Making Life Multiplanetary (Starbase, April 4, 2024)
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (6)
Transcript
0:02[Applause] [Music] [Applause] so what I was what I'm going to go through to tonight is the overall
0:19overall sort of path to making life multiplanetary so um we're doing a lot of good things at SpaceX I mean starlink is incredible providing connectivity throughout the world um and also you know paying for a
0:35lot of what we're doing here and uh falcon9 is the the primary lift V launch vehicle for for Earth doing more non-space X launches than anything else and uh but Starship
0:51is what is Will well Starship Starship is the first design of a rocket that is actually capable of making life multiplanetary um where success is one of the possible outcomes uh no rocket before this has had the potential to
1:07extend life uh to another planet and um and I'll I'll sort of wax esoteric here for a minute um because this this may sound sort
1:22of uh unusual but when you think about the question of where are the aliens um which I get asked a lot um this is like the FY Paradox where are
1:37the aliens and um I've not seen any evidence that there are aliens on earth a lot of people think there are aliens on Earth and I'm like great I'd like to meet one um you know for a while there when I was getting my green card and everything it
1:52said alien registration card I'm like okay um but uh this question of where the aliens is I think a very profound one because uh I'm aware of no evidence
2:07of aliens whatsoever which means that I think we're probably Alone um and if you look at the history of Earth like how long has Earth been around if assuming that physics is
2:23correct uh the universe is about 13.8 billion years old uh Earth is about 4 1.2 billion years old old when you think about the how how old is civilization I think the the right measuring point for civilization in my
2:39view or or a a good measuring point would be the Advent of writing so the first writing uh is generally considered to be the ancient Sumerians uh where are they now they died out but the about 5,500 years ago
2:56was archaic pre prec uniform in fact I suggest um it's like an interesting Rabbit Hole to uh read about the history of writing um so if you consider say like okay civilization I think if you don't have writing you kind of need writing
3:12for civilization so um so there only been around for like a little over 5,000 years out of 4 and a half billion years that Earth has been around and the 13.8 billion years of the universe so we're all of human civilization is basically the blink of an eye it's like a just a
3:28fraction it's almost nothing um and I think that that probably means that that Consciousness is incredibly rare um and perhaps fleeting it may not
3:45last for very long um because otherwise we would I think we would have seen aliens some kind of sign of aliens I think the most likely explanation is that Consciousness is is
4:00uh so rare that that and and does that Consciousness actually extend to another planet does that Consciousness extend to uh another star
4:15system I mean ultimately if we're able to become a space bearing civilization a multiplet species and ultimately a multi- stellis species and go out there and explore all these star systems I think we may find that there are many long dead One Planet
4:32civilizations um we and as you've heard me say before we don't want to be one of those lame One Planet civilizations I mean we want to be a multi-planet civilization ultimately be a multi- stellar Civ civilization be out there Among the
4:48Stars like you know make science fiction not fiction forever um kind of make star Star Trek real um that's uh so that's why I think that there's there's there's High urgency to making
5:05life multiplanetary um because this is the first time in Earth's 4 and a half billion year history that it's been possible to extend life or Consciousness beyond Earth and we've got to do that while
5:22civilization is still strong so that's that's that's the overarching goal of the company is extend life sustainably to another planet Mars is the only option really and uh to do so uh ideally
5:39before World War III or some kind of bad thing the the key thing is that we need enough people and enough tonnage on Mars uh such that Mars can survive and continue Consciousness uh even if something would
5:55happened to Earth um now I still think obviously I'm not not talking about AB abandoning Earth or anything like that and we want Earth to be as good as possible for as long as possible but there are certain things that may be outside of our control so so we want to just get get uh
6:13Mars to be a self-sustaining civilization as quickly as possible and I I think this can be done in around 20 years so and this this you know giant Starship Factory that we're building is obviously key to that and the launch
