People don't underpla is one of the biggest threats of the future of human civilization, and that is what it's going on right now, which is not great. I mean, we really want to wake up the morning and look forward to the future. We want to be excited about what's going to happen, and and life cannot simply be about sort of solving one miserable problem after another. I read At the same time, I want to want to caution against complacency, so I can't epsize that that're not As long as we push hard
and are not complacent. Um, the future is going to be great. Don't worry about it. I'm curious about your timelines and how you predict and how comes. Some things are so amazingly on the money, and some art so when it comes to predicting sales of Tesla vehicles, for example, you were scoffed in twenty fourteen because no one since Henry Ford with the Model T
had had come close to that kind of growth rate for four cars. You were scoffed, and you actually hit five hundred thousand cars and five hundred ten thousand or whatever. Pretty but five years ago, last time you came to Ted we Um, I asked you about full self driving and you said, yep, this very year where I am confident that we will have a car going from LA to New York without any intervention. Yeah. I don't want to blow your mind, but I'm not always right. UM. So talk
talks between those too. Why why why has full self driving in particular been so hard to predict? I mean, the thing that really got me and I think it's going to get a lot of other people, is that there are just so many false storms with with self driving. Um, where you think you think you've got the problem, I have a handle on the problem, and then nope, it turns out you just hit a ceiling um and uh, because what would if you if you would applied the progress? The
progress looks like a log curve. So it's like, yeah, a series of log curves. So most boil in our log curve business, suppose. But it goes it goes up sort of you know, it's sort of a fairly straightway, and then it starts tailing off and and and you start getting
diminishing returns. Yeah, and you're like, oh, this it was trending up and now it's sort of curving over and not and and you you start getting to these what I call local local maxima where you don't realize basically how dummy were that's and then and then and then it happens game so um and ultimately um these things you know in retrospect they seem obvious, but in order to solve full self driving properly, you actually just you have to solve real
world AI. Um. Yeah, because you see, like what other road networks designed to work with the designed to work with a biological neural net our brains, um, and with vision our eyes, and so in order to make it work with computers, you basically need to solve real world AI and vision because because we need we need cameras and silicon neural nets in order to have to have self driving work for a system that was designed for eyes and
biological neural nets, you know we need I guess when you put it that way, sort of like quite obvious that the only way to solve for self driving is to solve real world AI and sophisticated vision. Or what do you feel about the current architecture? Do you think you have an architecture now where where there is a chance for the logrithmic curve not to tail off any any
time soon. Well, I meantally these these maybe an infamous last words, but I actually am confident that we will solve it this year, that we will exceed Uh, you're like, what the probability of an accident? At what point do you exceed that of the average person? Right, I think we will exceed that this year. But but you but but but you're behind the scenes looking at the data. You're seeing enough improvement to believe that this
year timeline is real. Yes, that's what it seems like. I mean, like I say, you know, we could be here talking again in a year. It's like, well, another year went by and it didn't happen. But I think this, I think this is the year. And so in general, when when people talk about elon elon time, I mean it sounds like like you can't just have a general rule that if you predict
that something will be done in six months. Actually what you what we should imagine is it's going to be a year or it's like two x or three x. It depends on the type of prediction. Some things, I guess, things involving software at you know, AI whatever are fundamentally harder to predict than others. Is there an element that you actually deliberately make aggressive prediction timelines to drive people to be ambitious. Without that, nothing gets done well.
