Welcome back to the show. This is the Elon Musk podcast where we talk about SpaceX, NASA. We also talk about Tesla, Neurolink, Boring Company X, anything that Elon Musk has his hands in. This is what we talk about on this show. So welcome everybody to the live stream and check everything out here. I appreciate you being here. And if you're new here, please hit the like button and also hit the subscribe button if you find any sort of value out of this. So anyway, that's out of the way.
Let's talk about some things that Elon has been doing recently, some things that are happening down at Star Base first. And then we're going to move into some Tesla stuff. And we're also going to move into some other kind of like NASA stuff that's been going on with Jared Isaacman, who's a friend of Elon and who has also bought private space flights from Elon's company, SpaceX in
the past. And he's also the first private astronaut to do an Eva. If you're not familiar what an Eva is, it's when you go outside of your spaceship. That's incredible, especially for a private company or a private person. Jerry is a billionaire, so he buys these flights off Elon and off SpaceX because he just wants to do cool adventure stuff and he wants to make his mark so and also help people get excited about Space Flight.
But there are a few things that you know, that's been happening in Jared's life lately that are huge, huge things. One of them is that Donald Trump named him as the the next head of NASA, which is wild. Think about it. He's a 30 something. I think he's 40. I can't remember off the top of my head, but he's around 40 ish years old to be the head of NASA. He's also an astronaut. Like that's cool. Like that's the kind of leadership that NASA needs.
Not a bureaucrat, not a an ex governor or a mayor or anything like that or a politician. NASA needs somebody in charge that is an explorer and that's what Jared is. So moving forward, if Jared does accept the position, if he gets the position, which he will like, there's no reason why he won't because he's what I was saying before, he's an astronaut. He's also a fighter pilot jet. He also runs a a company that sells like drones that US
fighter pilots fight against. It's like the training drones that the US fighter pilots use. So he owns a company that builds those, promotes the, produces those. And yeah, of course he's a shoe in for this NASA head position. So going forward I think he's going to do some really cool
stuff. Jared also said something to the effect of, and I have to pull this up real quick because I forgot what he said, but he said something about how NASA isn't going to be a just sending astronauts to the space station anymore or like low Earth orbit stuff in the like satellites and things like that. But he said it's going to be a new age of experimentation and also Space Flight experimentation. So check this out.
This is the article from Ars Technica written by Stephen Clark. And NASA's boss to NASA's boss to be proclaims we're about to enter an age of experimentation. You can get into a rhythm of using all of these providers to get things up very quickly. So what he's talking about is Elon Musk's SpaceX Blue origin Ula Boeing. And NASA has been doing this for a long time.
NASA has been using outside providers for a very long time, since their inception, to build the things that they need in order to do the tasks that they want to do. So if they want to go to Mars, NASA doesn't build that rocket. NASA has a private contractor build that rocket for them, and then they also have the private contractor build the Lander for Mars to their specs. So NASA goes to a private provider and says, hey, we need this Rover to do these certain
tasks, whatever those tasks are. It was mostly more than likely science based tasks. I hope for sending it to Mars like a Rover, they'll tell that to Rocketdyne or Boeing or ula or whoever is going to build this thing. And that's what they've always done. They've always done this since since the beginning. Space Shuttle. NASA didn't build that. A contractor built that. Bunch of contractors built the space shuttle. Same with the the Atlas rockets,
the Apollo program, everything. Like NASA didn't build it. Other companies built that. So what they're doing now is they're taking these privately funded companies and these are companies for profit now. NASA used to do it in old way, and the old way was you give them $5 billion to start the project, right? And if they don't get the project done with five billion, you give them another 500 million or something like that so they can finish the project.
They're like whoops, whoopsies, we still can't finish it. So they give them another 500 billion or 500 million. So you get an extra billion dollars out of it. Out of the $5 billion contract, you get 6, seven, $8 billion. That's not what they do now. They do completely different. So what they do now is the provider, say SpaceX knows what
NASA needs. They need people to go to the International Space Station, so they'll bid on it, and NASA will pick the lowest bidder that can do the job properly. That's not dangerous. So now they're going to use all of these companies, all these different companies that I mentioned before, but Jared mentioned this. You talked of commercial investment, thriving space economy, all these things that NASA was doing before.