6:29sides that we're building here and and at the cape and elsewhere in the future will be key to that so so let's just go through that this is the final go no go Poll for flight three of Starship may buy two go
6:45stage one go stage two go flight directors go [Music] forun
7:08we have LIF
7:25off vehicle's pitching down range ex
7:41[Music] cute vehicle [Music] supersonic St
7:58separation [Music]
8:23[Music] [Applause] oh [Music]
8:41[Music] [Applause] [Music]
8:58he [Applause] and congratulations guys you did that
9:13that's in that's insane I mean it looks like CGI um I mean it's hard to believe that that is unfiltered video that's just the actual what the camera saw no filters no nothing that's actually what the camera saw which is
9:28insane um so you know uh you're doing incredible work that I think uh almost no one thought would actually happen so uh it's
9:45wild that that this uh this strange spot this we we're basically on a sandpit uh by the Rio Grand near the beach um and uh that is actually the gateway to Mars um has to like if if this was a
10:01movie you'd be like no way come on too too implausible but it's it's real and it's due to you guys [Applause] [Music]
10:16congratulations this is a side by side of the three flights you can see how thrust a weight improved significantly so we um we've made
10:31tremendous progress from flight one to flight two to flight three and we got flight four coming up in about a month or so and uh with flight four we should uh if we get you know if fate Smiles upon
10:47us uh we'll get through the high heating regime um and uh smash into the ocean at a controlled spot um and hopefully be able to to also do this with with the
11:02booster uh land on a essentially a virtual Tower um if if the landing on the virtual Tower with the booster works then we will actually try with flight five to come back and land on the
11:19[Applause] tower that's very much a success oriented schedule but uh but it is in the realm of possibility um but I would say like the odds of us actually being able to catch the the booster with the
11:36mechazilla arms this year I think I I don't want to attempt to fate no wood but I think the odds of actually catching the booster uh with the tower probably like 80 90% this year um which is insane like actually
11:52when we first talked about it it sounded so batshit crazy we're going to going to have a giant it's like literally bigger than mechazilla from this movie uh that You' catch like the like
12:07the the biggest flying object ever made with mechanical arms out of the air but we're going to do it so yeah may not work you know necessarily the first time but you know it will
12:23work um so really Starship is is really the key to making life multiplanetary and preserving the light of Light Of Consciousness that's what it's all about and um it it may end up being the most
12:38important thing that that we ever do I think that you like the light of Consciousness is like this this tiny candle in a in a vast darkness and that candle has only been
12:54lit for a very short time and it could easily go out so we obviously to preserve that that the tiny Light Of Consciousness on Earth but extend it to Mars and then ultimately to the rest of the solar system and then start going to
13:09other other star systems and um I mean I won't be allowed to see that butless I'm like frozen or something I don't know but uh but I you know I think at some point we will discover many civilizations that maybe
13:25lasted a million years or two million years or 10 million years um but a civilization that lasted a million years which would be you know vastly longer than our civilization has lasted I mean that's only the the third
13:42decimal point so like 13.8 billion something something years if your if your civilization lasts a million years it's only goes that third digit past the decimal point goes up one and that's a million years so
14:00I mean I'd say like we should think of like how do we make civilization last a million years you know we often get caught up in like the day-to-day things but we want them to have at least a million year civilization if not 100 million year civilization or billion
14:17year civilization so absolutely crucial to that goal is becoming a multi-planet species people often people often ask why why Mars um well there's not a lot of options frankly so uh if Venus is a
14:37superheated uh High Press Acid Bath so not uh not what you don't don't want to go to Venus uh but and then um the Moon is close but it it doesn't have
14:52an atmosphere the gravity is only one sixth out of Earth and it's missing a lot of Key Resources so uh also the the the the insulating value of the Moon Rel relative to Mars is much
