Elon Musk | Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit 2014
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (3)
Transcript
0:13InterviewerA man who needs no introduction, but welcome. Thanks for being here. Number one on the Vanity Fair new establishment list. Is that the highest honor you've ever had?
0:22Elon MuskOf course.
0:23InterviewerThat's right. The Nobels are announced. You're doing an announcement tomorrow, and the next day is a Nobel Prize. So if you get all three, that's a great trifecta. Let's talk about your announcement tomorrow.
0:35Elon MuskYeah.
0:36InterviewerWhat is it you're going to announce?
0:39Elon MuskI'm glad you asked.
0:45Elon MuskWell, I think I can give maybe one clue, which is that one of the things is already there and people don't realize it, so we just need
0:59Interviewerto turn it on.
1:01Elon MuskYeah. Wow. Cool.
1:03InterviewerAnd it'll be part of a new car.
1:10InterviewerI used to be a journalist. I used to be good at this.
1:12Elon MuskYeah, it'll be a different. It'll be different from the current one. Part of our announcement will be different from things in the past. Obviously, it's an announcement, but I can't say we're not going to talk about the Model 3 or the Model X.
1:34InterviewerThe Model 3 would be the $35,000 electric vehicle. You're going to talk about something that's
1:42Elon Musklabeled D. Yeah, D. And then there's another thing, which is. I actually would have said the other thing, except it would have been too obvious. And that's the reason I didn't say
1:53Interviewerwhat's the letter for the other.
1:54Elon MuskI can't say what the letter is.
1:55InterviewerOkay. And what does D stand for?
2:02Elon MuskI think the Internet is very good at guessing these things, so they're. They understand directionally. It's directionally correct, but the magnitude is not well appreciated yet.
2:18InterviewerAnd the magnitude of the. Something else, too. Yeah. That's the really big one.
2:26Elon MuskI kind of got myself in trouble by. Because we had the Model S and the X. And then just for fun, we tried to trademark the Model E. And then Ford sued us, or said they were going to sue us, so we had to change it to model three.
2:41Elon MuskSo it's S3X, totally different. And so I kind of. I guess when I say that we're about to unveil the D and something else, then it's. I kind of dug my own grave on that front.
2:59Elon MuskYeah.
3:00InterviewerWell, we look forward to. Why in the world are you doing this? I mean, what's impelling you to make an electric special car?
3:09Elon MuskWell, I think it's important that we accelerate the advent of a sustainable transport future. So it's better if we move towards electric cars sooner rather than later, and then we can get away from burning oil.
3:24Elon MuskAnd obviously that needs to be paired with sustainable generation of power. That's where SolarCity comes in. But in order for humanity have a good future this century, we have to figure out a way to sustainably produce and consume energy.
3:44Elon MuskAnd that's what Tesla and SolarCity are trying to be helpful in that regard. So that's really the purpose of it. It's not as though I think that there's a need for another car company.
3:58Elon MuskThere's plenty of good car companies, very competitive industry. But there is a need to show that electric cars can be better than gasoline cars, otherwise people will continue to buy gasoline cars.
4:13InterviewerWhen you say better, I'm going to push you back to where you didn't want to go, which is what you're announcing. Better means that it would be faster and stronger than a gas car, which we think electric cars cannot be.
4:28Elon MuskYeah, it will be bigger and faster. Oh, cool. Yeah.
4:37InterviewerCan I have one?
4:38Elon MuskCan't wait for that quote to be out there.
4:40InterviewerYeah,
4:42Elon Muskit's unveiled the D. It's bigger and faster.
4:44Audience MemberYeah,
4:47InterviewerI know there have been a lot of jokes that Kara Swisher started today that I know we have to steal.
4:53Elon MuskShe has a conference called All Things D. You know.
4:55Audience MemberYeah.
5:00InterviewerWhy did you give away or open up the intellectual property?