They're going to do it at a much bigger scale because all these companies, they don't just want to make money. They want to make continuous profit because if they continue doing what they used to do, which is take that money and run, you know, they get the job done. But there's like, I can't get it done with five billion. I need 6, seven, $8 billion. They're not going to be able to do that. From now on. NASA is leaving some commercial expertise on the field, in this
case on the ground. And so here we go. Space Power Conference in Orlando says. I love all about commercial space industry right now, Isaac Man said in a discussion at the Space Force Association Space Power Conference in Orlando. They're all generally doing the same thing, which is putting a lot of their own dollars on the line because they believe in the future that it holds.
So all of these things, all these things that these companies are building, whether it's rockets or booster stages or kick stages, which is a, it's sort of like if you have a rocket and then you have like the upper stage of the rocket that goes to space, but that upper stage can't make it to a certain trajectory or a certain orbit. Kick stage goes, kicks it off to where it needs to go. So builds kick stage, ground equipment, anything that NASA needs, these people will be building it.
And they're putting their own money on the line because they have to make a profit. He says it's not just a launch. More Serbs are pursuing satellite manufacturing Earth return vehicles, which is wild to think about. An earth return vehicle instead of the ship that sends people to the space station. An earth return vehicle. A ship that could bring people back to Earth from the space station. Build one of those.
Cool. So once the first ship docks with it, they can just leave if they want to. But rockets have to be one of the most mature segments of the commercial industry. Yeah, Blue Origin is putting a ton of their own money online. I'd love everything Blue Rock Rocket Lab did as kind of another small, scrappy startup that's doing great things. And for sure, SpaceX and their approach with a fully reusable first and second stage, which is the Starship. Yeah, pretty awesome stuff.
Starship is huge. I spent ten months, 1012 months covering it at Starbase. I was on the ground reporting live every single day from the side of the road filming Starbase. And I, I'll tell you what, man, that thing is 400 feet tall. You don't realize how big it is until you actually get there. It's gigantic. But he was talking about how SpaceX is going to change the like how well these companies are going to change the
industry. Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos's company, putting their own money on the line, billions of dollars just to build a giant rocket that's similar to Spacex's Starship, which can take massive payloads to space. Things that are like the size of the space shuttle or like send a bust of space. You know, think about think about that like how big could you what kind of things would you send into space if you could just think the dream that up.
And that's what they're trying to do, whether it's through a single launch or multiple launches. That's what blue ordinance trying to do. Isaac Mitt 2 is a wealthy entrepreneur. According to Forbes, $1.9 billion wild right Polaris program, two more missions to fly with SpaceX of the players program is what I was talking about before where they send people to space. The first one was the capsule. The Dragon had a giant window at the top of it, which hasn't been
done before. The second one he did an Eva where he walked outside of the of the ship kind of just like pop the top off. It was in a vacuum. So like everybody inside the the capsule was also in the vacuum of space, climbed out of it, looked around, a little bit cool. And then he went back in. It was really, really wild. No one's done that before other than, you know, like a NASA astronaut or Russian astronaut or something like that. So Jared was the first person to
do that privately. He bought the ticket. Basically, he bought his own ticket to fly to space. And then he goes on to say the future of the players program is a little bit of a question mark right now. It may wind up on hold for a little bit. We'll have to see. But overall, it's just I'm just super passionate about humankind's future among the stars and what's approaching, because it's going to arrive a lot quicker than probably many of us think.
What's he talking about? It's going to happen soon, right? Next 10 years. Even Starship, Spacex's Starship will be in a place in the next year or so where they can start taking payloads to low Earth orbit, maybe make it around the moon in the next few years and land on the moon it within 3-4 years get to Mars. Elon wants to get to Mars in five years or so, like send his giant rocket to Mars with some stuff in it.
I don't know what the stuff's going to be, but it'll probably be supplies for a later mission or some some science equipment, we're not sure, but here we go. Shockingly, the government does do business very differently than the rest of the country, said Isaac Men. And that's true. Cost reductions enabled by using reusable rockets will allow us to experiment in really grand ways.