15:07less so if there's something that takes out earth like let's say there's a World War III global thermonuclear Warfare they'll probably throw a few nukes at the moon so whereas it's way harder to to to shoot Mars with with nuclear and Mars would see it coming and probably
15:22have some time to stop the inbound missiles um so the the in the the value of Mars the the difficult or the distance and time required to get to Mars actually has an insulating benefit
15:38to the for the continuation of Consciousness even if there's something terrible happens on Earth um and uh and then once we go beyond Mars there's there's some asteroids like sarus uh some of the moons of
15:53Jupiter um stasha would ultimately be capable of uh of reaching anywhere in the solar system then we'll need something a new level of technology to go to other star systems but if we can't
16:08at least get to Mars then other star systems are hopeless I mean it's a fixer uper of a planet okay needs some work but it is uh it's really the only option for becoming multiplanetary and long term we
16:24can warm up Mars and we can there would be we can densify the atmosph osphere and there' be a liquid ocean on about 40% of the surface so we could make it an earthlike Planet long [Music]
16:40term so let's see um we've we've we've learned a tremendous amount from when we started the company and and um at first could we
16:55unable to get even a small rocket to orbit to now where we've done 327 successful launches uh almost 300 Landings in fact you know give it a few weeks and we'll have done three 300
17:10Landings um 261 ref flights so uh I many times I was told that uh that reusability was was impossible and even if you did it there would there would be
17:26no point cuz nobody would want to fly rockets that much um but now we routinely uh fly and land the booster and we recover the fairing so we've learned a tremendous amount from the Falcon program that is
17:41then feeding into the starship program um and Falcon and starlink are what obviously keep keep the company going so um I just like to have give a hand to the the Falcon team for the
17:56incredible work that they're doing [Applause] W and then Dragon wow 45 launches of
18:15dragon it's amazing and we've flown flown 50 crew members to Orit 46 to the space station um and uh everyone has come home home safely which is the most important thing
18:32um so you know incredible work by the dragon team so let's give him a hand that was uh couldn't ask for a better [Applause] outcome and
18:48starlink uh actually if you look at the sort of the the plot of the all the satellites going around Earth um does look kind of scary actually uh but there's there's 6,000 satellites in operation o over
19:036,000 and uh 10,000 lasers almost 3 million customers um so stall link is doing a lot of good for PE um for people on Earth who don't either don't have internet access or it's very expensive
19:19and uh so it's doing doing a lot of good you know on Earth uh because when I say we want to be a multi-planet species I'm I you know we obviously want to Earth to be as good as possible and Mars to be to be great so uh stall link
19:35is is doing a tremendous amount of of that and we're learning a lot by having this big Fleet um stall link will also be uh very important for high bandwidth communication uh to and on Mars
19:52so from from a tiny rocket to Falcon 9 which is a much bigger rocket uh many iterations of Falcon 9 and then Falcon heavy and then
20:07Starship as sship will get bigger obviously um you know this this year if if um if things go according to plan uh SpaceX will do probably 90% of all Earth Master
20:24orbit and then China will do about 6% and the rest of the world will do about 4% uh which is pretty wild and then once Starship is flying uh we'll be doing over 99% of all Earth Mass
20:39Orit um which you kind of have to do in order to uh build a city on Mars and and I should say we'll also build a a lunar base as well so you might as well along the way so you can see that uh actually
20:57Falcon 1 was really yeah half a ton to orbit umry slight error on the slide there so Falcon was about half a ton to orbit uh Falcon 9 depending on in Expendable mode uh would do probably 25 tons to of it uh
21:14and uh yeah Falcon heavy probably 70 anyway the these these are just uh obviously rapidly increasing numbers and Starship in its final configuration or its final form um will probably do well
21:30over 200 tons to orbit with full reusability um and be able to fly you know multiple times a day
21:45[Music] so
22:00[Music]
22:26[Music] [Music]
22:45so I I'm pretty confident we will achieve that this year like I said probably 80 90% uh this year and uh and then there's recovering and reusing the ship the ship will take uh longer um so the ship I think we want