5:05Elon MuskOh, the patent. Yeah, yeah. We sort of open source patents in order to accelerate the advent of electric vehicles. That's the main reason. I think people think that maybe there was some competitive reason or that this would somehow be helpful to Tesla, you know, because more people would enter electric cars and somehow there would be, you know, rising tide, lift all boats.
5:29Elon MuskBut actually, I think, I think the open sourcing our patents does slightly impair our competitive position on balance. But I'm hopeful that it generates enough goodwill to overcome that competitive impairment.
5:46Elon MuskBut I mean, I came to the conclusion, at least on a personal level, that patents were kind of like buy a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, you know, and so why would you want to do that?
5:57InterviewerWhat drove you into the electric car business? Was it really sustainability for the planet or was it just the intellectual curiosity
6:06Elon Muskof it all, actually? So if you go back to like when I was first thinking about electric cars was in college, and it was really more from the standpoint of the need to transition to some transport means that was sustainable independent of whether there was an environmental impact or not, because if we're burning oil to move and that's not a renewable resource, then independent of any environmental impact, we must find some alternative or there will be economic collapse.
6:46Elon MuskSo and civilization would sort of crumble because we have to or revert, you know, so that, so that, that was actually originally why I was very interested in it is just because it's.
7:01Elon MuskI mean, I think from a physics standpoint, it's really obviously the way to go is electric motors. I mean, kind of crazy to do something else, honestly. And then the environmental thing grew over time, it became evident that the environmental impact was quite significant because we're putting so much carbon into the atmosphere that we're fundamentally changing the chemical makeup of Earth's atmosphere and the oceans too, because of the CO2 that gets absorbed into the water and creates carbonic acid.
7:35Elon MuskSo.
7:35Audience MemberSo
7:38Elon Muskif we don't take corrective action, the probability of a catastrophe will increase over time. Eventually there's certainty of a catastrophic outcome. And the longer it takes us to make that transition, the greater the probability of something bad happening.
8:01Elon MuskAnd so, you know, so when I think of Tesla, what's the fundamental good that Tesla can achieve? It would be to accelerate the advent of electric vehicles, perhaps by, you know, for fortunate a decade or something like that, because it'll happen anyway.
8:15Elon MuskIndependent Tesla was not, not around. So that's. I would say that that's a really fundamental good. And since we're making cars, I mean, it seems like we should try to make really good cars and, you know, maybe make the buying experience a lot more pleasant.
8:34InterviewerThere's a Peter Thiel line, as you know, about. You know, we were promised flying cars, but we got 140 characters. Do you think that other innovators, people not like yourself, aren't really shooting as high as they should be?
8:47InterviewerWhen you're doing things from, you know, space shots to electric cars, do you
8:52Elon Muskthink there should be flying cars?
8:54InterviewerYeah.
8:55Elon MuskOkay.
8:59InterviewerAm I missing something? Gosh, I think that would be fun, don't you?
9:05Elon MuskI'm not sure. I mean, I think there should be vertical takeoff and landing. Supersonic air transport. Yeah, that obviously should be the case.
9:16InterviewerWe had that 30 years ago and now we don't.
9:19Elon MuskMeaning supersonic? Sure.
9:20InterviewerYeah. No, it's kind of innovation for big things has actually slowed down, it seems. Is that true?
9:28Elon MuskI think whenever you have a large industry that is monopoly or duopoly, the forcing function for innovation is weak because innovation tends to come from new entrants to an industry.
9:42InterviewerAnd if the barriers like Tesla into the auto model.
9:44Elon MuskYeah, yeah. When there are huge capital barriers to entry, then it's very difficult for new entrants to enter that industry. It's like being in a forest of Giant redwoods.
9:57Elon MuskAnd in that situation the innovation is weak because if you sort of. I think it's fairly easy to understand this because if you're say the senior executive in that company or CEO, let's say if you do something incremental, you are very unlikely to be fired.
10:16Elon MuskIf you do something bold and it doesn't work out, you're very likely to be fired. So then they do incremental things.
