So it is my great honor to introduce a man who needs no introduction. I'm not sure where he's at, but I'm sure he's going to come in here somewhere.
Where is he?
Okay, there you go, a gentleman who we can call Elon. In everybody, at least in this country, I know exactly who you're talking about. But mister Elon Musk, he's the CEO, lead designer of SpaceX. Everyone I think knows this. SpaceX is an amazing commercial company. It's the first company to launch commercial rocket and to low Earth orbit with their
Falcon one launch. Then in two thousand and eight they were one of the winners of a contract to bring services to the International Space Station, the first commercial company to birth with the International Space Station bringing supplies. They're also the first commercial company to return a sizeable returned vehicle with all the components still intact, which is very import to us back to the surface of the Earth. And so it's an amazing company. Has done a great
job and continues to push the boundaries. You'll hear from Elon, but his interest really is not so much in lower Earth orbit as it is going beyond low Earth orbit and making sure humanity will continue to live by exploring beyond beyond Earth. Elon has a varied history of things that he's been involved in. This was This is one of the things that makes it so exciting to have this conversation with him today. He's not one dimensional space guy.
He's involved in Tesla Motors, which he is a co founder and CEO, and also a major player in the design efforts and what they choose to go build and how. Of course, he was a co founder.
Of PayPal and zip too.
He's deeply involved in a number of other industries as well. And so it's my great honor to welcome Elon Muska to the stage. Thanks for coming, appreciate it. Okay, well, these are great chairs, you guys.
Look at those chairs you're in.
Let's see. So Elon, you've you and I were gonna have a little chat this morning. We said it was gonna be a fireside chat. So minus the fireside I guess we're ready again. I've, as you heard, I've encouraged folks to ask a few questions along the way, but I have a few, a few questions I thought to get us started. So the first one, which is probably on everybody's mind is perhaps you want to discuss a little bit about the recent loss of the dragon in the Falcon nine here on SpaceX seven.
Sure, well, I mean I think it's it's obviously it's a huge loads to to SpaceX and and or do we take these missions incredibly seriously the invest Everyone that can engage in the investigation of SpaceX is very very focused on that. And in this case, the the data does seem to be quite difficult to interpret, Like whatever happened is is clearly not not a sort of simple
straightforward thing. So we want to spend as much time as possible just reviewing the data, obviously going over it with with NASA and with the FA and with the number of other customers, and just sort of seeing what to feedback everyone has based on their prior experience, to see if we can get to what the most likely root causes, look at look at both what we think most likely happened and then anything that's a close call, and try to address all of those things and maximize
the probably of success for future missions.
Any hints on where you think the problem lies, well.
And I know that there's there's media in the audience, so you have to be there, right.
I never really learned that, but that is a lesson working on.
So so it's yeah, I mean, I you know, the.
I think, I think.
I think we'll be able to say something.
More definitive towards the end of the week.
At this point, really the only thing that's really clear is that there was some kind of over pressure events in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank, but the exact cause and the sequence of events, there's there's still.
No clear theory that fits with all the data.
So we have to determine if some of the data is a measurement error of some kind or whether there is actually a theory that matches the sort of what.
Appeared to be conflicting data points.
Okay, very good. I'll just make a comment. The tweets you put out regularly, particularly when events like this happen, are really useful to everybody. We really do appreciate it. You'd be amazed at how many folks quote what you said and how glad they are that you just step right out and at least give some sign about what's going on and that you know we'll get through it. Things are going well.
So we appreciate that absolutely, and for sure, as soon as we think we've got a clear line on what happened and we've sort of cross checked it with as many experts as we can, and certainly appreciate that the feedback from NASA on this front, very.
Much appreciate it. We'll certainly put a put out that story.
I'm only reticence about saying something quite yet is I don't want to say something that subsequently turns out to be a miss misunderstanding of the situation.
Oh yeah, absolutely understand that.
So one of the questions that I asked myself regularly is at what point does all this government help hurt? So this event occurred, and we have you have the NASA folks there from from about three different programs that intend to use your services, ISS being one of them. You have the FAA that's UH, that's involved, the range folks are there without feeling like you're giving your customers
a hard time? How is that interaction? And what what should we consider doing differently so that we in those areas where we can help, we are helpful, and in those those areas where we're really keeping you from getting your job done, we can modify ourselves.
