Elon Musk is CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.

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EPISODE LINKS:
Elon's Twitter: https://twitter.com/elonmusk

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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:07 - Elon singing
0:55 - SpaceX human spaceflight
7:40 - Starship
16:16 - Quitting is not in my nature
17:51 - Thinking process
27:25 - Humans on Mars
32:55 - Colonizing Mars
36:41 - Wormholes
41:19 - Forms of government on Mars
48:22 - Smart contracts
49:52 - Dogecoin
51:24 - Cryptocurrency and Money
57:33 - Bitcoin vs Dogecoin
1:00:16 - Satoshi Nakamoto
1:02:38 - Tesla Autopilot
1:05:44 - Tesla Self-Driving
1:17:48 - Neural networks
1:26:44 - When will Tesla solve self-driving?
1:28:48 - Tesla FSD v11
1:36:21 - Tesla Bot
1:47:01 - History
1:54:52 - Putin
2:00:32 - Meme Review
2:14:58 - Stand-up comedy
2:16:31 - Rick and Morty
2:18:10 - Advice for young people
2:26:08 - Love
2:29:01 - Meaning of life

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The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, his third time on this, the Lex Friedman Podcast.

I mean, how close do I need to get at the same thing?

The closer you are, the sexier you sound.

Anytime somebody messages me about it, I'll just respond to that.

And you think I'm sexy, Come right out and tell me so.

Come on, you're Russian, you can be serious.

Everyone's serious all the time in Russia.

Yeah, yeah, we'll get there, we'll get there.

Allow me to say that the SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30th, 2020 was seen by many as the first step in a new era of human space exploration.

These human space flight missions were a beacon of hope to me and to millions over the past 2 years as our world has been going through 1 of the most difficult periods in recent human history.

We saw, we see the rise of division, fear, cynicism, and the loss of common humanity, right when it is needed most.

So first, Elon, let me say thank you for giving the world hope and reason to be excited about the future?

Humanity has obviously a lot of issues and people at times do bad things, but despite all that, I love humanity and I think we should make sure we do everything we can to have a good future and an exciting future and 1 where that maximizes the happiness of the people.

So that first flight with humans on board, how did you feel leading up to that launch?

Yeah, no, that was Extremely stressful, no question.

We obviously could not let them down in any way.

So, extremely stressful I'd say, to say the least.

I was confident that at the time that we launched that no 1 could think of anything at all to do that would improve the probability of success.

And we racked our brains to think of any possible way to improve the probability of success.

We could not think of anything more, nor could NASA.

So that's just the best that we could do.

Now, I'm not a religious person, but I nonetheless got on my knees and prayed for that mission.

First when the launch was a success and when they returned back home or back to Earth?

For high stress situations, I find it's not so much elation as relief.

And I think once, as we got more comfortable and proved out the systems, because we really, you gotta make sure everything works, it was definitely a lot more enjoyable with the subsequent astronaut missions.

And I thought the inspiration mission was actually very inspiring, the Inspiration4 mission.

I'd encourage people to watch the inspiration documentary on Netflix, it's actually really good.

And it really is, I was actually inspired by that.

And I, so that 1 I felt I was kind of able to enjoy the actual mission and not just be super stressed all the time.

So for people that somehow don't know, it's the all civilian first time, all civilian out to space, out to orbit.

Yeah, and it was, I think, the highest orbit that in like, I don't know, 30 or 40 years or something.

The only 1 that was higher was the 1 shuttle, sorry, a Hubble servicing mission.

And then before that, it would have been Apollo in 72.

So it's cool, I think as a species, like we want to be continuing to do better and reach higher ground.

And I think it would be tragic, extremely tragic, if Apollo was the high water mark for humanity, and that's as far as we ever got.

And it's concerning that here we are, 49 years after the last mission to the moon, and so almost half a century, and we've not been back.

It's like, does that mean we've peaked as a civilization or what?

So, like I think we gotta get back to the moon and build a base there, you know, a science base.

I think we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe if we have a proper science base on the moon.

You know, like we have a science base in Antarctica and many other parts of the world.

And so that's, I think, the next big thing.

We've gotta have a serious moon base and then get people to Mars and, you know, get out there and be a space-faring civilization.

I'll ask you about some of those details, but since you're so busy with the hard engineering challenges of everything that's involved, Are you still able to marvel at the magic of it all, of space travel, of every time the rocket goes up, especially when it's a crude mission?

