ISSRDC 2015 - A Conversation with Elon Musk!!!

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

Sure, well, I mean I think it's it's obviously it's a huge load to to SpaceX and and or do we take these missions incredibly seriously? The investigator, everyone that can engage in the investigation of SpaceX is very very focused on that. And I in this case, the the the data does seem to be quite difficult to interpret, Like whatever happened is is clearly not a sort of

Any hints where you think the problem.

Lies, well, and I know that this this media and the audience, so you have to be fair.

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 what pear 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 would happened and we've sort of cross checked it with as many experts as we can, and certainly appreciate that the feedback from NASAU on this front. Ver 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 ha been 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

Yeah.

Actually, I think the interaction with NASA has been great this far. The biggest challenge there 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

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 be very useful. But that's a perspective from NASA perspective, so it's always interesting to know your perspective of that.

Yeah, it seems to be quite quite good actually right now.

Yeah, so you're building the last couple of launches you've had landing legs, and you've been working on landing the first stage back eventually to shore, and you talk a little bit about that and which your vision is for that and for a 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 the 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 needs to happen for humanity to

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 actually had the best chance of landing of the vehicle on the on the sort of drone 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. It was a real downer, you'll remember

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 with you seems to be more of a passion than the others or our businesses. But 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 so we're trying to make progress in that front on with those companies. With with SpaceX, it's trying to help solve the space bearing problem. I mean I I I think that a a future where we're a space baring civilization and a and a multiplanet

Cost of space flight.

And uh, and that's that's why why space X exists, is to try to try to lower the cost of spaceflight, uh, 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 then I think there's the potential for for order of magnitude or greater improvements, reasability being key to all of that.

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 th 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

Well, definitely the Wigi board of 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 intovertive breakthrough, that's kind of that's going to be how it is. Anything which is significantly innovative is going to come with a significant risk of failure. And but you know, if you've you've got to take big chances in order for the potential for a big

Big risk is worthwhile. 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 to improve the p 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 y that you 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 it starts SpaceX, the I thought the odds of success were very low. I thought we'd most likely fail, but

I remember, you're trying to purchase a vehicle too, 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. 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 to Mars.

And I thought, well, if I could.

Do a small greenhouse and send that to the surface of Mars with seasons, 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 we like the you know, sort of first life on Mars, the furthest lifes ever traveled, and you get people sort of excited about, well, but where we send people there, like the health of plants, we should.

Send people, you know.

And and then I thought, well that could If that could get the public really excited about sending Keill to Mars, then that would translate into congressional support for a bigger NASSA budget.

That was the goal.

And then I didn't have enough money to buy and I thought that that outcome would have a har per cent chance of no commercial success.

So the harp cent chance of losing all the money.

So so compared to that SpaceX, which I thought maybe had a ten percent chances of success, that was an improvement.

There. You go, well, that makes that makes good sense. So are you still thinking about that? Do you remember that conversation? This was the idea where you used Martian regulars. You send these self contained habitats, if not habitats, and grow.

Like commuter across or something like that.

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 pig and ass a budget.

It's the goal.

And well, again, God bless you, it's a worthy goal. I hope you never 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 it's affected your company, if it has, if it's changed the thing, and how you approach space.

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

Mars or other places.

We're in discussion with other parts of NASSA 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 Dragon cargo vehicle, clearly there are some significant differences. Fairly innovative approach, I think to aboart testing, which traditionally you've seen the jess and rocket on top that that'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

Yeah, I think the the the big items for well, the the biggest item really for Dragon two is the ability to do a propulsive landing. And it's basically h having heavy thrusters on board. So those same heavy thrusters can then do the abort but retain the the engines.

So, uh, let's go back to Dragon. At one point you had a conversation talked a little bit bit. It's something I think was Virtus Dragon Lab where you go to lowerth orbit and do what I assumed was sort of kind of research and then 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 there is some potential for to essentially just take things to loath orbit and then bring them bring them back, you know, after a few weeks or

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 I'd add some other challenges to the system. Yeah, trying to fly as often as you as you.

Need to make that.

Yeah, well, let's see. I don't want to bore everybody with all my questions. And we talked about if folks had any questions in the audience, let's see this. Oh, well they're not bashful. That's good. So I don't know if we're gonna need microphones. But but I'll start here.

I would like to ask question.

My question.

Because you are like a kind of mentor and visionary, and you give hope to a lot of people around the globe because when they see you, they realize that they can realize their dreams. But my question is different when you are a dreamer, when you are when you are a 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

Well, I mean, I think I'm kind of constitutionally just heared 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 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 it's not clear what other things would succeed. And if we don't succeed, then we will be certainly pointed to as a reason why people

Okay, And last question, last question.