10:24InterviewerYou mentioned a moment ago the environmental sustainability thing that's really big that you worry about. Your other big thing that you worry about is sort of machines getting out of control.
10:36InterviewerExplain that. Or the artificial intelligence singularity.
10:41Elon MuskYeah, I don't think most people understand just how quickly machine intelligence is advancing. It's much faster than almost anyone realizes. Even within Silicon Valley and certainly outside Silicon Valley, people really have no idea.
10:58InterviewerSo why is that dangerous?
11:01Elon MuskI mean if there's a super intelligent, particularly if it's engaged in recursive self improvement, if there's some digital superintelligence and its optimization or utility function is something that's detrimental to humanity, then it will have a very bad effect.
11:26Elon MuskYou know, it could be just something like getting rid of spam email or something. And it's like concludes, well, the best way to get rid of spam is to get rid of humans.
11:35Elon MuskYou know. But why would we lose the source of all spam?
11:39InterviewerI know we've all watched Cal in 2001, but why would we lose control over our machines? There are no data points showing that our connection to machine has ever been loosened.
11:50Elon MuskActually, I think the thing to do would be to plot the progress of digital intelligence versus time and then to maybe curve fit or extrapolate that progress and see where that leads.
12:06InterviewerBut you're talking about machines that are not just intelligent, but have intentionality, is that right?
12:11Elon MuskThey have the intention of their utility
12:13Interviewerfunction, which is what we programmed in. Right?
12:16Elon MuskYes.
12:16InterviewerOkay.
12:17Elon MuskBut it can have unintended consequences.
12:21InterviewerIs that propelling, no pun intended, your Mars mission ideas?
12:29Elon MuskNo, I think it's quite. It's more likely than not that if there's some digital superintelligence apocalypse scenario, it would probably follow people to Mars, not necessarily because of that utility function.
12:44Elon MuskIf it simply has utility function that is arbitrarily confined to Earth, it would be totally fine doing that. I mean this is, it's just.
12:56InterviewerSo what is, let's get to the Mars mission. Why do you feel that is something we should be aiming at?
13:03Elon MuskI think the reason for. There's two main reasons for Mars or Becoming a multiplanetary one is the defense of reason. It's life insurance for life as a whole. And there's some value to having that in terms of a small percentage of our economic output, like let's say half a percent or maybe even less of our economic output to ensure that the light of consciousness as we know it propagates into the future for a much longer period of time.
13:34Elon MuskAnd so there's that defensive reason, and this is the first time in four and a half billion years since Earth was first formed that it's been possible for life to move to another planet to become multi planetary.
13:52Elon MuskAnd that window may be open for a long time, or it may be open for a short time. I'm actually quite an optimistic person, so I'm hopeful that will be open for a long time, but maybe it'll be open for a short time, in which case we should take action now and not delay.
14:06InterviewerYou've been a fan of science fiction books. Have they actually influenced you?
14:12Elon MuskSure. I'll just say the other reason which I actually find personally more motivating with respect to Mars, which is that it would just be the greatest adventure ever and very exciting.
14:22Elon MuskAnd I think we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring. It can't just be about solving some awful problem. There have to be reasons to get up in the morning.
14:34InterviewerAnd I was talking about the books you've read and the science fiction. I notice you're a science fiction fanatic. Do you think maybe you've read too much science fiction?
14:42Elon MuskMaybe have. That's certainly possible. So the, the, Yeah, I mean where we are right now is we've, I think on the SpaceX front we've made evolutionary but not revolutionary progress.
14:54Elon MuskWe're hoping to make revolutionary progress in the coming years, but the key breakthrough that we'd aim for is, what they're aiming for is to be able to have the, the rocket booster come back and land and be able to reply it again.
15:08InterviewerWhy is that important? Because that's not the way we've been doing it. Right.
15:12Elon MuskYeah, it's been expandable. Rockets up till now really, except for the space shuttle, was partly reusable, but it was extremely difficult to refurbish for flight. 10,000 people needed to work nine months to refurbish the space shuttle.
