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Back in The Past, 2007 Elon Musk interview!!! · Elon Musk Thinking

• 0:01
  Well, what I mean by that is in nineteen sixty nine we were able
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  to go to the Moon, and here we are over three decades later,
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  and we can barely get to lowerth orbit. And I think by any measure,
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  that is a step backwards. Is that for a lack of leadership or
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  technology, I think we made the wrong technological choices. And I think there
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  was also a lack of will at the highest levels of government to take the
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  next step and well, at least go at least stay on the Moon and
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  perhaps build a base there, and then go beyond the Moon to Mars.
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  And if you look at the news articles in the late sixties early seventies,
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  the expectation was that by now in the twenty first century, we would have
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  a Moon base and probably even a Mars base. And I think if you'd
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  asked anyone at that point in time whether we would be unable to go to
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  the Moon and have no not have been to Mars, I think they would
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  think you're crazy. Do we need a leadership in that realm? Do we
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  need a John F. Kennedy who sets a goal for us when he said,
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  one one day man will walk on the moon. Do we need that
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  kind of leadership for this technology to move forward in that big step. I
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  do think it's it's very important the president set the priority and and and determine
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  the goal. Uh. You know that that reals nation will aspire to.
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  And you know, George Bush has his pluses and minuses, but at least
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  one plus is that he has helped to steer the space program in a direction
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  that that more or less makes sense. You know. The only thing I
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  would I would sort of argue with is that I don't think we should be
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  going back to the Moon. I think we should be focused on Mars.
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  I think we saw the Do you think that's a mistake focusing on the Moon.
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  I do think I do think we should rather go I think we should
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  rather be focused on on Mars. You know, the Moon is kind of
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  like it's kind of like the Arctic. It's just it's just a very barren
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  place and very very little resources. It's small, it's not it's not really
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  a place that we could establish another human civilization. There's a there's a there's
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  a feeling of been there, done that too with the Moon. Yes,
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  we saw that movie of the sixties, you know, and the room makes
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  never as good did we really go to the moon? Ah, yes,
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  we definitely just wanted to try. The government is incapable of suppressing a conspiracy
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  of that nature, of that newture. It's okay, good this ambition to
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  explore space. Absolutely, that's entrepreneur There's there's quite a bit of competition out
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  there. There's Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, There's Richard Branson with his Virgin
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  Galactic and I'm not talking about NASA either. There's Paul Allen, there's the
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  European Space Agency in Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the Chinese, the Russians,
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  let's just throw all of them into this. Everyone doing a competitive field.
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  How is SpaceX different? How do you think you'll sort of surpass them?
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  Well, you know you've You've listed a wide range of entities there, and
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  I think the differences are really different depending upon which one you're referring to.
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  The Well, let me ask you this question. Who is your competition?
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  We have no serious competition, No, not presently. Who's chasing you?
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  Well, if you mean chasing and have and has a serious chance of catching,
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  then I think none that I'm aware of. And Biden saying you guys
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  kind of a hack. Then, well, what Brandson is saying, by
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  the way, I'm a great admirer of Branson, is really a much smaller
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  technological challenge. So their craft would be suborbital, so it would go to
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  about mark three. Our craft is orbital. It goes to mark twenty five,
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  so twenty five times to speed a sound. But that doesn't describe the
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  whole scale of difficulty because the energy required to get to those philosophies scales is
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  the square of the placity. So to do what Branson is doing, you
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  need to say about nine units of energy. To do what we're doing,
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  you need six hundred and twenty five units of energy. The difference is monumental.
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  And then when you re enter you have to you have to burn off
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  all that energy, so that doubles the problem. Really, So, I
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  mean, what Branson is doing, for a technological standpoint, is building something
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  that can cross the English Channel. What we're building is something that can circum
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  navigate the globe. It's a very different scale of technological difficulty. I still
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  think what he's doing is great, and by the way, I bought a
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  ticket on his effort. Yeah, yeah, so I still think it's great,
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  but it's not in the same league technologically, so you're not particularly worried,
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  certainly not about no certinly not about that. Now the things that worry
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  me are are we going to make a mistake? The things that can really
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  hurts face x are I mean, our own foolishness, our own errors can
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  hurt us. But not none of the competition that I'm aware of. So
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  generally you're worried about what's in front of you, not the other guy.
