car companies, I think it would really slow things down. Mm, you think so? Absolutely.
19:55Elon MuskMm.
19:56InterviewerYou're very busy, enterprising the part of your company that will explore space. You're very busy with this car company. Where do you find time to be CEO of two companies that size?
20:08Elon MuskWell, I should correct you that I'm CEO of Space X. And I'm chairman CEO of Space X. And that is really my day job, so I spend 80% of my time on Space X.
20:16InterviewerOkay.
20:16Elon MuskI'm the chairman and the principal owner of Tesla Motors, but I do not run it on a daily basis.
20:23InterviewerYou don't run that on a daily basis?
20:24Elon MuskNo.
20:25InterviewerWell, that was really. The question was, how do you do. How do you run those two large enterprises on a daily basis? I Is it a couple of phone calls to the Tesla folks?
20:33InterviewerHow's it going? I'm busy with outer space right now. You guys got that covered?
20:36Elon MuskI spent about, I spent about two, two to three days a month on Tesla related business and almost all the rest of the time is on SpaceX. So SpaceX is very much my, my day to day job and then I provide product guidance, strategic guidance and obviously funding for Tesla.
20:55Elon MuskLike Steve Jobs.
20:56InterviewerRight.
20:56Elon MuskSo he runs Apple on a daily basis but he also, you know, has oversight over Pixar. It's kind of like that.
21:04InterviewerAnd in your day to day, and this is, this is one of those silly lifestyle questions, but how early do you get up in the morning and where do you go to work physically?
21:15InterviewerIs it an office?
21:16Elon MuskYeah, I go to work at SpaceX.
21:18InterviewerHow early do you get up in the morning?
21:19Elon MuskYou know, I'm not an early morning person.
21:21InterviewerSo, so young. For young engineers and for inventors and creators, they can sleep until 10 or 11.
21:28Elon MuskWe have no fixed hours at SpaceX. And I mean my, personally I would, I tend to get up around 7:30 or 8 and be in the office around, you know, 9, 9:30.
21:39Elon MuskBut then I tend to stay until about 8:00pm okay.
21:41InterviewerCollege students across America are saying oh drats. I thought he was going to say like noon. But then you go into an office and you, you sit with in a separate office away from those who are working.
21:51Elon MuskOr do you sit with? No, I just have a cubicle at SpaceX.
21:54InterviewerYou have a cubicle?
21:55Elon MuskYeah.
21:55InterviewerAnd are you surrounded by your colleagues there?
21:57Elon MuskYeah, absolutely.
21:58InterviewerWhat is your hope in terms of the impact you will leave on culture, this civilization, this world, global civilization? What is it that you hope to leave here?
22:09Elon MuskWell, I think what I'd like to do is help solve some important problems. So I think in a small way helped build the Internet. And then with respect to the global warming problem, the transition from away from oil and other hydrocarbons to something which is clean and sustainable.
22:27Elon MuskI hope to have an impact there and then with respect to space, I hope to have an impact in helping make humanity a multi planet species.
22:37InterviewerElon Musk, thank you so much for being with us at Wire Science. Let me get it straight. CEO of SpaceX and chairman of Tesla Motors.
22:44Elon MuskYeah, I got other titles, but that's about, that's about right.
22:46InterviewerI think that you're doing pretty good. You've done very well.