Latest / Elon Musk Thinking / Back in 2008, Elon Musk SpaceX Presentation to The Hollywood Hill!!!
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Okay, sure, So it's quick up on Tesla. You have
- 0:04Speaker 1: to unute program for people hold on oneside.
- 0:07Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. So I'm sure people have been reading
- 0:15Speaker 2: about the order alone, bailouts and all that sort of stuff.
- 0:17Speaker 2: So it's it's kind of a travesty at what's going on,
- 0:22Speaker 2: although I hope I don't think it's gonna last too long.
- 0:24Speaker 2: Into the Obama administration, there was a twenty five billion
- 0:26Speaker 2: dollar loan program that Congress approved to find energy development
- 0:31Speaker 2: of energy efficient vehicle, essentially the wean ourselves of oil.
- 0:35Speaker 2: And ironically, the Big Three then came to Washington and said,
- 0:40Speaker 2: now give us that money for our day to day
- 0:42Speaker 2: operations building gas guzzlers, which is is obviously a sort
- 0:48Speaker 2: of a version of the intent. And unfortunately, with the
- 0:52Speaker 2: job situation being being the way it is, Congress has
- 0:55Speaker 2: acceded to that demand and it is understanding currently giving
- 1:00Speaker 2: fifteen of the twenty five billion to the Big Three
- 1:03Speaker 2: to fund their data operations, which I.
- 1:05Speaker 1: Believe gets them to about February. I love kidding. There's
- 1:10Speaker 1: not even an exaggeration.
- 1:12Speaker 2: Although the Speaker a Speaker Pelosi has also said that
- 1:17Speaker 2: as soon as the new administration comes in they're going
- 1:22Speaker 2: to replenish that fund, so I think it'll be I
- 1:23Speaker 2: think it'll be okay.
- 1:24Speaker 1: But certainly, if you have the opportunity to express to.
- 1:29Speaker 2: Anyone in DC or in the press the importance of
- 1:33Speaker 2: developing clean energy vehicles, please take the opportunity to do so.
- 1:39Speaker 1: In the case of Tesla, if.
- 1:41Speaker 2: Tesla actually is not applying for any bailout funds, although
- 1:44Speaker 2: some of the press have mistaken that, what Tesla's done
- 1:47Speaker 2: is applied for funding to develop lower cost mass market vehicles,
- 1:52Speaker 2: and essentially the exact intent of the legislation, and.
- 1:56Speaker 1: So hopefully this will some money left over to actually
- 1:58Speaker 1: do that after the Big three have taken what the
- 2:02Speaker 1: what what they will take?
- 2:06Speaker 2: Uh so uh And and the Tesla Roadster, I think
- 2:10Speaker 2: a lot of people are familiar with that.
- 2:11Speaker 1: That's the two seater sports car.
- 2:14Speaker 2: In fact, my my car, which is production unit one,
- 2:16Speaker 2: is parked outside if anyone's curious.
- 2:19Speaker 1: To see it. There's uh there's also Tesla.
- 2:22Speaker 2: Sales and service center on Santa Monica Boulevard, so if
- 2:24Speaker 2: you want to pop in and take a look at
- 2:26Speaker 2: the card at that time, we also welcome do so.
- 2:29Speaker 2: And we're about to deliver our hundredth production Tesla next week.
- 2:34Speaker 2: And that's interestingly enough, our hundredth customer is Sam Perry.
- 2:40Speaker 1: If if if anybody.
- 2:41Speaker 2: Watched the the when Obama won and an Oprah was
- 2:46Speaker 2: crying on some guy's shoulder, that same guy's hundred customers.
- 2:55Speaker 1: So it's good.
- 2:55Speaker 2: Like Zelig, I mean, he's sort of everywhere. So anyway,
- 3:01Speaker 2: he's a really great guy and lives in the area.
