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Interview Of Elon Musk Talking About Mars Exploration!!! · Elon Musk Thinking

0:01
Speaker 1: Well, elon, you need no introduction, but for those who
0:05
Speaker 1: don't know, you are the founder and chief engineer of
0:08
Speaker 1: SpaceX and into the Mars Society, and we're delighted to
0:13
Speaker 1: have you back. You've got nine thousand people registered to
0:16
Speaker 1: hear you today.
0:17
Speaker 2: All right, cool sounds good.
0:19
Speaker 1: Okay, So usually like.
0:21
Speaker 2: Change this perspective. Let's say, if I change the perspective, is
0:24
Speaker 2: that better or is that worse?
0:26
Speaker 1: I think you were better before?
0:28
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, so listen.
0:32
Speaker 1: Uh, why don't we just start out with the basis
0:35
Speaker 1: you started SpaceX to make humanity multiplanetary. Yeah, why do
0:41
Speaker 1: you see that as a critical goal?
0:44
Speaker 2: Yes? I think we want to be on track to
0:48
Speaker 2: become a multipad species and a space brank civilization in
0:52
Speaker 2: order to find out what the universe will all about,
0:56
Speaker 2: like what you know? Uh, and ensure the continuance of
0:59
Speaker 2: consciousness as we know it. Far as we know, we're
1:01
Speaker 2: the only life. I mean, people think there's aliens, but
1:03
Speaker 2: obviously I haven't seen any sign of aliens. So as
1:08
Speaker 2: far as we know, we're the only the only life.
1:11
Speaker 2: Whether we could be the only life, So let's put
1:13
Speaker 2: it that way, and we need to take the set
1:16
Speaker 2: of actions that are most likely to make the future
1:17
Speaker 2: good and result in the continuance of consciousness as we
1:21
Speaker 2: know it.
1:23
Speaker 3: Okay, so okay, well, obviously your your means to that
1:28
Speaker 3: end is to open the space frontier with reusable launch vehicles,
1:32
Speaker 3: and you've gone through some partially useful ones and now
1:36
Speaker 3: it's starship.
1:37
Speaker 1: Can you explain that basically the line of thinking that
1:41
Speaker 1: led you to the starship design?
1:45
Speaker 2: I forget. What I need to look at is look
1:47
Speaker 2: like I'm looking at the camera. So let's see. Well,
1:53
Speaker 2: on the starship front, we've gone through many iterations, starting
1:59
Speaker 2: from not really knowing how to build rockets at all
2:02
Speaker 2: with Falcon one and having four failures actually in reaching orbit. Yeah,
2:07
Speaker 2: the sorry three failures, and then the fourth one got
2:09
Speaker 2: to orbit. So fourth one is a charm, so we
2:13
Speaker 2: only barely survived. I was at zero cash basically when
2:17
Speaker 2: we got that fourth one to orbit, and if that
2:20
Speaker 2: fourth one hadn't worked, we would have been curtains. So
2:23
Speaker 2: it's definitely not been smooth sailing. It's been very difficult
2:27
Speaker 2: ride with just a lot that has been discovered along
2:33
Speaker 2: the way. I mean, just just trying to figure out
2:36
Speaker 2: what questions to ask about the design it was was
2:40
Speaker 2: quite difficult. I think it's helpful to have as the
2:44
Speaker 2: objective the creation of a self sustaining city on Mars.
2:50
Speaker 2: I think this is this has to be the objective,
2:53
Speaker 2: not simply a few people or a base, but a
2:57
Speaker 2: self sustaining city. The acid test really is if the
3:03
Speaker 2: if the ships from Earth stopped coming for any reason,
3:07
Speaker 2: does Mars die out for any reason? It could be
3:11
Speaker 2: from a banal, or it could be nuclear. Again, it
3:16
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if the if the ship stopped coming for
3:19
Speaker 2: any reason, does the city on Mars die out? If
3:22
Speaker 2: it does, we have not We're not in a secure place.
3:28
Speaker 2: So I mean, I think this really might come down to,
3:32
Speaker 2: you know, the great filter front is this, are we
3:36
Speaker 2: going to create a self sustaining city on Mars before
3:40
Speaker 2: or after World War three? And I think the probably
3:43
Speaker 2: of it being created after World War three hopefully hopefully
3:46
Speaker 2: this's never world War three, but after is low. So
3:51
Speaker 2: we should try to create to make the city self
3:53
Speaker 2: sustaining before any possible World War three. This is just
3:57
Speaker 2: a risk. This is not you know, I mean not
4:00
Speaker 2: as people have difficulty to dealing with with probability to
4:02
Speaker 2: see that this way or that way. But it's really
4:05
Speaker 2: we just face a series of probabilities and there's some
4:10
Speaker 2: chance that we will have a giant ore or a
4:12
Speaker 2: super volcano, or you know, a commet might have the Earth,
4:17
Speaker 2: or we might just self extinguish in some Uh, it
4:21
Speaker 2: might be more of a more more of a whimper
4:23
Speaker 2: than a bang. And frankly, right now, civilization is not
4:27
Speaker 2: looking super strong, you know, it is looking a little
4:31
Speaker 2: rettal rickety right now. Frank would you.
4:35
Speaker 1: Say that it's it's more than a life boat that
4:40
Speaker 1: would actually make you civilization more clearly more able to
4:48
Speaker 1: divert asteroids from hitting the earth and uh otherwise.
4:52
Speaker 2: Help, Yeah, it's not it's not an escape, it's a
4:59
Speaker 2: it's simply something that it's like you can, I mean
5:04
Speaker 2: less modes mars is made self sustaining, which will probably
5:08
Speaker 2: not happen in my lifetime. It is certainly not its meaning,
5:12
Speaker 2: it's meaningless to have an escape, you know, a life
5:17
Speaker 2: boat or or or escape patch or something if you will.