Or are you just so overwhelmed with all the challenges that you have to solve?

And actually, sort of to add to that, the reason I wanted to ask this question of May 30th, it's been some time, so you can look back and think about the impact already.

It's already, at the time, it was an engineering problem, maybe, now it's becoming a historic moment.

Like it's a moment that, how many moments will be remembered about the 21st century?

To me, that or something like that, maybe Inspiration4 or 1 of those would be remembered as the early steps of a new age of space exploration.

Yeah, I mean, during the launches itself, so I mean, the thing I think maybe some people know, but a lot of people don't know is like, I'm actually the chief engineer of SpaceX, so I've signed off on pretty much all the design decisions.

And So if there's something that goes wrong with that vehicle, it's fundamentally my fault.

So I'm really just thinking about all the things that, like so when I see the rocket, I see all the things that could go wrong and the things that could be better and the same with the Dragon spacecraft.

It's like, other people see, oh, this is a spacecraft or a rocket and this looks really cool.

I'm like, I have like a readout of like, this is the, these are the risks, these are the problems, that's what I see.

So, it's not what other people see when they see the product, you know.

So, let me ask you then to analyze Starship in that same way.

I know you have, you'll talk in more detail about Starship in the near future, perhaps.

But just in that same way, like you said, when you see a rocket, you see a sort of a list of risks.

In that same way, you said that Starship is a really hard problem.

So, there's many ways I can ask this, but if you magically could solve 1 problem perfectly, 1 engineering problem perfectly, which 1 would it be?

So is it maybe related to the efficiency, the engine, the weight of the different components, the complexity of various things, maybe the controls of the crazy thing it has to do to land?

No, it's actually by far the biggest thing absorbing my time is engine production.

Not the design of the engine, but I've often said prototypes are easy, production is hard.

So we have the most advanced rocket engine that's ever been designed.

Because I say currently the best rocket engine ever is probably the RD-180 or RD-170, that's the Russian engine basically.

And still, I think an engine should only count if it's gotten something to orbit.

So our engine has not gotten anything to orbit yet.

But it is, it's the first engine that's actually better than the Russian RD engines, which were amazing design.

So you're talking about Raptor engine, what makes it amazing?

What are the different aspects of it that make it, like

What are you the most excited about, if the whole thing works, in terms of efficiency, all those kinds of things?

Well, it's, the Raptor is a full-flow, staged combustion engine, and it's operating at a very high chamber pressure.

So 1 of the key figures of merit, perhaps the key figure of merit is what is the chamber pressure at which the rocket engine can operate?

So a Raptor is designed to operate at 300 bar, possibly maybe higher, that's 300 atmospheres.

So the record right now for operational engine is the RD engine that I mentioned, the Russian RD, which is, I believe, around 267 bar.

And the difficulty of the chamber pressure increases on a nonlinear basis.

So 10% more chamber pressure is more like 50% more difficult.

But that chamber pressure is what allows you to get a very high power density for the engine, enabling a very

ratio So enabling a very high thrust to weight ratio and a very high specific impulse.

So specific impulse is like a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine.

It's really the effect of exhaust velocity of the gas coming out of the engine.

So with a very high chamber pressure, you can have a compact engine that nonetheless has a high expansion ratio, which is the ratio between the exit nozzle and the throat.

So you know, engines got, like you see a rocket engine has got like sort of like a hourglass shape, it's like a chamber and then it necks down and there's a nozzle.

And the ratio of the exit diameter to the throat is the expansion ratio.

So why is it such a hard engine to manufacture

There's a lot of components and a lot of unique materials.

So we had to invent several alloys that don't exist in order to make this engine work.

So a materials problem, and in a staged combustion, a full flow staged combustion, there are many feedback loops in the system.

So basically you've got propellants and hot gas flowing simultaneously to so many different places on the engine.

And they all have a recursive effect on each other.

So you change 1 thing here, it has a recursive effect here, it changes something over there, and it's quite hard to control.

Like there's a reason no one's made this before.

And the reason we're doing a stage combustion full flow is because it has the highest theoretical possible efficiency.

So in order to make a fully reusable rocket, which that's really the holy grail of orbital rocketry.

You have to have, everything's gotta be the best.

It's gotta be the best engine, the best airframe, the best heat shield, extremely light avionics, very clever control mechanisms.

You've got to shed mass in any possible way that you can.