I generally believe in terms of internal timelines that we want to set set the most aggressive timeline that we can UM, because there's sort of like a low of gases expansion, where for schedules where whatever time you set, it's not going to be less than that. It's very rare that will be less than that. UM. And as far as my predictions I concerned. UM, what what has to happen in the media is that they will report all the
wrong ones and ignore all the right ones right UM. And or you know when when when writing an article about me, I've had a long career in multiple industries. If you if you list my sins, I sound like the worst person on earth. But if you put those against the you know, the things I've done right, it makes much more sense. You know. So essentially, the longer you do anything, the more mistakes that that that you will make cumulatively, which if you sum up those mistakes will sound like
I'm the worst predictor ever. But for example, for it tells La vehicle growth. I said, I think we're doing fifty percent, and we've we've done eighty percent. Yes, so, but they don't mention that one. So, I mean, I'm not sure what my exact track record is on predictions. They're more optimistic than pessimistic, but they're not all optimistic. Some of them are exceeded, probably more or later, but they they do come
true. It's very rare that they do not come true. It's sort of like, you know, uh, you know, if there's some radical technology prediction. But the point is not that it was a few years late, but that it happened at all. Yeah, that's the that's the more important part. So it feels like at some point in the last year, seeing the progress on understanding that the AI, the Tesla AI, understanding the world
around it led to a kind of an Ahlm moment. It does, because you really surprised people recently when you said, probably the most important product development going on at Tesla this year is this robot Optimus. Yes, many companies out there have tried to put out these robots, have been working on them four years, and so far no one has really cracked it. There's no mass adoption robot in people's homes. There are some in manufacturing, but it's
like I would say that no one's kind of really cracked it. What is it something that happened in the development of full self driving that gave you the confidence to say, you know what, we could do something special? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you know, it took me a while to sort of realize that in order to solve self driving, you really needed to solve real world aim and the point of which you save real world AI for a car which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize
that to a robot on legs as well, the two hard parts. I think it's obviously companies like Boston Dynamics have shown that it's possible to make quite compelling, sometimes alarming robots. Right. Um, you know, so this is from a sensor is an actualator standpoint, it's certainly been demonstrated by by many that it's possible to make a humoroid robot. The thing that the things that are currently missing are enough intelligence, enough intelligence for the robot to navigate
the real world and do useful things without being explicitly instructed. So the missing things are basically real world intelligence and scaling up manufacturing. Those are two things that tells LA is very good at and so then we basically just need to design the specialized actuators and sensors that are needed for a humanoid robot. People have no idea this is this is going to be bigger than the car.
So let's dig into exactly that. I mean, in one way, it's actually an easier problem than full self driving because you instead of an object going along at sixty miles an hour, which if it gets it wrong, someone will die, this is an object that's engineered to only go what three or four or five marks in our walking experience, and so a mistake is that
there aren't lives at stake. There might be embarrassment at stake. It doesn't take it over and right and now sleep recently a right, but but so talk about I mean, I think the first applications you've mentioned are probably going to be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to have these available for people at home. If you had a robot that really understood the three D architecture of your house and knew where every object in that house was or was supposed
to be, and could recognize or those objects. I mean that's kind of amazing, isn't it. Like like that the kind of thing that you could ask a robot to do would be what like tidy up? Yeah, absolutely, or make make dinner, I guess the lawn, take take a cup of tea two grandma and show her family pictures and exactly take care of my grandmother and make sure, yeah, exactly when it could recognize obviously, recognize
everyone in the home. Yeah, could play catch with your kids, yes, I mean, obviously we need to be careful, just doesn't become a dystopian situation. Like I think. One of thinks that's going to be important is to have a localized ROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air, where if you, for example, we're to say stuff soft stop, that would if anyone said that, then the robot would stop, you know type of thing, and that's not updatable remotely. I think it's
going to be important to have safety futures like that. Yeah, that sounds wise. And I do think there should be a regulatory agency for AI. I've said this for many years. I don't I don't love being regulated, but I you know, I think this is an important thing for public safety. Let's come back to that. But I'm just I don't think many people have really sort of taken seriously the notion of, you know, a robot
at home. I mean at the start of the computing revolution, you know, Bill Gates said a computer in every home, and people at the time said, yeah, whatever, who would even want that in our pocket? Do you think there will be basically like in say say twenty fifty or whatever, that like a robot in most homes is what there will be on people will I think they probably them account on them. You'll have your own butler basically, yeah, you'll have your sort of buddy robot. Probably yeah,
I mean how much of a buddy do you like? Do you do? How many applications you thought? Is there? You know, can you have a romantic partner, sex part I mean probably inevitable. I mean I did promise the Internet that I would make catgirals. We could make a robot catgal that, So yeah, I guess it'll be what what whatever? People want?