5:21
Speaker 2: You're simply moving to another place where you will soon
5:23
Speaker 2: die out. That doesn't count so much of a life
5:27
Speaker 2: boat really, So this is really about minimizing existential risk
5:34
Speaker 2: for civilization as a whole and then having an exciting
5:39
Speaker 2: future that you can look forward to, and a future
5:40
Speaker 2: where we are a space ban civilization and multi plant
5:46
Speaker 2: species is far more exciting than one where we are not.
5:52
Speaker 2: I mean, that's an exciting future. And being forever confined
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Speaker 2: to Earth until some eventual extinction event is depressing and
6:00
Speaker 2: knock one. And we need things that make you want
6:04
Speaker 2: to get out of bed in the morning and be
6:06
Speaker 2: excited about the future. And I think being a space
6:08
Speaker 2: faring civilization it's one of those things that everyone can
6:11
Speaker 2: get excited about.
6:13
Speaker 1: But can you maybe just kind of lead people along
6:18
Speaker 1: the path that led you from the design but from
6:21
Speaker 1: Falcon nine to Falcon Heavy, but now Starship is rather
6:25
Speaker 1: different than Falcon Heavy. The engineering.
6:30
Speaker 2: Absolutely didn't quite answer your original question. You first have
6:35
Speaker 2: to say what is the goal? And once you have
6:38
Speaker 2: what is the goal, you can then measure various designs
6:41
Speaker 2: against that goal. Otherwise you're saying, how are you evaluating?
6:46
Speaker 2: Why is one design better than another? What's your goal?
6:48
Speaker 2: It's got to be a goal. So the goal is
6:51
Speaker 2: get enough ton in to Mars to and enough people
6:54
Speaker 2: to make Mars self sustaining as quickly as possible. So
6:58
Speaker 2: then you say, okay, let's back back out the math
7:00
Speaker 2: on this. We're gonna need We're gonna lot of need,
7:03
Speaker 2: a lot of tonnage. Maybe I don't know, one hundred
7:08
Speaker 2: thousand tons, maybe a million tons. So you can't be
7:12
Speaker 2: fat and around with these expandable rockets. They're a joke.
7:15
Speaker 2: They're absode even Saturn, five tiny potatoes. We need it
7:21
Speaker 2: because if you want to get like, let's say, first
7:23
Speaker 2: order approximation a million tons the sofas of Mars, inclusive
7:28
Speaker 2: of people. Uh, you know that that means probably something
7:33
Speaker 2: around four or five million useful tons of payload in
7:38
Speaker 2: the into low with orbit. You know, for every time
7:42
Speaker 2: you get to low with orbit, you're gonna get four
7:45
Speaker 2: or five tons, hopefully closer to five. It's it's you
7:48
Speaker 2: know these are this math is you really start squeezing
7:51
Speaker 2: like tiny percentages. But let's say it comfort confidently. If
7:56
Speaker 2: you've got five tons to low with orbit, you can
7:59
Speaker 2: get one ton tomorrow. That's that's confident. Maybe you can
8:03
Speaker 2: get maybe maybe I only need four. Anyway, The point
8:05
Speaker 2: is you need five million tons into Earth orbit to
8:08
Speaker 2: get one million tons to Mars. Now, let's put this
8:12
Speaker 2: into perspective. Total global capacity to orbit of all expendable
8:18
Speaker 2: rockets is around around five or six hundred tons, I think.
8:24
Speaker 2: And if you said, okay, the world's going to end
8:26
Speaker 2: if you do not increase your capacity, perhaps they could
8:29
Speaker 2: do a thousand tons. Okay, So that's one five five thousand,
8:39
Speaker 2: one five thousandth of what's needed. It's ridiculous, you know,
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Speaker 2: it's it's not even you know, zero point one percent
8:54
Speaker 2: would be you know, one thousandth so way less than
8:58
Speaker 2: point one percent. We have way less point one percent
9:01
Speaker 2: of the capability needed to create a if everyone went
9:04
Speaker 2: full filled with expendable rockets. Expanded rockets are the absolute
9:09
Speaker 2: are just utterly stupid, in my opinion, utterly stupid. They
9:13
Speaker 2: are a complete waste of time. People should stop wasting
9:16
Speaker 2: the time. If you try to sell an expendable plane,
9:18
Speaker 2: people would laugh the out of the room. If you
9:20
Speaker 2: trying to sell an expendable car, they would laugh the
9:22
Speaker 2: old room. Try to sell an expendable horse, they would
9:26
Speaker 2: laugh the out of the room and think there's something
9:27
Speaker 2: wrong with you mentally. So all of these things are reusable.
9:33
Speaker 2: It's essential to be reasonable. Now, creating a reusable rocket,
9:38
Speaker 2: obital rocket is very difficult. Doing a suborbital reusable rocket
9:41
Speaker 2: is easy. Doing it a reasonable oval rocket is hard.
