- Good afternoon.
Over the last three days
we have been celebrating
a century of MIT Aerospace Innovation.
We've looked at the lessons
learned from the past,
the excitement of the present,
and have speculated about the future.
The common theme underlined
this incredible 100 years
has been the passion of the visionaries,
people like Hansacker, Doolittle, Gardner,
Draper, and Siemens.
Who better than Elon Musk
to add to this roster
of visionaries and
culminate this symposium
and join us as we launch
our second century
of aerospace at MIT.
Elon is an innovator and an inspiration
to a new generation of
engineers and entrepreneurs.
First of all, Elon, thank
you very much for coming.
It's a pleasure to have you here
and welcome to MIT.
- Thank you for having me.
(audience applauding)
- So perhaps I'd like to start and ask you
if you could elaborate a little bit
on what you've seen on the video.
(Elon chuckling)
- Okay.
That was quite a lot.
Well, what we're seeing there,
and our communications
team put it together,
so I just saw it for the
first time in the back there.
(audience laughing)
I'm like, probably a bit too much slow-mo.
What we're seeing there
is our Falcon Nine rocket,
and our Dragon Spacecraft,
and we're seeing some of the initial tests
of the reusable version of Falcon Nine
that is capable of taking open landing,
which re-usability is, I think,
the critical breakthrough
needed in rocketry
to take things to the next level.
- [Jaime] When do you think
you might be able to fly
and operational reusable first state?
- Well, we've been able
to soft land
the rocket booster in
the ocean twice so far.
Unfortunately, it sort of sat
there for several seconds,
then tipped over and exploded.
(audience laughing)
(Elon chuckling)
Yeah, just quite difficult
to reuse that one.
(audience laughing)
Unfortunately, it's as tall
as a 14 story building,
so when a 14 story building falls over
it's quite a belly flop.
So, what we need to do
is be able to either land
on a floating platform,
or ideally a boost back to the launch site
and land back at the launch site,
but before we boost
back to the launch site
and try to land there,
we need to show that we
can land with precision
over and over again,
otherwise something bad could happen
if it doesn't boost back
to where we intended.
So, for the upcoming launch
I think we've got a chance
of landing on a floating landing platform.
We actually have
a huge platform that's being constructed
at a shipyard in Louisiana right now.
Well, it's huge-ish.
It's about 300 feet long
by 170 feet wide.
That looks very tiny from space.
(audience laughing)
And the leg-span of the rocket is 60 feet,
and this is going to be
positioning itself out in the ocean
with engines that'll try
to keep it in a particular position,
but it's tricky.
We've got these big rollers
and GPS errors,
so it's not anchored,
'cause it's out in the bloody Atlantic.
So, we're gonna try to land on that
on the next flight
and if we land on that,
then I think we'll be able
to re-fly that booster,
but it's probably
maybe not more than a 50% chance or less
of landing it on the
platform for the first time,
but there's a lot of
launches that will occur
over the next year,
so there's at least a dozen
launches that'll occur
over the next 12 months
and I think it's quite likely
probably 80-90% likely
that one of those flights
will be able to land and re-fly.
So, I think we're quite close.
- I'm curious to know
why you chose to go with
a retro thrust rocket
for landing as opposed
to just wings and wheels
and land on a runway
like the shuttle, say.
- Yeah.
There's a couple reasons.
The longterm ambition of SpaceX
is to develop technologies necessary
to establish a
self-sustaining city on Mars
or civilization on Mars,
and wings and a runway don't really work
if you're going somewhere
other than earth.
The moon doesn't have an atmosphere,
so wings and wheels,
there's no runways and
there's no atmosphere.
Not a good choice for the moon.
And on Mars, there are also no runways
and the atmosphere is very thin,
so unless you try to land something
at supersonic velocity,
it's just not a good
choice for Mars, either.
So, you really have to get
good at propulsive landing
if you wanna go some
place other than earth,
which is why we have rockets
because obviously aircraft
work quite well on earth.
But even for earth recovery,
when you really look at it,
even if other planets had atmospheres,
the penalty for propulsive
landing is quite low.
You can do an easy calculation
of what's the terminal velocity
and then how long do you
have to fire the engine
at what G level
to get to zero velocity,
and then if you do some
interesting things,
like if you look at our landing gear,
they're essentially like giant body flaps.
So, the drag
where we deploy the landing gear,
the drag massively increases,
so we have dual use of the landing gear
as giant body flaps
and as landing gear,
and it actually cuts the
terminal velocity in half,
and therefore the fuel that was propellant
that we needed to stop
the vehicle in half,
and actually it's quite
an efficient method
of landing precisely.
You can use less mass if
you wanna do parachutes
or water landing,
but then re-usability
is negatively affected.
- Any interim plans for a
reusable second stage product?
- The next generation vehicles
after the Falcon architecture
will be designed for full re-usability.
I don't expect the Falcon line
to have a reusable upper stage
just because with a kerosine-based system,
the specific impulse isn't
really high enough to do that,
and a lot of the missions we do
for commercial satellite deployment
are geostationary missions,
so we're really going very far out.
These are high delta velocity missions,
so to try to get something back from that
is really difficult,
but with the next generation of vehicles,
which is a so-called methane-oxygen system
where the propellants are cooled
to close to their freezing temperature
to increase the density,
we could definitely do
a full re-usability,
and that system is intended
to be a fully reusable
Mars transportation system,
so not merely to lower earth orbit,
but all the way to Mars and back,
full re-usability.
- What are we talking?
Three years?
(Elon chuckling)
- I am an optimistic person, but--
- Always.
(laughing)
- I think we could start
to see some test flights in
the five or six year timeframe,
but we're talking about
a much bigger vehicle.
- [Jaime] Much bigger vehicle to have.
- Yeah.
We're also gonna be upgrading
to a new generation,
a harder engine cycle,
which is a full flow staged combustion.
What we have right now
is an open cycle engine.
Right now, engines are our
weakest point at SpaceX,
but they will become as
strong as the structures
maybe in the next generation.
- Okay.
Thank you.
So, let me change a little bit.
SpaceX is only 12 years old
and you have shown that in some aspects
you can compete head to head
with much more established
long service providers,
like Locket and Boeing and the Europeans.
To what do you ascribe this ability
of a young and conventional company
to take on the establishment?
- Sure.
And actually, just to clarify (mumbling)
Like right now, our
weakest point is engines
with respect to specific impulse,
but not with respect to thrust to weight.
We actually have the
highest thrust to weight
of any engine,
I think maybe ever,
but our specific impulse,
the efficiency of the engine
is about 10% worse
than a stage combustion engine
using the same propellant.
