Mars Society Convention

Okay, I think we're here. Are we live? Jim. Yes, Robert. We are live. Okay. Well, then we're live. So, uh everybody wait I would just wait for a moment, Robert. I It's okay. He's here. I want Yeah, right here. Okay, perfect. Okay. So, uh Well, Elon, you need no introduction, but for those who don't know, you are the founder and chief engineer of SpaceX and a long-time friend of the Mars Society, and we're delighted to have you back.

We've got 9,000 people registered to hear you today. All right, cool. Sounds good. Okay. So, I should like change this perspective. I'll see if I can change the perspective. Is that better? Or is that worse? I think you were better before. Okay. Okay. So, listen. Uh why don't we just start out with the basics? You started SpaceX to make humanity multi-planetary. Um Yeah. Why do you see that as a critical goal? Yes.

Um I think uh we we want to be on track to become a multi-planetary species and and a space-faring civilization in order to find out what the universe is all all about. Like, what, you know, uh and ensure the continuance of consciousness as we know it. As we know it, we're the only life. I mean, people think there's aliens, but honestly, I haven't seen any sign of aliens. Um so, as far as we know, we're the only the the only life.

Uh we could be the only life. So, let's put it that way. And we need to take the set of actions that are most likely to make the future good and result in the continuance of consciousness as we know it. Okay. So, okay. Well, obviously, your your your means to that end is is to open the space frontier with reusable launch vehicles. Uh you've gone through some partially reusable ones, and now it's Starship.

Can you explain the basically the line of thinking that led you to the Starship design? I forgot what I need to look at to look like I'm looking at the camera. Um Um so, let's see. Well, on the Starship front, um we've gone through many iterations, uh starting from not really knowing how to build rockets at all, uh with with Falcon 1 and having four failures actually in reaching orbit. Uh three Yeah, that's right.

Three failures, then the fourth one got to orbit. So, fourth one's the charm. Um so, we only barely survived. Um I was at zero cash, basically, when we got that fourth one to orbit. Um and if that fourth one hadn't worked, we we would we would have been curtains. So, it's definitely not been smooth sailing. Uh it's been a very difficult uh ride. Um with just a lot that has been discovered along the way.

Uh I mean, just just trying to figure out what questions to ask about the design was was quite difficult. Um I think it's helpful to have as the objective the creation of a a self-sustaining city on Mars. I think this is this is has to be the objective, not simply a few people or a base, but a self-sustaining uh city. Um the acid test really is if these if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, does Mars die out? For any reason.

It could be from any banal or it could be nuclear Armageddon. Doesn't matter. If the if the ships stop coming for any reason, does the city on Mars die out? If it does, we have not we're we're not in a secure place. Um so, I mean, I think this this really might come down to, you know, on the the great filter front, is this are we going to create a self-sustaining city on Mars before or after World War III?

And I think the probability of it being created after World War III, hopefully the hopefully there's never a World War III, but uh after is low. So, we should try to create to make the city self-sustaining before any possible World War III. This is just a risk. This is not, you know, I mean, sometimes people have difficulty dealing with with probabilities. They see it this way or that way, but it's really we just face a series of probabilities.

Um and uh there's some chance that we will have a giant war or a super volcano or um you know, a a comet might hit the Earth or we might just self-extinguish in some uh it might be more of a more of a whimper than a bang. Um Yeah, and frankly, right now, civilization is not looking super uh strong, you know, it's it's looking a little little rickety right now, to be frank.

Would you say that it's it's more than a lifeboat that it would actually make you civilization more robust, clearly more able to divert asteroids from hitting the Earth and uh otherwise help? Yeah. Um it's not an it's not an escape vehicle. It It's a it's simply uh something that it's like you can I mean, unless Mars is Mars is made self-sustaining, which will probably not happen in my lifetime.

Uh it is certainly not It's mean It's meaningless to have an escape uh you know, lifeboat or or escape hatch or something if you will you are simply moving to another place where you will soon die out. That doesn't count. It's not much of a lifeboat, really.

Um so, this is really about to say minimizing existential risk for civilization as a whole and and then uh having an exciting future that you can look forward to, and a future where we are a space-faring civilization and uh multi-planetary species is far more exciting than one where we are not. Um I mean, that's an exciting future, and being forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event is depressing and not fun.