9:45
Speaker 2: Even when a lot of smart people have put quite
9:48
Speaker 2: a bit of effort into it. They might get two
9:50
Speaker 2: or three percent of the litron mass to lower vobit
9:55
Speaker 2: and a really epic rocket would get four. I'm not
9:58
Speaker 2: sure every I do think anyone's e and four. So,
10:03
Speaker 2: but you basically need to have something that inexpendable form
10:06
Speaker 2: would probably get about four percent of its paler to orbit,
10:10
Speaker 2: such that you can spend about half of that four
10:12
Speaker 2: percent on reusability and still net out to around two
10:17
Speaker 2: percent of Palo tourbit. So you have to make both
10:23
Speaker 2: the booster and the upper stage and the fairying and
10:25
Speaker 2: everything reusable with Falcon So with Falcon one, we did
10:29
Speaker 2: actually attempt to do this, So we had a parachute
10:31
Speaker 2: in the first stage, but really did not appreciate that
10:35
Speaker 2: that first stage was going to hit the atmosphere like
10:37
Speaker 2: a concrete wall. So at first I got pretty mad
10:40
Speaker 2: at the parachutes flare until I realized, yeah, it's not
10:42
Speaker 2: their fault. We were just being cools that that thing
10:46
Speaker 2: was exploding as soon as it hit the atmosphere, and
10:52
Speaker 2: you know, so you really got to do something to
10:57
Speaker 2: ease the transition into the atmosphere. At Heimock number, it's
11:01
Speaker 2: very hot and it's a lot of force and a
11:03
Speaker 2: lot of heat. So then with falcon Hine we made
11:08
Speaker 2: a bigger rocket. And as scale matters here because you
11:13
Speaker 2: do get basically economies of scale. You can't have a
11:15
Speaker 2: tiny rocket. There's a tiny rocket, you basically just end
11:18
Speaker 2: up carrying your electronics to orbit, so your avionics, you know,
11:22
Speaker 2: so in a little rocket, if you're small enough that
11:27
Speaker 2: just your your avionics a loane ends up being a
11:31
Speaker 2: significant percentage of your payload. And then you you know,
11:36
Speaker 2: if you've had a rocket that was I don't know,
11:39
Speaker 2: they're trying to get a ten thousand pound rocket, for example,
11:42
Speaker 2: or even a ten thousand kilogram rocket to all, but
11:44
Speaker 2: I think you would basically get zero payload. Now as
11:48
Speaker 2: you get bigger, the rocket gets bigger, but the brain
11:51
Speaker 2: doesn't get bigger. The brain can say the same size,
11:54
Speaker 2: So your avionics, for example, become almost not almost zero
12:00
Speaker 2: end of the weight at for a big rocket. Then
12:03
Speaker 2: for big rockets you also get gauge advantages. So this
12:08
Speaker 2: is we're really in the nuances of rocket design and manufacturing. Here,
12:11
Speaker 2: if your things are very small, it's difficult to get
12:13
Speaker 2: your gauge accurate. So the basically how thick is the
12:17
Speaker 2: material like you want to do castings, for example, there's
12:20
Speaker 2: a minimum gauge with thickness for a casting, there's a
12:26
Speaker 2: minimum kind of error bar on the you know, on
12:30
Speaker 2: this the material skins. Even for a composite rocket, you've
12:33
Speaker 2: got uh, you know, you start getting granularity issues as
12:38
Speaker 2: you get bigger. You know you're no longer gauge limited,
12:42
Speaker 2: and you can get your your percentage accuracy on the
12:45
Speaker 2: thickness of walls and castings can be can be very good.
12:52
Speaker 2: These are the nuances that I think was no one appreciates,
12:54
Speaker 2: but I spice to say that there are advantages to size,
13:00
Speaker 2: and you can certainly see this many walks of life
13:02
Speaker 2: where if you've got a truck that's carrying cargo, it's
13:06
Speaker 2: more efficient to have a big semi truck, not a
13:07
Speaker 2: bunch of little trucks. For ships, it would be pretty
13:12
Speaker 2: silly to see container ships or containers going across the
13:15
Speaker 2: ocean one at a time with little outboard motors. That
13:17
Speaker 2: would be silly. You put them on a container ship,
13:20
Speaker 2: you have big ships, not little little tiny ships. So anyway,
13:24
Speaker 2: so size matters, it really does, and for reusability matters.
13:30
Speaker 2: So with Falcon nine, after a mess effort, we were
13:34
Speaker 2: able to achieve reusability of the booster, and we're mostly
13:42
Speaker 2: achieving reusability at this point with the faring as well.
13:46
Speaker 2: But this is a this is a monumental effort, and
13:52
Speaker 2: I think within its architecture, Falcon nine is close to
13:56
Speaker 2: a local maximum if you a you know, gas gener
14:03
Speaker 2: cycle kerosene oxygen vehicle of this particular size with a
14:15
Speaker 2: twelve phot or three point six meters diameter, which is
14:18
Speaker 2: which is that size for because of road transport limitation,
14:22
Speaker 2: so you go bigger than that, you can transport it
14:24
Speaker 2: over the road and your logistics class become extreme. So
14:30
Speaker 2: but having a long, thin rocket is not very mass efficient.
14:35
Speaker 2: You end up having to have thicker skins to take
14:38
Speaker 2: out the vending moment. So we're and then and having
14:44
Speaker 2: like kerosene is not the right fuel. Methane is a
14:47
Speaker 2: much better fuel. You can get higher i SP specific
14:51
Speaker 2: impulse basically efficiency. I mean, But for those who I
14:54
Speaker 2: think probably a lot of those who are listening to
14:56
Speaker 2: what the rock equation is, but in simple terms, it's
14:58
Speaker 2: actually straight simple. It's like a rocket is going to
15:01
Speaker 2: go further if the gas, if it shoots the gas
15:04
Speaker 2: out of the end faster and if a bigger percentage
15:08
Speaker 2: of its mass is propellant. Was obvious. So that's what
15:13
Speaker 2: that's what the rocket equation says. So I shoot shoot
15:18
Speaker 2: gas out faster in the right direction and increase the
15:22
Speaker 2: propellant the percentage of propellant that that's going to get
15:26
Speaker 2: you allow you to go further. With methane, you can
15:30
Speaker 2: shoot it out faster, and you can make it on Mars.