In terms of our competitiveness,
I think it almost comes down
to our pace of innovation.
Our pace of innovation
is much, much faster
than the big aerospace companies
or the country-driven systems,
and this is generally true
if you look at innovation
from large companies
or from smaller companies.
Smaller companies are
generally better at innovating
than larger companies,
and it has to be that way
from a Darwinian standpoint
'cause smaller companies
would just die if they
didn't try innovating,
'cause otherwise people would
just keep buying the product
from the big company.
So, why is SpaceX more innovative?
I think it's probably 'cause we've got
a super engineering-driven culture.
We're running the kind of
Silicon Valley operating system.
It's kind of hard to describe.
How do you describe Linux?
(Jaime chuckling)
Linux is more efficient
than some other operating systems.
(audience applauding)
- To remain nameless.
- Exactly why, you really
have to get into the weeds.
But you have
a fairly flat hierarchy.
You promote rapid communication,
a best idea wins culture
as opposed to having the
seniority of the person
decide the solution,
which that should never be
the case in engineering.
It should always be a rational basis.
And I also believe,
in terms of at the leadership level,
I'd much rather promote someone
that has strong engineering ability
than so-called management ability.
We do hire some MBAs, but
(laughing)
- I hear you.
(laughing)
- It's usually in spite of
the MBA, not because of it.
(audience laughing)
- I think that deserves an applause.
(laughing)
(audience applauding)
You're really pushing the
concept of re-usability
as a way to affordability,
but would you agree that the only way
that you justify making a more
expensive reusable vehicle
is if you can guarantee a
minimum frequency of flights?
And is the market there?
In the, say five years,
10 year period,
who is gonna provide that demand?
Where is it gonna come from?
- Well, it is a chicken
and egg sort of situation.
The reason that there's
low demand for space flight
is 'cause it's ridiculously expensive,
so at some point somebody
has to say, "Okay,
"we're gonna make something
that's much more affordable,"
and then see what applications develop.
That's what has to happen.
The situation in rocketry
is it's like if an aircraft,
imagine if aircraft were single-use,
then how many people would fly?
The fly rate would be really low.
Fly a 7-47, it's like 250 million dollars,
maybe 300 million dollars
and you need two of them for a round-trip.
(laughing)
So, nobody's paying half a billion dollars
to fly it from Boston to London,
and if that were the case
there would be a very
small number of flights
for scientific and military purposes,
and people would say, "Wow,
"the market for aircraft is so tiny.
"People really love going by boat."
(audience laughing)
That's nonsense.
(laughing)
If we have rockets that are reusable,
fully-reusable and can get
to a decent flight-rate,
the potential is there to get it
to an order of magnitude reduction
in the cost of space transport,
which is vital
for establishing a
self-sustaining civilization
on another planet
or even on the moon
or some sort of L5 colony or whatever,
but you really need to get the cost,
we need it to an order
of magnitude improvement
at least in the cost of transport.
In fact, relative to the estimates
of what it costs to do
a manned Mars mission
where I think some of the lower estimates
are at the 100 to 200 billion dollar level
for a four person mission,
we need more like a 10,000 fold reduction.
- [Jaime] To make it viable.
- Yeah.
Well, so people can afford to go.
- Do you see space tourism
as a customer?
People wanting to just pay to be in orbit?
- If private space flight
is gonna be some amount of market, yeah.
I don't really know.
We're trying to advance
our rocket technology.
On the one hand,
if we get even slightly
towards the overarching goal
of Mars colonization-level technology,
if we just get slightly there,
we certainly have a viable business
in launching satellites and
servicing the Space Station,
that kind of thing.
We're aiming for like 5%.
There's still a very viable
business doing it with orbit.
- So, there is an after.
- And even for five (mumbling)
we're vastly more competitive
than the other rocket companies.
We do have a lot of people
going up against us these days.
- I understand, I understand.
Let's talk about Mars.
That's what really excites
a lot of people in the audience,
excites many of us.
How are we gonna get there?
First of all, what are in your mind,
say, two, three top technologies
that we need to develop,
we need to improve to get us closer
to where we wanna be?
- Sure.
- And second, I'd also like some comment
as to what would be useful
intermediate missions.
Are we gonna use the moon?
Is the moon a necessary step
on our way to Mars?
- I don't think the moon
is a necessary step,
but I think if you've got
a rocket and spacecraft
capable of going to Mars,
you might as well go to the moon.
It's along the way.
(audience laughing)
That's like crossing the English Channel,
relative to going to Mars.
So, if you have these ships
that can cross the Atlantic,
would you cross the English Channel?
Probably.
- But you don't see necessary
from a logistics perspective?
- No, definitely not.
It's definitely not necessary,
but you'd probably end
up having a moon base,
just 'cause, why not?
(audience laughing)
But in terms of the key technology.
- Technology.
- Yeah, key technologies,
it'd obviously be great to have some sort
of fundamental new thing
that has never existed before
and pushes the boundaries of physics.
That would be great.
But as far as the physics
that we know today,
I actually think we've got
the basic ingredients are there.
If you do
a densified Metholox rocket
with earth-orbit refueling,
so you load the spacecraft into orbit
and then you send a bunch
of refueling missions
to fill up the tanks
and you have the Mars
Colonial fleet, essentially,
that gets built up over the time
between the earth/Mars synchronizations
which occur every 26 months,
then the fleets, sort of all the pods
at the optimal transfer point.
I think we have,
we don't need anything,
we don't need any sort of thing
that people don't already
know about, I believe.
I believe we've got the building blocks,
but the mass efficiency
is extremely important,
so having better heat shields
that obviously are reusable.
- [Jaime] Is radiation on humans?
- Pardon me?
- Radiation on humans a concern?
- Yeah, things that can mitigate
the radiation effects, certainly.
I think the radiation affects
are generally way overblown,
'cause if you went to the moon,
like two weeks in deep space,
Buzz Aldrin's still around.
(audience laughing)
- Many other folks that went
are also in the audience.
- Yeah, great.
So, obviously didn't cause,
they're still alive
and yeah, they seem okay.
(audience laughing)
People have been up in the Space
Station for a year or more.
They're okay.
So, I don't know.
If there are things we can do to mitigate
the radiation en route
by affective placement of the water,
the water you bring in there.
- [Jaime] Protection.
- Yeah, put that in the
direction of the sun, and yeah.
But I really think we've got
the essential ingredients.
We do need
an efficient propellant depot on Mars.
I think there's obviously
a lot of hard work in engineering
that needs to be done,
but it's there.