23:03to have uh at least two consecutive successes of a given design uh that uh land at a specific point in the ocean or smash into a specific point of the ocean before we try to bring it back
23:19to the launch site um because we do we do not want a rain debris over uh Mexico or the US so uh my guess is probably next year year is when we will be able to reuse Starship but I think it's it's I think it's highly likely that this
23:34year we will bring Starship to or the ship the ship side of it to a controlled point in the ocean um and have it basically land on a virtual uh virtual Tower in somewhere in the in the Pacific or the Indian
23:49Ocean and we've already proven that we can do the Final Phase of Landing so coming from sort of a belly first position to uh rotating the ship and Landing vertically uh we proved that right here
24:05so what we just really we just need to be confident that we can get through the high heating portion of the app of of re-entry uh reliably and then we will bring the ship back and it will land on the tower as well and we're going to build more mechazilla so there's going to be two
24:22launch Towers here and and I think and then two launch Towers at the cape as well uh so we'll have four launch towers for uh for Starship probably you know by
24:39sometime next year so uh we're aiming to have the first Cape uh launch Tower and launch system operational around the middle of next year um and that'll be important for launch uh azimuths that are uh sort of
24:58fly Overland um so I think what what we probably expect is that we we do the kind of the development launches here um test anything new here build the build the
25:14rockets and then uh probably most of the operational launches would be from the cap so this year we're planning to build another roughly six
25:30uh boosters and shifts and um and that production rate will increase a lot next year that's why we're building the the giant
25:45Factory ultimately we'll need to build a lot more shifts than boosters especially for Mars because it's the you'll actually want to use the ship take apart the ship and use it for raw materials on Mars um because the ship materials will be so valuable you Mo most of the ships
26:01you wouldn't want to bring back you'd want to just use them for raw materials um eventually we will want to bring ships back and I think we want to give people the option of coming back because they're more likely to want to go if there's some option of coming back
26:16um but I think most of most of the people that go to Mars will probably never come back to earth so uh and we'll need to ramp uh production to pretty high numbers like a
26:31I think ultimately probably a ship every like multiple ships per day basically um and uh then next year we're aiming to demonstrate ship to- ship propellant transfer
26:46um it's it's hard to make this not look a little bit nauy uh because it's two ships connecting and doing a fluid transfer it's just what it is um but it is this is actually a very
27:02important uh this is a very important step on going to Mars because you need to put to get the ship to orbit and then do orbital refilling kind of like aerial refueling and um and that's that's
27:18really you'll need about about five or six uh refilling missions for every one mission that goes to Mars so roughly 5 to1 so and and this will also be very important for the Artemis program for
27:34the N to to get back to the moon so we want to have a ship that is uh well it's going to be a specialized ship for the moon um like this um so the moon obviously there's no mechazilla so we need Landing
27:49legs and uh you don't need a heat shield and uh you don't need flaps cuz there's no atmosphere so the moon ship would be specialized uh and uh now ultimately I think we we want to build a moon base Moonbase
28:05Alpha um and have a permanently uh occupied uh base on the moon think that would be super exciting um and so you'd have a bunch of ships that are specialized for going to
28:20and from the moon but they never come back to uh they never land back on Earth they just would would uh dock with uh propellent propellent tankers to get orbital refilling so in terms of performance we've made um dramatic progress on on
28:38every level for Starship uh it's remarkable that uh you see the rapor engines and how how how it has evolved from you know optimistically 185 tons to
28:56280 and I think ultimately we'll probably the booster engines will will aim to get the booster engines over 330 tons of thrust which would mean 10,000 tons of total thrust at left 12 so uh and then the Raptor 3 also will
29:15not need a heat shield so rafter 3 looks looks very simple and it is actually simplified in a lot of ways um but a lot of the complexity is hidden because we have integral cooling channels uh in in many parts of the engine that that don't exist in Raptor 2