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  And in fact, you probably don't think about them in terms of how they
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  criticize you or what they think about you. I don't think actually, I
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  don't think there's much criticism. I mean Boeing and Luckied of course that they
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  would criticize, but I don't think any of the entrepreneurial guys would criticize what
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  we're doing. And it certainly possibly I think, you know, what Jeff
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  Bezos is working on could ultimately, I mean, he does have aspirations to
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  get to over and beyond. It's just that what they're doing right now is
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  sub orbital and at the sort of lower technology level. What I think about
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  at spaces is really entirely what are we doing to ensure that our rocket is
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  going to be successful and that we are truly optimizing the cost and ensuring a
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  higher liability. I mean, that's just a very very difficult problem. There's
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  a reason why there's an an atomatic expression about rocket science being hard. It
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  really is really hard. Science really is rocket science. Yeah, it looks
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  hard, and it's harder than it looks. What's the big goal here,
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  what's the long term plan? Well, that the long term ultimate objective that
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  the holy grail is. We would like to help make life multiplanetary. That's
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  really what we'd like to do, so establish societies on as many planets as
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  possible. Uh. Well, yeah, I think there's only one possibility.
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  But yeah, I mean even if we can just go from one planet to
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  two, I think that's a pretty big step. And you'll start with well
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  Mars. Mars is the only viable, viable planet, so multiplanetary life.
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  Yeah, it's helped make life multiplanetary. I think that's an important thing.
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  I don't think your goal is big enough. Hah, Yeah, it's ambitious.
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  Well, like I said, we don't expect to do it single handedly,
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  but we certainly would like to help make it happen. It's fair to
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  say you've made a fortune. Yeah, I think so, if you have
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  any reasonable standard. Yeah, And you know, those who work in aliens
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  probably understand your trajectory. But there are those who are watching who would think
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  if I made that money, I'd sit on a beach, I'd drink beer,
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  and I would just watch the sunset, kind of like a Corona beer
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  commercial. Have you ever thought about that as a career option? You know,
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  I find that really pretty boring, So that would be torture if I
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  had to do that every day, that would really be pretty awful for me.
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  Is there something about startup businesses that really fuels your desire to work?
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  Well, I guess I really need to be preoccupied with something and if I'm
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  just sort of sitting there relaxing, I can only do that for a very
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  short period of time and then it becomes unbearable. Although startups definitely have their
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  highs and lows. And as a friend of mine who has a good phrase,
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  you know, a startup business is like eating glass and staring into the
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  abyss. What is the criteria that you established for yourself or a startup?
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  Meanwhy want business over? Yeah? Well, for me, it's always about
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  does what I'm doing matter if we are successful, does it matter to the
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  world, And so there are easier ways to make money than starting a rocket
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  company, or say a car company, or even when I started an Internet
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  company, because when I started the first Internet company, nobody had made any
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  money, and it wasn't clear that anyone would make any money. It was
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  simply from the perspective of the Internet being a very important thing and something that
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  needed to be built, and so I wanted to help at Well, you
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  touch upon something that's interesting is that there is a that benefiting humanity is a
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  very integral part of your criteria no matter what you're starting up. Yes,
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  absolutely, really not everybody has that as a prime interest. I think that's
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  probably relatively unusual, although there are many people that I know in Silicon Valley
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  for whom that is a significant motivation. You said in your endeavor here to
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  explore space that we are committed to failing in a new way if nothing else.
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  What did you mean by that? Just how it sounds? Well,
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  I mean we're I mean we're committed to succeed, really, but if we
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  do fail, I would hope that we at least add to the body of
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  knowledge such that those who follow may make few mistakes. Now, if Mars
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  were not enough, you are busy here on earth, the world is not
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  enough. That's right for you? Where? What have you? No limits?