The pieces are there.
- Do you foresee robotics missions
ahead of human missions
going to Mars
and to prepare the ground for people?
- Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We have rovers on Mars.
- Oh, are they?
- We're no already.
So, I think when we see
more of what's on Mars
and we probably wanna make sure
that the propellant depot works.
It'd be an automated propellant depot,
and there are some questions
as to what do you do for
power generation on Mars?
Do you have a nuclear reactor?
Then you gotta carry
the nuclear fuel there.
Reactors are fairly heavy.
Do you do some lightweight
solar power system?
Maybe a big inflatable solar
arrays or something like that.
So, just power generation on Mars
I think is an interesting problem.
And then, just figuring out
how to get all of the
bits of efficiency right
for creating, say, methane-oxygen on Mars.
Mars has got a CO2 atmosphere
and there's a lot of
water buried in the soil
that you can get.
- A question that has been discussed
over the past couple of days,
should we be considering
one-way only trips to Mars?
What's the best approach
to colonize the planet?
What's your view?
Is that socially acceptable?
Do you think people will sign up to do it?
- I think there's plenty of people
that would sign up for
a one-way trip to Mars.
(audience laughing)
- Maybe if I could have a show of hands.
Who would consider such an option?
I see some.
Not many.
Perhaps enough for a couple of missions.
(audience laughing)
- Certainly would be an option.
I think it's sort of like,
is it a one-way mission and then you die,
or is it a one-way mission
and then you get re-supplied?
That's a big difference.
(audience laughing)
- Wait for the second option.
- Yeah, exactly.
But I think it ends up being a moot point
because you wanna bring
the spaceship back.
These spaceships are expensive.
They're hard to build.
You can't just leave them there.
(laughing)
So, whether or not people
wanna come back or not,
they can jump on if they want,
but we need the spaceship back.
(audience laughing)
(audience applauding)
- Thank you.
- I mean, it'd be kinda weird.
There's a huge collection of
spaceships on Mars over time.
(audience laughing)
It's like, maybe we should send them back.
Of course we should send them back.
So, I think that's for sure necessary,
particularly, say, if we wanna
have a colony of some kind
that's of significant size.
Yeah.
- Just one question.
Looking at the Apollo experience,
are you concerned that,
say we land humans on Mars
in, say, 10, 15 years,
and then all of a sudden
the excitement is done,
we've done it,
and just go and rest for the next 50 years
like we did with Apollo.
Is that something that concerns you?
- Well, that's why I
think we should really
be setting the goal as the creation
of a self-sustaining civilization on Mars,
not simply a mission to Mars,
'cause then we risk,
it'd be awesome and cool
and it'd be a new high altitude record
and great pictures and stuff,
but it's just not the thing
that fundamentally changes
the future of humanity.
I should sort of explain,
perhaps, the rational
for why I think it's
important to establish
a self-sustaining colony on Mars,
'cause I think some
people are aware of that,
but probably most people aren't
and you hear all these rebuttals,
like aren't there all
these problems on earth
that we need to deal with,
and shouldn't we focus on that?
And the answer is yes.
Our primary focus should
be problems on earth,
but I think that there
should be some small amount
that's given over to the establishment
of a colony on Mars
and making life multi-planetary.
By small amount, I mean some number less
than 1% of our resources.
So, it's not as important
as, say, healthcare,
but it's more important
than, say, cosmetics.
(audience laughing)
I'm in favor of cosmetics.
I like them.
They're great.
(audience laughing)
But lipstick or colony on Mars?
(audience laughing)
A few may have different
opinions, but (chuckling)
So, I think we should have that
because the future of humanity
will fundamentally bifurcate
along the lines of either
single planet species
or multi-planet species,
and a multi-planet version
of humanity's future
is going to last a lot longer.
We will propagate civilizations
in the future far longer
if we are multi-planet species
than if we're a single planet species.
And so, it's like planetary redundancy,
backing up the biosphere.
We've got all of our
eggs in one basket here.
We should try to protect that basket
and do everything we can,
but there's some risks
that are just extremely
difficult to mitigate
and some which we will ultimately
not be able to mitigate.
So, it just seems like
the right thing to do,
and then the next question
is should we do it now
or should we wait for
some point in the future?
And I think the wise move
is to do it now
because the window of
technology for this is open,
and it's the first time
that window's been open
in the four and a half
billion year history of earth.
That's a long time.
(Elon chuckling)
And I certainly hope that the window
will be open forever,
but it may also close,
and if you look at the
history of technology
in various civilizations,
you look at, say, ancient Egypt
where they were able to build
these incredible giant pyramids
and then they forgot
how to build pyramids,
and then they couldn't read hieroglyphics,
or you look at, say, Roman civilization,
they were able to build these
incredible aqueducts and roads
and then they forgot how to do that.
They had indoor plumbing,
they forgot how to do indoor plumbing.
There's clearly been a
cycle with technology,
and hopefully that's a
upwards sloping sign wave
that continues on to be
really great in the future,
but maybe it doesn't.
Maybe there's some bad thing that happens.
And so, for 1% of our resources
we could buy life insurance
for life collectively,
and I think that would
be a good thing to do.
- Thank you, thank you.
I'm sure the topic of
Mars is gonna come again
because in a few minutes I'd like to open
the floor for questions,
but I have a couple more questions
I'd really like to get your opinion on.
Related to your association,
your involvement with
Tesla and Solar City,
could you tell us a little bit
about you announced plans
to contract battery Gigafactory,
and can you elaborate on this?
What's the driver?
Does it satisfy demands, reduce costs,
improve efficiencies, or all of the above?
- For the Gigafactory?
- Yes.
(Elon chuckling)
- The Gigafactory is
the least bad solution
we could come up with, honestly.
I think it's actually pretty
cool the way it's worked out,
but we're just faced with a simple problem
of if we wanna make electric cars,
we need enough batteries
for the electric cars.
Well, last year
all the lithium ion production combined
was 30 gigawatt hours, approximately.
That's nothing, okay?
(Elon chuckling)
Or at least it's nothing
when you consider,
if you wanna make a half a
million electric cars a year,
that's how much you need,
and there are a hundred million
new cars made every year,
there are two billion gasoline
or diesel cars on the road worldwide.
So, just do the basic math.
You don't just need one Gigafactory.
You need like 200 Giga Factories
just for new car production,
and that assumes you're
only gonna replace the fleet
at the existing rate,
which has a refresh every 20 years.
Yeah.
So, given that we wanna get
to full capacity at our
Fremont plant in California
of half a million vehicles a year,
we need half a million
vehicles a year of batteries,
and obviously we can't use
all of the other batteries
in the world combined
because people want cellphones
and laptops and other things.
