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Elon Musk Discusses Aliens and Space · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
• 0:04
  Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
• 0:07
  the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The
• 0:11
  Boring Company, and Neuralink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
• 0:16
  These lights are bright. See Elon, you know, a lot of
• 0:21
  times you say things me or you and they edit them.
• 0:25
  So I noticed this panel description was A conversation
• 0:31
  with Elon Musk. The real title of this panel was
• 0:37
  How to Save the Human Race and other like topics, A
• 0:42
  Conversation with Elon Musk. And so before we begin, Elon, I
• 0:49
  thought we might want to go back in time 11 years when you were
• 0:54
  sitting on this stage. That's hot water and this is
• 0:58
  regular. You can take your choice.
• 1:00
  Alright, Sounds good. OK.
• 1:02
  So eleven years ago, Alan was talking about the things that
• 1:10
  will have the biggest impact on the future of humanity that he
• 1:16
  was thinking about in college. And so let's run that video of
• 1:23
  11 almost 11 years ago to today. I guess, you know, when I was in
• 1:29
  college that I I thought about things that would most affect
• 1:31
  the future of humanity and, and there were three areas that I
• 1:35
  thought would have the biggest impact and those were the
• 1:37
  Internet, sustainable energy, of which solar power is the
• 1:41
  production side and electric cars the consumption side.
• 1:46
  And then humanity becoming a multi planet species.
• 1:51
  And so we cut that short, but there was two others you talked
• 1:55
  about. One was modifying the human
• 1:59
  genome. Yeah, I'm just, I'm not saying
• 2:01
  we should. I'm just saying that that's the
• 2:02
  thing would really affect the. Future and next AI.
• 2:06
  So a lot of people didn't weren't thinking about these
• 2:09
  same five things when they were in school, particularly humanity
• 2:15
  on multi planets at that time. Well, sci-fi was certainly
• 2:19
  thinking about it, but, you know, I think at some point we
• 2:22
  want to make science fiction, not fiction forever.
• 2:25
  And yeah, so like, let's make life multiplanetary and be a
• 2:29
  space paring civilization, be out there among the stars.
• 2:33
  You know, I think there are things that like, you have to be
• 2:35
  excited about the future life. Life cannot just be about
• 2:41
  solving one problem after another.
• 2:43
  They have to be things that that that really sort of move your
• 2:46
  heart and that make you excited to wake up in the morning.
• 2:52
  And I think being becoming a space bearing civilization is
• 2:55
  one of those things. If you ask kids anywhere around
• 2:56
  the world, like what is, what are some of the most inspiring
• 2:59
  things you can ask like 5 year old, 6 year old anywhere in the
• 3:03
  world and they're going to say, you know, space exploration is.
• 3:06
  One of those. Things and and we want to make
• 3:10
  sure that we we're we're you know that Apollo is not the
• 3:13
  high. Watermark in.
• 3:14
  Fact. You mentioned at one point that
• 3:16
  that you wrote a letter offering to run.
• 3:18
  The Apollo program, I believe. But I would have, you would have
• 3:23
  done a fantastic job. But the, but the point is that
• 3:26
  the, the Apollo program was something that was inspiring to
• 3:29
  everyone around the world. And we, we don't want the Apollo
• 3:34
  program to be the high watermark of, of human exploration.
• 3:37
  And yeah, we want, I think you want to have some some sense
• 3:43
  that the future is going to be better than the past, that we're
• 3:45
  going to be out there going to other star systems.
• 3:49
  And you know what? What you see in a science,
• 3:54
  science fiction, non dystopian sci-fi story, of which there
• 3:58
  aren't many, but like Star Trek I suppose.
• 4:01
  Well, Speaking of Star Trek, a lot, you know when I think about
• 4:05
  you. Let's look at sparks from Star
• 4:10
  Trek here. Space.
• 4:16
  The final frontier. These are the voyages of the
• 4:20
  Starship Enterprise, your ongoing mission to explore
• 4:26
  strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new
• 4:31
  civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
• 4:39
  So when I think about you, I think about Spock and Captain
• 4:43
  Kirk, and you're going to take us to places we've never gone
• 4:47
  before. Yeah, that's the idea.
• 4:54
  You know, if we if we send probes out there, we might, I
• 4:57
  mean we might find the remains of long dead alien
• 5:00
  civilizations. If physics is correct, the the
• 5:04
  universe is about 13.8 billion years old.
• 5:08
  Earth is about four and a half billion years old.
• 5:10
  So but at 13.8 billion years, a civilization that even lasted a
• 5:14
  million years is 3 digits past the decimal point.