Um and we need things that make you want to get out of bed in the morning and be excited about future. And I think being a space-faring civilization is one of those things that everyone can get can get excited about. But but can you maybe just kind of lead people on the path that led you from the design of but for Falcon 9 to Falcon Heavy, but now Starship is is is rather different than Falcon Heavy. Um Yes.

the engineering Uh actually, I didn't quite answer your original question. I the the you first have to say what what is the goal. Um and once you have what is the goal, you can then measure the various designs against that goal. Um if otherwise, you're saying, "How are you evaluating Why is one design better than another?" What's your goal? It's got to be a goal.

So, the the goal is get enough tonnage to Mars to and enough people to make Mars self-sustaining as quickly as possible. So, then you say, "Okay, let's back back out the math on this." We're going to need We're going to need a lot of tonnage. Uh maybe I don't know, 100,000 tons, maybe a million tons. So, then you can't be faffing around with these expendable rockets. They're a joke. They're they're absurd. Even Saturn V is tiny potatoes.

Um we we need it because if if you want to get like like let's say first-order approximation, um a million tons to the surface of Mars, um inclusive of people, uh you know, that that means probably something around four or five million useful tons of payload in the into lower Earth orbit. You know, for every ton you get to lower Earth orbit, you're going to get four or five tons. Prob- hopefully closer to five.

It's it's you know, these this math is is really start squeezing like tiny percentages, but let's say I can confidently if you got five tons to lower Earth orbit, you can get one ton to Mars. That's that's con- confident. Maybe you can get maybe maybe you only need four. Anyway, point is you need five million tons into Earth orbit to get one million tons to Mars. Now, let's put this into perspective.

Total global capacity to orbit of all expendable rockets is around around five or 600 tons, I think. And if you said, "Okay, the world's going to end if you do not increase your capacity," perhaps they could do 1,000 tons. Okay, so, that's uh 1/5,000th 1/5,000th of what's needed. This is ridiculous. Um you know, um it's it's not even, you know, 0. 1% would be, you know, 1/1,000th. So, it's way less than 0. 1%. We have way less than 0.

1% of the capability needed to create a if if everyone went full tilt with expendable rockets. Expendable rockets are the are the absolute are just utterly stupid, in my opinion. Utterly stupid. Um they're a complete waste of time. People should stop wasting their time. If you try to sell an expendable plane, people would laugh you out of the room. If you try to sell an expendable car, they would laugh you out of the room.

If you try to sell an expendable horse, they would laugh you out of the room and think there's something wrong with you mentally. Um So, all these things are reusable. It's It's essential to be reusable. Now, creating a reusable rocket, orbital rocket, is very difficult. Doing a suborbital reusable rocket is easy. Doing a reusable orbital rocket is hard.

Um even when a lot of smart people have put a quite a bit of effort into it, they might get 2 or 3% of the lift off mass to lower orbit. Um And a really epic rocket would get four. Um I'm not sure I don't think anyone's ever gotten before. Um So, but what you basically need to have something that in expendable form would probably get about 4% of its payload to orbit. Such that you can spend about half of that 4% uh on reusability.

And and still net out to around 2%. uh payload to orbit. Um So, you have to make both the booster and the upper stage and the fairing everything reusable. With Falcon 9 So, so with Falcon 1, we did actually attempt to do this. So, we had a parachute in the first stage. Um but really did not appreciate that that first stage was going to hit the atmosphere like a concrete wall.

So, at first I got pretty mad at the parachute supplier until I realized it's not their fault. You know, we were just being fools. Um that that that thing was exploding as soon as it hit the it hit the atmosphere. Um and you know, so you you really got to do something to to um ease the transition into the atmosphere at at at high Mach number. It is very hot and there's a lot of force and a lot of heat.

So, then with Falcon 9, we made a bigger rocket. Um and our scale matters here because you do get basically economies of scale. You can't have a tiny rocket. Um with a tiny rocket, you basically just end up carrying your electronics to orbit. So, your avionics, you know.