Yeah, Actually, I think the interaction with NASA has been great this far. The big the biggest challenges that there are a lot of inquiries coming in simultaneously, so it's it's hard to sort of keep you know, respond to respond to everyone right away. But but actually it seems
to have gone fairly well. The biggest thing that's needed in the in the sort of short term is the ability to sort of gather all the data create a very precise timeline so that you know, by by the melosecond, we know what each sensor was reading, and we can
correlate that with the ground video. And actually, like one of the biggest challenges is matching the things to the exact time, you know, because when you're talking about you know, a matter of meloseconds, you know, being able to say, what is the groundtrack video compared to the data as received by the you know, by by the ground station from the rocket, and then taking into account for exactly the actual time taking to generate a packet of information,
When was that sensor read, when was it encoded into a packet, and when was that packet sent to the ground When when you're doing in in mollerseconds, that all that stuff actually makes quite a big difference.
So that's the biggest sort of effort.
We've been engaged thus far is just putting together a super detailed timeline and then just making sure that we have the sequence of events down as precisely as possible.
That's what we're working on.
And but but actually, certainly with the interaction we've had with with Nason with us has actually been quite good thus far, and we've explained that this is what we're doing, and then we very much welcome any feedback or input or a view of the data that would lead us to a better understanding of the circumstances.
I thought we had a very productive discussion back when we had the Engine one anomaly, and so I found it'd be very useful. But that's a perspective from a NASA perspective, so it's always interesting to know your perspective of that.
Yeah, it's seems to be quite quite good actually. Right now, so.
You're building the last couple launches, you've had landing legs, and you've been working on landing the first stage back eventually to shore. Can you talk a little bit about that and which your vision is for that and for SpaceX in general.
As you go forward.
Sure, Well, the overwatching goal of SpaceX is to try to advance the state of space transport, advanced space transport technology to a point where well it get as far along the path as we can to where space travel is hopefully commonplace at some point in the future, and where we can send large numbers of people and cargo to other planets. And you know, it's like that's the sort of thing that that needs to happen for humanity
to have a great future in space. So we want to keep pushing that, and I think like a key to to that future is reusability. So that's why we've worked quite hard on reusability, and unfortunately we haven't succeeded yet. And in fact, the last launch ironically was we we actually had the best chance of landing the vehicle on the on the sort of grown ship that's keeping station
in the Atlantic. So we're actually quite sort of geared up for hopefully this would be a really great launch and unfortunately ended up being the opposite on my birthday of all things, a real downer you'll remember it though, definitely low point. But but but I do think in the in the future launches that that we've got a decent chance of on the ship and then bringing the boostage back to land. And then the next challenge, of course, is trying to figure out how to if efficiently effectively
reuse it. And it is designed for easy reuse in theory, but we've got to see what the stage looks looks like when it comes back to one piece. We have been able to over the last few years to do a number of vertical takeoff and landing tests of hardware that's essentially in the flight configuration, so we know we can we can handle the terminal phase if you know, if things go right, we can take off land no problem.
So it's just a question of completing all the pieces and hopefully later this year won't be able to do that, but that that's key. So but of course that doesn't address upper stage reuse, but it addresses boost stage reuse, which is sort of seventy percent to eight percent of the of the of the CRS and but I think would be a great step towards lowering the cost of space transport.
So you know, if you look at your history, I guess zip to PayPal.
These are.
Largely software type efforts. Now you've got Tesla electric cars, you're building a battery plant solar City. I guess you're involved in solar City. So why space?
It seems.
Space to me and just what I rate we with you seems to be more of a passion than the others or are businesses. But I I can't tell why space?
Why are you?
Why do you think it's important for us to be having access to lowerth orbit?
Well, the I mean actually technically, I mean with with the.
Tesla and Solar City, they're about helping to solve the sustainable energy problem.
And uh so.
We're trying to make progress in that front on the with those companies. With with SpaceX, it's uh trying to help solve the kind of space bearing problem.