• 5:17
  And if you consider human civilization, I, I, I dated from
• 5:22
  like the first writing. So that first writing was the
• 5:25
  ancient Sumerians, archaic Greek Preak uniform around 5500 years
• 5:30
  ago. So that is one millionth of
• 5:33
  Earth's lifespan. That's how long writing has
• 5:37
  existed. So if we were to last as a
• 5:41
  civilization for a million years, that would be incredible.
• 5:45
  And we would actually probably be in every part of the Galaxy.
• 5:50
  So that this is, this causes me to to think that, well, where
• 5:54
  are the aliens? It's the Fermi question.
• 5:57
  You know, the, the great physicist, Italian physicist,
• 5:59
  Enrico Fermi, he, he's like, where are they now?
• 6:05
  A lot of people think there are aliens among us.
• 6:07
  Well, there was that. It was that movie Men in Black.
• 6:12
  Yes, yes, yes. Told us they're among us.
• 6:15
  And Elvis really went back to his own planet.
• 6:18
  Yeah. Well, I mean, really, a lot of
• 6:21
  people think there are aliens, but I get asked that a lot.
• 6:25
  And for some reason, a lot of the same people who think there
• 6:28
  are aliens among us didn't think, we don't think we went to
• 6:30
  the moon, which I'm like, think about that for a second, you
• 6:38
  know, so, but I, I, I think I would, I mean, if I've not seen
• 6:43
  any evidence of aliens and SpaceX with the Starling
• 6:48
  constellation has roughly 6000 satellites.
• 6:51
  And, and not once have we had to maneuver around the UFO.
• 6:54
  OK, so, so we were like, hey, what's that?
• 7:01
  Is that an alien has occurred Never.
• 7:05
  So, so I'm like, OK, I don't see any evidence of aliens and I'll
• 7:11
  look at it. And if somebody has evidence of
• 7:13
  aliens in a, in a, you know, that's not just a fuzzy BLOB,
• 7:19
  then I'd love to see it, love to hear about it.
• 7:22
  And but I don't think there is. So which is actually reason for
• 7:27
  concern because you could if, if any civilization in the Milky
• 7:32
  Way, in our Galaxy were to last for a million years, even with a
• 7:38
  speed of travel that's far below the speed of light, you know,
• 7:40
  like a few percent of speed of light, they could easily have
• 7:44
  explored and colonized the whole Galaxy.
• 7:47
  So, so they haven't. So why not?
• 7:52
  I think the the the answer might be, or perhaps probably is that
• 7:57
  that civilization is precarious and rare, and that we you should
• 8:04
  really think of human civilization as being like a
• 8:07
  tiny candle in a vast darkness, and we should do everything
• 8:11
  possible to show that that candle does not go out.
• 8:19
  Well, Ron, I thought one of the interesting things for the
• 8:24
  people on X viewing this session and the people in the audience
• 8:28
  here is that maybe I'd give you a few of your quotes and you can
• 8:33
  comment on them. OK, let's start with this one.
• 8:37
  Free speech, freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy.
• 8:43
  Without it, America ends. Yes, it's it's obviously not
• 8:48
  possible to have democratic elections if people do not have
• 8:52
  access to the information that would allow them to make the
• 8:55
  right decision on a candidate or a party.
• 8:58
  So if, if speech is constrained in a fundamental way, you, you,
• 9:03
  you just can't expect people to make the, the right decision or
• 9:07
  an informed decision because they are prevented from being
• 9:10
  informed. I think it's, it's, it's very a
• 9:14
  foundation element. It's, you know, if they're like,
• 9:17
  why, why is free speech free of speech?
• 9:20
  The 1st Amendment is because people came from countries where
• 9:24
  if you spoke freely, you would be imprisoned or killed.
• 9:27
  That was why they were like, you know what, we should make sure
• 9:30
  that we got that one. I Remember Remember that time
• 9:35
  when they tried to try to kill us back at the other country
• 9:39
  just just for saying we didn't like a political candidate.
• 9:41
  Well, let's, let's, let's make sure that's OK in America.
• 9:45
  So, and so actually in a lot of parts of the world, you know,
• 9:49
  you can't really say most parts of the world, you can't really
• 9:51
  say what you want to say without some bad consequences.
• 9:56
  So as long as people forget, like why is the Constitution
• 10:00
  there? The Constitution there is to
• 10:01
  protect the, the people from the government.
• 10:06
  So like, if if they're it's to make it hard to change things,
• 10:12
  that's why the Constitution exists.
• 10:18
  Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
• 10:20
  I really do appreciate your support.
• 10:22
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• 10:25
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• 10:27
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• 10:30
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• 10:32
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• 10:35
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• 10:38
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• 10:41
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• 10:47
  and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.