you know there are american heroes who don't like this idea neil armstrong gene cernan
have both testified against commercial space flight and the way that you're developing it
and i wonder what you think of that i was very sad to see that um because those guys are yeah
you know those guys are heroes of mine so it's really tough
you know i i wish they would come and visit and and see the hardware that we're doing here
and i think that would change their mind they inspired you to do this didn't they yes
and to see them casting stones in your direction
it's difficult did you expect them to cheer you on
so they hoping they would what are you trying to prove to them what i'm trying to do is just to
make a significant difference in its space flight and and and help make space flight accessible
to to almost anyone one of the most difficult choices i haven't faced in life was was in 2008
and i think i had
maybe 30 million dollars left 30 or 41 left in 2008 i had two choices
i could put it all into one company and then the other company would definitely die um or split it
between the two governments and but if i split up between two companies they both might die
and you know when you put your blood sweat and tears into creating something you're building
something it's like a child and so it's like which one am i gonna let one starve to death
you can bring myself to do it so i split the money between the two
fortunately thank goodness uh they both go through
what was your biggest failure and how did that change you well there's a ton of failures along
the way that's for sure except for as i said for spacex the first three launches failed
and uh we actually were just barely able to scrape together enough parts and money to do the fourth
launch that fourth launch had failed we would have been dead so multiple failures along the way um
i tried very hard to get the right expertise in for spacex i tried hard to to find a great
chief engineer for the rocket but the good chief engineers wouldn't join and the bad
ones well there was no point in hiring them so i ended up being chief engineer of the rocket
so if i could have found somebody better than we would have maybe had less than three failures that
third failure in a row did you think i need to pack this in never why not i don't ever give up
uh you need to work depending on how well you want to do and particularly if you're starting a
company you need to work super hard so what what does super hard mean well when my brother and i
were starting our first company instead of getting an apartment we just rented a small office and we
slept on the couch and we showered at the the ymca and uh we're so hot up we had just one computer so
the website was up during the day and i was coding at night seven days a week all the time
and i i sort of briefly had a girlfriend that period and in order to
be with me she'd have to sleep in the office so i work hard like it i mean every waking hour that's
that's the the thing i would i would say if you particularly if you're starting a company um
and i mean if you do simple math say like okay if somebody else is working 50 hours and you're
working 100 you'll get twice as done as much done in the course of a year as the other company
have a high pain threshold but that's um there's a friend of mine who's got a good saying which is
that starting a company is like eating glass and stirring into the abyss okay that's um
that's generally what happens because um when you first start a company there's lots of optimism and
things that things are great and then so happiness at first is high then you encounter all sorts of
issues and happiness will steadily decline and then you'll go through a whole world of hurt
that's and then eventually you'll if you succeed and in most cases you will not succeed um
and tesla almost didn't succeed came very close to failure um then if you succeed then after a
long time you will finally get back to happiness um so i mean what tends to happen is it's sort of
quite exciting for the first several months of starting a company and then then reality sets
in things don't go as well as planned customers aren't signing up the technology or the product
isn't working as well as you thought and i think that can sometimes be compounded by a recession
and it can be very very painful for several years um so i think um frankly the starting company
i would advise people to have a high pain tolerance yeah people do not do not think
critically enough i mean there's critical thinking is a skill in short supply where people
people take too many things as they assume too many things to be true
without a sufficient basis in that belief so it's very important that people
closely analyze what is supposed to be true and and try to build up to try to say let's let's
analyze things from first principles not by not not by analogy or not by convention
if you assume things are true by convention which is actually what most people do
then it's difficult to gain insight into working how things can be bettered
so you know in any argument or any sort of train of thinking you want to
make sure that your the underlying premises are valid and applicable and um and you know
and and then in reaching a conclusion that the conclusion you're reaching is necessarily driven
by the underlying premises and the interconnection between those premises that may seem like a really
simple thing to say but most people don't do that so it's really the foundation of rational thought
if somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society i think that's a good thing
like it doesn't have to change the world like you know um if you're doing something that has
high value to people um and frankly even if it's something if it's like um just a little game um or
you know the some improvement in photo sharing or something if it if it has a small amount of
good for a large number of people that's i mean i think that's that's fine like
stuff doesn't need to be changed the world just to be good people tend to overweight risk
um on a personal level it's one thing if you've got you know a mortgage to pay and get support and
that if you were to deviate from your job that's well how you're going to feed your family and
pay the rent okay that's understandable but let's say you're young and you're just coming
out of college or coming out of high school or whatever the what are you what are your risk
you know you're not going to stop i mean it's it's really certainly not in any kind of modern
economy it's it's so easy to earn enough money just to live somewhere and eat food very easy
to do so if you i don't know if you're what are they only afraid of their that was mostly afraid
of failure i think or yeah but people should be less risk averse when there's not much at risk
you