I mean I I I.
Think that a a future where we're a space bring civilization and a and a multiplanet species is very exciting, inspiring, awesome future. And in order for that to happen, we've
we've got to dramatically improve the cost of spaceflight. And uh and that's that's why why SpaceX exists, is to try to try to lower the cost of space flight, which we've made some progress in doing, but still I would call up improvements thus far evolutionary, not revolutionary, and but with with a lot of continued work, and I think there's the potential for for order of magnitude or greater improvements. Reasonability being key to all of that, of course.
And yeah, and then hopefully if you know, if we want to see if we can keep improving the constant space flight and eventually that trend is in the right direction, that could be leading to a city on Mars, and certainly along the way a lot of activity in low with orbit and the Moon and you.
Know, lots of other exciting things.
So one of the things we're trying to do with the International Space Station is try to figure out which industries will prosper from the use of lower orbit to try to understand or help grow the economy.
Essentially in lower th orbit.
And folks who are doing that are all taking risks today. Our job is to try to reduce the risk as much as we can near term so that they can get the information they need to really have a business case for the future. But everyone's trying toulate a risk. So is there an e long Musk philosophy of risk Bursted benefit? And when you when you think is the
right time to jump in. I mean, what is your thought on on how to approach new industries, innovative areas and when's the right time to jump in or not? Or do you just is there no crystal ball or is it a crystal ball or wigi board? I mean, how do you how do you figure out what you should go after?
Well, definitely the course much more reliable than the crystal ball, So the yeah, I mean, I don't really like risk for risk sake or anything. It's and I do think that all the things are are very risky with a low chance of success. But if you want to try to come up with an introvertive breakthrough, that's kind of that's gonna.
Be how it is.
I an anything which which is significantly innovative is gonna come with the significant risk of failure. And but you know, if you you've got to take big chances in order for the potential for a big.
Positive outcome, and.
You know, just if and if if, I mean if if the outcome is exciting enough, then then taking a.
Big risk is worthwhile. Ye, it's really our approach it.
But w but then once executing down a path, I actually do my absolute best to reduce uh risk, you know, cause or or or to improve the po another way of saying, to improve the pobality of success because uh wh when you try to do something that is very very risky, uh that you ha, you you you have to spend a lot of effort trying to reduce that risk as you emblock down that path. I mean when wa, when I start as SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were very low. I thought we'd most likely fail,
but I thought, well, we should give it a try. Nonetheless, and and then I'm not sure if you know what what preceded SpaceX because the why I got into the space.
I remember, you're trying to purchase a vehicle two from our Russian cor That's what I'm talking about.
Well, actually it was.
The reason I got into space was to try to increase NASA's budget.
Well the.
And but so I'll tell you so the roundabout way I thought that might be accomplished was I thought, well, if if NASA's budget was more, was larger than we could do more in space exploration. And I thought, well, what particularly if we could get the public excited about
sending people tomorrows? And I thought, well, if I could do a small greenhouse and send that to the surface of Mars with seasons in nutrient jail, and you hydrate the gael and landing you have a little miniature greenhouse, and then you'd have The public tends to get excited about precedents and superlatives. So if we like the you know, sort of first life on Mars, the furthest lives ever traveled, and you get people sort of excited about, well, but where we send people.
There, like the health plants, we should send people, you know.
And then I thought, well that could if that could get the public really excited about sending people tomorrows, then that would translate into congressional support for a bigger massa budget.
That was the goal.
And then I didn't have enough money to buy and I thought that that outcome would have a hard per cent chance of no commercial success.
So the harp cent chance of losing all the money.
So compared to that SpaceX, which I thought maybe had a ten percent chance of success, that was an improvement.
There You go, well, that makes that makes good sense. So are you still thinking about that? I do remember that conversation. This was the idea where you used Martian regulars you send these self contained habitats, if not habitat.
And grow like commuter across or something.
But just to prove the concept, Yeah, just to get it.
I mean, the real goal was to get the public excited. You get some engineering data about what does it take to maintain a little habitat on Mars type of thing, but the main thing would be to get the public excited and you know, get people to be you know, the public to be in the paper of a bigg ass a budget.