15:29Elon MuskSo what we really need is rapid and complete reusability like an aircraft or a car or really any mode of transport is, besides rockets is reusable. Horse, bicycle, you can think of almost anything.
15:47Elon MuskBut imagine if that mode of transport Was not reusable, very unfortunately in the case of the horse. But even in cars, if you could use a car once and you have to buy a new car every time you took a journey, odds are you would not buy many cars because it would be very expensive.
16:06Elon MuskSo reusability essentially opens the door for reducing the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100 or more.
16:15InterviewerAnd if you do this, how much of it will be government funded? In a way? Aren't you under a lot of contracts with government?
16:27Elon MuskYeah, in the beginning, there was no government. I funded SpaceX entirely with the proceeds from PayPal. We got our first government contract about five or six years after starting the company from NASA.
16:47Elon MuskBut I should say about NASA's maybe a quarter of our flights, three quarters are commercial.
16:54InterviewerBut the way we have been doing innovation in this country, especially starting with World War II, has always been a combination of government, private enterprise, universities, and that is now dissipated.
17:06InterviewerThe government is not doing as much basic research. Do you think that's going to be a problem for the United States?
17:14Elon MuskWell, I think the government does quite a lot. I'm not exactly sure whether we're at the right number for basic research. I mean, I'm a fan of research, so I'd probably.
17:26Elon MuskI'd be in favor of spending more money on that, allocating more resources to basic research. But I think the government's doing quite a bit. I mean, NASA's doing a lot of things.
17:40Elon MuskYou've obviously got the rovers on Mars. We've got things like the Hubble Telescope, the upcoming James Webb Telescope. There are planetary probes and earth science missions launching all the time.
17:53Elon MuskSo NASA's doing quite a lot, actually.
17:54InterviewerWhat other big things like electric cars, space shots, whatever do you dream of?
18:03Elon MuskWell, I think space and cars a lot.
18:08InterviewerWe've eliminated flying cars.
18:11Elon MuskWell, I'm not sure about the flying cars. That's not to say I don't think there should be flying cars, but if the sky was full of cars flying all over the place, and it was, it would affect how this, how things look.
18:26Elon MuskIt would affect the skyline and it would be noisier and there would be a greater probability of something falling in your head.
18:33InterviewerYes, right.
18:35Elon MuskThat's argument. You know, those are not good things. On the other hand, that you could be able to go from one place to another faster. But I think actually, at least if you eliminate the choke points in cities, then there's really not that much traffic outside of the choke point.
18:53Elon MuskSo you look at sort of in suburban streets, you don't see a lot of. I mean, the traffic doesn't choke things. It's really on the highways and major arteries and it's because the cities grew way bigger than the major arteries.
19:08InterviewerAnd how would we fix that?
19:09Elon MuskTunnels. Tunnels.
19:11InterviewerWhat about autonomously driving cars? Would that help?
19:13Elon MuskThat would help, certainly. Yeah.
19:16InterviewerI'm going to open it up, but I have one frivolous question while they bring the lights up. Everybody so far today has been touting how much they love Silicon Valley, the HBO show, and you said some bad things about it.
19:28InterviewerWhy don't you like it?
19:29Elon MuskWell, first of all, I should say that, I mean, the article was not very accurate that was written. It was just one article which was. It was simply not an accurate article.
19:38Elon MuskSo the. I thought it was okay. But I think like Mike Judge did an amazing job with Office Space. Like that's one of my favorite movies ever.
19:55InterviewerHe may be here, so be nice.
19:57Elon MuskGreat. He was here a few minutes ago. No problem. Anyway, so movie like Office Space just really nailed it. I don't think Silicon Valley, the show quite nails it.
20:08Elon MuskIt's not quite right. So that's my objection to it. It doesn't quite get it right in my opinion. But I've heard that the later episodes are better. I saw the first two, so.
20:19InterviewerYes.
20:23Elon MuskUC Berkeley.