Really? You know, So what sort of timeline should we be thinking about of the first the first models that are actually made and sold, Well, you know, the first units that that we tend to make are m for jobs that are dangerous, boring, repetitive, and things that people don't want to do. And you know, I think we'll have like an interesting
prototype sometime this year. We might have something useful next year, but I think quite likely within at least two years, and then we'll see rabbit growth year over a year of the usefulness of the humor wid robots, an decrease in cost, and scaling out production initially just selling to businesses or when when do you picture you'll you'll sell You'll start selling them where you can buy your parents one for Christmas or something i'd see I listened ten years. Yeah,
how how how help me on the economics of this? So what do you picture the cost of one of these being? Well, I think the cost is actually not going to be crazy high, um, like less than a car. Initially, things will be expensive because it'll be new technology at low production volume. The complexity and cost of a car is greater than that of a humanoid robot, so I would expect that it's going to be less than
a car, or at least equivalent to a cheap car. So even if it starts at fifty k. Within a few years it's down to twenty K or lower or whatever, and maybe for home they'll get much cheaper still book, But thinking about the economics of this, if you can replace a thirty thousand dollars forty thousand dollars a year worker which you have to pay every year, with a one time payment of twenty five thousand dollars for a robot that
can work longer hours, a pretty rapid replacement of certain types of jobs. How worried should the world be about that? I want to worry about the sort of putting people out of a job thing. I think we're actually going to have and already do have a massive shortage of labor. So I think I think we will have not not people out of work, but actually still a shortage labor even in the future. But this really will be a world
of abundance. Any good and services will be available to anyone who wants them. That it will be so cheap to have goods and services will be ridiculous. And presuming it should be possible to imagine a bunch of goods and services that can't profitably be made now but could be made in that world. Courtesy of legions of robots. Yeah, it will be a world of abundance. The only scarcity that will exist in the future is that which we decide to
create ourselves as humans. Okay, so AI is allowing us to imagine a differently powered economy that will create this abundance. What are you most worried about going wrong? Well, like I said, AI and roboducts will will bring, um, bring out what might be termed the age of abundance. Other people affuse this word um and and that this is my prediction, will be an age of abundance um for everyone. Um that that. I guess.
There's the the dangers would be the artificial general intelligence or digital superintelligence d couples from a collective human world and goes into direction that for some reason we don't like, of whatever whatever direction might go. Um, you know, that's sort of sort of The idea behind neuralink is to try to more tightly couple collective human world to the two digital superintelligence and also along the way solve a
lot of brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing. So even if it doesn't succeed in the greater goal, it will I think it will succeed in in the goal of alleviating brain and spine damage. So that the spirit there is that if we're going to make these ais that are so vastly intelligent, we ought to be wide directly to them so that we ourselves can have these superpowers more more directly. But that doesn't seem to avoid the risk
that those superpowers might ten ugly and unintended. I think it's a risk. I agree, I don't. I'm not saying that I have some certain answer to that risk. I'm I'm just saying, like, like, maybe one of the things that would be good for ensuring that the future is one that we want is to more tightly couple human world, collective human world, to digital intelligence. UM. The issue that we face here is that we're already
a sidewalk. If you think about it, the computers are an extension of ourselves, and when we die, there's like we have like a digital ghost all of our text messages and social media and emails. And it's quite eerie actually when someone dies and there but everything online is still there. But but you say, like, what's what's the limitation? What is it that UM
in him? It's human machine symbiosis. It's the data rate. When you communicate, especially with a phone, you're moving your thumbs right very slowly, so you're like moving with two little meatsticks right at a rate that's maybe ten per second, optimistically one hundred pers per second. And computers are are communicating
at the gigabit level beyond. Have you seen evidence that the technology is actually working that you've got You've got a richer sort of higher bandwidth connection, if you like, between external electronics and a brain than has been possible before. Yeah. So the I mean, the fundamental principles of reading neurons sort during rewrite on neurons with tiny electrodes have been demonstrated for decades. So it's not like this is the concept is near. What the problem is that there's no
product that works well that you can go and and buy. So it's it's all sort of in research labs. Um, and it's it's not it's uh like there's there's always like some chords sticking out of your head and it's it's quite gruesome, and it's it's really, um, there's there's no good product that that that actually there's a good job and is high bandwidth and safe and something you'd actually that you could buy and would want to buy. So um. But but in it the way to think of the neural device is kind
of like a fitbit or an Apple watch. Um that's uh, where we take out a sort of a small section of skull about the size of a quarter. Um replace that with what, in many ways really is very much like um uh, a fitbitt, Apple watch or some kind of smart watch thing. Um uh and um and and but but with with tiny tiny wires, very very very tiny wires tied to wires so tiny it's hard to even see them. And it's very important to have very tiny wires that you when
they're implanted, they don't they don't damage the brain. How far are you from putting these into humans? Well, we have put in our FDA application to have the aspirationally do do the first human implant this year. The first uses will be for neurological injuries are different kinds, yes, But running the clock forward and imagining when when people are actually using these for their own enhancement,
let's say, ahead, for the enhancement of the world. How clear are you in your mind as to what it will feel like to have one of these inside your head. Well, I do want epsides we're out of at an early stage and so m it really will be many years before we have anything approximating a high bound with neural interface that allows for AI human symbiosis. UM. For many years, we will just be solving brain injuries and spinal injuries from probably a decade UM. This is not something that will suddenly
one day it'll will have this incredible sort of whole brain interface. It's going to be, like said, at least a decade of really just solving um of brain injuries and spinal injuries. And and really I think you can solve a very wide range of brain injuries including severe depression, morbid obesity, sleep perchancely schizophrenia, like a lot of things that cause great stress to people, restoring memory in all the people. If you can pull that off, that
is that that's the APP I will sign up for. I wouldn't please hurry. Actually yeah, I mean the emails that we get at neural link or heartbreaking, UM, I mean that they'll send us just fragic you know, you know where where someone was was sort of in the prime of life and and and they had an accident on a motorcycle, and and and someone who's twenty five is you know, it can't even feed themselves and this is something
we could fix. Um. But but you have you have said that AI is one of the things you're most worried about, and that neuralink may be one of the ways where we can keep abreast of it. Or yeah, it's it's there's there's the short term thing, which I think is helpful on an individual human level UM with injuries. And then the long term thing is an attempt to address the civilizational risk of AI by bringing bringing UM digital intelligence
and biological intelligence closer together. I mean, if you think of the hell the brain works today, they're really kind of two layers to the brain. There's the Olympic system and the quartet seek about the kind of animal brain where it's kind of like the fun part really must have Twitter operates by the way. Yeah, I mean we're I think, like to Imban said this, like we're like we're like somebody's you know, stuck a computer on a monkey. Um, you know, so we're like, if you gave a monkey
a computer, that's our cortex. But we still have a lot of monkey instincts, right, So which we then try to rationalize it's no, it's not a monkey instinct. It's something more important than that. But it's often just really a monkey instinct. We're in this, we're just monkeys with a computer STU stuck in our brain. Um so um. Even though the cortex is sort of the smart or the intelligent part of the brain, the thinking part of the brain. UM, people are quite I've not yet met anyone
who wants to delete the olympic system or their cortex. They're quite happy having both. Everyone wants both parts of their brain and um. And people really want their phones and their computers, which are really the tertiary the third part of of of your intelligence. It's just that it's it's like said that it's band with the rate of communication with that tertiary layer is slow. Um. And it's just a very tiny straw to those tertiary layer. And we want
to make that tiny straw a big highway. UM. And I'm definitely not saying that this is going to solve everything, or this is you know, it's the only thing. It's it's it's something that that that might be helpful. Um. And And in worst case scenario, I think we solve some important brain injury spinal injury issues, and that's still a great outcome. Right best case scenario, we may discover new human possibility telepathy you've spoken of in
a stal collection with With With with the loved One. You know, full memory UM and and much faster thought process than maybe all these things. It's very cool if AI were to take down Earth. We need a plan. B Let's let's shift to space. We spoke last up to about reusability, and you're just demonstrated that spectacular for the first time. Since then, you've gone on to build this monster rocket, Starship UM, which kind of changes the rules of the game in spectacular ways. Tell Us, tell us about
Starship. Yes, Starship is extremely fundamental. So the holy grail of of rocketry or space transport is full and rapid reusability. This has never been achieved. The closest that UM anything has come as our Falcon Rand rocket, where we are able to recover the prey the first stage the boost age, which is probably about sixty percent of the cast of the vehicle, um of the whole launch maybe seventy percent, and we've now done that over one hundred times.
So with Starship we will be recovering the entire thing. That's or at least that's the goal, right um. And and and more of recovering it in such a way that it can be immediately reflown. Whereas with Falconline we still need to do some amount of refurbishment to the brewster and to the firing one nose cone so um. But with Starship, the design goal is immediate reflight, right, So you just you're just refill propellant and go again. And the this is gigantic, It just just as it would be in any
other mode of transporting. And it's and the main design is and is to basically take what one hundred plus people at a time, plus a bunch of things that they need to Mars. So talk first of all, talk talk about that piece. What what is your latest timeline? One for the first time a starship goes to Mars, presumely without people but just equipment. Two with people, three the sort of okay, one hundred people at a time, let's let's go. Sure we and I just put the cost thing into
perspective. Um. The the cost of the expected cost of Starship putting one hundred tons into orbit UM is significantly less than what UM it would have cost, or what it did cost to put out our tiny Falcon one rocket into orbit. UM. Just as the cost of flying a seven forty seven around the world is less than the cost of a small airplane, you know, a smaller plant that was thrown away. UM. So it's really pretty mind boggling UM that that the giant thing costs less, way less than the small
thing. So it doesn't use sort of exotic propellants or things that are difficult to obtain on Mars. UM. It uses methane's fuel and it's primarily auctions. It's sort of roughly seventy seven seventy eight percent oxygen by weight UM. And Mars has a AR two atmosphere and has water ice which is ER two plus H two. Oh, so you can make thh four methane and O two oxygen on Mars. There's manly. One of the first task on Mars will be to create, yes, a fuel plant that can create the fuel
for the return trips of many starships. Yes, and actually it's mostly gonna an oxygen plant. But but it's it's because it's um. It's it's cool, it's seventy eight percent oxygen twenty two percent fuel. UM. But but but the fuel is a simple fuel that is easy to create on Mars Um and and and many other parts of the Solar systems. So basically um and it's all propulsive landing, no parachutes, UM, nothing's thrown away. UH has a heat shield that's capable of entering on Earth or Mars. Um.