It's the goal.
And well, again, God bless you, that's a worthy goal.
I hope you don't saw so.
Commercial crew. So you've been selected as one of the providers for the commercial crew. Can you tell us a little bit about where that's headed for you as a company, and perhaps maybe how affected your company, if it has, if it's changed the thing, and how you approach space.
I think things seem to be going fairly well on the commercial crew front.
I mean the I mean overall.
I mean, I mean that there are small disagreements here and there, but overall, I like, I think we very much agree with the way it's being done. And yeah, I think it's it's it's pretty pretty good. I mean, there are a few things where the like it seems like the amount of of sort of massive volume reserved for poop is too high. Sorry, but that's you know,
there's like little things like that. We're like, well, are they really going to do that much group, But it's it's quite it's quite a large volume, but really it is, so but I could really they're pretty small disagreements. So I think that it seems to be pretty pretty sensible.
And then we did the orange board.
Test earlier this year, which at the Cave, which actually went pretty well, and yeah, so things are going along getting pretty exciting. And yeah, I think there's also some potential use for Dragon too as a science delivery platform, you know, going to sort of delivering payloads to Mars or other places.
We're in discussion with.
Other parts of NASA about some of those ideas because the propulsive landing, you know, it could really lower the cost of getting science instruments to various places in the Solar System.
So that's kind of exciting.
So I'm gonna come back to that in just a second. But commercial the crew vehicle versus the dragging cargo vehicle, clearly there are some significant differences fairly innovative approach. I think to aboart testing where traditionally you've seen the just and rocket on top. It's a pullar versus the pusher technique where you utilize fuel that you otherwise would use for the right on orbit, but of course you're not
going there, So very innovative approach. Are there other areas where you feel like you're from an innovation standpoint, you're making some significant strides with the crew vehicle?
Yeah, I think the the the big items for well, the biggest item really for dragon Io is the ability to do a propulsive landing and it's basically having heavy thrusters on board. So those same heavy thrusters can then
do the abort but retain the engines. So instead of in a normal sort of creud mission like take to take the Soyers for example, that have a tractor motor on the nose of the vehicle, that would have to be basically a rocketential on the nose that would have to be discarded on every flight, which is a potential reliability issue. And it and then you have obviously unable to reuse the the the the aborted system, and yeah, and it adds it adds a bunch of bunch of mass.
But but then in addition, those same thrusters can be used for propulsive landing, so you can achieve a precise propulsive landing which on on land or water, which is I think a significant improvement.
And I mean.
It's sort of also it's sort of like really I think feels feels more like the future to to have that that capability. And then, as I mentioned it poor it can be extended to uh do paler delivery to the Moon or Mars or other places. Because of the generalized cape ability of propulsive landing to land land almost anywhere very good.
So, uh, let's go back to dragon. At one point you had a conversation talked a little bit about something I think was virtuos Dragon Lab, where you go to lowerth orbit and do what I assumed was sort of kind of research and then and bring the vehicle back. Are you still pursuing that or something like that. Is this an area where you think that there is a potential.
I think that that there is some potential for to essentially just take things to love with orbit and then bring them bring them back, you know, after a few weeks or something like that.
It's it's not a huge area of attention. It's at space X, but I think we might do a few missions like that.
But yeah, I mean Dragon is is very much sort of its primary optimize optimization is as a transport vehicle to and from the space station and uh and so things like Dragon Lab and then science delivery platform I think are interesting extensions of that.
And I think as as Dragon to.
First flies and then gets into regular flights, I think there'll probably will be some more applications that that people could think of, particularly since with Dragon two the reusability of the vehicle should be quite high.
So if we have reusability.
Of the Dragon spacecraft and reusability of the booster, and somebody is willing to sort of do a bunch of flights with with the fully reused system, there's the potential for much lower cost access to space. There is a bit of a chicken and egg challenge because, like the there's a certain amount of fixed costs that have to be carried no matter what, so the the module costs of launch or the cost of each subsequent launch can
drop quite significantly. So long as the launch rate per year is high, it stays up.
Yeah, of course, it adds other challenges to the system.
Yeah, trying to fly. It's often as you that you need to make that yup.