20:25Audience MemberHi. I used to work in large scale
20:28Elon Muskrenewable energy, mostly solar. And I was wondering that given all the release of the patents of the batteries and all the knowledge on small
20:39Audience Memberscale renewables like SolarCity,
20:44Elon Muskis there something coming about like large renewable energy storage from all the batteries patents in Tesla, what Tesla's going to do stationary storage of, you know, in a very large scale way because it's very important to pair battery packs with solar power and for wind it's even more important.
21:08Elon MuskSo with the gigafactory that we're creating in Nevada, we're going to create many, probably tens of gigawatt hours per year of stationary storage on the battery front. So that, yeah, there's a lot coming for sure.
21:29Audience MemberHi, my name is Tina, I'm originally from China. So my question is relevant to China market. How would you, in your perspectives, how would you forecast about the electric vehicles, the demand in China and how's the tough strategies in the coming year?
21:47Elon MuskYeah, sure. I think things seem to go fairly well in China. We've had a very enthusiastic response. And yeah, I think, I think long term it seems likely that China would be the biggest market for Tesla.
22:02Elon MuskSo yeah, I'm really, really optimistic about things over there.
22:07Audience MemberIs it going to Be bigger than the North America?
22:10Elon MuskIt seems likely that it would likely be bigger than North America. Yeah. In long term.
22:16Audience MemberAnd how about the government regulations and the local competitors there?
22:22Elon MuskThe government's been pretty good. I mean, there is certainly, in terms of the incentive structure, it does favor local production. But overall, it's, you know, I think it's not been too much of an issue.
22:37Elon MuskThe government's been great so far. Yeah.
22:40Audience MemberThank you. Hi, I'm Manu. I'm a sophomore at Stanford. And all of your work has been bringing people from place A to B in the fastest and the most environmentally friendly manner.
22:55Audience MemberThere's also another kind of research happening in the valley where people are trying to avoid transportation at all. We call it virtual reality. Right. So I can be in my dom and I can see you speaking with the same level of contact on my Oculus Rift as I am here right now taking the Caltrain or the Tesla or even a SpaceX rocket.
23:12Audience MemberIn the future, how do you think will virtual reality tie in the future of transportation, which you are working on? Thank you.
23:20Elon MuskWell, maybe we're in a simulation right now.
23:22InterviewerYeah,
23:26Elon MuskYeah, yeah. Seriously. Sometimes feels like that. Yeah, I think it is going to. From what I've heard of Oculus Rift and some of the other immersive technologies, that it's quite transformative.
23:47Elon MuskYou really feel like you're there, and then when you come out of it, it feels like reality isn't real. So I think we'll see probably less physical movement in the future as a result of the virtual reality stuff.
24:05Elon MuskYeah.
24:07InterviewerAnd when we come out of what we're here now into this virtual reality, we'll think it's real. I mean, it's like we're.
24:15Elon MuskWell, I mean, there's some interesting things here on the virtual reality front. I mean, just on the whole notion of a simulation, which is that if you just. If you extrapolate into the future and say, well, how good and let's say, will video games be in 100 or 200 or 1000 years from now?
24:35Elon MuskIf there's continued improvement and you're in a full body haptic suit with a sort of surround vision, and it becomes beyond a certain resolution, indistinguishable from reality, and there are likely to be millions of maybe billions of such simulations.
24:58Elon MuskSo then what are the odds that we're actually in base reality? Isn't it one in billions?
25:04InterviewerIs it? I mean, give. I can give the counterargument. I'd rather you give the counter argument.
25:12Elon MuskObviously, this feels real, but it may. I mean it seems unlikely to be real.
25:24Audience MemberMy name is Danielle. I'm an architect from Palo Alto. I just completed a net zero passive house and I'm now a fellow at the Stanford Business School. And I'm working with a group of students on a project to come up with the most innovative ways to solve big problems in cities.