So, in a little rocket, uh you if if you're if you're small enough, the the just your your avionics alone uh ends up being a significant percentage of your uh payload and and then you end up you know, if you've got a rocket that was I don't know, you're trying to get a 10,000-lb rocket for example or even a 10,000-kg rocket to orbit and make you basically get zero pylon.

Um Now, as you get bigger, the the rocket gets bigger, but the brain doesn't get bigger. The brain can stay the same size. So, your avionics, for example, uh become a almost not almost zero percent of the weight of a perfect rocket. Um Then, for big rockets, you also get uh gauge advantages. So, this is We're really in the nuances of rocket design and manufacturing here. If you the things are very small, it's difficult to get your gauge accurate.

Um So, the basically how thick is the material? Um like you want to do castings, for example, there's a minimum gauge or thickness for a casting. Um there's a minimum kind of error bar on the um you know, on this the the material skins. Even for a composite rocket, you've got uh you know, you you start getting granularity issues. As you get bigger, uh you're no longer you're no longer gauge limited.

Um and you can get your your percentage accuracy on the thickness of walls and castings can be can be very good. Um Uh these are nuances that I think almost no one appreciates, but suffice to say that there are advantages to size. Um And you can certainly see this in many walks of life where uh if you've got a truck that's carrying cargo, you it's more efficient to have a big semi truck, not a bunch of little trucks.

Um For ships, uh it would be pretty silly to see container ships uh or containers going across the ocean one at a time with little outboard motors. That would be silly. You put them on a container ship. You have big ships, not little little tiny ships. Um So, anyway, so size matters. It really does. Um and for reusability, it matters. So, with with Falcon 9, after immense effort, we were able to uh achieve reusability of the booster.

Um And um we're mostly achieving reusability at this point with the fairing as well. Um but this is a This is a monumental effort. Uh And I think within its architecture, Falcon 9 is close to a local maximum. Um If you say uh you know, gas generator cycle kerosene uh oxygen vehicle um of this particular size could with uh a 12-ft or 3. 6-m diameter, um which is which is that size for because of of road transport limitation.

So, you go bigger than that, you can't transport it over the road and your logistics costs become extreme. Um So, but but having a long thin rocket is not very mass efficient. Um you you you you end up having to have thicker skins to take out the bending moments. Um So, we're we're and then and then having like kerosene is is not the right fuel. Methane is a much better fuel. You can get higher ISP. Um the specific impulse basically efficiency.

I mean, for for those who I think probably a lot of us who are listening know what the rocket equation is, but in simple terms, it's actually it's very simple. It's like a rocket is going to go further uh if if the gas if it shoots the gas out of the end faster um and if a bigger percentage of its mass is propellant. It is obvious. So, that's what that's what the rocket equation says.

Um So, shoot shoot gas out faster um in in the right direction and increase the the propellant uh the percentage of propellant, that that's going to get you go allow you to go further. Um with methane, you can shoot out faster. And And you can make it on Mars. You can make it on Mars, for sure. Um Exactly. So, uh um being able to to do in situ propellant development is or production is very important.

Um So, you don't have to carry your return fuel with you or return fuel and oxygen. It's to be in like um Rockets are mostly oxygen or oxidizer. So, um And there's there's some other subtle advantages with a ox oxygen-methane system in that you can go to a higher percentage a higher mass ratio of oxygen.

So, with kerosene, you're you have a called roughly two and a half to one um oxygen to fuel mass ratio with uh methane, you're more like three and a half to one. Um and you actually want that higher mass ratio because oxygen is very dense and it's inexpensive. Um especially on Earth. So, you're going to you know, you have all these plants just making oxygen all day long and thank them just making oxygen. Um They don't have to do anything.

So, the cost of oxygen is basically the cost of electricity. Um Anyway, so going from Falcon um going from uh you know, um kerosene, which is basically the same as jet fuel. It's like RP-1 rocket propellant grade kerosene is just um a tighter grade of jet fuel. Um You want to go from that to something which has where the gas shoots out faster, and that's methane, and where um in situ production of propellant is easier.