Well, let's see. I I don't wanna bore everybody with all my questions. And we had talked about if folks had any questions in the audience.
Let's see this. Oh wow, they're not bashful. That's good.
So I don't know if we're gonna need microphones, but but i'll I'll start here.
So I would like to ask question.
It's a little love my question.
Because, uh, you are like a kind of mentor and a visionary, and you'll give hope to a lot of people around the globe because when they see you, they realize that they can realize they dreams. But my question is different. Uh, when you are a dreamer, when you are too uh, when you are dreamer, when you are a visionary, of course you have your vision, but there are moments that sometimes maybe you stop believing in this vision,
especially in the moments of some problems or failure. So could you tell me, and could you tell also to thousands of people who maybe will be motivated by your answer? What keeps you fighting for your vision? What helps you to reach your gym.
Well, I mean, I think I'm kind of constitutionally just thereed to just keep going.
I don't know, it's a.
Yeah, I mean it just I I don't know. I mean it Certainly there are times when things don't go well and then that's quite desperating for sure, and so then it's difficult to proceed with the same level of enthusiasm. But but I do think, like I do think the things that we're doing are you know, pretty important to the future. And if we don't succeed, then you know, there's well there's there's not it's not clear what other
things would succeed. And if if we don't succeed, then we will be certainly pointed to as a reason why people shouldn't even try for these things. So I think it's important that we do whatever it's necessary to keep going.
Okay, And last question, last question, So in two thousand and four, when you are going to burny Men with your cousin, you were thinking, there is a sun and let's make energy out of it.
Yeah, and I would like.
To ask you why do you believe so in solar energy and in and clean tech energies and also in sustainable energy, and the last question I will not ask any more questions what will be the role of solar in the exploration of Mars.
Sure, I think solar energy is probably fairly significant for Mars. And what's going to be quite important is having a very lightweight solar system that you know, both volumetrically and grabhometrically dance. So actually you were sort of playing with the different concepts like you know that like thing, that party thing where you've inflated and it rolls out.
But the thing, like what one of.
The solar concepts is is to have like a big role that you just basically inflate and it rolls out with with with like really thin solar panels on it. But but it's it's gonna be pretty important because really you either got to do that or nuclear and you know nuclear has has these challenges, but put for solar, it's pretty straightforward. So I think I think it so al is very important to the future exploration of Mars for sure.
So thank you and I wish you that your next Thursday is very successfuls A last.
Okay, let's go, let's go, okay, go ahead, bel team.
My name is Valentina NOVAEF. I am from the United Rocket and Space Corporation, which shortly will become a part of State Corporation ross Cosmos. So I made this one quest to the West because I'd like to ask one question of you and Mask what is his secret to become a successful businessman in the space industry, and then coming back to Russia to tell Russian businessman there is a way to become a taikoun and space industry. So seriously speaking, I'd like to ask you when you started
your business, was the government your partner? Was it useful in what areas? And so there are always two sides on is it going as there were times when you had to fight bureaucracy?
Thank you? Sure? Well.
Well, I should say with respect to starting a space business, it's definitely not the easiest environment to start a business. And I think if most people were to rank order what's the highest retinent investment, I mean, space would not be very good. I mean it's I'm very pro space, So it's like you know, but it's I mean, that's just true that like if you you know, start a hedge fund, or if you're in like many other industries, then it's much easier to make money than the space industry.
This is not the easiest wanted to make money and it's yeah, car industry also quite difficult. So the in fact, I mean when starting SpaceX, the the joke I heard the jokes this, this joke so often it was ridiculous. The joke was how do you make a small portion in the space industry? And the punch line, of course
being started with a large one. Yeah, And I got to a point I'd heard the joke so many times that I would just get to the punchline and say like, well, I wanted to figure out how to turn a large fortune.
Just more one. That was my goal, And they're like, wow, how did you know that?