25:42Audience MemberWe've identified Detroit as our prime target. Two questions. What do you see as citywide innovation? And since women don't ask as we're taught, I'm going to ask, would you come down to Stanford and brainstorm on this with us?
26:04Elon MuskThis may sound trite, but I honestly think tunnels should be given a lot more consideration. So I mean if you look at a city, if you have, if look at like we have all these apartment buildings and office buildings and they are on many levels.
26:20Elon MuskLike they're like an average of in Manhattan. I don't know what is an average of like 30 stories or something like that. But then you've got a street which is one story.
26:28Elon MuskThis is an obvious issue. Like you have a 30 to 1 ratio of, you know, so you should
26:33Interviewerhave multi layered highways underground stacked up.
26:38Audience MemberYeah.
26:39Elon MuskYou can have tunnels. The tunnels don't have to follow the buildings. They can, they can be, they can go diagonally through the basement. Yeah, yeah. And you can have as many levels as you want.
26:50Elon MuskSo it's really just the cost of building the tunnels and, but really a tunnel is a hole in the ground. Like how hard can it really be? I mean, so it seems like if some entrepreneurs put their effort into building tunnels, what other effectively would be transformative to cities around the world?
27:14Elon MuskI'll certainly consider coming giving a talk. I mean I'm in Palo Alto every week, so be open to it. Sure.
27:20InterviewerWhat other things besides you know, tunnels, hyperloops, you've talked about other things that are great visions that could transform our daily, what we call reality, which we assume is reality for the moment.
27:38Elon MuskYeah, I mean it's within cities, it's sort of tunnels, tunnels and tunnels and tubes and for long distance travel, I really think that the vertical cycle of landing electric supersonic aircraft is the way to go.
27:57Elon MuskAnd I think it's very doable. So that would be the way to go for long distance transportation if you're going more than like 500 miles because then you have any to any, you solve the any to any problem over a long distance for shorter distances because you have a time to climb and a time to descent penalty.
28:17Elon MuskBelow 500 miles, aircraft are not as good. So that's why I think sort of some sort of evacuated tube is a better way to travel.
28:30InterviewerWhat is an evacuated tube?
28:32Elon MuskWell, just something where you've reduced the air density, the drag is dramatically reduced, then it's like it's as though you got teleported to altitude and you can go much faster and not have to have the climate descent issues.
28:48Audience MemberHi, I'm Lawrence, I'm a sophomore at Stanford and I run a music startup. We all know that you have all those really crazy ideas in the best way possible, but how do you come up with those ideas?
29:01Audience MemberCould you tell me more about your creative process? And also once you have those great ideas, how do you go about capitalizing those really ambitious ideas if you have very few limited financial resources?
29:18Elon MuskWell,
29:23Elon MuskThe great thing about software or anything which just involves intellectual capital of you and your friends, you and a few friends, is that you can just do it. So that's why doing some sort of Internet thing or software thing is great as an initial company to create.
29:39Elon MuskAnd that's why Zip2 and PayPal, they gave me the capital to attempt to do more capital, intense activities. As far as idea generation, I think I tend to think of things from a sort of physics standpoint, like from a first principle standpoint, what would be the best way to accomplish something and then pursue that.
30:03Elon MuskSo that's also a good way to determine if something's far from its optimum. And like on rockets, for example, one could say, oh, you know that you could reason by analogy and say the rocket's going to cost a certain amount because that's what prior rockets have cost.
30:25Elon MuskOr you can say, well, what is a rocket made of? What are the material constituents? What are those? What do they weigh? What's the cost per unit mass? And that sets the limit asymptotically for what a rocket can be.
30:37Elon MuskSo if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape, then you can achieve a much better outcome. That's the first principles approach.
30:49Elon MuskAnd I think also just combining ideas from different industries is really helpful for innovation. So what have people discovered in one industry and can that be applied to other industries?
31:02Elon MuskThat's, I think, also a great source of ideas, but usually you just struggle on a solution and try a bunch of things. Some of them don't work and some of them.
31:14Elon MuskAnd most of them don't work. And occasionally one does.