We could even potentially go to Venus. But it's not you don't want to go there. It's Venus is hell almost literally, Um, but you you could. It's a generalize a method of transport to to anywhere in the Solar System because the point which you have a pellent deep on Mars, you can then travel to the asteroid belt and to the moons of Jupiter and then to the Saturn and ultimately anywhere in the Solar system. Right, but your man
for your main for focus and SpaceX's main focus is still Mars. Like that that is that is the that is the mission, that is that is where most of the effort will go. Yeah, or you are you actually imagining a much broader array of uses even in the coming you know, the first decade or so of use is of this where we could go, for example, of the places and Solar System to explore. Perhaps NASA wants to use
the rocket for that reason. Yeah, now so, now so it is planning to use a starship to return to the Moon, to return people to the Moon. Um and so we're very honored that NASA has shown us to do this. Um so. But I'm saying is it is a generalized it's a it's a general solution to getting anywhere in the Greater Solar System. It's not suitable for going to another star system, but it is a general solution
for transport anywhere in the in the Solar System. Before it can do any of that, it's got to demonstrate it can get into orbit, you know, around what what's what's what's what's what's your latest device on the on the timeline for that, it's looking promising for us to have an orbital launch attempt in in a few months UM. So we're actually integrating the we'll be integrating the engines into the booster for the first orbital flight starting in about a week
or two UM and the launch complex itself is ready to go. So, assuming we get regulatory approval, I think we could have a an orbital launch attempt within a few months, and a radical new technology like this, presumably there is real risk on those early sept that yeah, yeah, yeah, Like I mean, the joke I make all the time is that excitement is
guaranteed. Success is not guaranteed, but excitement certainly is. But the last less on your timeline, you've slightly put back the expected date to put the first human on Mars till twenty twenty nine. I want to say, yeah, I mean, so, let's see, I mean, we are we have built a production system for starships, so we're making a lot of ships
and boosters. How many of your planning to make? Actually, well, we're currently expecting to make a booster and a ship roughly every well, initially roughly every couple of months, and hopefully by by the end this year, one every month. So it's it's giant rockets, but a lot and a lot of them. Just in terms of talking in terms of rough orders of man. In order to create a self sustaining city on Mars, I think that you will need something on the order of a thousand ships, and we
just need we just need a helen of Sparta. I guess on the Mars this is not in most people's heads. The planet that launched a thousand ships. That's that's nice, But this is not in most people's heads, this picture that you have in your mind that so there's there's there's basically a two year window. You can only really fly to Mars conveniently every two years.