15:35
Speaker 2: You can make it on Mars for sure, exactly. So
15:41
Speaker 2: being able to do institute propellant development is production is
15:45
Speaker 2: very important. So you don't have to carry your return fuel.
15:49
Speaker 2: With your return fuel and oxygen, it's like rockets are
15:54
Speaker 2: mostly oxygen or oxidizer. So and there's there's some other
16:00
Speaker 2: subtle advantages with a oxygen methane system in that you
16:05
Speaker 2: can go to a higher percentage a higher mass ratio
16:08
Speaker 2: of oxygen. So with kerosene you'd be about quote roughly
16:11
Speaker 2: two and a half to one oxygen to fuel mass ratio.
16:16
Speaker 2: With methane you're more like three and a half to one,
16:19
Speaker 2: and you actually want that higher mass ratio because oxygen
16:22
Speaker 2: is very dance and it's inexpensive, especially on Earth, so
16:26
Speaker 2: you're gonna you know, you have all these plants just
16:28
Speaker 2: making oxygen all day long and plank them, just make
16:31
Speaker 2: an oxygen, don't do anything. So the cost of oxygen
16:36
Speaker 2: is basically the cost of electricity anyway. So going from falcon,
16:43
Speaker 2: going from you know, kerosene, which is basically the same
16:47
Speaker 2: as jet fuel. It's like RP one rock propelland grade.
16:51
Speaker 2: Kerosine is just a tighter grade of jet fuel. You
16:56
Speaker 2: want to go from that to something which has where
16:58
Speaker 2: the gas roots out faster, that's methane and where instatu
17:03
Speaker 2: production of propellant is easier. So that's that's why the
17:07
Speaker 2: change from from kerosene to methane. Methinks just c H four.
17:10
Speaker 2: It's one carbon pore hydrogens and then the oxygen pairs
17:15
Speaker 2: pairs together. So here it's it's called O two because
17:18
Speaker 2: auction para bonds and I was you know all this stuff.
17:22
Speaker 2: I'm just basically help that kind.
17:24
Speaker 1: Of the audience together large size twice to take off
17:30
Speaker 1: thrust of a saturn five, but about the same payload,
17:33
Speaker 1: but that gives you reusability much cheaper in situ propellant.
17:37
Speaker 1: It all is coherent. Uh and uh so let me
17:42
Speaker 1: ask you the thing that I think everybody wants to know,
17:46
Speaker 1: which is when when are we going to see Starship?
17:49
Speaker 1: Do a high fly to the stratosphere? When to orbit?
17:53
Speaker 1: When first payload to Mars? When the first units to Mars?
17:58
Speaker 2: All right, well, it's all like we're obviously venturing into
18:02
Speaker 2: unknown territory. So it's not as though I have all
18:05
Speaker 2: these secret dates and I and I am, you know,
18:08
Speaker 2: just keeping them from people, but so that these are
18:12
Speaker 2: just guesses. Obviously, I'm pretty I am eighty to nine
18:19
Speaker 2: percent confident that we will reach orbit with Starship next year.
18:24
Speaker 4: Uh.
18:25
Speaker 2: I think probably fifty or sixty fifty percent confident that
18:28
Speaker 2: we'll be able to bring the ship and booster back.
18:31
Speaker 2: That's that's more of a dicey situation. We'll probably lose
18:37
Speaker 2: a few ships before we really get the atmospheric return
18:41
Speaker 2: and landing right. We might lose hopefully, don't you lose it.
18:45
Speaker 2: Hopefully we don't lose any boosters because that's a lot
18:47
Speaker 2: of engines. Initial booster flights will just have maybe two
18:52
Speaker 2: to four engines, not twenty eight, twenty eight a lot
18:56
Speaker 2: of engines. So yeah, and then I think we'll probably
19:01
Speaker 2: be in do it doing high volume plates. I think
19:07
Speaker 2: probably in twenty twenty two, a couple of years from now. Well,
19:13
Speaker 2: I'm trying to make sure that our rate of innovation increases,
19:17
Speaker 2: it doesn't decrease. This is really essential. In fact, if
19:23
Speaker 2: we do not see something close to an expontential improvement
19:27
Speaker 2: in our rate of innovation, we will not reach Mars.
19:31
Speaker 2: Like a pure linear doesn't get there. Not not, well,
19:36
Speaker 2: I'll be down anyway before it gets there. It's pure linear,
19:39
Speaker 2: it's exponential. I think we could get to Mars. We
19:43
Speaker 2: could probably send an uncrewed mission there in maybe four years.
19:52
Speaker 2: You know, there's a mass contraction every twenty six months.
19:56
Speaker 2: There's one this year, so that means in a couple
19:57
Speaker 2: of years Nail is another one, and then four years
20:00
Speaker 2: is another one. I think we've got a fighting chance
20:03
Speaker 2: of making the that second Mars transfer window.
20:10
Speaker 1: So one thing that is really amazing about SpaceX to
20:19
Speaker 1: those of us who have experienced in the aerospace industry
20:23
Speaker 1: is the rate of innovation. Uh you know, Okay, last
20:27
Speaker 1: time you spoke to the Mars Society Convention was twenty twelve.
20:30
Speaker 1: Since then, you've made the Falcon i'm usable, introduced Falcon
20:34
Speaker 1: Heavy Crew Dragon a satellite constellation, and you're in the
20:40
Speaker 1: middle of developing Starship. So what what is your you know,
20:46
Speaker 1: what would you say is your methodology that allows you
20:48
Speaker 1: to innovate so swiftly?