(Elon chuckling)
So therefore, we have
to build this factory,
and then we found we have a
great partner in Panasonic.
Panasonic's taking care of
the cell formation part of it.
There are actually many aspects to this
because you've got anode
cathode separator electrode can
at the precursor level,
you've got raw materials
coming in from the mines
that feed into a variety
of other companies,
like (mumbling) Metals and
Mining and Hitachi and others,
they do the precursor processing,
and then Panasonic takes the
anode and cathode materials,
separate, puts that into a cell,
then it goes into a Tesla section,
which creates the module,
which is all the electronics
and the packaging
and the conductors
and the safety mechanisms
and the cooling loops.
Then, the modules go into the pack,
which has a lot of crash
structure associated with it,
and the pack goes in the car,
and then obviously Tesla
is obviously the landlord
of the whole thing, as well.
Anyway, short of doing that,
there was no way to scale,
so that's why we did it.
- The reason why I brought that up
is because as much as we love Teslas,
we're in the aerospace department
where we are really
interested in the potential
for electric aircraft.
- Sure.
I love the idea of electric aircraft.
Everything will go electric.
Everything will be fully
electric, except for rockets.
(audience laughing)
It's ironic.
- We think
that in terms of energy density
to make a transport aircraft feasible,
you would need improvements
of the other 10 to 100.
- What?
No, that's not good.
Wait, when you say 10 to 100,
of what baseline?
What do you mean?
- Ion lithium.
- Oh, no, no.
Definitely not.
My opinion, at least.
Where we are right now
is roughly, for a cell
that doesn't have
lots of other drawbacks,
which people always forget to mention
when they talk about
battery breakthroughs,
there's many parameters that
are important for a battery
and hardly a week goes by
where there's not some huge breakthrough,
allegedly, in batteries,
but the bullshit factor is outrageous.
(audience laughing)
But for real cells that actually work
and don't have some huge drawback,
they're currently at about
300 watt hours per kilogram.
To have a compelling aircraft,
you only really need about
400 watt hours per kilogram
provided the percentage of
cell on the aircraft is high.
It doesn't need to be
anywhere near as high
as it is on a rocket,
but if it's at the 70% level,
at 400 watt hours per kilogram,
you can do very decent range,
and if you move it up
to the mid to high 70s,
you can go trans-continental.
Not intercontinental, but
west coast to east coast.
So, you need an efficient aircraft,
but that's approximately,
by my calculations,
the numbers you need.
400 watt hours per kilogram,
mid to high 70s,
cell (mumbling) fraction,
which I think is an achievable number
'cause aircraft have
all these unnecessary things, like tails
and rudders and elevators.
Not needed.
(audience laughing)
Just gimble.
I don't know.
Gimble the electric fan.
For some weird reason
gimbling motors is normal in rockets
and not in aircraft.
Why not?
- Okay, well definitely plans
to get into this business
because we love to see
how things develop in
that particular area.
Certainly very interesting.
Do you have a specific plan?
- I've been toying with the design
for an electric supersonic
vertical takeoff and landing
electric aircraft for a while.
I'd love to do it,
but I think my mind would explode.
(audience laughing)
It's like, brain's worn out, you know?
Pretty saturated working on
electric cars and rockets.
(audience laughing)
- Okay.
Okay.
Good topic.
(audience laughing)
So, the last question I will ask
is about our students.
You've hired dozens of MIT
graduates for your companies.
The first question is how are they doing?
(audience laughing)
- Well.
No, they're doing great.
In fact, we wanna hire a
lot more people from MIT.
- [Jaime] That's good news
and I'm sure a lot of
people in the audience.
(audience applauding)
- Yeah, definitely apply to SpaceX,
apply to Tesla,
and yell at me on Twitter
if there's something wrong
with our admissions process or something.
(laughing)
It's not the most efficient
way to get (mumbling)
That is one way
'cause I don't know if our recruiting
and our process of hiring people is good.
I think it's good, but I'm not sure.
But we wanna hire lots
of really smart engineers
'cause that's how these
problems get solved.
- I read a quote, which I
hope it's true from you.
Tell me if that's not the case.
You said that the most
common hiring mistake
was weighing too much on someone's talent
and not on someone's personality,
and then, "I think it matters when someone
"has a good heart."
- It does, yes, absolutely.
That's generally where,
if I say where it's of the hiring mistakes
that I've made in the past,
it's been just as I said,
it's looking too much
at their intellectual capability alone
and not on how they
affect those around them,
and what really matters
for someone's contribution to a company
is how they are as an individual
and how they affect others around them.
It's also analogous to a sports team.
The best person on the team
is not necessarily the one
who scores the most goals.
It could be the person who
assists in the most goals,
and if there's one person on the team
who just wants the ball all the time
and just wants to kick it at the goal,
that can actually be detrimental.
So, it is important
to weigh personality
and are they gonna be a good person
and will people like working with them,
that kind of thing.
It does make a difference.
- Thank you.
I'd like to invite the audience
to ask some questions.
I'd particularly like
students to ask questions,
but others are also invited,
and one thing I will ask is
that we keep the questions short
so that we can have a few of those.
- Okay.
I'm Phil Chapman.
What I'd like to ask you, Elon,
is it looks as if the next decade or two,
human spaceflight will be dominated
by you and Bob Bigelow
and other exo-preneurs.
The question is what do you think
the proper role of
N.A.S.A. human spaceflight
should be in that context,
other than just giving you contracts?
(Elon laughing)
- Well, N.A.S.A.'s been
really helpful to SpaceX,
not just in terms of giving us contracts,
but also technically in a number of areas,
and a lot of things that
we've done at SpaceX
have been dependent on things
that N.A.S.A's done in the past,
so I think we're certainly
incredibly grateful
for everything that
N.A.S.A. done in the past
and for the ongoing support
that we receive from N.A.S.A.
I'm a huge fan of N.A.S.A.,
and I think N.A.S.A.'s
actually doing the right thing
given all of the
constraints that they have.
Like within the context
of being this large,
government entity that's getting pushed
in all sorts of different directions
and has a lot of limitations
on what it can do,
I've been pretty impressed
with what N.A.S.A. has done
given all of those constraints.
Yeah.
So, I think
if N.A.S.A. continues
to expand upon the support
of competitive commercial space,
that's probably what will
have the most positive effect
on the future of space development.
- [Jaime] Thank you.
- I'm Jordan and I had a quick
question about manufacturing.
So, Obama has had a large push
to really get high
technology manufacturers
in the United States,
and I think above
everything, SpaceX and Tesla
are excellent examples of that,
and I was wondering,
one, do you have a
commitment going forward
to have all your manufacturing
or majority of it done in the U.S.,
and then how can other
companies really learn
from this experience that SpaceX has had
and Tesla has had
to really do your own manufacturing
in-house as much as possible?
- Sure.
Well, I should say that
for SpaceX and Tesla,
our goal was not initially
to do huge amounts
of internal manufacturing.
We actually tried to do
as little manufacturing
as possible at first,
but we found that we had to in-source
more and more over time.
But it's really not from the standpoint
of we really believe in
in-sourcing or outsourcing,
it's just given
if there's a great supplier
that then we'd love to
use a great supplier,
and if there's not,
then we need to do it ourselves.
The need to find a way or
make a way to a good solution,
and it's just over time
we've had to make our way
more often than not.
Now, for rocketry,
there are I2R limitations,
which is that rockets are considered
advanced weapons technology,
so we can't just outsource it
to some other country.
Yeah.
But I think for manufacturing,
very often people think of manufacturing
as just some road to process
of making copies,
which actually it isn't.
Manufacturing is building a machine
that makes the machine,
and if you think the machine is important,
well, building the machine
that makes the machine
is also extremely important,
and more often than not
what I've found
is the manufacturing
is harder than the original product.
For example, at Tesla
we can make
one of a car very easily,
but to make thousands of a car
with high reliability and quality
and where the cost is affordable
is extremely hard,
let's say maybe 10 times harder
than just making one
prototype, maybe more;
and then at SpaceX also,
it may be approaching a magnitude harder
to manufacture rockets
and launch a lot of them
than to design one in the first place.
So, I really think a lot more smart people
should be getting into manufacturing,
and it's kinda fun.
It sorta got a bad name for a while,
but it's really interesting.
Yeah.
- [Jaime] Thank you.
- I've got a question
about the Tesla automobile.
I understand the drive motors
on the order of 250 horsepower
and only weights 70 pounds,
which is multiple horsepower per pound.
I've worked in the transit industry,
never seen, and looked in other sources,
never seen a motor
other than one that ways
multiple pounds per horsepower,
the opposite way.
So, you have and advantage
of an order of magnitude.
Some of it can be explained by high speed.
Can you explain
how you achieved that?
- Actually, if power to weight
ratio is of interest to you,
rocket turbo pumps really take the cake.
(audience laughing)
The turbo pump on the Merlin engine
generates 10,000 horsepower
and weights 150 pounds.
Now, fuel efficiency is
sort of a separate question.
(audience laughing)
But power to weight,
it's at the ragged edge of
pulling those molecules apart.
It's kind of amazing
that you can get 10,000
horsepower in this thing
you can basically pick up,
but for electric motors,
if you have a properly
designed electric motor,
AC induction motor,
getting a high power weight ratio
and a really great response rate,
like low latency and all that,
extremely low ripple current and whatnot,
it just kinda comes naturally
to an AC induction motor.
The bigger challenge is
actually cooling it effectively,
and then in particular cooling the rotor,
'cause you've got this rotor going
at 18,000 RPM.
So, in the Model S we
coaxially cool the rotor
in order to have high steady state.
Also, for an electric motor you can have,
it's easier to get peak power
for a short period of time.
It's hard to have sustained peak power
'cause you over-heat,
and then it's hard to get high efficiency
over a complicated drive cycle,
but those tend to be the
problems we wrestle with
more than, say, the peak power.
We can get peak power pretty easily,
but sustained power and efficiency
over the drive cycle are hard.
- [Dennis] Thank you.
- [Jaime] Thank you.
- Hi, name's Sherry.
I'm a PhD student, core 16,
and when you hear about
the founding of SpaceX,
a popular story is that you started it
partly because you, yourself,
want to go to space.
Is this true,
and what sort of timeframe
with the current program
do you see for you, yourself,
being able to have that opportunity?
- Actually, that's not
why I started SpaceX.
(audience laughing)
The easiest thing for me to do
would be to buy a ride on the Soyuz
and I would've been able
to go to the Space Station
as a number of other people have done,
but the thing that I
was trying to figure out
was how to get us back on the track
of extending life beyond earth.
That's the reason for starting SpaceX,
and I expected it to fail
and people sort of think, "Well,
"why would you even start
that in the first place?"
But the reason,
if you go back before I started SpaceX,
I wanted to do
this philanthropic mission
to send a small greenhouse
to the surface of Mars
and try to get the public excited
about sending life to Mars
because people respond to
precedence and superlatives,
and this would be the first
life on another planet,
the furthest that life's ever traveled,
and I thought, "Well,
"that would get people excited
"and that would result
in N.A.S.A.'s budget
"getting increased, and
then we could resume
"the dream of Apollo."
My initial goal was just to figure out
how to get N.A.S.A.'s budget higher.
(audience laughing)
But then I came to the conclusion
that if we don't make
rockets way better,
then it wouldn't matter.
We could get a budget increase,
but then we'd just send
one mission to Mars
and then maybe never go there again.
So, the goal of SpaceX really
was to make as much progress as possible
to advance rocket technology to the point
where, hopefully, we can establish
a colony on Mars,
or at least get us as far
along that way as we can.
We'll just try to go as far as we can.
- Hi, I'm Justin.
I'm a freshman.
Now that SpaceX has
unveiled the Dragon V2,
which is a man-rated capsule,
I was wondering if you were planning
on forming your own astronaut core
or were you relying on N.A.S.A.
astronauts from here out?
- Well...
Yeah.
(audience laughing)
We're building a ship
that N.A.S.A.'s gonna use
and that other people will use.
In terms of an astronaut core,
I kinda think,
really, what we should be transporting
are scientists and engineers,
not pilots, really.
Dragon doesn't need pilots.
It obviously goes there with just cargo.
We just sent up 40 mice.
They were not piloting the craft.
(audience laughing)
So, it's really a means
of transporting people
to the earth/moon orbit region
in order to do science, basically,
potentially to the moon to
do some exploration there,
but I kinda think it should be easy
to go on a spacecraft.
(Elon chuckling)
You should just be able to get
on with no training and go.
It shouldn't be hard.
(people chuckling)
(audience applauding)
- Hi, I'm Scarlet.
I'm a Junior in Aerospace at MIT,
as you can tell,
and I was just wondering,
now SpaceX and Boeing
have both been awarded contracts
to build a space taxi,
and how do you think SpaceX's approach
will differ from Boeing's,
and which one do you think is likely
to be most successful?