Yes, you are still you were picturing that during during the twenty thirties, every couple of years, something like a thousand starships take off, each containing one hundred or more people. I mean that that picture is just completely mind blowing to me, that that sense of this armada of humans going Battlestar Glad together fleet departs, and you think that that it can basically be funded by people spending maybe a couple hundred grand on a ticket to to Mars. Is
is that price about where where it has been? Well? I think it say like, what's what's what's required in order to get enough people and enough cargo to Mars to build a self sustaining city UM. And it's where you have an intersection of sets of people who want to go, because I think only a small percentage of humanity will want to go UM and can afford to go or get sponsorship in some manner that intersection of sets I think needs to
be a million people or something like that. Um, and so it's what what what can a million people afford or get sponsorship for or because I think governments will also pay for it, and um, people can take out loans and a. But I think at the point in which you say, okay, okay, like if if moving to Mars costs are fragments, take um, one hundred thousand dollars, then I think, um, you know, almost anyone can can work and save up and and and eventually have one hundred
thousand dollars and be able to go to Mars if they want. We want to make it available to anyone who wants to go. Yeah, So it and and very important. Tom says that Mars, especially in the beginning, will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped, difficult, hard work. It's kind of like that Shackleton app for going to the Antarctic, which I think is actually not real bit but it sounds real and it's cool. It's sort of like the sales pitch we're going to Mars is it's it's
it's dangerous, it's cramped. You might not make it back. It's difficult, it's hard work. That's the sales pitch. Right, you will make history. Bet it'll be glorious. Right. Also, on that kind of launch rate you're talking about, over two decades, you could get your million people to to Mars. Essentially, whose city is it? Is it NASAs City? Is it Space exus? It's the people of Marsas City. The reason for this, I mean I actually like what we feel like, well,
why why? Why do this thing? It's I think this is important for Max mice and the probable lifespan if of humanity or consciousness, human civilization could come to an end for external reasons like giant meteor or super volcanoes, or extreme climate change or World War three, or you know, anyone of a number of reasons. Um and and but the probable lifespan of of civilizational consciousness as we know it, um, which we should really view as this
very delicate thing, like a small candle in a vast darkness. That's that's caught that that is what appears to be the case. Um. We're in this vast darkness of space. Um, and there's this little candle of consciousness that's only really come about after four and a half billion years and it could just go out. I think that's powerful and I think I think a lot
of people will be inspired about that vision. And the reason so the reason you need the million people is because they has to be enough people that to do everything that you need to survived. It's really like the critical threshold is um, if the ships from Earth stopped coming for any reason? Right? Um? Does it? Does the Mars city die out or not? Right?
And and so we have to pass that. That's you know, people talk about like these sort of the great filters, the things that perhaps um, you know, we talk about the Fermi paradox and where are the aliens and like, well, maybe the aliens didn't There is various great filters that the aliens didn't pass, and and so they eventually just cease to exist. And one of the great filters is becoming a multiplanet species. So we want
to pass that filter. Um. And And I'll be long dead before this is, you know, a real real thing, before before it happens. But I'd like I'd like to at least see us make a great progress in this direction, given how tortured the Earth is right now, how much we're
beating each other up. Shouldn't there be discussions going on with everyone who is dreaming about Mars to try to say, we've got a once in a civilization's chance to make some new rules here is that it should someone be trying to lead those discussions to figure out what it means for this to be the people of Mars's city. Well, I think ultimately this will be up to the
people of Mars to decide what how they want to rethink society. Yeah, there's there's certainly a risk there, and hopefully the people of Mars will be more enlightened and will not afflight amongst each other too much. I mean, I have some recommendations, but which people of Mars may choose to listen to
or not. And I would advocate for more of a direct democracy. You're not a representative of democracy seeum and laws that are short enough for people to understand um and where it is harder to create laws than to get rid of them. Coming back a bit nearer term, I'd love you to just talk a bit about some of the other possibility space that's Starship seems to have created. So given given suddenly we've got this ability to move one hundred tons plus
into orbit. Yes, so we've just spent We've just launched the James Webb telescope, which is an incredible thing. It's unbelievable, happens exiit piece of technology, exquisite piece of technology. But people spent two years trying to figure out how to fold up this thing. It's a three ton it's a three ton telescope. We can make it a lot easier if you've got more volume and mass. Well, so let's let's ask a different question, which is
what what what? How much more powerful a telescope could someone design based on using Starship for example? I mean roughly, i't it's probably in order of magnitude, more resolution if you've got a hundred tons and a thousand cubic leaders volume, which is roughly what we have. And what about other explorations through the Solar system. I mean, I'm you know, Europa, well,
Europa, good question, Mark, Right. So there's an ocean there, right, and what you really want to do is to drop a submarine into the Maybe there's like some squid civilization under the cephalopod civilization under the ice of Europe that would be pretty interesting. I mean, you know, if you could take a submarine to Europa and we see pictures of this thing being devoured by a squid. That will honestly be the happiest moment of my life.