• 9:28
  My friend? Here on earth you are establishing a presence, certainly with
• 9:35
  Tesla Motors. Tell us a little bit about that. This is your electric
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  car company, correct, right? And this is no this is no hybrid
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  car you could buy on a car lot. This thing goes from zero to
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  sixteen four seconds? Is that y? Absolutely? Is there a sixteen under
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  four seconds? It's faster, a better acceleration than any Porsch currently in production,
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  and any Frari except the Enzo. And it's twice the energy efficiency of
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  a Prius. So it's you. We have the moral high ground, and
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  you get to, you know, leave the Ferrari guy in your dust.
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  So well, let me start to be let me ask the obvious. Well,
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  and you don't look like one of those guys who's trying too hard in
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  a Ferrari. Absolutely, yeah, you don't look like a jerk, you
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  know, you know, up right banana yellow Lamborghini or or I mean there's
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  something I shoul point out about Tesla, which is, uh, we didn't
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  you know Tesla is the first car is a sports car, not because we
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  think the world lacks for a sports car, but because it is the right
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  entry point for the market. If you have a new technology, the right
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  place to enter is high unit cost, low unit volume. Just as you
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  know when when when a new cell phone come out comes out, or a
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  new a new laptop or some some new thing, it tends to be expensive
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  at first because they're figuring out all the issues and it takes time to optimize,
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  and then over time that that technology will become cheaper and cheaper. And
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  so the model two of Tesla, uh, and maybe I'm leaping ahead here,
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  but Model two of Tesla is a forty nine thousand dollars four door,
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  five passenger sedan, and that's that's going to be obviously a much broader market
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  segment that that that can make use of that car. And then Model three
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  is intended to be around a thirty thousand dollars price point, and so that's
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  that's really affordable by by almost everyone who's who's who can buy a new car.
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  So the idea is to drive to mass market as rapidly as possible,
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  but only at the pace at which the technology matures. So is Henry Ford,
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  and of someone you admire, well, I think Henry Ford made some
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  very important contributions to UH, to business and obviously you know, moving moving,
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  manufacturing line and that sort of thing. So I think he's certainly worthy
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  of admiration. Uh here's a bit of an od duct but you know,
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  certainly noteworthy. But the interest in Tesla's is not from the perspective of,
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  you know, the world needs another car company. It's more from the perspective
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  of we have a very important environmental problem that needs to be addressed, which
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  is and buy the burning of fossil fuels and the increasing CO two concentration in
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  the atmosphere and global climate change, which I think is going to be one
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  of the most significant issues of the twenty first century. And the only way
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  to really get around that, in my view, is really with an electric
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  vehicle, and then you need to pair that up with a zero mission power
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  generation method such as solar power. I think is solar power is going to
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  be a really big deal. Tesla's not a hybrid car. Tesla's pure electric,
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  pure electric. So help connect the dots from me, why aren't we
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  seeing Tesla cars on the car lots, then well, what's keeping them made
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  them yet? So we're just finishing up the development right now, and anybody
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  can buy this, yes, how will you? Actually we've almost sold out
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  of two thousand and seven productions, so if somebody does want to buy an
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  next year's model, that they better act quickly. One of the primary complaints
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  about hybrid vehicles is there not fast enough. You seem to overcome it.