You know, so in two thousand and four, when you are going to burn you men with your cousin, you were thinking there is a sum and let's make energy out of it. And I would like to ask you why do you believe so in solar energy 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 the solar energy is probably fairly significant for Mars, and what's gonna be quite important is having a very lightweight solar system that you know both well eumetrically and graphometrically 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.

So thank you, and I wish you that your next birthday is very successful.

Okay, let's go, let's go. Okay, go ahead, BELTI.

My name is Valentina.

Nowref I'm from the United Rocket and Space Corparation, which shortly will become a part of State Coparation Ross COSTMOS. So I made this one question to the West because I'd like to ask one question of you n 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 taikoon 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? Sure as they there were times when you had to fight to 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 I 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 like many other industries, then it's much easier to make money than the space industry.

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 an 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 orbits 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

So so along those lines, did you read Andy Weare's book The Marshal?

Yeah? Yeah, it was good.

What did you think I thought it was.

It was pretty excellent, certainly one of the more 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 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 like this, this looks really hard.

I think we need to show about how Mas is awesome and it's like the wild West and you got the gunslingers and like the cool cowboys.

And that kind of thing.

All right, maybe you got to write a book too. Let's either'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 Nanobiosim so in your vision and dream to achieve low cost space travel. How do you allocate your investments 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 I think with g with current physics, this 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 I and exactly be the w I 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 space light.

And I think with the you know, simply with with Falcon, iine, I think we make improvements. And then with our next generation rocket system, which is still you know, many years away, that'll be a a deep cryo METHALOCKX system, I think I think we can achieve full reusability and that that's really that's a that's a huge potential for w you know it, like maybe a two order of magnitude reduction

We we hire 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 the Okay, we're here. Hi.

My name is Zachary Maltson, a student from uh Babson College. I just wanna say it's an honor to be here. I read Ashley Nancy'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 D technology to the 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 everything like that.

Yeah.

Absolutely, So, as you lud to, we we we actually print the super Draco engines so that they're printed out of titanum in a canal, and 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 only 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 raise 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

Is normally the case.

Uh the uh, you know w with that engine. Uh, we're trying to print as much as possible. It's it's a bit the The biggest limitation on free printing right now is the the size envelope. So there's a limit on how big we can print something. But we're able to print the 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

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 Ross Spungehock with a company called High Orbit. I wondered if you'd give it 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 hyper loop technology.

Yeah, SpaceX is not.

Neither I nor SpaceX are doing anything to try to commercialize the hype loop. There are two, 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 high loop technology or high bloop

Okay, ok here, Well, I'm Paula 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've 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 comes out, people are gonna have blown away.

It's awesome.

I actually brought my whole team at SpaceX to go see the preview of the of the IMAX movie. And I mean, it's a It is a very unique laboratory because this is the only thing that's in sort of microgravity, that's above the Earth's atmosphere, and you can learn a lot about basically human physiology, uh and do experiments that you can't really do an 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 gained there.

And and I think it's 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 public want to have something going on in space that that involves people, and yeah, and it's it's just it's the coolest thing going on in space.

So there's a lot of valute that.

You know, we've tried to to 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 this is important. What's done in Lower's orbit has benefit to those of us on Earth that will never actually go to space. But in doing that, you're trying to get their interest level, and part of their interest level is the cool factor that you talked about. And I've always kind of struggled

Yeah.

I think we've actually spent a lot of effort on the space suit design, on the both the functionality and the aesthetics. But I think just 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,

Yeah, that looks awesome. So that 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.

Thanks. Sure.

So we're still at the early stages of it's sort of a big LEO constellation communication idea, and we're hopeful, hopefully going to launch get a test satellite next year and what I I think the long term potential of it is pretty pretty great. But I don't want to overplay or overstate, you know, things quite you know this,

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. I mean, depending 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

Bandwidth broadly.

But it's also worth saying that a lot of companies have UH tried this and kind of broken their pick on it, and I think 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

Or much like you know current dishes that are the satellite dishes.

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 to 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 exploration mission. Is that something that you've given much thought or have any opinions on?

Well, I've I've gone, I've perceived the vircual reality demos at uh Oculus and at Valve, and it's pretty impressive. You can sort of imagine if that's extra late into the future, it's really gonna super feel like you're there. And I wonder if some people are never gonna wanna take that all honestly, you know, it's like it's pretty I mean it, it's pretty entrancing. But I I I do think it'd be quite exciting to do that for a space as well. Yeah do you do you have a set up here?

Yeah? Okay, it's right there. Wow, Okay, yeah cool? Okay, w where are you based in? W Where? But where you based? Okay?

I think maybe today is going to be tricky. But but but maybe if since you're based in California, I could we could range something, you know, in the coming weeks.

All right, let's see elon we'll uh, we'll call it

Thank you, thanks a.

Thanks, thanks for listening.

See you in the next episode.