20:55
Speaker 2: I don't really know. We're focused on like scept iportant
21:00
Speaker 2: to have that have the objective you right, That's why
21:03
Speaker 2: I was talking so much about the importance of making
21:07
Speaker 2: wealth Mars, a self sustaining, pulling, self sustaining city on Mars.
21:12
Speaker 2: If that's the objective, then obviously, you know, just putting
21:16
Speaker 2: some satelli smoll good or it's not that that's not important.
21:21
Speaker 2: You have to achieve full and rapid reusability. Emphasize quill
21:24
Speaker 2: and rapid reusability is only relevant to the degree is
21:27
Speaker 2: rapid and complete.
21:30
Speaker 5: And uh.
21:31
Speaker 2: And then you also have to do obital refilling. This
21:34
Speaker 2: is essential as well. And uh and then propellant production
21:41
Speaker 2: on Mars also essential. So uh, you know, and with
21:47
Speaker 2: that as the goal, then you know that that that
21:51
Speaker 2: means that that that that creates I think a good
21:53
Speaker 2: forcing function for radical innovation, because in the absence of
21:57
Speaker 2: radical innovation, we have no chance of meeting that goal.
22:01
Speaker 2: Whereas if I go simply you know, defeat Lucked and
22:07
Speaker 2: Boeing or something like that, that that we were probably
22:11
Speaker 2: achieved it that really wasn't even a thing, you know,
22:17
Speaker 2: I wish it was. We got like they're they're not
22:21
Speaker 2: really trying to do not even trying to do reusability,
22:24
Speaker 2: which is bizarre because they make planes that are re usable.
22:28
Speaker 2: So I mean, if they if they talked to the
22:31
Speaker 2: you know, if they talked to one of their customers
22:33
Speaker 2: buyas or a Lucky Fighter Dead or a Boeing aircraft, like, hey,
22:37
Speaker 2: we're going to sell you a seven thirty seven confused
22:39
Speaker 2: once and it's not seven thirty seven megs, but that
22:45
Speaker 2: that turns out that was a single use of a
22:47
Speaker 2: planet times but you really, uh, it would be an
22:52
Speaker 2: episode thing for them to sell a single use aircraft,
22:57
Speaker 2: but they feel quite comfortable with selling a single use
22:59
Speaker 2: rocket and anyway, But if I always simply we're going
23:03
Speaker 2: to have be the leaders in launching the conventional satellites
23:07
Speaker 2: that exist, we would probably approach that in on a
23:12
Speaker 2: sort of a logarithmic basis where you know you'd get there,
23:17
Speaker 2: and you sort of slowly make progress towards doing ten
23:21
Speaker 2: launches a year, twelve open launches a year, and while
23:23
Speaker 2: they do six or something like that. But since the
23:27
Speaker 2: goal is, hey, we need to make life multiplanter before
23:30
Speaker 2: it's too late and time really matters, so we're says us,
23:37
Speaker 2: it's like we're shooting for Mars, not just the moon.
23:39
Speaker 2: It's not much shoot for the moon, shoot from Mars
23:42
Speaker 2: and then and then the you know, these these competitive
23:44
Speaker 2: things are are kind of small things along the way.
23:47
Speaker 2: Unless somebody else is shooting from Mars, they will not
23:49
Speaker 2: be competitive with something as pedestrian as launching a few
23:54
Speaker 2: satellites into Earth. Over So, how how.
23:57
Speaker 1: Can the Mars Society help you?
24:01
Speaker 2: Well, I do think this. In order to for there
24:06
Speaker 2: to be a self sustained city on Mars, this we're
24:10
Speaker 2: going to need an intersection of sets here. One set
24:14
Speaker 2: is the set of people that want to go and
24:17
Speaker 2: can either find sponsorship. They can either afford it themselves
24:21
Speaker 2: or find government sponsorship or take out a loan, wherever
24:25
Speaker 2: the case may be. But somehow you've got to have
24:30
Speaker 2: the set of people who want to go to Mars
24:32
Speaker 2: and can and can come up with the funds somehow
24:35
Speaker 2: to do that, and then then you know it's I
24:39
Speaker 2: should say it's there's two sets desire to go to
24:41
Speaker 2: Mars and can afford to go to Mars. When when
24:43
Speaker 2: desire to go to the people who want to go
24:45
Speaker 2: to Mars and the people who can afford to go
24:49
Speaker 2: to Mars. When that intersection of sets reaches a million roughly,
24:53
Speaker 2: then I think we will have this city on Mars.
24:57
Speaker 2: So we need both the motivation and the you know,
25:02
Speaker 2: we need both the means and the way. I mean
25:04
Speaker 2: we need It's like we need people to.
25:13
Speaker 1: Want the will in the way.
25:14
Speaker 2: The will in the way, yes, exactly the way well
25:17
Speaker 2: as will as a way, but in this case we
25:18
Speaker 2: will end away. So when the will in the way intersect,
25:22
Speaker 2: then we will have it be of all the planet species.
25:27
Speaker 2: The will in the way must intersect. So I think
25:30
Speaker 2: the Martrostic can really help with the will.
25:32
Speaker 1: Okay, you provide the way, we'll provide the will.
25:34
Speaker 2: Yes exactly. Okay.
25:37
Speaker 1: Now, your assistant Jen told me earlier that you have
25:40
Speaker 1: a hard cutoff at the half hour. Is that true
25:44
Speaker 1: or do you want to stay and take some questions
25:46
Speaker 1: from the audience.
25:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could do maybe five ten minutes of questions.
25:51
Speaker 1: All right, great, so we've got one hundred questions. So
25:59
Speaker 1: would Jim, do you want to read a question or two?
26:04
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure thing, hi Eland. My name is James Brooke.
26:06
Speaker 5: I'm from Seattle, Washington. Where's the best place to land
26:09
Speaker 5: on Mars? Do you think?