Um So, that's that's why the change from from kerosene to methane. Methane is just CH4. It's one carbon, four hydrogens. Um and then the oxygen pairs pairs together, so you have it's it's called O2 because oxygen pair bonds. Um And obviously you know all this stuff. I'm just Yeah. basically helping for the audience. together. Large size, twice the take off thrust of a Saturn V, but Yes.

about the same payload, but that gets you reusability, much cheaper, in situ propellant. It all is coherent. Yes. And uh so, let me ask you with the thing that I think everybody wants to know, uh which is when? Um when are we going to see Starship do a high flight to stratosphere? When to orbit? When first payload to Mars? When first humans to Mars? All right. Well, it's not like I We're all seeing venturing into unknown territory.

So, it's not as though I I I have all these secret dates and I and I um you know, just keeping them from people, but So, so the my These are just guesses, obviously. Um I'm pretty I I say I'm 80 to 90% confident that we will reach orbit with Starship next year. Um Uh I think probably 50 or 60 50% confident that we'll be able to bring the ship and booster back. That's that's more of a dicey situation.

Um We'll We'll probably lose a few ships before we we really get the atmospheric return and landing right. Uh we might lose Hopefully, we don't lose that uh Hopefully, we don't lose any boosters cuz that's a lot of engines. Um Our initial booster flights will just have maybe two to four engines, um not 28. 28's a lot of engines. So, um Yeah, and then I think we'll probably be in um do it doing high volume flights I think probably in 2022.

So, a couple years from now. Um But I'm I'm trying to make sure that that our rate of innovation increases, it does not decrease. Um if this is really essential, uh it In fact, if we do not see something close to an exponential improvement in our rate of innovation, we will not reach Mars. Like a pure linear doesn't get there. Not not while I'll be dead anyway before it gets there if it's pure linear.

If it's exponential, I think we we could get to Mars. We could we could probably send an uncrewed mission there in maybe 4 years. Um you know, there's a Mars conjunction every 26 months. There's one this year, so that means in a couple years from now there's another one, and then 4 years from now there's another one. I I I think we've got a fighting chance of of making the that second uh Mars transfer window.

So, one thing that is really um amazing uh about uh SpaceX to those of us who have experience in the aerospace industry is is the rate of innovation. Uh you know, the last time you spoke to the Mars Society convention was 2012. Since then you made the Falcon 9 reusable, introduced Falcon Heavy, uh Crew Dragon, a satellite constellation, and you're in the middle of developing Starship.

Uh so, what what is your you know, what would you say is your methodology that allows you to innovate so swiftly? I don't really know. Uh We're focused on I guess it's it's it is important to have that have the objective you're right. Um that's why I was talking so much about the importance of making Mars a self-sustaining self-sustaining city on Mars.

Um if if that's the objective, then obviously you know, just putting some satellites in orbit or is not that that's not important. You have to achieve full and rapid reusability. I emphasize full and rapid. Reusability is only relevant to the degree it's rapid and complete. Um and uh and then you also have to do orbital refueling. This is essential as well. Um and uh and then um propellant production on Mars is also essential.

So, uh you know, in in with that as the goal, then you know, with that that that means that that that that creates I think a good forcing function for radical innovation because in the absence of radical innovation, we have no chance of meeting that goal. Um whereas if our goal was simply, you know, defeat Lockheed and Boeing or something like that, that that we we would probably achieve that done it.

It it really that really wasn't even a thing, you know. Yeah. I wish it was. Um You know, like they're they're not really trying to do not even trying to do reusability, which is bizarre cuz they make planes that are reusable. Um so, I mean, if they if they talked to the you know, if they talked to one of their customers about buying a uh sir a Lockheed fighter jet or a Boeing aircraft like, "Hey, we're going to sell you a 737 can be used once."

And and it's not a 737 Max. Um but that would that turns out that was a single use airplane at the time. Um but it really uh it it would be an absurd thing for them to sell a single use aircraft, but they feel quite comfortable selling a single use rocket.

Um Anyway, but if if our goal was simply we're going to have be the leaders in uh launching the conventional satellites that exist, uh we would probably approach that in a sort of logarithmic basis where you know, you you'd get there and you'd sort of slowly make progress towards doing 10 launches a year, 12 launches a year, and while they do six or something like that. I don't know.

