I think the thing that drives me is that
I want to be able to think about the future, and...
feel good about that.
So,
that we’re doing what we can to
have the future be as good as possible,
to be inspired by what is likely to happen,
and to look forward to the next day.
You know, there are American heroes who don't like this idea.
Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan
have both testified against commercial space flight
in the way that you’re developing it
and I wonder what you think of that?
I was very sad to see that because those guys are...
Yeah
you know, that those guys are heroes of mine, so it’s really tough.
You know, I wish they would come and visit
and see the hard work 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?
Certainly hoping they would.
What are you trying to prove to them?
What I’m trying to do is to make a significant difference
in space flight and and...
help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.
And I would hope for as much support in that direction as we can receive.
- Why is no one else doing these things? - What's your pain threshold?
- Yeah - I hope it's real high.
Yeah SpaceX is alive but it's kind of at sea so is Tesla...
if things just got a little bit the other way
both companies would be dead
like one of the most difficult choices I have ever faced in life
was was in 2008
and I think I had...
maybe 30 million dollars left
30 or 40 million dollars left in 2008. I had two choices
I could put it all into one company
and then the other company would definitely die
or split it between the two companies.
And if I split it between two companies they both might die
and when you put your blood, sweat and tears into creating something,
building something, it's like a child
it's like which one, am I gonna let one starve to death.
I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I split the money between the two.
Fortunately, thank goodness they both came through.
What was your biggest failure? And how did it change you?
For SpaceX, the first three launches failed.
And we were just barely able to scrape together enough
parts and money to do the fourth launch.
If that fourth launch had failed we would have been dead.
I tried very hard to get the right expertise in for SpaceX
I tried hard to find a great Chief engineer for the rocket
but the good chief engineers wouldn't join…
and the bad ones, well, there’s 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.
When I was young, I...
I didn't really know what I was going to do when I got older.
People kept asking me and…
But then eventually I thought the idea of inventing things would be really cool.
And the reason I thought that was because
I read a quote from Arthur C. Clark which said that
“A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
And that’s really true.
If you go back, say 300 years,
the things that we take for granted today, you’d be burned at stake for.
You know, being able to fly. That’s crazy.
Being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate,
having effectively...
with the Internet, a group mind of sorts,
and having access to all the world’s information
instantly from almost anywhere on the earth.
This is, this is the stuff that really would be magic
that would be considered magic in times past.
In fact, I think it actually goes beyond that,
because there are many things that we take for granted today
that weren’t even imagined in times past.
They weren’t even in the realm of magic.
So, it actually goes beyond that.
So I thought, well if I can do some of those things
basically -if I can-
advance technology, then that's like magic and that would be really cool.
And the the...
I always had sort of a slight existential crisis, because I was trying to figure out
what does does the mean? Like what’s the purpose of things?
And I came to the conclusion that
if we can advance the knowledge of the world,
if we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness,
then we’re better able to ask the right questions
and become more enlightened. And that’s really the only way forward.
I think certainly being focused on something
that you're confident will have high value to someone else
and just being really rigorous in making that assessment
because people tend to...
a natural human tendency is wishful thinking.
So a challenge for entrepreneurs is to say, well, what’s the difference between
really believing new ideas and sticking to them
versus pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn’t actually have merit?
And it’s it's, that is, that is a really difficult thing to...
Can you tell the difference between those two things?
So you need to be sort of very rigorous in your self-analysis.
I think certainly extremely tenacious
and...
and then just work like hell, I mean, you just have to put in,
you know, 80 hour to 100 hour weeks every week.
Well, first of all I think
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,
If you’re doing something that has high value to people,
and that frankly, even it's something, if it’s like just a little game
or, you know,
some improvement in photo sharing or something,
if it.. if I does a small amount of good for a large number of people
that’s, I mean I think that's fine.
Like, stuff doesn’t need to change the world just to be good.