29:32so in order to not have a heat shield it has to be very resilient um but that is actually what rafter 3 would look like looks like rafter 3 looks like it's missing a bunch of parts uh but actually those parts have either been deleted or they've been
29:47integrated into the system and like I said with integral cooling channels um and where where you need secondary Plumbing the secondary Plumbing has also been integrated uh into the pump and into the the chamber jacket and um yeah
30:02so it's uh much simpler well it's it's yeah it's actually extremely difficult to build Rapter 3 but um but it will be easy to integrate and we'll have higher performance and lower
30:18total mass um and be more reliable so
30:51well than going for a while um so I I I find it interesting to look at the if you look at the uh the flame tail on Starship uh and how long it is it's it's a very long flame tail um which is a due
31:06to the fact that the the the chamber pressure well it's it's just outputting a lot more yeah a lot more gas at a higher velocity um but I think the flame tail is like maybe 1,000 ft long it's like more than twice the length of the rocket
31:22um and that will actually get as as we increase the thrust that will get longer so yeah um and inevitably the rocket grows in height so Starship 2 riming for like
31:37currently flight three would be around 40 or 50 tons to or it um so the current design Starship 2 will be over 100 tons and then Starship 3 will be over 200 tons um and uh yeah it's
31:55uh going from around 7,000 tons thrust to over 8,000 but I think we'll we'll we'll end up ultimately with more than three more than 10,000 tons of thrust um probably 7 or 8,000 tons of lift wolf
32:11mass and at least 10 m taller we'll see tends to grow yeah exactly um
32:27so it probably grows a bit more than that even really um so if if you look at Falcon 9 it's it we're not going to do the length to diameter of Falcon 9 that would be crazy but uh Falcon 9 is a very long rocket
32:44um and uh so I suspect it'll probably get a bit longer than this but at 200 tons per flight fully reusable um that is that is pretty incredible and uh
33:01yeah this will be on the order of 500 ft tall um and then we're there there there's thousands of design improvements here
33:17so I mean I think maybe the most one of the most profound things is Starship 3 will cost less per flight than Falcon 1 so that's the difference between if you've got a fully reusable rocket or an
33:33Expendable rocket um the fully reusable rocket with lowcost propellant and autogenous pressurization uh actually costs less than a a a tiny expandable rocket so and it'll do like said Falcon
33:50one is about half a ton to Orit the Starship 3 will be 400 times more payload for less than the cost of a falcon one um ultimately I think we might be able to get the cost per flight to Earth orbit down around $2 million or $3
34:07million so uh these are sort of Unthinkable numbers uh from the you know no nobody ever thought this was possible but we're not breaking any physics to achieve this uh so this is within the B without breaking physics we can do
34:26this so the Mars missions are 2 years apart or 26 months um and uh if you look closely at the starlink router you see the the home and
34:41transfer from Earth overit to Mars over it and uh that's basically tell to say to people the starlink system that you're buying is helping get Humanity to
34:57Mars I think it's pretty cool so roughly every 2 years thousands of ships would depart from Earth to Mars it would look like Battle Star Galactica but in a good way you know hopefully without being chased by the silons um but it would be an incredible
35:14thing to see these thousands of ships departing every every 26 months for Mars what this diagram is basically saying is that uh for getting to Mars we would um essentially
35:30uh create a kind of a propellent Depot ship the propellant Depot would look more like a hot dog than like a spear um it's really just a long ship with a lot of insulation and uh we' fill that ship up
35:48and then shortly before or or as as they're going to Mars the ships would take off with a couple hundred tons of the payload from Earth reach orbit with very almost no propellent and then uh
36:04get refilled by the tanker uh and then go to Mars and and land go all the way to Mars with over 200 tons of useful payload then on Mars in the beginning we would I think we would simply reuse the ship materials so most of the ships
36:19wouldn't come back but then over time you'd want to bring the ships back so you could reuse them and um and for that we would need to create methane CH4 and oxygen O2 on Mars which you can do with uh H2O and CO2 so the atmosphere is CO2