So basically any of these reusable rockets, they can fly to space, drop off their cargo and then fly back down to Earth, refuel, and then fly back up possibly the next 24 hours, 48 hours. So the cost reductions for that because there's not as much prep work either. So even though people think a lot of the cost is like the actual rocket launching, a ton of cost is from the ground systems, the people working there getting this place
prepped. So in like manufacturing a new rocket every time is just stupid and silly. So toss one of those rockets in the ocean. It's not a good thing, but now if with fully reusable rockets like the Falcon 9 and now the Starship and Boeing Super Heavy rocket as well, it's going to be a completely different game changing flight pattern for all these rockets. So yeah, Jared is going to be the head of going to be the head of NASA, hopefully in the next administration.
He's going to go for it. I mean, he's going to do it. It's like, of course he's going to get it, but there's there's no doubt that he's going to take that position and run with it because he is absolutely like he's perfect for that job. I don't see why he wouldn't be perfect for that job. Also, if you're here right now live, leave a comment. I want to know or leave a leave a chat.
I'd like to know what you think about Jared Isaacman and also, you know, the next administration, because I think it's going to be kind of crazy. I think it's going to be wild what happens with the next iteration of our government and the next iteration of NASA, because it's, it's an iterative process. Everything changes all the time with NASA. So, but it hasn't changed a lot in a while. So it's, it's going to be a, a pretty huge change once Jared gets his hands on the reins
there. Another thing, Elon is even richer. Elon Musk's net worth tops $400 billion, a historic first. Elon Musk, whose wealth has been turbocharged since president-elect Donald Trump's win last month, became the first person to reach $400 billion net worth, Latest milestone for the world's richest individual Elon has been the richest guy for on and off for a long time, but now he's $400 billion. Like what he's going to be the
first trillionaire. I, I think he, he or his successor will be the first trillionaire because all the automation that he's making with Tesla, SpaceX is a huge one. But I think Tesla's robots in AI are going to bump it up even higher. Maybe we'll get up to 700 billion, but that's, that's wild to think about the first trillionaire. Now, the most recent catalyst was an insider share sale privately held SpaceX, who boosts Musk's net worth by roughly $50 billion.
Could you imagine selling off shares of your company and by the end of the day, you know, or by the end of the the sell time, you're like, oh, I just made fifty bill. That's incredible. Like this guy is so wealthy. It doesn't make any sense. Like $50 billion. Do you know what that looks like? I don't. Could you imagine? I mean, $1,000,000 in like $1.00 bills, that's an, that's an insane amount of money, insane amount of dollar bills.
But $447 billion, that's wild. Musk's one day wealth jump of 62.8 billion is the largest on record. Help propel the combined fortune of the world's richest 500 people above $10 trillion. Also, for the first time, according to the index, the group's net worth are similar in size to last year's combined gross domestic products of Germany, Japan and Australia. So these people have 500 people have more money than Germany, Japan and Australia.
That's wild. Musk added 218 billion to his net worth since the start of 2024 as well. That's a nice, nice fact, $218 billion to your net worth. Of course he doesn't walk around with like $218 billion in his pocket. It's all mostly stock. But he, yeah, I just want to share this with you. Over $400 billion in net worth. I want to share this with you to show you that Elon isn't just stagnant.
He's continuing to make money, sell off shares and SpaceX, even if he had like he's always going to have a controlling share, He's always going to have power at SpaceX. But if he can continue selling shares, making the money, because he needs to make that money so he can leverage it so he can build more Starships, so he can launch more Starlinks, so the Starlinks can make him more money so we can build more Starships, so we can launch more star links, then it keeps going.
And then who's going to get launch partners with NASA? Private industry people will eventually go on Starship too. So he's selling shares of SpaceX. So all these things can happen. XAI too. It mentioned something about XA down here. Meanwhile, the valuation, the value of his artificial intelligence startup XAI is more than double to 50 billion since it last raised money in May. And that's going to XAI is going to kind of supercharge everything that Elon touches.