So yeah, I mean I do think there's that there is opportunity in space, but but it is, it's it's it's it's tough going. I think if but I think if, if, if SpaceX and other companies can can lower the cost of transport to orbit and perhaps beyond, then there's a lot of potential for entrepreneurship at the destination. I mean, you can think of it like the like the Union Pacific railway. You know, before there was the univer Cific railway, it was real hard to have commerce between the West
coast and the East coast. It'd go by wagon or a really long sailing journey. But once there was the transport, then there were huge opportunities. And now look at sort of you know, the California and Washington State and all the industries that have been created in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. But you've got to have that fundamental transport element otherwise
there's just it's really tricky. So we're trying to establish that transport element, make it easier to get to lower orbit, and hopefully in the future, make it easier to get to the Moon or Mars. And I'm an idea of this long term vision of like if there was affordable transport to a place like Mars, I think the entrepreneurial opportunities would be phenomenal, you know, because there'd be people that would want to create everything from the first pizza
joint to the first iron ore factory. To be like just an enormous amount of opportunity for people to create things on Mars. And that'd be different things on Mars. Some of the things on Mars would be different they wouldn't even imagine on Earth.
It would be very exciting.
So I think that's that's really key to making things happen in space is you've got to have someplace. You've gotta have some place to go in some place in some way to get there.
So so along those lines, did you read Andy Ware's book The Marshal?
Yeah? Yeah, it was good. What do you think I thought it was?
It was pretty excellent, certainly one of the most realistic books on Mars that that I've read.
I mean, like, there were a few things like the wind force.
On Mars is not really that high. It's not going to knock you over or anything. It's high obviously high velocity, but low force. But overall I thought it was pretty cool. And apparently it's been made into a movie.
And everything, so you don't you don't have a cameo on that one too.
I don't have a cameo on that one.
I'm a little worried that it might not make people too keen on going to Mars.
This looks really hard.
I think we need to show about how Mas is awesome and it's like the wild West, and you've got the gun slingers and like the cool cowboys and.
That kind of thing.
All right, maybe you got to write a book too. Let's see, there's a question over here.
Hi there, my name is Anita Goel. I'm here at out of Harvard and MIT. You run a company called NATO biosim So, in your vision and dream to achieve low cost space travel, how do you allocate your estments between engineering and essentially driving down the cost of existing technology versus investing in new breakthrough physics things like breakthrough propulsion physics anti gravity. What's your vision in the bifurcation of those two kinds of portfolios.
Well, we don't spend a ton of time on new physics. I mean the I think with current physics this huge potential, so rather than rely on a breakthrough, which we you know, really it's difficult to envision what that breakthrough would exactly be.
Or even and exactly be.
The I'm quite confident that with what we know of current physics, sort of just going with the kind of you know, where the standard model of physics is today, that there are dramatic improvements possible in spacelight. And I think with the you know, certainly with with falcon iine, I think we can make improvements and then with our next generation rocket system, which is still you know, many
years away, that'll be a deep cryo METHYLOCKX system. I think I think we can achieve full reusability and that that's really that's a that's a huge potential for you know, like maybe a two order of magnitude reduction in the class of spaceline. So as far as R and D is concerned.
Like we we we we.
We we hire great engineers as fast as we can find them. So it's like the it's not that easy to find, but I should say great ish is with the sort of like the right mindset and everything, we we hire at the at the at the maximum rate that we can find people that we think would would really be an asset to the team, so there's no limitation on that.
Okay, we're here. Hi.
My name is Zachary Malton, a student from babs In College. I just want to say it's an order to be here. I read Ashley Vancy's biography about you. One thing that really was intriguing to me was the super Draco engine for the Dragon V two that was used to printed out of three day technology vision using that technology more in the future and when you first splace exploration and do you think they'll how about affect the costs in terms of getting to Mars anything like that.
Yeah.
Absolutely, So, as you lud to, we we actually print the super Draco engines, so they're printed out of titanum in a canal, and that actually allows us to.
Reduce the cost.
Of those engines quite a bit, in particular because we can print integral cooling channels. So when you've got an hour glass chamber and you've got cooling channels in the wall of the chamber, where the whole wall consists of cooling channels, it's onally quite difficult to create that thrust chamber and nozzle because you've got to create an inner jacket outer jacket kind of machine the inner jacket it's
and then braise the whole thing together. It's real pain and you've got a bunch of joints in there to make it all work. So with printing, you can print something that you can't make by any other means, so it actually ends up being lighter and cheaper than if we're built it by traditional methods. For our next generation engine, which we call the Rafter, which as mentioned is sort of a it's a it's a deep crime of methologue.
So what I mean by that is the methane and oxygen are cool too close to their freezing points, so not not far from the freezing point as opposed to close to their walling point, which is more which is normally the case. The you know, with that engine, we're trying to print as much as possible. It's it's a big The biggest limitation on three printing right now is the size ovelope, So there's limit on how big we
can print something. But we're able to print the turbopump components and much of the injected not the whole thing, but many of the critical parts we can print, So that actually helps us in speeding up the development. So instead of waiting for castings to be developed, which can take several months, and then if the casting is wrong, you've got to iterate in the casting, and each iteration
we can take several months. With printing we can have those iterations can be reduced to a matter of weeks or months, so that that actually helps with the speed of developments as well.
See are we here? Hi? I'm Ros Spungehock with a company called High Orbit.
I wondered if you could give us a little bit of an update on what's going on with the hyper loop and.
Is there any overlap between the worker doom of SpaceX and hyperop technology.
Yeah, SpaceX is not.
Neither I nor SpaceX are doing anything to try to commercialize the hypher loop. There are I think at least two, maybe more than two companies that have formed that are completely independent of me or SpaceX that are working towards commercializing the hypher loop technology or high blop idea or design.
What what SpaceX is doing is We're going to just create a little student competition for higher loop ideas, so kind of like around the way that Formula SAE works, where students can come up with a design and compete against each other to design the best pod. So what what SpaceX will do is just construct about a mile long low pressure tube near nearly vacuum two basically in which students can kind of raise their pods. So it's just basically to support get get students excited about engineering.
That's the only involvement of SpaceX myself with the hyperlib at this point.
Okay, over here, well, I'm Paul Kastagno mus sociologist, and I'm writing a book about the International Space Station. How would you describe the scientific value of the International Space Station and where would you draw the line between luxury and need when it comes to space exploration.
Well, I mean for space I mean I really spend all of my time thinking about just how to get to the space station. To be honest, I I I actually hadn't even really seen a proper movie of the inside of the space station until I went to see the preview of the new Imax thing that's coming out. And it's amazing, Like when that Space Station Imax movie exact people are gonna have blown away.
It's awesome.
I actually bought my whole team at at space X to go go see the preview of the of the IMAX movie. And I mean it, it's like it is a very unique laboratory because this is the only thing that's in sort of micro gravity, that's above the Earth's atmosphere, and you can learn a lot about basically human physiology, uh and two experiments that you can't really do any any other lab. And you know, and you can have to bring scientists up and they can actually work in
this incredibly unique lab. So I think that there's a lot to be game there and and I think it just you can't sort of, you know, ignore the coolness factor of it. Like that's like people think it's pretty cool.
So I think it's pretty cool.
And you know, the the the public wanna have something going on in space, uh that that involves people, and yeah, and it's it's just I don't know, it's the coolest thing going on in space. So there's a lot of value that.
You know, we we we try to to uh sells the wrong word. It's the word we use, but sells really the wrong word. We're trying to get people to recognize that there's a platform in Lowers orbit and that, uh, this is important. What's done in Lower's orbit has benefit to to uh those of us on Earth that will never actually go to space. But in doing that, you trying to get their interest level. And part of their interest level is the cool factor that you talked about.
And and I've always kind of struggled with that being sort of a black and white. I I understand and the purpose in my head, that's why I joined NASA, right, But over the years, this is one of the things that I've started to recognize is important. So my question to you is did we I've heard a rumor that for the suits for commercial crew that you wanted to play and role in that and so is that true?
And is there some reason behind the design of the suit that you want to personally be involved in other than cruise safety.
Yeah.
I think we've actually spent a lot of effort on the spacesuit design, on both the functionality and the aesthetics.
But I think just getting.
It's actually really hard because if you just sort of optimize functionality, it's one thing. If you optimize for aesthetics, it doesn't work. Like you know, there's things that see movies, they don't work. So the so it's like, okay, how do we make something that looks cool, antworks and with with with a key uh goal here of being being that you know, when people see that spaceally, they want them to think, yeah, I want to wear that thing one day.