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  You won't have any trouble with this. In fact, really there's something uniquely
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  better about electric vehicles, which is that the talk response is immediate. So
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  if you want to pass someone, I mean you just the response to the
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  car is very immediate. It's just it's more fun to drive an electric car
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  than it is to drive a gasoline car. You know, I was going
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  to say that Tesla the car, the name of the car company is no
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  coincidence, is It'll explain a little bit about that, right. The company
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  is named after Nikola Tesla, who is an inventor. He was originally from
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  the sort of the area of Yugoslavia and Europe, but he moved to America
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  when he was young and was an inventor of the ac induction motor. Invented
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  a lot of the principles of magnetism. So he was a great man,
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  a great, great inventor, and so the company is named in honor of
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  him. So these cars, the Tesla Roaster first, the first issue of
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  the Tesla Roaster available in two thousand and seven. Yes, in the spring
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  the summer. How do you get on the waiting list? Well, you
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  buy the car. You basically put down at a positive and we've actually can
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  you do that through the web. Yeah, we'll have, by the way,
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  customer centers all around the country. So we'll have one in La,
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  one of the various Cargo Miami, New York, and eventually nationwide customer centers
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  where somebody does want to see the current person take a test drive or see
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  the car being worked on. I mean, we have this idea for the
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  way that the car is a serviced that it should be a really really pleasant
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  experience. So we have you know, some some some somewhere between, like
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  a Starbucks and Apple store. So you'd go in and you'd see the car
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  being the cars being worked on behind a glass partition. That would be your
• 14:33
  car you're watching or somebody else's again, but it's really clean it's really clean,
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  present bright, It'll be sort of a you know, coffee bar available,
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  you know, just a we really want to have a very pleasant experience
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  that that you don't typically get if you go into a dealership. Have you
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  heard from Toyota, Have you heard from General Motors and Ford saying use the
• 14:52
  company for sale? Nobody's actually made a formal offer. But the interesting you
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  know, I think one of the one of the big values that Tesla can
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  can provide is serving as an example to the rest of the auto industry because
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  right now, the order interest, you know, the big car companies believe
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  that a biable electorcy vehicle is not possible and be if even if it wise
• 15:13
  people would buy it. So we need to show that neither of those are
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  true, that the technology works, that people want to buy it, and
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  that will be the most effective way of really driving change in the in the
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  order industries by serving as an example in that matter. And if we were
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  to sell the company to one of one of the big car compans, I
• 15:31
  think it would really slow things down. Mm hmm, you think so.
• 15:33
  Absolutely. You're very busy enterprising the part of your company that will explore space.
• 15:39
  You're very busy with this car company? Where do you find time to
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  be CEO of two companies that size? Well, I should correct you that
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  I'm CEO of SpaceX and I'm chairman of SpaceX, and that is really my
• 15:52
  day job. So I spent eighty percent of my time on SpaceX. I
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  am the chairman and the principal owner of Tesla Motors, but I do not
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  run it on a daily basis. You don't run that on a daily basis.
• 16:03
  Well, that was really the question was how do you do How do
• 16:06
  you run those two large enterprises on a daily basis? Is it a couple
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  of phone calls or the Tesla folks? How's it going? I'm busy without
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  her space right now, you guys got that covered. I spent about I
• 16:15
  spent about two to three days a month on Tesla related business and almost all
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  the rest of the time is on SpaceX. So SpaceX is very much my
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  my day to day job. And then I provide product guidance, strategic guidance,
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  and obviously funding for Tesla. Like Steve Jobs, right, so he
• 16:36
  runs Apple on a daily basis, but he also, you know, has
• 16:40
  overside over Pixar's It's kind of like that and in your day to day and
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  this is this is one of those silly lifestyle questions. But how early do
• 16:49
  you get up in the morning, and where do you go to work physically?
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  Is it an office? Yeah? I go to work at SpaceX.
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  How early do you get up in the morning. You know, I'm not
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  an early morning person so young like for young engineers and for inventors and creators,
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  they can sleep in until ten or eleven. We have no fixed hours
• 17:07
  at SpaceX. I mean my personally, I would I tend to get up
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  around seven thirty or eight and be a campus around there nine nine thirty,
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  But then I tend to state about it till about eight pm. Okay,
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  college students across America are saying, oh drats, I thought he was going
• 17:22
  to say, like noon. But then you go into an office and you
• 17:26
  you sit with in a separate office away from those who are working, or
• 17:30
  do you sit with No, I just have a cubicle at SpaceX. You
• 17:33
  have a cubicle, yeah, And are you surrounded by your colleagues there?
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  And what is your hope in terms of the impact you will leave on culture,
• 17:41
  this civilization, this world, global civilization? What is it that you
• 17:45
  you hope to leave here, Well, I think what I'd like to do
• 17:48
  is help solve some important problems. So I think, in a small way,
• 17:52
  help build the Internet. And then with respect to the global warning problem
• 17:59
  that the transition from away from oil and other hydrocobins to something which is clean
• 18:04
  and sustainable, I hope to have an impact there. And then with respect
• 18:08
  to space, I hope to have an impact in helping make humanity a multiplanet
• 18:15
  species. Elon Musk, thank you so much for being with us at wire
• 18:18
  Science to let me get a straight CEO of SpaceX and chairman of Tesla Motors.
• 18:22
  Yeah, I got other titles, but that's about That's a