(audience laughing)
- Well, Boeing's a fine
company, of course.
(audience laughing)
So, yeah.
What we're trying to do with Dragon Two,
or the new crew Dragon design,
is to be able to land
propulsively with precision,
which I think
is the next generation.
Like if you consider the first generation
was parachutes to a water landing,
then arguably sort of wings
and gear, landing gear,
then the third generation
is propulsive landing with precision.
If you saw a movie about the future
with aliens landing,
how do they land?
Like that.
(laughing)
Okay, obviously.
That would be weird
if the aliens landed in
the ocean with parachutes,
and like, "Okay.
(audience laughing)
"Nothing to fear."
(laughing)
And Boeing's trying to
take it slightly improved,
'cause it's got airbags,
but it's still an imprecise landing.
It's somewhere in a huge expanse of desert
and it's basically like landing on airbags
and kinda crashing in the desert.
Okay.
That's one way to land.
(laughing)
But I think the future
has to be precise propulsive landing,
'cause that's what you
need to go to the moon
or to Mars
or anywhere else in the solar system,
and that's the thing we
should be focusing on.
Yeah.
We're already going to
the Space Statin and back,
by the way.
Boeing isn't doing that.
- So, comic books
are the future?
- [Elon] Sorry?
- So comic books are the future?
- Well, I think a lot of
things that are envisioned
in sci-fi books,
I mean, it's a wide range, of course,
but a lot of things that are
envisioned do make sense.
Yeah.
Like I said,
there isn't some other
way to land on the moon.
You can't land on the moon
with parachutes and airbags,
due to the lack of atmosphere over there.
- [Scarlet] Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Hello there.
My name is Johannes.
I'm a junior in Core 16
and I'm also international,
and I was wondering,
from international perspective,
how's this trip to Mars gonna look like?
Is it gonna be an American
colony on Mars and that's it?
Because SpaceX is mainly
based here in the U.S.
Or is it just like,
"Everybody join in, please?"
- I don't know.
I'm hopeful that there will
be multiple colonies on Mars.
From a SpaceX standpoint,
we don't aim to do anything
on an exclusionary basis.
We're just trying to get there,
and then I think
we'd love to have that debate
and be like, "Oh, is it too American?"
You know, like okay.
(laughing)
Maybe.
But we've got this awesome base on Mars.
Who cares?
(laughing)
But I think if there was
an American base on Mars
it would certainly prompt other countries
to wanna establish
their base on Mars, too,
but I do think that it would be better
to have competition than cooperation.
- So, you encourage
companies in other countries
to start their own endeavor
to go to Mars, as well?
- Yes.
I think we'd be better
off with competition,
rather than insisting.
Like the Space Station,
we've got the International Space Station,
but when governments
are all sort of forced
to go in lock-step
it tends to not make things go faster.
Yeah.
We want some sort of positive
competitive element, I think.
So, we don't want people
going to war or anything,
but just some positive
competitive element,
like the Olympics.
If people compete hard
and it's good sportsmanship
and everything,
and the net result is better
than if there was no competition.
Like Olympics with no competition
wouldn't make any sense.
(audience laughing)
Yeah.
So, I think some positive
competitive thing
would be better,
and we should definitely not insist
that all countries go at the same pace
or some collection of
companies go at the same pace.
That would slow things down dramatically
and maybe not even happen.
- So, just encourage
ESA to invest in Mars.
- Yeah, absolutely.
ESA, Chinese Space Agency, everyone.
- [Johannes] Okay, thank you.
- All right.
- Hi, my name is Vincent,
and my question is there are
there any natural resources
on Mars right now
that a colony would be able to use?
And if so, how would
SpaceX go about extracting
those natural resources
when the time comes?
- Well, I think any natural
resource extraction on Mars,
the output would be for Mars.
It definitely wouldn't make
sense to transport stuff
200 million miles back to earth.
Honestly, if you had crack cocaine on Mars
in pre-packaged pallets,
(laughing)
it still wouldn't make sense
to transport it back here.
(audience laughing)
It may be good times for the martians,
(laughing)
but not back here.
- [Vincent] These would be for
the colony to use, obviously.
- [Elon] Yeah, for the colony to use.
Exactly.
(laughing)
- Hello, my name's Alexander Brukalirri.
I'm a recent PhD in Core 16
and I recently started
up a aerospace research
and development company,
and one thing that I'm working on
is something called
beamed energy propulsion
where we use external
energy to power rockets,
microwaves or lasers,
the idea being that you can get very high,
specific impulses with very high power,
and I'm curious where SpaceX stands
on this kind of technology,
what your thoughts were,
or if you could comment a little bit.
- Yeah.
The beamed energy thing is interesting.
I think it is a worthy area of research.
I think it's worth trying
to make something work,
trying to get something to orbit
or really high delta velocity
with beamed energy,
and see how well does it work in practice?
I do think...
I'll state some concerns,
but these concerns are not meant to say
that we shouldn't work on them.
I preface it by saying
we should work on it.
I think there are some scaling challenges
with beamed energy.
You have to say what's the
actual power output you need
to send, say,
a Falcon Nine class vehicle to orbit?
And it's a very, very big number.
You start needing, like whoa,
we need the power of the eastern seaboard
to send something,
the quote Falcon heavy class.
What do you need to send
something like that to orbit?
It's really a huge amount of energy,
or a huge amount of power to be precise.
Actually, the power level you need,
you don't need arguably
that much energy basis,
but you can't tell everyone
to turn their lights
off in Florida,
so then you need a huge power plant
or a huge capacitor bank
or a huge high-power
density battery array.
So, I'd like to see
how well does it scale,
and then you say,
"What's the cost
"of the huge power plant
"and the huge laser array
and that kind of thing?
"And how does that compare
"to the cost per unit mass
"if you just carry your
own oxygen with you
"and have a lower ISP
"and don't do any of those things?"
- [Alexander] Thank you.
- [Elliott] Hello.
My name is Elliott Owen.
I'm a freshman here.
I'm very interested in the hyper loop.
I made a small working
model for my senior project.
- That's cool.
- And one of the major problems I ran into
was tube tolerances.
So, I'm wondering if you can comment
on problems with tube tolerances
and thermal expansion
if you're building a 350
mile long steel tube?
- Well, what was the ratio
of the pod to tube diameter?
- About two and a half
inch internal diameter
and about 20 feet long.
- Right, but the pod diameter
to tube diameter?
- The pod was only a few
hundredths of an inch
smaller than the inside diameter.
- That's the problem.
(laughing)
So, you actually want the pod,
you want a ratio
of the pod area,
tube cross section to pod cross section
of about two.