Yeah that looks awesome. So that's that's that's the reason for it. Very good.
Let's see, we'll do a couple more questions and then let's let's can we get back in the back here or do we have somebody else here already with the microphone. All right, go ahead, thank you.
I'm Alex Pearlman. I'm with Boston Magazine and I'm writing for Advice today. I was hoping that you could give us a little bit of an update on the most recent news with the idea of putting satellites to provide internet to developing countries and unconnected people.
Sure.
So we're still at the early stages of it's sort of a big leo constellation munication idea, and we're hopeful, hopefully going to launch get a test satellite next year. And but but I think the long term potential of
it is is pretty pretty great. But I don't want to overplay or overstate, you know, things quite you know that this you know, or any stage of the game, really, but the long term goal is to create a comprehensive global communication system that's that provides high bandwidth, low latency connectivity anywhere in the world and provides cross links through the satellites so that you can have improved long distance Internet.
It's one of the things that sort of your lize when you look at this is that you can actually have a more direct path through space and you can and photons move faster upon what fiber optic material.
They're running through.
Photons actually move about forty to fifty percent faster in vacuum than they.
Do in fiber optic cables.
And if you look at the way that the fiber optic cables go, they trace the outlines of the continents and they go through many repeaters and routers and everything. So if you want to say, communicate from a server in California to one in South Africa, it's a very very long route and sort of very roundabout path, and it's a high latency, low photonic speed, and you can actually have that communication be quite a bit faster if
it's in space. So I think there's there's the potential for doing a fabet of long distance internet activity as well as providing.
Bandwidth broadly.
But it's also worth saying that a lot of companies have tried this and kind of broking their pick on it, and I think we we want to be really careful about how we delivered, about trying to make this thing work and not not overextend ourselves. So we're being s we're being, you know, fairly careful about it. But I I do think this is something that should be built and would be quite good to have.
Well.
In our case, the the communications technology would be substantially more advanced. In the past, we'll say attempts like tealdeesic h the the the electronics of the day were very low bandwidth, I mean really analog or barely digital, and they weren't very high bandwidth. So she said it really didn't compete with stage with terrestrial phones. In the case utilities they were looking to compete with or or to address cell needs. That the system we're talking about would
not attempt to compete with celluar needs. So for example, it wouldn't compete directly with say Iridium, which is which which can talk directly to a handset. Our system would seem to would seek to talk to a small user terminal that's about the size of a pizza box, or much like you know current dishes that are the satellite dishes. But but it will be flat because we have faced ray antenna that's tracking the satellites. But you could mount it in a window or just anywhere outside as long.
As you can see the sky. It would work.
See back here, we'll take our last question back here.
Hey Elon, thanks for coming out. I would like to show you. We brought a virtual reality camera here. It's record for the first time. We have a small start up in San Francisco called space VR, and we believe that virtual reality is the future of space exploration because you can put people on the very cutting the very front of every every expiration mission. Is that something that you've given much thought or have any opinions on?
Well, I've gone I've perceived the vicial reality demos at Oculus and at Valve, and it's pretty impressive. You can sort of imagine if that's extrap late into the future, it's really gonna super feel like you're there. And I wonder if some people are never gonna want to take that all. Honestly, it's like it's pretty I mean, it's pretty entrancing. But I do think it'd be quite exciting to do that for a space as well. Yeah, do you have a set up here?
Okay? It's right there? Wow, Okay, cool? Okay, w where are you based in? W Where? But where are you based? Okay?
I think maybe today is gonna be tricky, but uh but but maybe uh if since you're based in California, uh, I could we could range something in I you know, in the coming weeks.
Tell you alright, let's see, Elan, we'll uh we'll call it a a conference.
Uh.
I wanted to first, uh, thank you very much. You've been very genius with your time and we uh you know, from the moment I called you, you were all in and UH it's really this open conversation and your your thoughts on uh on the on what's in front of us that uh really excites us all in this room. So thank you very much for your time. We really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you. Thanks tiring me alright, alright, thank