Very well, yeah, that would be. What what are the possibilities are out there? Like? It feels like if you're going to create a thousand of these things, they can only fly to Mars every two years, what are they doing the rest of the time. It feels like there's this this
explosion of possibility that I don't think people are really thinking about. I mean, I don't know if we've certainly got a long way to go, has you alluded to earlier, We've we still have to get to orbit, and then after we get to orbit, we have to um really prove out and refine full and rapid reusability. That will take a moment um and but but I do think we will solve this. I am I highly confident we will
solve this. At this point, do you have a wake up with the fear that there's going to be this Hindenburg moment for SpaceX where we've had many Hindenburg Well, we've we've never had Hindenburg moments with people, which is very important big difference. We've blown up quite a few rockets, so there's we have a there's a whole compilation online that we've put together and others put together. It's showing rockets are hard. Um. I mean, the sure amount
of energy going through rockets boggles the mind. So yeah, you know, getting out of both gravity well as difficult. We have a strong gravity and a thick atmosphere, and and Mars which is less than forty percent. It's like a of both gravity and has athan atmosphere. The ship alone can go all the way from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth, whereas getting two Mars requires a giant booster and orbital refilling soon. So I think
more about this incredible array of things that you're involved with. I keep seeing these synergies, to use a horrible word, but between them. You know, for example, the robots you're building from Tesla could possibly be pretty handy on Mars doing some of the dangerous work and so forth. I mean, maybe there's a scenario where you're city on Mars doesn't need a million people, it needs half a million people and half a million robots, And that's a
possibility. Maybe the boring company could play a role helping create some of the subterranean dwelling spaces that you might need. Yeah, back on planet Earth, it seems like a partnership between Boring Company and Tesla could offer an unbelievable deal to a city to say we will create few a three D network of tannels populated by robotaxis. Yeah, that will offer fast, low cost transport to
anyone. You know, full self driving mail may not be done this year and then, and in some cities like someone like Mumbai, I suspect won't be done for a decade, are more charging than others. But today today, with what you've got, you could put a three D network of tannels under there. It's just an internel. That's the sold problem exactly. Full self driving is itself problems. So so to me, there's there's an amazing
synergy there. Um you're with with with Starship. You know quinchotwell talked about by twenty twenty eight having from city to city, you know, transport on planet This is a real possibility. It's a Yeah, the fastest way to
get from one place to another it's a long distance is a rocket. It's it's basically I CBA, right, with the but it has to learn learning, delete new because it's a nice CBM, it has to land probably offshore, yes, lou So, So why not have a tunnel that then connects to the city and neural Link. I mean, if you're going to go to Mars having a telepathic connection with loved ones back home, even if there's a time delay, I mean, if these are not intended to be connected
by the way they just but there should certainly could be some synergies. Yeah, surely there is a growing argument that you should actually put all these things together into one company and just just have a company devoted to creating a future that's exciting and let a thousand flowers bloom. Have you have you been thinking
about that? I mean it is tricky because Tellsla's a publicly traded company, and the investor base of Tesla and SpaceX, and certainly Boring Company and neural Link are are quite different company our tiny companies just right, the audience may yeah, it tells us got one hundred and ten thousand people. SpaceX I think is around twelve thousand people. Boring Company and neural Link are both under two hundred people. So there are little, little, tiny companies, but
they will probably get bigger in the future. They will get bigger in the future. It's not that easy to sort of combine these things. Traditionally, you've said that for SpaceX especially, you don't you wouldn't want to public because public investors wouldn't support the craziness of the idea of going to Mars or whatever, and you want to making life multiplanetaries is outside of the normal time horizon of Wall Street analysts say the least, I think something's changed, though.
What's changed is that Tesla is now so powerful and so big and throws off so much cash that you actually could connect the dots here, just tell the public that X billion dollars or whatever your number is, will be diverted to the Mars mission. I suspect you'd have massive interest in that company, and
it might. It might unlock a lot more possibility for you. Now, I mean, I would like to give the public access to ownership of SpaceX, But I mean the thing that, like the overhead associated with a polar company is high, so I mean it's a poll company. You're just constantly sued. It does occupy like a fair butt of you know, time and effort to deal with these things, right, but you still only have one public company. It would be bigger and have more things going on, but
instead of being on four boards, you'd be on one. I'm actually not even on the neural link of warring company boards. Well yeah, and I don't really atta and the space x board meetings, we only have two a year, and I just stopped buying chat for an hour. Um, So the boarder overhead for a public company is much higher, right. I think some investors probably worry about how your time is being split, and they would be they might be excited by you know that, that's anyway I am.
I just I just work up the other day. I think I think it just there are so many ways in which these things connect, and and you know that just the note, the simplicity of that mission of building a future that is worth getting excited about might might appeal to um an awful lot of people. Um elon, you are reported by Forbes and everyone else's as now you know the worlds, which is person that's not a sovereign, you know, I think it's fair to say that if somebody is like the killing or
the facto king of a country, they're wealthier than I am. So, but it's just harder to measure. But what people do so three hundred million dollars, I mean, your your net worth on any given day is rising or fall late by several billion dollars. How say, yeah, I mean does that? How do you? How do you handle that? Psychologically? There aren't many people in the world who have to even think about that.
I actually don't think about that too much. But the the thing that is actually more more difficult and that does make sleeping difficult, is that, you know, every good hour or even minute of thinking about TISLA and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company that I really try to work as as much as possible, you know, to to the edge of sanity, basically, because the tela's getting to the point where probably we'll get to the point
later this year where every good, every high quality minute of thinking, um is a million dollars to impact on Tesla. So, which is insane? Um so UM? I mean the basic you know, if if Tesla's doing you know of a sort of two billion dollars a week, let's say in revenue, is sort of three hundred million dollars a day, seven days a week. You know, it's if you can change that by five percent in an hour's brainstorm, that that those those ant be valuable. That's a pretty
valuable hour. I mean there are many many instances where a half hour meeting I was able to improve the finacial account of the company by one hundred million
dollars in a half hour meeting. There are many other people out there who who who can't stand this world of billionaires like they are hugely offended by the notion that's an individual can have the same wealth as as say billion of or more of the world's porous people if they examine sort of the sort of I think there's some axiomatic flows, um, that that are leading to them to that conclusion. If for sure, it would be very problematic if I was
consuming you know, billions of dollars a year in personal consumption. But that is not the case. Um. In fact, I don't even own a home right now. I'm literally staying at friends places. I if I travel to the Bay Area, which where most subtails and engineering is, I stayed in my I basically rotate through friends spare bedrooms. Um, I don't have a yacht. I really don't take vacations. So, UM, it's not. It's not as though there's um that that my personal consumption is high with.
I mean, the one exception is a plane. But if I don't use the plane, then I have less hours to work. So UM, I mean I personally think you have shown that you are mostly driven by really quite a deep set some moral purpose, Like you've tried your your your your attempts to solve the climate problem have been as powerful as anyone else on the
planet that I'm aware of, And I actually can't can't understand personally. I can't understand the fact that you get all this criticism from the left about oh my god, he's so rich, that's disgusting, when when climate is their issue. Um, philanthropy is is a topic that some people go to. Philanthropy is a hard topic, like how how do you think about that? Um? I think if you if you care about the reality of goodness instead of the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult. Um. SpaceX,
Tesla neural linked boring company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy. There. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This is a love of full entropy. SpaceX is trying to ensure the long term survival of humanity with multiplied species. This is love of humanity. Um, you know, neural Link is to help solve rain, injuries and existential whisk with ai love of humanity. Boring Company is trying to solve traffic, which
is health most people. And that also it's not a humanity. It's how how upsetting is it to you to hear this constant drum beat of billionaires? My guard elon musk, Oh, my god, like is that do you do? You do? You just shrug that offer? Does it? Does it actually hurt? I mean, at this point, it's water off a
duck's back. You know, I'd like to as we wrap up now, just pull the camera back and just think you're a father and I have seven surviving kids, and and well, I mean, I'm trying to say a good example, because the birth rate on Earth is so low that we're facing civilizational collapse unless the birth rate returns to a sustainable level. Yeah, You've talked about this a lot. The depopulation is a big problem and we we yes, people don't. Understulation is one of the biggest threats of the future
of human civilization. And that is what it's going on right now. How what what drives you on a day to day basis to do what you do? I guess like I really want to make sure that there is a good future for humanity and that we're on a path to understanding the nature of the universe, the meaning of life. Why are we here? How do we get here? And in order to understand the nature of the universe and all these fundamental questions, we must expand the scope and scale of consciousness. Certainly
it must not diminish or go out. We certainly we weren't understand this. So I always say, I'm motivated by curiosity more than anything, UM, and just desire to think about the future and not be sad. You know, and and are you? Are you not sad? I'm sometimes sad, but mostly I'm I'm I mean not feeling I guess relatively optimistic about the future these days. UM, there are certainly, UM, some big risks that
humanity faces. I think that the population collapse is a really big deal that I wish more people would would think about, UM, because the birth rate is far below what it's needed to sustain civilization as current at its current level. And ye know, there's obviously we need to take action on climate sustainability, which is being done UM. And we need to secure the future of
consciousness by being a multiplane of species. UM. We need to address the Essentially, it's important to take whatever actions we can think of to address the existential risks that affect the future of consciousness. There's there's a whole generation coming through who seem really sad about the future. What would you say to them, Well, I think if you want the future to be good, you must make it so take action to make it good and it will be Yellen,
thank you for all this time. That is a beautiful place to end. Thanks for all that you're doing. You're welcome.