26:13
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm not super sure. I can tell you what
26:15
Speaker 2: the criteria are that you'd want you'd want to be,
26:21
Speaker 2: but anyway, I think the short answer is mid latitudes,
26:25
Speaker 2: probably on the north so you want to be close
26:29
Speaker 2: to ice. You don't be too you don't be too
26:33
Speaker 2: far away from the sun, so you can get sol
26:35
Speaker 2: the power. And you want to land at a low
26:40
Speaker 2: altitude so that you can take maximum effect of atmosphere breaking.
26:45
Speaker 2: What do you think?
26:47
Speaker 5: I like Milli's chasma. It's a nice little area at
26:50
Speaker 5: the bottom of Alice marineras their pressure is high.
26:53
Speaker 2: Okay, is there a lot of ice there?
26:56
Speaker 5: There's ice around there. We'd have to look for it though.
26:59
Speaker 2: Okay.
27:00
Speaker 5: That kind of brings me to my next question, and
27:01
Speaker 5: I'm going to turn it over to Carrie to ask
27:03
Speaker 5: you one. How would you prioritize like missions like two
27:08
Speaker 5: through ten. Are you going to focus on exploration or
27:12
Speaker 5: building up the infrastructure or.
27:15
Speaker 2: Science we're gonna put I think the first order of
27:19
Speaker 2: business is build a propellant plant. I mean, we can
27:23
Speaker 2: for sure a lot out a bunch of droids. You know,
27:26
Speaker 2: that's no problem. I think why not? You know, we're
27:29
Speaker 2: going you know, and probably if anyone wants to put
27:32
Speaker 2: their droid on, we can just take it. And you know,
27:36
Speaker 2: it's like, hey, it's basically a remote control car with
27:40
Speaker 2: sole power to remote control car, and we could provide
27:43
Speaker 2: the the communication relay, so you know, you could just
27:48
Speaker 2: basically connect to your car from your computer at home
27:53
Speaker 2: and you know, cruise your electric you could have legs
27:57
Speaker 2: to matter you're robo device slash car. That would pretty cool.
28:05
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of to be worried about, like
28:08
Speaker 2: you know, life contamination. It's like listen, anything that can
28:11
Speaker 2: survive on Mars is very It's so freaking tough. It's
28:15
Speaker 2: insane that it is cold, and there's like a lot
28:18
Speaker 2: of UV radiation. And if it's not going to be
28:23
Speaker 2: too worried about anything, we sent it from Earth for
28:25
Speaker 2: that way. It's just tougher than anything on Earth. So
28:33
Speaker 2: but but I think the first word of business is
28:34
Speaker 2: we've got to build up propellant plant to make propellant.
28:38
Speaker 2: And this is we said, we've got to need a
28:40
Speaker 2: lot of energy. We've got to mine some ice and
28:48
Speaker 2: we've got you got CO two from the atmosphere. So
28:51
Speaker 2: from the ice, you got the H two. Find that
28:54
Speaker 2: H two with the two got c H four oh two.
28:58
Speaker 2: But that's a lot of energy and requite hard. I
29:01
Speaker 2: think to make that repellent plan to reliable. But that's
29:09
Speaker 2: the primary order of business. And then we crols to
29:11
Speaker 2: look around and see if you can learn anything from a
29:12
Speaker 2: scientific standpoint.
29:14
Speaker 5: Carrie, do you want to go next? Sure?
29:17
Speaker 4: Thank you, James. I'm Carrie Fade. I live in Denver, Colorado.
29:24
Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us today, mister Musk. That we
29:27
Speaker 4: do have a lot of questions from thirteen fourteen year
29:30
Speaker 4: old so I'm just going to pick one and ask you.
29:33
Speaker 4: It's from a teenager and her name is Dara, and
29:37
Speaker 4: she wants to be an engineer and build starships and
29:40
Speaker 4: robots and her dream is working for SpaceX.
29:43
Speaker 1: What should she focus on to be an engineer?
29:49
Speaker 2: Well, I think this all kinds of engineering that's needed.
29:54
Speaker 2: So you don't have to be an aerospace engineer. You
29:57
Speaker 2: could be in electronics, the mechanical engineer, local engineer, it
30:04
Speaker 2: could be software engineer. I mean there's a lot of
30:06
Speaker 2: engineering basically almost any kind of engineering. We'll mean chemical engineering.
30:10
Speaker 2: I think also for figuring out how to make a
30:13
Speaker 2: good propellant depot or propellent production plan. And uh yeah,
30:21
Speaker 2: I think physics in general is a good background for thinking.
30:26
Speaker 2: You know, I just generally recommend people take physics closest
30:29
Speaker 2: because physics has the best tools for critical thinking.
30:35
Speaker 4: Thank you, Elon James.
30:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks Kerry. Another question, the Boring Company, now, is
30:42
Speaker 5: that just kind of an outfit to build tunneling machines
30:45
Speaker 5: that can work on Mars.
30:49
Speaker 2: No, the Boring Company actually started as kind of a joke.
30:54
Speaker 2: And I for a lot a lot of times people
30:56
Speaker 2: would ask me, what, what do I think the opportunities
30:59
Speaker 2: are there, And for I don't know, five years or more,
31:02
Speaker 2: I kept saying, can someone please start a telling company?
31:06
Speaker 2: Because I think tunnels have a lot of opportunity for
31:09
Speaker 2: alleviating traffic in cities and just improving quality of life overall.
31:14
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of streets you could turn
31:15
Speaker 2: into parks, you certainly wouldn't need parking. You could just
31:18
Speaker 2: park cars on the ground. So and I just everyone
31:23
Speaker 2: that I was joking, and I was, and I was like, well,
31:26
Speaker 2: I guess we'll just see what it takes to drill
31:28
Speaker 2: take a tunnel. And and you know, all these like
31:31
Speaker 2: so cooled traffic experts and like haven't really made much progress. Uh,
31:37
Speaker 2: you know, studies like LA and DC or SOLIW traffic nightmare.
31:40
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, guys, well we've got such great ideas,
31:43
Speaker 2: when why is this little traffic nightmare? So if you
31:46
Speaker 2: built tunnels, you've got to go three D somehow, either
31:48
Speaker 2: underground or above ground, like either air or ground. And
31:52
Speaker 2: the problem with air is, like you know, any anything
31:56
Speaker 2: that can carry persons can generate a lot of noise
31:58
Speaker 2: and a lot of windforce, so and could fall in
32:01
Speaker 2: your head and also kind of not be good for privacy,
32:05
Speaker 2: and like you know, you're sitting in your backyard and
32:07
Speaker 2: something like flying over you, it's like not that cool.
32:09
Speaker 2: So the tunnels are working all those things there are
32:12
Speaker 2: also weather proof, you know, don't have many privacy issues,
32:17
Speaker 2: and safe anyway they will leave. They would make a
32:22
Speaker 2: big difference to traffic. And we have the first production
32:25
Speaker 2: tunnel or useful tunnel in Vegas that's going to open
32:29
Speaker 2: in a month or two, So a few months, I guess,
32:34
Speaker 2: and hopefully we'll be ready for prime time around the
32:37
Speaker 2: consumer electronic show. So and now for Mars, I think
32:43
Speaker 2: tunnels and dating in general is good, but you need
32:46
Speaker 2: to build a very light system compared to what would
32:50
Speaker 2: matters on Earth. You don't really care all that much
32:52
Speaker 2: about mass on Earth. You care a lot about masks
32:54
Speaker 2: going to Mars.
32:56
Speaker 5: Is it fair to say that you're learning some techniques
32:58
Speaker 5: that might apply to Mars with the boring.
32:59
Speaker 2: Comempany, Yeah, yeah, probably.
33:06
Speaker 5: When do you think Starship will be able to be
33:08
Speaker 5: demonstrating refeeling in low eerth orbit?
33:13
Speaker 2: I think we've got a shot at doing that in
33:14
Speaker 2: twenty two, about two years.
33:19
Speaker 5: And then when do you guys think you'll have a
33:21
Speaker 5: moonship prototype?
33:29
Speaker 2: Probably two or three years. As soon as you've got
33:34
Speaker 2: over refilling, you you can send significant payload to the Moon,
33:38
Speaker 2: like significant meaning one hundred tons of useful payload out
33:41
Speaker 2: of shot.
33:44
Speaker 5: So then from there, I think you mentioned Mars is
33:47
Speaker 5: a couple of years after that.
33:49
Speaker 2: It's only a couple years after that. Because the Mars
33:53
Speaker 2: transit window is every twenty six months, I think we
33:57
Speaker 2: maybe have a shot of standing or I send something
34:00
Speaker 2: to Mars in three years, but the windows is four
34:04
Speaker 2: years away because of the being in the different parts
34:07
Speaker 2: of this whole system.
34:10
Speaker 5: Carrie asked a question from a young person. I'd like
34:12
Speaker 5: to also ask, do you have any tips for young
34:15
Speaker 5: people who love Mars but don't know how to help
34:17
Speaker 5: with the settlement of Mars.
34:20
Speaker 2: Well, I think definitely, you know, anyone who is a
34:25
Speaker 2: strong advocate for Mars. I think this really makes a difference.
34:29
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of times it's not even people
34:31
Speaker 2: aren't even thinking about it, and you know, you can
34:33
Speaker 2: talk to people at a party and they or talk
34:36
Speaker 2: to friends. I like, it's just even not even a
34:39
Speaker 2: topic of conversation. So I think it could really help
34:42
Speaker 2: if everyone out there who thinks this is important for
34:44
Speaker 2: the future of humanity and consciousness as a whole, to
34:48
Speaker 2: make it part of what people are thinking about, bringing
34:50
Speaker 2: up at parties and talking to friends and online. It's
34:53
Speaker 2: like it should be a thing that we do, and
34:57
Speaker 2: I think it's worth you know, maybe one percent of
34:59
Speaker 2: our resources at least, and that's not going to fundamentally
35:03
Speaker 2: change change things your quality of life if we have one.
35:06
Speaker 2: If we spend one percent of our resources, you know,
35:09
Speaker 2: much less than healthcare obviously, maybe probably even less than
35:15
Speaker 2: we spend on cosmetics. Frankly, then that that would be
35:19
Speaker 2: enough to make life Palti planetary. But we really need
35:23
Speaker 2: to make this a thing people talk about it at least
35:27
Speaker 2: one percent of the time, and that that would really matter.
35:31
Speaker 2: Like that, as we're talking about earlier, we need we
35:33
Speaker 2: need the will, which is, we need a critical mass
35:35
Speaker 2: of people wanting to make it happen, and then we
35:38
Speaker 2: need the way and Stays Basics is going to try
35:40
Speaker 2: hard to provide the way, and then once we show
35:43
Speaker 2: that there's a way, probably there'll be other companies that
35:45
Speaker 2: also try to do it as well. So we need
35:49
Speaker 2: the will in the way they can provide either. The
35:52
Speaker 2: will is extremely important. It makes a huge difference.
35:57
Speaker 5: What's the coolest part of starship develop I'm.