For example, we are, instead of putting landing legs on the booster and ship, we are going to catch them with a tower to save the weight of the landing legs.

So that's like, I mean, we're talking about catching the largest flying object ever made on a giant tower with chopstick arms.

It's like Karate Kid with the fly, but much bigger.

Anyway, so this is bananas, This is bananas stuff.

So you mentioned that you doubt, well not you doubt, but there's days or moments when you doubt that this is even possible.

at this point, I think we'll get Starship to work.

There's a question of timing, how long will it take us to do this?

How long will it take us to actually achieve full and rapid reusability?

Because it will take probably many launches before we are able to have full and rapid reusability.

But I can say that the physics pencils out.

At this point, I'd say we're confident that, I'm very confident success is in the set of all possible outcomes.

a while there I was not convinced that success was in the set of possible outcomes.

We have a very talented team, they're working night and day to make it happen.

And Like I said, the critical thing to achieve for the revolution in space flight and for humanity to be a space-faring civilization is to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, orbital rocket.

There's not even been any orbital rocket that's been fully reusable ever.

And this has always been the holy grail of rocketry.

And many smart people, very smart people, have tried to do this before and they've not succeeded.

What's your source of belief in situations like this?

When the engineering problem is so difficult, there's a lot of experts, many of whom you admire who have failed in the past.

And a lot of people, a lot of experts, maybe journalists, all the kind of, the public in general have a lot of doubt about whether it's possible.

And you yourself know that even if it's a non null set, non empty set of success, it's still unlikely or very difficult.

Like where do you go to, both personally, intellectually as an engineer, as a team, like for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this and to keep going with the project, take it to completion.

That's really not how I think about things.

I mean, for me it's simply this is something that is important to get done and we should just keep doing it or die trying and I don't need a source of strength.

And I don't care about optimism or pessimism.

Can you then zoom back in to specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on?

Can you try to introspect your particular biological neural network, your thinking process, and describe how you think through problems, through different engineering and design problems.

You've spoken about first principles thinking, but is there a kind

Well, I like saying like physics is law and everything else is a recommendation.

Like I've met a lot of people who can break the law, but I haven't met anyone who could break physics.

So first, for any kind of technology problem, you have to just make sure you're not violating physics.

And, you know, first principles analysis, I think is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, anything really.

It's really just saying, you know, let's boil something down to the most fundamental principles, the things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level.

And that sets your axiomatic base, and then you reason up from there, and then you cross-check your conclusion against the axiomatic truth.

So, you know, some basics in physics would be like, are you violating conservation of energy or momentum or something like that, you know, then you're not gonna work.

So that's, you know, so that's just to establish, is it possible?

And another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit.

If you take a particular thing and you scale it to a very large number or to a very small number, how do things change?

Well, like in number of things you manufacture or something like that and then in time?

Yeah, like let's say take an example of like manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem.

And like I said, it's much harder to take an advanced technology product and bring it into volume manufacturing than it is to design it in the first place, by orders of magnitude.

So let's say you're trying to figure out is, like why is this part or product expensive?

Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing or is it because our volume is too low?

And so then you say, okay, well what if our volume was a million units a year?

That's what I mean by thinking about things in the limit.

If it's still expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive.

There's something fundamental about the design.

And then you then can focus on reducing the complexity or something like that in the design?

You could change the design to, change the part to be something that is not fundamentally expensive.

But that's a common thing in rocketry because the unit volume is relatively low.

And so a common excuse would be, well, it's expensive because our unit volume is low, and if we were in automotive or something like that, or consumer electronics, then our costs would be lower.

I'm like, okay, so let's say, now you're making a million units a year.

If the answer is yes, then economies of scale are not the issue.

Do you throw into manufacturing, do you throw like supply chain, you talked about resources and materials and stuff like that, do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles, like how we're gonna make the supply chain work here?

And then the cost of materials, things like that, or is that

Exactly, so like a good example, I think of thinking about things in the limit is if you take any, you know, any product, any machine or whatever, like take a rocket or whatever, and say, if you look at the raw materials in the rocket.

So you're gonna have like an aluminum, steel, titanium, Inconel, specialty alloys, copper, and you say, what's the weight of the constituent elements of each of these elements, and what is their raw material value?

And that sets the asymptotic limit for how low the cost of the vehicle can be unless you change the materials.

So, and then when you do that, I call it like maybe the magic wand number or something like that.