So, the pod only is half
the cross section area
of the tube
because you're still gonna wanna have
some flow of air
over the pod.
- [Alexander] To deal
with the Cantor's Limit?
- Yeah.
Well, yeah.
You'll probably deal
with the Cantor's Limit
by having a compressor on the nose,
but it only partly addresses it,
and then the rest is airflow
around the pod,
but you definitely don't wanna have
something that's really a tight fit,
'cause you also start hitting
tolerance limitations like that.
Yeah.
You need some play in that system.
A tricky thing also
for if you're going really fast
is just even small imperfections
in the surface of the tube,
which I think can be dealt with
by essentially having,
once the tube's done,
you actually need to run something
that's gonna smooth it out.
You basically need to run a grinder
through the tube
that's gonna polish the surface
and make sure that there
aren't undulations,
but in the proposal (mumbling)
we had the air skis were sprung.
So, yeah.
That's also important.
- Okay.
And thermal expansion,
if you heat it up 20 degrees
this 350 mile pipe will
get 450 feet longer.
How do you maintain a vacuum seal
with expansion joints?
- You actually have
to allow expansion at the terminals.
So, wherever the terminals are
you've gotta have that
length of expansion,
and then in the pylons
that are supporting it
you actually need to allow
each pylon to stretch in X.
So, you can't hard constrain it
at the pylons.
- [Alexander] Thank you.
- We've gone past the hour now.
Would you be able to take
a couple more questions?
- Yeah.
We could probably spend
about 10 or 15 more minutes.
- Perfect.
- All right.
- My name is John
and I was wondering,
since there's always a growing need
for more resources here on earth,
if, say, some time in the
future SpaceX would look
more towards obtaining
resources from the moon
or Mars, or even out further on asteroids,
is that in a plan for SpaceX?
- Well, we're not really
gonna try to get resources
on the moon
because that would be useful
if you're on the moon,
but not for bringing it back to earth.
So, if there's a moon base,
I'd suspect they would extract resources.
Yeah.
But for themselves.
I'll try to get through
a bunch of questions.
I'm gonna make my answers short.
- Hi, my name is Bob.
In view of its potential
to be possibly the
biggest game changer ever,
do you have any plans to enter
the field of artificial intelligence?
And in general, what
are your thoughts on it?
Do you think it's even close
to being ready for prime time?
- I think we should be very careful
about artificial intelligence.
If I were to guess
at what our biggest existential threat is,
it's probably that.
So, we need to be very careful
with artificial intelligence.
Increasing in clients,
I think that there should be
some regulatory oversight
maybe at the national and
the international level
just to make sure
that we don't do something very foolish.
With artificial intelligence,
we are summoning the demon.
You know those stories
where there's the guy with the pentagram
and the holy water,
and he's like, "Yeah, he's sure
you can control the demon."
(audience laughing)
It didn't work out.
- I take it there will be no Hell 9000
going up to Mars.
(laughing)
- Hell 9000 would be easy.
It's way more complex.
It would be Hell 9000 to shame.
Yeah.
I like Puppy Dog.
- [Bob] Thank you.
- All right.
- Hi, my name is Raichelle Anasetto,
and I'm a junior in the
AeroAstro department.
My question aligns with
how a lot of the work
toward the mission to
Mars is focused on rockets
with SpaceX, obviously,
but where do you see the
role of telecommunications
and communication satellites
since there's a lot of
traction in this field,
and this will be very crucial to, I guess,
the overall mission to colonizing Mars.
- Sorry, can you repeat the question?
I was just sort of
thinking about the AI thing for a second.
(audience laughing)
- Yeah.
Absolutely.
So, a lot of the focus
with the mission to Mars
aligns with rockets, SpaceX,
but a key aspect to
eventually colonizing Mars
lies with telecommunications
and communication satellites,
so where do you see
this as a viable aspect
along with your goals?
- Communications are
certainly very important.
We're gonna need
terabyte level communication
between earth and Mars,
which viscerally means that
you wanna have a tight beam,
like a laser communication
system or something like that,
and relays, satellites that really,
'cause sometimes Mars is on
the other side of the sun,
so you gotta bounce the
photons around the sun,
not through 'em.
So, I think communication's
definitely gonna be important.
Also think that on earth
there's a lot of potential
for space-based communications.
I think there's a huge
amount of room to grow
for having satellite communication systems
that provide high
bandwidth global coverage,
and we'll need the same for Mars.
- [Raichelle] Thank you.
- Hi, I'm Eric Ward.
I'm a graduate student
in the system design
and management program
and I was reading recently
a Japanese construction company,
I think it's Obayashi,
just announced plans to
make a space elevator
by, I think, 2050.
(Elon laughing)
And I'm wondering
if SpaceX has a response.
- I say, bravo.
(audience laughing)
- But how do you think that technology
might affect your vision
and goals, as well?
(Elon laughing)
- I think it'd be awesome if
there was a space elevator.
I wouldn't hold my breath.
I don't think it's realistic,
but love to be proven wrong.
I always think of Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory
when I hear the space elevator
'cause people sorta
manage, like an elevator,
you press up
and now you're in space.
(audience laughing)
This is extremely complicated.
Yeah.
I don't think
it's really realistic
to have a space elevator.
Look at it this way.
At the point at which we have
a bridge from L.A. to Tokyo,
which I think is a much easier problem.
(laughing)
Then, right across the Atlantic,
like some sort of 2000 mile long bridge,
3000 mile long bridge, something like that
would be made of carbon nano tubes.
I don't think we've got a carbon nano tube
foot bridge so far,
let alone some enormous 60,000
mile long space elevator.
Anyway, it's not the thing
that I think makes sense right now,
but if somebody can prove me wrong,
that'd be great.
- [Eric] Thank you.
- All right.
- Hi, my name is Koki Ho.
I'm a PhD student here.
I wonder how you think
about Mars One project,
which tried to send crew
to Mars one way every two years
for relatively short?
I think they claimed they want to use
the modified Dragon capsule for landing,
and I wonder how you think
about their philosophy
and their technical feasibility?
Thank you.
- Well, I think,
I mean the illustrations that I've seen
basically has them using
a bunch of SpaceX rockets
and Dragon spacecraft.
I'm like, "Okay,
"if they wanna buy a bunch
"of Dragons and Falcon
Nine rockets, that's cool."
We'll certainly sell them.
(audience laughing)
But I don't think they've got
anywhere near the funding to buy even one,
so I think therefore it's unrealistic.