So I thought that was an interesting tidbit. Video cannot play to a network issue. Whatever I got network. And here's another cool thing about Tesla cyber truck has gotten approval in China. So your merit on X? Breaking news. Tesla Cybertruck has passed the specification declaration of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and is expected to enter the Chinese market in the near future. See why Foxconn on X said that and Sawyer just retweeted it.
Well, re exed it. It's always a weird thing like just shared it. They shared it on their timeline, but that's wild cyber trucks out there in the wild. I see it in the wild all the time. I drive past it all the time. Like I think it's wild looking
compared to like a regular car. So I could see in China when they're building up the cyber truck over there, building up the presence of the cyber truck, like there's going to be some crazy social presence on it on X and all the other platforms out there. I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of YouTube videos, bunch of different shorts and
different Tik Toks about it too. When they see it the first time because it is a wild thing to see if you haven't seen it in person, it's like, whoa, I think it's strikingly weird. It's like, where did this come from? So one more little tidbit here, another SpaceX thing, and this is, this is for the future of SpaceX. I know this is a SpaceX heavy episode, but I wanted to let you guys know about the cyber truck and Elon's big wealth here.
But Starbase wants to. SpaceX wants Starbase to become its own little city. So they're about 20 minutes ish away from Brownsville. It's down this long road that nobody ever goes down. If you don't go to Starbase, there's a beach at the end of it, really, really cute little beach. But really nobody ever goes down there other than to work at SpaceX or to look at Starbase and look at this. the Rockets and things you can see like right on the road, they're right there.
So there's, you know, there's there's some things that this could help with SpaceX. So here's a little bit of this Cameron County from Cathy leader is the general manager of Starbase. To continue growing the workforce necessary rapidly develop and manufacture Starship. We need the ability to grow
Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting the Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Rio Grande Valley. So it looks like taxes, things like that. Trevino, who's the local judge, said our legal and elections administration will review the petition, see whether or not it complied with all the statutory requirements and then we'll go from there. And they work really close together.
Trevino and SpaceX, they work very close together. Judge Eddie Trevino, top elected official in Cameron County. So more than likely, if they did the paperwork properly, this is going to pass easily. I mean, Cameron County needs the the tax dollars. So make it into a city and like
certain things happen. The county has to provide certain services, I'm not exactly sure what those services are, but also SpaceX has to pay certain different things to the county and to the state if they are a city. So it's basically like Star Base city. Like that's what like you name it, a city. That's crazy. More than 3400 full time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the Star Base site, according to a local impact study issued by Trevino earlier this year.
So there aren't many people that live there, but there's always about 3500 to 4000 people at Starbase like in and out all time. So it's a small city, if you could call it a city, because most of the people visit during the day and then they all take off at night. It's I mean, there are, it does, they do kind of work around the clock there, but they're different shifts and it's always busy. But out of those 3400 people, full time employees, half go in the morning or thirds I guess
and do 3 shifts or whatever. They have different shifts throughout the day. So if they are a city, like I said before, they'll do different taxes and they'll they'll be treated differently than just like a project that Elon Musk is working on down at the down at the middle of nowhere. It really is the middle of nowhere too. It's like you don't want to go down there if you don't have to. And it's, there's no resources
anywhere. There's no bathrooms, there's no like convenience stores, there's no gas stations. So it's out in the middle of nowhere. But there's 3400 people there, you know, throughout the day, which is kind of wild to think about because in a city of like couple 100,000 people of Brownsville, there's people all over the place all the time. But when you go to Star Base, there are people there, but it's very desolate. So I don't know how like becoming a city works or like
what you need. Like what are the what are the qualifications? Like? Do you need a population of certain amount of people in order to become a city? Because it looks like maybe SpaceX might have that amount. I don't know. They might. But 3400 people is not that big of a city, man. I grew up in a town a little bit smaller than that. It's not that many people just say, just saying. So that's all I have for today. Everybody. I want to thank you for becoming
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Hit the subscribe button and the like button if you like this kind of content because not only will show you my stuff, it'll show you stuff from other people that make Elon Musk content that you might not be aware of. So thanks again, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other and I'm out of here. Take care. I got it. I don't even have an end screen. I never have an end screen. I should probably make one of those, huh? There we go, There we go. That's kind of the end screen
right there, right? Bye everybody.