So that would be like, if you had the, like just a pile of these raw materials here and you could wave the magic wand and rearrange the atoms into the final shape, that would be the lowest possible cost that you could make this thing for unless you change the materials.

So then, and that is always a, almost always a very low number.

So then, what's actually causing things to be expensive is how you put the atoms into the desired shape.

Yeah, actually, if you don't mind me taking a tiny tangent, I often talk to Jim Keller, who's somebody that worked with you

So I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you're talking about now.

And I guess I see that same thing at Tesla and SpaceX folks who work there, they kind of learn this way of thinking and it kind of becomes obvious almost.

But anyway, I had argument, not argument, he educated me about how cheap it might be to manufacture a Tesla bot.

What is, how can you reduce the cost of the scale of producing a robot?

Because I've gotten the chance to interact quite a bit, obviously in the academic circles with humanoid robots, and then Boston Dynamics and stuff like that.

And then Jim kind of schooled me on saying, like, okay, like this kind of first principles thinking of how can we get the cost of manufacturing down.

I suppose you do that, you have done that kind of thinking for Tesla Bot and for all kinds of complex systems that are traditionally seen as complex?

And you say, okay, how can we simplify everything now?

Yeah, I mean, I think if you are really good at manufacturing, you can basically make, at high volume, you can basically make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches the raw material value of the constituents, plus any intellectual property that you need to license.

But it's hard, it's not like, that's a very hard thing to do, but it is possible for anything.

Anything in volume can be made, like I said, for a cost that asymptotically approaches its raw material constituents, plus intellectual property license rights.

So what'll often happen in trying to design a product is people will start with the tools and parts and methods that they are familiar with, and then try to create a product using their existing tools and methods.

The other way to think about it is actually imagine the, try to imagine the platonic ideal of the perfect product or technology, whatever it might be.

And so what is the perfect arrangement of atoms that would be the best possible product?

And now let us try to figure out how to get the atoms in that shape.

I mean, it sounds, it's almost like Rick and Morty absurd until you start to really think about it and you really should think about it in this way because everything else is kind of, if you think you might fall victim to the momentum of the way things were done in the past, unless you think in this way.

Well, just as a function of inertia, people want to use the same tools and methods that they are familiar with.

They just, that's what they'll do by default.

And then that will lead to an outcome of things that can be made with those tools and methods, but is unlikely to be the platonic ideal of the perfect product.

So then, so that's why it's good to think of things in both directions.

So like, what can we build with the tools that we have?

But also, what is the theoretical perfect product look like?

And that theoretical perfect product is gonna be a moving target, because as you learn more, the definition for that perfect product will change, because you don't actually know what the perfect product is but you can successfully approximate a more perfect product.

So think about it like that and then saying, okay, now what tools, methods, materials, whatever do we need to create in order to get the atoms in that shape.

But people rarely think about it that way.

I should mention that the brilliant Siobhan Zillis is hanging out with us in case you hear a voice of wisdom from outside, from up above.

You mentioned it would be great for science to put a base on the moon to do some research, but the truly big leap, again, in this category of seemingly impossible, is to put a human being on Mars.

When do you think SpaceX will land a human being on Mars?

Best case is about 5 years, worst case 10 years.

What are the determining factors would you say from an engineering perspective or is that not the bottlenecks?

You know, it's fundamentally, you know, engineering the vehicle.

I mean, Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made by, I don't know, order of magnitude or something like that.

And the fundamental optimization of Starship is minimizing cost per ton to orbit and ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars.

This may seem like a mercantile objective, but it is actually the thing that needs to be optimized.

Like there is a certain cost per ton to the surface of Mars where we can afford to establish a self-sustaining city and then above that we cannot afford to do it.

So right now you couldn't fly to Mars for a trillion dollars doesn't, no amount of money could get you a ticket to Mars.

So we need to get that above, to get that like something that is actually possible at all.

But then, but that's, we don't just wanna have, you know, with Mars, flags and footprints and then not come back for a half century like we did with the moon.

In order to pass a very important great filter, I think we need to be a multi-planet species.

This may sound somewhat esoteric to a lot of people, but eventually, given enough time, there's something, the Earth is likely to experience some calamity that could be something that humans do to themselves or an external event like happen to the dinosaurs.

And, but eventually, if none of that happens and somehow magically we keep going, then the sun is gradually expanding and will engulf the earth.

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Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #252