Hi I'm Brian Alexander with TIME,
and I'm here with Elon Musk, who has been dubbed the real-life Tony Stark
and who is also the founder of PayPal, the founder of Tesla Motors
and the current head of this company, SpaceX.
Right.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Kevin Lin in Ann Arbor, Michigan asks, 'Tesla Motors was recently awarded 465 million dollars in a loan
from the federal government, and I believe SpaceX seeks money from the federal government as well.
Doesn't this contradict your libertarian views?
No I don't think it does contradict those views because we're just living in very unusual times.
We're living in times where capital availability is extremely difficult,
and even the private markets are somewhat weak right now.
This is the worst period, for the financial period, since the Great Depression,
so I think special times call for special circumstances, and I think in this time,
particularly when you're dealing with something that requires an enormous amount of capital to get done,
which is to build the car company, I think it does make sense to accept a loan from the Department of Energy.
Tom Hale in New York City asks, 'Do you really think the electric car can replace the combustion engine?'
I think probably within 20 years, a majority of new cars manufactured will be pure electric.
It'll take another 10 or 15 years beyond that for the the fleet of existing cars to be primarily electric
because it takes a while to sort of switch out things, but I feel confident in saying that within 20 years, probably sooner,
a majority of new cars manufactured will be pure electric.
And what about planes? I mean, do you have any kind of timetable for that?
You've talked about, you know, it seems pretty hypothetical at this point, and when when does the concrete work begin with that?
I do feel pretty confident that with what I know, with what I've learned from doing SpaceX, which is an aerospace company
and what I learned from doing Tesla, so obviously has a lot of experience with electric motors and batteries,
that kind of thing. If I combine the knowledge sets of those two, then it's really ideal for creating a supersonic
electric plane right?
You're the guy.
It kind of makes sense so.
I don't see anybody behind you.
All right. I don't know if you know who's chasing me on that one but so I do think I've got the necessary ingredients
to design the plane and make it work. I just need enough bandwidth, a personal bandwidth to be able to get it done.
Andrew Colegrieve from Perth, Western Australia asks, 'How did you feel when the Falcon 9 successfully launched
and achieved orbit?'
It was definitely elation in that case. I was super, super excited and glad, and it was, you know, there was a lot riding on that rocket,
beyond just SpaceX because we're really at this historic inflection point for a transition to commercial space,
and the success or failure of Falcon 9 was at that point in history, really could have shifted that whole debate.
NASA is right now moving towards commercial. The president is moving things towards commercial,
but there's a lot of opposition in Congress. Ironically, a lot of that opposition is coming from Republican,
the Republican side of the house. I think it's somewhat not well reasoned.
It's sort of strange that you'd have some Republican senators and congressmen opposed to commercialization.
They think the public option is, you know, public option is terrible unless it applies to space.
Doesn't make any sense.
Eric Kulu from Tartu, Estonia,
uh-huh Wow, from Australia to Estonia.
Yeah, we give you the world here at TIME.
'SpaceX was founded with a long-term goal of enabling humanity to become a spacefaring civilization.
Are you hoping to see that in your lifetime?'
Yes I really am. I know of course it depends on how long I live.
Like within 40 years, we could be a spacefaring civilization.
The critical breakthrough, technological breakthrough, that's necessary for that
is to create a truly reusable rocket system.
I mean, it's, you know, launching expendable rockets is nice, and yes we can be
a very successful rocket company, and we could even be the, you know,
the overwhelmingly successful rocket company.
I think there's a good chance we could be the the main, you know, have a very high market share
and really could be a, you know, quite, quite dominant in the aerospace launch, but nonetheless,
if we do not make reusability work I would not consider it to be a success.
What advice would you give to young persons of developing countries who are seriously considering to be an entrepreneur
but still feeling a bit wobbly?
You really, when you're trying to create a company what you really try to do is organize a group of people
to do something useful.
And something useful is as measured by other people who are the consumers of your products and services,
but this thing may seem like an obvious thing but often people organize groups
into a company that doesn't produce something useful or that other people consider useful,
so you definitely want to listen to any positive and negative feedback that you get,
which is not to say that you believe it but you need to look at it, at any positive, negative feedback
and say maybe it's correct, maybe it's not, weigh it up and just sort of carefully reflect on all information you receive.
But don't be afraid to pull the trigger even in this, if you got the goods.
Yeah. Exactly.