- 3:05Speaker 2: It's going to take a little bit of his car
- 3:07Speaker 2: on Tuesday, so I'm going to hand him the keys
- 3:08Speaker 2: personally and think of being a customer. So and you know,
- 3:13Speaker 2: there's an important point about Tesla, which is, whenever somebody
- 3:16Speaker 2: buys the Tesla Roadster, even though it's a one hundred
- 3:19Speaker 2: thousand dollars one hundred nine thousand dollars sports car and
- 3:22Speaker 2: it's kind of a fancy sports car, every pointy that
- 3:24Speaker 2: Tesla makes goes into development of lower cost mass mark vehicles.
- 3:29Speaker 1: So the company doesn't.
- 3:30Speaker 2: Issue any dividends, nor will it ever know my stalary's
- 3:33Speaker 2: minimum wage, you know.
- 3:36Speaker 1: So I'm a volunteer.
- 3:39Speaker 2: Basically, So and then you know, it's it's like it's
- 3:45Speaker 2: just an important point because sometimes people think, well, gee,
- 3:47Speaker 2: what's the point of making these these expensive cars, which
- 3:50Speaker 2: are sort of toys for rich people, hows that really
- 3:52Speaker 2: helping the environment.
- 3:53Speaker 1: The important point to bear in mind is that when.
- 3:55Speaker 2: You have new technology, it takes time to optimize that technology.
- 3:58Speaker 2: If you think back to the early days of cell
- 4:00Speaker 2: phones or laptops or pretty much anything new, it's expensive
- 4:05Speaker 2: in the early days because the first job with a
- 4:07Speaker 2: new technology is you've got to make it work, and
- 4:09Speaker 2: you make it small volume you sell those cars. But
- 4:13Speaker 2: if you the critical point is that you can't get
- 4:17Speaker 2: to the low cost cars unless you start with the
- 4:19Speaker 2: expensive cars. And and that's that's the point that sometimes lies. Anyway,
- 4:23Speaker 2: that's enough on Tesla. I'll jump into the space stuff
- 4:27Speaker 2: and I'll kick it off with our last flight video.
- 4:34Speaker 3: Fuel turned out actually are set.
- 4:45Speaker 1: To trigger system. So this is actually on a remote
- 4:51Speaker 1: trop of the island. We launched a small rocket, the
- 4:55Speaker 1: Falcon one from an island in the quadronin anshole. So
- 5:00Speaker 1: so it feels a bit of nefarious to be launching
- 5:02Speaker 1: rockets for a moretrochoical islands. Yeah, I feel a bit
- 5:07Speaker 1: like a brine villain in this case. It's basically just
- 5:14Speaker 1: a dummy satellite. So if this is basically.
- 5:17Speaker 2: A test flight to get to orbits. So this is
- 5:20Speaker 2: actually our fourth flights. The flights two or three made
- 5:23Speaker 2: it to space, but they didn't make rule a way
- 5:24Speaker 2: to orbit. And it's actually a lot harder to get
- 5:26Speaker 2: to orbit than it is to get to space. You
- 5:28Speaker 2: can get to space just by getting going up to
- 5:30Speaker 2: mark three, but to get to orbit you get to
- 5:33Speaker 2: get you have to have a minimum of mark twenty five,
- 5:37Speaker 2: and that doesn't actually explain the full difficulty because the
- 5:41Speaker 2: energy scales with the square of the last seas, So
- 5:43Speaker 2: getting space nine inntes of energy, getting to orbit six
- 5:46Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five minutes of energy. It's about seventy
- 5:48Speaker 2: times harder to get to orbit than to get to space,
- 5:51Speaker 2: and that's why there's only been about half a dozen
- 5:52Speaker 2: countries in the world that have actually reached aubit. So
- 5:57Speaker 2: this is actually the first completely privately developed rocket uh
- 6:00Speaker 2: to to reach orbit and also the first amen privately
- 6:05Speaker 2: about liquid fuel rocky disorders. This is it's named This
- 6:10Speaker 2: is the Falcon one. It's named Falcon after the Millennium Falcons.
- 6:13Speaker 1: From Star Wars. Looks nothing like it, but.
- 6:29Speaker 2: So the music in the background is a high roller
- 6:31Speaker 2: from the crystal method.
- 6:45Speaker 1: Actually with with with rockets. Uh. The only semi reuseful
- 6:49Speaker 1: rocket in.
- 6:49Speaker 2: The world right now is the Space Shuttle, and they
- 6:51Speaker 2: say sam reusul because the main tank is actually.
- 6:53Speaker 1: Thrown away every time, so it's typically we're really almost
- 6:57Speaker 1: in all cases rockets are not recovered.
- 6:59Speaker 2: They basically re enter and kind of either burn up
- 7:02Speaker 2: or crash into the ocean and think to the bottom.
- 7:05Speaker 1: Typically now a.
- 7:07Speaker 2: Falcon one, our intent is to recover the first stage,
- 7:11Speaker 2: which unfortunately we weren't able to do it this flight.
- 7:14Speaker 2: The clametry coming down showed that that the it didn't
- 7:17Speaker 2: have enough normal protection, so it actually ended.
- 7:19Speaker 1: Up burning up. We need to increase the thermal protection.
- 7:23Speaker 1: Got Uh. The field is is a high purity kerosene,
- 7:30Speaker 1: so it's.
- 7:30Speaker 2: Like sort of a very clean form of jet fuel
- 7:32Speaker 2: basically with no sult of content dry. It's not the
- 7:37Speaker 2: greatest thing in the world, but we do buy lots
- 7:40Speaker 2: of carbon ox sets, so.
- 7:49Speaker 1: It's a nine degresional that too.
- 7:52Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, we're making use of thest rotation to help
- 7:59Speaker 2: with the insert simplacity.
- 8:02Speaker 3: Could you actually go out wouldn't it be easier to
- 8:05Speaker 3: go into space?
- 8:06Speaker 2: And well, the only way to go up and stay
- 8:13Speaker 2: up is to reach orb it. The the gravity is
- 8:16Speaker 2: actually almost the same force at say two hundred.
- 8:19Speaker 1: Miles above the surface as it is on the on
- 8:22Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth.
- 8:23Speaker 2: The only reason people seem to be sort of floating around,
- 8:26Speaker 2: but actually what's happening is they're zooming around the Earth
- 8:28Speaker 2: super fast. And the said the outward acceleration is equal
- 8:33Speaker 2: to the inward acceleration of gravity, and so when that's neutralized,
- 8:36Speaker 2: you have what appears to be zero gravity, but you're
- 8:38Speaker 2: actally just sort.
- 8:39Speaker 1: Of falling around the Earth.
- 8:42Speaker 2: Do you want We've not encountered any any space junk
- 8:49Speaker 2: issue that it's although there's been a lot of launchers
- 8:52Speaker 2: up there and been issues like the where the Chinese
- 8:55Speaker 2: blood for satellite and scattered bits all over the place.
- 8:58Speaker 1: It's so big up there that the statistical chance of
- 9:02Speaker 1: being hit is tiny.
- 9:04Speaker 2: But but for things which are which carry people, like
- 9:06Speaker 2: the space station and our Dragon spacecraft.
- 9:09Speaker 1: Uh, they actually have my Cromeinia rights shields so they
- 9:12Speaker 1: can take a high impact which essentially a.
- 9:15Speaker 2: High speed bullet coming at its picture.
- 9:22Speaker 1: Ah, the bigger picture. Very good question.
- 9:25Speaker 2: So the reason I started SpaceX was because the cost
- 9:31Speaker 2: and reliability of getting to getting to orbits and beyond.
- 9:34Speaker 1: Has not really improved since the sixties. In fact, it's
- 9:37Speaker 1: Scottland worse so.
- 9:40Speaker 2: And if you look at the trajectory over time, it's
- 9:42Speaker 2: not an improving trajectory if you would extrapolate that the
- 9:45Speaker 2: cast trajectory, and Steve could tell could affirm that if
- 9:49Speaker 2: if you would extrapolate to the future, you would basically
- 9:52Speaker 2: be able to afford no launchers at some point.
- 9:55Speaker 1: Because it's just it's actually was getting more and more expensive.
- 9:58Speaker 2: So I started SpaceX to really reverse that trend and
- 10:02Speaker 2: make it affordable to get to orbit and beyond. The
- 10:07Speaker 2: huge breakthrough that space aspires to achieve, and this is
- 10:10Speaker 2: a very difficult thing, is to make a fully reusable.