31:18InterviewerYou mentioned the startup of PayPal, which is a great innovation that happened in sort of how we pay for things. That seems to me an area in which there hasn't been as much, much subsequent innovation other than Bitcoin as there should be.
31:32InterviewerIn other words, quickly transferring money, especially to people you don't know or whatever is to me, maybe I'm wrong. Far more difficult than it seems like it should be.
31:43InterviewerAre you somewhat disappointed with the way PayPal then proceeded or are you disappointed with the lack of innovation in the digital currency environment?
31:54Elon MuskYeah, PayPal has definitely, I mean it hasn't moved much since from when it was sort of bought by ebay. The long term vision that I had for PayPal or sort of in sort of finance was to.
32:16Elon MuskWell, it sounds a bit strange like to convert the financial system from a series of heterogeneous insecure databases to one database or well, not one database and maybe there'd be like a few more.
32:33Elon MuskMoney is just a number in a database. That's what it is. And it's primarily an information mechanism for labor allocation. And the current databases are not very efficient. Like they're, you know, there are these old legacy mainframes that don't talk to each other very well, have poor security and only do their.
32:57Elon MuskAnd do batch processing once a day.
32:59InterviewerAre you glad paypal is being spun off?
33:02Elon MuskIt's probably the right move.
33:03InterviewerAnd what would you do with it?
33:07Elon MuskWell, I think I converted into more of a full service financial institution. A. So you just, you want to do all the things that a consumer, you want to have like all the financial services that somebody needs in one place, seamlessly integrated together and easy to use.
33:27Elon MuskAnd I think really, really care about the consumer. I think a lot of banks don't seem to care that much about the customer. So I think there's an opportunity to be like a really good bank effectively, but much more than what people think of as.
33:44InterviewerDo you think Bitcoin will be disruptive in that way? I mean, now it's a speculative currency. Will it be something that will be what normal consumers will use and will disrupt the banking industry?
33:57Elon MuskMy opinion of Bitcoin is that, I mean, I think Bitcoin is probably a good thing, but it's essentially its main thing will be. I mean this probably would get quoted here and there, but I think it's primarily going to be a means of doing illegal transactions.
34:23Elon MuskBut that's not necessarily entirely bad. Some things should be, maybe shouldn't be illegal, so.
34:33InterviewerBut a combination of Silk Road and Bitcoin will save us.
34:38Audience MemberWell,
34:40Elon Muskit will be useful for legal and illegal transactions. Otherwise it would have no value as a use of, for Legal transactions. You have to have a legal to illegal bridge.
34:49Elon MuskI don't own any Bitcoin.
34:52InterviewerI'll let you get the last word, sir.
34:55Elon MuskI promise it'll be fast.
34:56InterviewerElon.
34:56Elon MuskBob Shookey from Thomson Reuters. India just launched a mission to Mars. $75 million to get that thing. Was it, as Astro Teller said, a miracle? Or is there something fundamental about the Indian space industry that allowed them to do a mission like that for so cheap?
35:13Elon MuskAnd if so, is there something that we can pick up and learn from that? I think it's a very impressive mission given that it was executed by a government entity.
35:23Elon MuskThat's like really, really impressive. I mean impressive no matter who's doing it, but from a cost standpoint, impressive because it's being done by a government entity. Ultimately we have to be able to do missions to Mars for much less than that.
35:38Elon MuskOtherwise it'll be impossible to establish a self sustaining civilization on Mars because we'll have to transport millions of tons of cargo, billions of people, people. And the cost of moving to Mars has to be affordable, otherwise people won't be able to go.
35:54Elon MuskSo it has to ultimately come down by a couple orders of magnitude from that level. $7 million. Then a couple orders of magnitude, I'd say well below a million.
36:04Elon MuskYeah.
36:04InterviewerElon Musk, great innovator. Thank you very much and good luck tomorrow. We'll be looking to see what was right under our nose when you announce it tomorrow, sir. Thank you.