36:02
Speaker 2: Well, I guess the closet part of starship development is
36:05
Speaker 2: working with just a great team of engineers and coming
36:09
Speaker 2: up with interesting solutions. And you know, I think it's
36:14
Speaker 2: just fundamentally enjoyable. If you're working with a lot of good,
36:18
Speaker 2: smart people creatively towards solutions that have never existed before.
36:25
Speaker 2: That's very rewarding. So I guess probably like that the most.
36:29
Speaker 5: Can you talk a little bit about how Starship could
36:32
Speaker 5: be used for other destinations in the Solar System like
36:34
Speaker 5: Venus and the outer planets.
36:39
Speaker 2: The Starship is is definitely a general generalized ship. It
36:46
Speaker 2: basically can it's it solves for transport anywhere in the
36:51
Speaker 2: Solar System that where there is a solid surface to land.
36:58
Speaker 2: So if you can land there, we take there. We
37:00
Speaker 2: will also actually go into the atmosphere Venus for example,
37:05
Speaker 2: just like going to Orbit and uh and and perhaps
37:10
Speaker 2: to the upper atmosphere. Venus's atmosphere is extremely dense also
37:14
Speaker 2: quite hot. So because of that dense atmosphere, you could
37:19
Speaker 2: you could have something you could have a kind of
37:22
Speaker 2: like a some sort of dirigible, you know, kind of
37:28
Speaker 2: some kind of like like things that could float on
37:32
Speaker 2: Venus that could not float on in the atmosphere because
37:34
Speaker 2: of the dense atmosphere, So you con could have been
37:37
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not a super friendly place. And then
37:41
Speaker 2: like Mercury is super hot. I think that we could
37:45
Speaker 2: go to Sarahs or any of the asteroids, the moons
37:50
Speaker 2: of Jupiter or the quite high radiation around there, and
37:55
Speaker 2: then out to Saturn, you know, eventually getting out to uh,
38:02
Speaker 2: you know, the sort of caper belt or cloud and
38:04
Speaker 2: that kind of thing the outer Solar System. So so starship,
38:07
Speaker 2: once you have for pount depots, you can kind of
38:09
Speaker 2: like planet hop or moon hop around the Solar System.
38:14
Speaker 2: It's not it's not a vehicle that would enable us
38:16
Speaker 2: to go interstellar, but it's that that's a that's a
38:22
Speaker 2: that's a tough one, but we need to make this
38:24
Speaker 2: the leap. We're going to another planner first. Once we
38:27
Speaker 2: are multiplanet species will create a forcing function with the
38:30
Speaker 2: rapid improvement of spaceflight, and and we'll figure out new
38:36
Speaker 2: technologies that will ultimately allow us to go to other
38:38
Speaker 2: star systems.
38:40
Speaker 1: What do you look for in the people you hire,
38:42
Speaker 1: especially the engineers.
38:46
Speaker 2: Really just look for evidence of exceptional ability. So it's
38:50
Speaker 2: not or at least aspirationally like sometimes these things get
38:54
Speaker 2: messed up in recruiting, or the recruiting fault of beings
38:58
Speaker 2: ends up being wrong, like sometimes wonder with Tesla, if
39:02
Speaker 2: Nikola Tesla applied to Tesla, would we even give him
39:05
Speaker 2: an interview? It's not clear. You know, this guy came
39:08
Speaker 2: from like some weird college and somewhere in eastern Europe.
39:11
Speaker 2: He's got some odd mannerisms. Now, we don't know if
39:14
Speaker 2: we should give an interview like I worry that that's
39:16
Speaker 2: actually what we do instead of like react, it should
39:19
Speaker 2: be like, man, Nichola, this this this kid is super smart.
39:24
Speaker 2: What does he want? We'll pay him anything. That should
39:26
Speaker 2: be that that should be the reaction if Nicola Tesla applies,
39:29
Speaker 2: you know, to Tesla ironically. But so, but I can
39:33
Speaker 2: tell you the intent is we're looking for evidence of
39:36
Speaker 2: exceptional ability. Uh. And it really doesn't matter if you
39:39
Speaker 2: want to graduate high school or college or anything. We're
39:42
Speaker 2: just looking for evidence of exceptional ability such that it
39:45
Speaker 2: would be a good predictor for doing exceptional things to SpaceX.
39:54
Speaker 1: All right, you have some more questions from the audience
39:56
Speaker 1: the gym.
39:56
Speaker 5: I've got one. So, have you thought about indication that
40:00
Speaker 5: works between Earth and Mars and kind of I mean
40:03
Speaker 5: you're working on starlink, what about like an Internet around Mars?
40:06
Speaker 5: Have you thought about that? Yeah?
40:09
Speaker 2: I mean you could certainly do some variant of starlink
40:11
Speaker 2: probably would probably have to be the last question, because
40:14
Speaker 2: I've got a bunch of things to pall that. But yeah,
40:17
Speaker 2: you could just do it version of starlink around Mars
40:20
Speaker 2: and then you just need a big laser coming from Earth.
40:25
Speaker 2: Probably want it to be an orbit so it doesn't
40:27
Speaker 2: get atmospheric diffraction or attenuation. You want to go from
40:32
Speaker 2: a big laser from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, and
40:36
Speaker 2: then you're gonna need some relay stations for when Mars
40:41
Speaker 2: is on the other side of the Sun, so you
40:42
Speaker 2: can't just shoot a laser through the Sun.
40:46
Speaker 5: All right, Thank you, Thank you so much, Elian. We're
40:48
Speaker 5: all pulling for you. Good luck, but appreciate it.
40:51
Speaker 2: And just like I, thank you to all the people
40:53
Speaker 2: out there that that are that are fighting hard for
40:55
Speaker 2: the course of Mars. There's not that many and we
40:58
Speaker 2: need more. Thank you, Thank you,