- 10:15Speaker 1: Orbital launch vehicle. So with Falcon one, the first stage
- 10:18Speaker 1: is intended to be re usable. With Falcon nine, both
- 10:20Speaker 1: stages are intended to be reusable.
- 10:22Speaker 2: Now it's going to take us many launches to figure
- 10:24Speaker 2: that out and get the stages back safely and optimize
- 10:28Speaker 2: the refurbishment for flight and make sure they're reliable and what.
- 10:33Speaker 2: But that's that's the that's sort of the big tech
- 10:36Speaker 2: technical breakthrough wereing for and you can imagine in any
- 10:39Speaker 2: mode of transport, if you had a reusable vehicle or
- 10:43Speaker 2: expendable vehicle, it would be a night and day difference.
- 10:46Speaker 2: I mean, how many people would have driven here if
- 10:48Speaker 2: the car was single use or or even And that
- 10:52Speaker 2: applies to any mode of transport, bicycles, horses, planes, you know,
- 10:58Speaker 2: really pretty much anything.
- 10:59Speaker 1: So we've got this weird.
- 11:01Speaker 2: Situation in space where vehicles can only be used once.
- 11:04Speaker 2: In fact, you want to return journey, you've got like
- 11:06Speaker 2: tow one behind you. So that's what we're aspiring to it.
- 11:11Speaker 2: It's a tough goal. We're not saying we can achieve it,
- 11:13Speaker 2: but we're aspiring to achieve.
- 11:15Speaker 1: That, and I think we will. But to explain why
- 11:19Speaker 1: that's so difficult.
- 11:24Speaker 2: When an orbital rocket is after they've really optimized the
- 11:31Speaker 2: weight of the rocket and use the most advanced materials
- 11:34Speaker 2: and the engines are incredibly efficient, and you've pushed everything
- 11:39Speaker 2: to the maximum, you typically get about three percent of
- 11:42Speaker 2: the lift off weight to orbit. So if you make
- 11:46Speaker 2: even a small mistake in the design, you know, if
- 11:49Speaker 2: you get three percent off your you know you got nothing.
- 11:53Speaker 2: So and that's for expandable single use rockets, where they're
- 11:57Speaker 2: not trying to make the rocket robust enough to have
- 11:59Speaker 2: multiple flight. They're not trying to make it robust enough
- 12:01Speaker 2: to re enter safely. It doesn't have to have heat
- 12:05Speaker 2: shields and all that lot of stuff. So when you
- 12:08Speaker 2: add in all those things, if that exceeds three percent,
- 12:10Speaker 2: well you're getting nothing toward it.
- 12:12Speaker 1: So uh So to make it.
- 12:15Speaker 2: Reusable and still deliver it a useful payload is extraordinarily difficult,
- 12:19Speaker 2: and and no one has ever succeeded in doing that, right,
- 12:27Speaker 2: So I'm getting I'll get So the why Essentially.
- 12:32Speaker 1: I should? I should? I Actually, you're right, I should
- 12:34Speaker 1: perceive this with the Y and then and then the how.
- 12:45Speaker 2: No.
- 12:45Speaker 1: So, yeah, technics, for granted, being in a space business.
- 12:47Speaker 1: But so I'm a huge believer in the extension of
- 12:53Speaker 1: life beyond Earth.
- 12:54Speaker 2: So making life multiplanetary, I think, is one of the
- 12:57Speaker 2: most important things we could do.
- 13:00Speaker 1: So then why why is that important? Well?
- 13:03Speaker 2: How do you how do you say that anything is important?
- 13:06Speaker 2: How do you judge importance? Well, if you look at
- 13:08Speaker 2: things on an historical time scale, and the further you
- 13:11Speaker 2: zoom out more, the important stuff stays behind, and the
- 13:14Speaker 2: unimportant stuff you can't see it anymore.
- 13:17Speaker 1: And if you look at the the span of life's
- 13:20Speaker 1: evolution on Earth, you know, the multi billion.