And I think trying to go to Mars in Dragon
is less than ideal here,
'cause if you go real fast
it's maybe a three month journey,
and normally it'd be a six
to eight month journey.
That's a long time to spend
in something with the
interior volume of an SUV.
So, I'd recommend waiting
for the next generation technology.
- [Koko] Thank you.
- Hi, my name's Benson.
I'm a recent graduate.
I had another space
elevator question, actually.
What do you think would be the difference
in public perception if
instead of building rockets
you were building space elevators?
How would the promo video have changed?
- Well, you know,
I think it would not work.
(laughing)
It would just be an illustration on a page
that doesn't actually have real hardware.
That would be the difference.
Yeah.
I just don't think
space elevators are a very sensible thing.
- [Benson] Thank you.
- Hi, I'm Evan.
I'm a sophomore.
Just a question about the future
of the Super Charger Network.
Will renewable energy sources
play a big role
in the source for the network?
- Yeah, absolutely.
What we're planning to do over time
is go to 100% renewable power generation
for Super Charge stations.
We've temporarily not added solar power
because in the interest of just having
a national and international coverage
that you can drive anywhere in the U.S.,
Europe, or Asia by using Super Chargers,
we haven't constrained that
so that every Super Charger
has to have solar panels.
There are a few that have solar panels,
but most don't,
but in the longterm all of them
will either have solar panels
or otherwise get their power
from renewable sources,
and in longterm expect
it to be solar panels
to a stationary battery pack
so that the solar panels can charge
the stationary battery pack
over the course of the week
and then that stationary battery pack
can then buffer the energy
and release it during peak times,
'cause what we see with Super Chargers
is huge differences in usage,
and you can imagine
when people go away for the weekend,
like Friday nights and Saturday nights,
Friday and Sunday,
for Friday nights and Sunday nights,
huge peak usage
if people are going somewhere,
like on a family trip for the weekend,
but say Wednesday
at 11 a.m., low usage.
So, you wanna have
stationary battery pack,
solar panels, and then it could work
even if the power grid goes down.
So, I think that would
be cool to have something
like even post-apocalypse,
you can still drive around.
(Elon chuckling)
- Okay.
Perhaps you can take a couple more
if they are quick?
- Hello.
My name is Rita.
I'm a sophomore in course two,
so mechanical engineering.
I'm more of a car buff, myself,
so concerning Tesla,
what is your approach
dealing with new companies
trying to make it in the EV world,
like Ativa and others?
Is it more of a collaborative approach
in terms of sharing technologies
so we can see more electric
vehicles on the roads
in the near future,
or maintaining a competitive edge?
- Well, I think given that
we open sourced our patents
earlier this year,
I think we're...
(audience applauding)
I think that suggests that
were trying to be helpful.
(audience laughing)
So, it's certainly,
if there's anything that Tesla can do
that's helpful and doesn't distract us
from making cars,
then we're happy to do that,
and we'll sit down
battery packs and power trains
for Mercedes and for Toyota.
Right now, the fundamental constraint
is on battery production,
so we have to solve that constraint
in order for there to be any scaling up
of electric cars,
and that's why we've got the Gigafactory
and things have to be affordable.
Basically, people need
a compelling and affordable
electric vehicle.
That is the Holy Grail.
So, that's really,
we're trying to get
there as fast as we can.
- [Rita] Fantastic, thank you.
- Hi.
I'm Daniel and I'm a junior at MIT
and here's a decidedly
non-technical question.
So, I understand
that you have consumed lots
of science fiction literature,
films, et cetera.
Yeah.
(Elon laughing)
I mean, this is what you're doing.
So, I was just wondering
what kind of works of art
that you think have contributed
to your zeal for good future for humanity,
whether by influencing your fear,
like cyber funk stuff,
or making you see
something that's awesome,
like Star Trek.
- Sure.
I love technology.
So, yeah.
Particularly when I was a kid,
I just consumed all
science fiction and fantasy
movies, books, anything at all,
even it it was really schlucky.
And in terms
of key influences,
I certainly like Star Trek
because that actually shows
more of a utopian future.
Things aren't horrible in the future.
There's so many bloody
post-apocalyptic futures.
Like, okay.
Can we have one that's nice?
Just a few?
(audience laughing)
So, I like that about Star Trek.
In terms of some key books and movies,
obviously Star Wars.
Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw,
so obviously that's gonna
be fairly influential.
I'd never seen a movie
in a theater before.
- [Daniel] My parents just
played it on loop for me.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
So, it was super great.
And, yeah.
And in terms of books,
Lord of the Rings is
probably my favorite book.
That's not really sci-fi.
In fact, oddly enough
J.R. Tolkien's kinda anti-technology.
- [Daniel] Sci-fi and
fantasy are often bedfellows.
- Yeah, it is.
It's funny, Lord of the
Rings is an awesome book,
but it's kinda anti-technology.
Still great.
I think the Foundation series from Asimov
is one of the best ever,
and the books, Arthur
C. Clarke and Heinlein,
those are probably the three
best sci-fi authors,
and recently somebody
was recommending to me
the Iain Banks novels
as being fairly good.
Yeah.
What do you think's good?
- One of my favorite books
is, let's see, The Moon
is a Harsh Mistress
by Robert Heinlein.
- Yeah, it's funny
you should mention that.
- [Daniel] Like the loonies.
- I think that's Heinlein's
best book, honestly.
- [Daniel] It's really fun.
- Yeah.
- [Daniel] So, thank you.
- Thank you.
- Perhaps we could take the last question?
(audience applauding)
- Sure.
(audience applauding)
- Our last question.
- Hi.
My name's Ellie Simonson.
I'm a sophomore here in Core 16.
I was just wondering,
so I know that N.A.S.A.'s
working on the SLS,
which I believe after
a couple of iterations
or several iterations,
they're hoping we'll be
able to land on Mars,
and so I'm wondering if that happens
before you guys develop a
rocket that can do that,
how will that change your focus at SpaceX?
(Elon laughing)
(audience laughing)
- Well, I don't think...
We're just gonna keep trying
to make rocket technology
better and better,
and I think the time frame for the SLS,
they're sending people to Mars,
is pretty far out there.
And if it does, that's great,
but what we need
is a technology system that's capable
of sending large numbers of
people and cargo to Mars.
It's cool to send one mission, sure,
but that's not the thing
that changes humanity's future.
The thing that really matters
is being able to establish
a self-sustaining civilization on Mars,
and for that
I don't see anything being done
except SpaceX, honestly,
and that's not to say
SpaceX will be successful,
but I don't see anyone even trying.
- [Ellie] Thanks.
- Okay, Elon.
Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
(audience applauding)