36:34and there's plenty of water ice H2O and so it's it's kind of like tailor made for well actually the reason we have methane oxygen system is because you can make methane and oxygen on Mars fairly easily like not uh just not
36:51total walk in the park but the ingredients are readily available to create methane and oxygen on Mars so so you build a propellent Depot and and bring the ships back and build out
37:06as quickly as possible a self-sustaining civilization on Mars and we want to get we want to get the cost of going to Mars such that almost anyone could afford it so like if somebody would to just work hard on Earth save off and that they'd
37:21be able to go to Mars so it's like anyone ideally almost anyone could go to Mars and I think you'll see a lot of govern also sponsor people um and ultimately we'll we'll want to get uh so there's uh kind of an optimal
37:37Landing Zone on Mars where you have resources so you've got access to water or frozen water um that you're not too close to the pole so you can use solar power um it would uh it would be nice to use nuclear I don't know if you'll get
37:52get the approval but nuclear would be very handy on Mars because you can use the heat um and you can gener electricity so and then you kind of want to be about 2 kilm below sea level so if Mars did have an ocean you'd actually be
38:07quite deep in the ocean at least at first um and uh yeah so let's see that's Mars kind of kind of want to land about halfway
38:24between the the pole and the equator um in in a kind of a deep area of Mars if if you the deeper it is the more you can use the atmosphere to break and the atmospheric density is
38:40higher so these are all the things that would have to be developed uh people ask me are we developing these things I'm like not yet because uh this is the cart and we need the horse first um so the rocket is the horse and then this is the cart uh but
38:56ultimately we'll need all these things lots of power generation mining in general ice mining propellent production long duration life support uh constru a lot of construction and uh and then Global Communication um so I think this would
39:12open up a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs that want to create any create things on Mars whether that is a propellent well well I think we'll have to do the propound depot but uh whether it's uh like iron or refining or a pizza
39:27joint or are you know uh there'll be an opportunity to do all the things that we like on Earth on Mars like a Mars bar would be yeah great um
39:42so I I think probably a rough order of magnitude guess for what you need how many people do you need for a self-sustaining city is about a million um and several million tons of of cargo so
39:59uh yeah which we can do and we can do this in 20 years but like I said in order for it to be self- sustaining you actually need the entire base of Industry you can't be missing any element so that's that's really what's going to take take a while
40:15is do you have everything you need to survive on Mars at that point the future of Consciousness is assured so if you do a 10 launch a day at 200 tons per
40:30launch uh million and a half tons to Leo per opportunity you you net that out to a quar million tons uh to Mars per opportunity so that means you can get to a million tons in about 8 years since the
40:47opportunities are two years apart so I think this pretty doable and I'm like we're actually going to do this are we well I you know we are actually going to do it which is insane to
41:02think so millions and tons to Mars yeah wild um and we're going to build a lot of vehicles
41:18so uh yeah several thousand vehicles per year is what we'll need which really quite quite doable actually it sounds like a lot but it's very
41:36doable yeah if you compare it to sort of car production uh there a small number of course this is much bigger than a car uh but even if you look at the total tonnage um the uh it's still very it's very doable to build several thousand
41:51Vehicles a year um so that's what we need to do and we're going to do it and then long term we'll probably have some offshore launch
42:26SES you can just imagine all these Starships waiting in Orit for the planets to align and then this gigantic Starfleet taking over from
42:56Mars
43:26for all right so we're actually going to do this um and uh when you think about where this started out this was literally just a like a a sandbar um where we're
43:43standing right now and now look at what we've done here and that we've gotten three flights off of Starship and we've got a fourth fourth one coming up and we're building a gigantic Factory that will be able to Output a massive number of ships
43:59so it's surreal but it but it's real um so we're actually going to do this we're going to take Humanity to Mars and uh I'm confident you can do it
44:19so