- 13:23Speaker 2: Year history of Earth itself, of life on Earth itself,
- 13:27Speaker 2: you can really point to about half a dozen major
- 13:30Speaker 2: steps on the evolution of life. There's obviously single cell life,
- 13:33Speaker 2: multicellular life, differentiation to plants and animals, life moving from
- 13:39Speaker 2: the oceans to land, mammals, consciousness.
- 13:43Speaker 1: You know, those are sort of like the big ones,
- 13:45Speaker 1: and that's why we're here talking.
- 13:55Speaker 2: And on that scale also would fit I think the
- 14:00Speaker 2: extension of life to multiple planets. So life becoming multiplanetary,
- 14:05Speaker 2: it would be at least is important, if not more
- 14:07Speaker 2: important than life going from the oceans to lands, oceans
- 14:10Speaker 2: to land.
- 14:10Speaker 1: You could jump back to the ocean if forgot uncomfortable.
- 14:14Speaker 2: But going to another planet you've got to go over,
- 14:16Speaker 2: you know, billions of miles of hostile space and then
- 14:20Speaker 2: land and try to create an ecology on a planet
- 14:24Speaker 2: that is nothing like the planet that we live on today,
- 14:29Speaker 2: or if my current planet may become more like that
- 14:32Speaker 2: planet if not careful, But you know that's so if
- 14:37Speaker 2: you have something which arguably I could fit on the
- 14:41Speaker 2: important scale of the evolution of life, itself, then it's reason.
- 14:45Speaker 2: We'll say it's important and should get some of our resources.
- 14:49Speaker 2: And I think, say, well, what is some of our resources? Well, probably,
- 14:52Speaker 2: like you know, less than what we spend on medicare
- 14:57Speaker 2: and more than what we spend on lifstick. You know,
- 14:58Speaker 2: you can sort of bracket it. So we spent a
- 15:03Speaker 2: lot of lipstick quo, which I.
- 15:07Speaker 1: Think is great.
- 15:10Speaker 2: But if you said, well, maybe we should spend a
- 15:14Speaker 2: quarter of a percent of our of our economic product
- 15:17Speaker 2: on the extension of life to another planet, making my
- 15:21Speaker 2: fault planetary, and that would be like a reasonable number,
- 15:23Speaker 2: and you know that's uh, you know, several tanza billions.
- 15:29Speaker 2: So I don't think it could be done for that.
- 15:31Speaker 2: And but a critical element is making having that reusable
- 15:35Speaker 2: orbital craft. So that's the that's the fundamental breakthrough is necessary.
- 15:38Speaker 2: First bill to afford to do it at a price
- 15:40Speaker 2: that is going to be palatable to the general public.
- 15:47Speaker 1: Planetary and think about the kind of fuels used. Probably
- 15:54Speaker 1: it looks so ideas about well my wild's idea about feels.
- 16:05Speaker 2: I think long term, you know, once we well, if
- 16:08Speaker 2: we I suppose figure out fusion, you're having a fusion.
- 16:12Speaker 1: If you can have a compact fusion reactor and that
- 16:17Speaker 1: that would be the best energy source.
- 16:19Speaker 2: And then you need to sort of shoot something out
- 16:20Speaker 2: of the back end, uh, you know, which could just
- 16:23Speaker 2: basically a high energy ion engine powered by a fusion reactor.
- 16:28Speaker 2: That's like, that's pretty much about as good as're gonna get.
- 16:31Speaker 2: I mean, theoretically from a physics standpoint, sorry a gravity saying,
- 16:39Speaker 2: maybe a solar sale. Yeah, solar sale is an option.
- 16:44Speaker 2: But now the sun doesn't have a lot of force
- 16:47Speaker 2: because if you stand outside, you don't feel yourself getting
- 16:49Speaker 2: knocked down by the Sun.
- 16:51Speaker 1: But but so you need a big sale in space
- 16:55Speaker 1: and it can and it can work, and it's an option.
- 16:56Speaker 2: And particularly, you know, if you had, like to say,
- 16:58Speaker 2: a cargo ship going from Earth to Mars, where the
- 17:02Speaker 2: time of the journey wasn't that big of a deal,
- 17:04Speaker 2: then that could be actually a good option.