Um But if since the goal is, "Hey, we need to make life multi-planetary before it's too late." Um and time really matters, so we're our state us it's like we're shooting for Mars, not just the moon. So, let's shoot for the moon, shoot for Mars. Um and then and then the you know, these these competitive things are are kind of small things along the way.

Unless somebody else is shooting for Mars, they will not be competitive with something as pedestrian as launching a few satellites into Earth orbit. So, how how can the Mars Society help you? Well, I do think there's you know, in order to for there to be a self-sustaining city on Mars, there's we're going to need an intersection of sets here.

One set is the set of people that want to go and can either find sponsorship they can either afford themselves or find government sponsorship or take out a loan or whatever the case may be. Um Uh but somehow you've got to have the the set of people who want to go to Mars and can and can come up with the funds somehow to do that, and then then you know, it's it's it's I should say it's there's two sets.

Desire to go to Mars and can afford to go to Mars. When the when desire to go to the people who want to go to Mars uh and and who who could afford to go to Mars, when that intersection of sets reaches a million roughly, then I think we will have this a city on Mars. Um so, we need both the the motivation and the the you know, we need both the means and the way. I mean, we I should I should It's like um We need we need people to want to go.

and the way. The will and the way. Yes, exactly. The will and the way. Where there's a will, there's a way, but in this case we need will and a way. Uh so, when the will and the way intersect, then we will have a viable planetary species. The will and the way must intersect. So, I think the Mars Society could really help with the will. Okay, you provide the way, we'll provide the will. Yes, exactly. Uh okay.

Now, your assistant Jen uh told me earlier that you have a hard cut off at the uh half hour. Is that true, or do you want to uh stay and take some questions from from the uh audience? Yeah, we can do maybe 5 10 minutes of questions. All right, great. So, um I we've got uh hundreds of questions, so uh would the uh Jim, do you want to read a question or two? Yeah, sure thing. Uh hi Elon, my name is James Burke. I'm from Seattle, Washington.

Where's the best place to land on Mars, do you think? Yeah, actually I'm not super sure. Um I can tell you what the criteria are that you'd want you'd want to be um um I I anyway, I think the the the short answer is mid-latitudes. Um probably on the north. Uh so, you want to be close to ice. Uh you don't want to be too you don't want to be too far away from the sun so you can get solar power.

Um and you want to uh land at a low altitude so that you can take maximum effect of atmospheric braking. What do you think? Uh I like uh Melas Chasma. That's a nice little area at the bottom of Valles Marineris. The air pressure is high. Okay. Is there a lot of ice there? There's ice around there. I would have to look for it, though. Okay. That kind of brings me to my next question, and then I'm going to turn it over to Carrie to ask you one.

Um how would you prioritize like missions like two through 10? Are you going to focus on exploration or building up the infrastructure or science? Uh we're going to I think the first order of business is build a propellant plant. Um I I mean, we can for sure lob out a bunch of droids, you know, that's no problem. Um I think why not, you know, we're going you know, and probably if anyone wants to put their droid on, we we can just take it.

Um and you know, like, hey, it's basically a remote control car. Uh it's a solar powered remote control car. Um and we can provide the the the communication relay, so you know, you could just basically connect to your car from uh your computer at home and try you know, cruise your electric you could have legs, too, for that matter your rover device / car. That would be pretty cool.

Um and um you know, there's a lot of people worried about like, you know, life contamination. And it's like, "Listen, anything that can survive on Mars is very it's so freaking tough, it's insane. Um That it is cold and there's like a lot of UV radiation, and it if it's not going to be too worried about anything we send from Earth, let me put it that way. Um it's just tougher than anything on Earth.

Um so, but but I think the first order of business is we've got to build a propellant a plant to make propellant. And it is we should have got to let me a lot of energy. Um we we've got to I mine some ice. Um and uh we've got you got CO2 from the atmosphere, so you got from the ice you got the H2O. Combine that H2O with the CO2, you get CH4 and O2.

Um but that's a lot of energy, and it be quite hard, I think, to make that propellant uh plant It's reliable, Um So, but that that's the that's the primary order of business and then we can also look around and see if we can learn anything from a scientific standpoint. Carrie, do you want to go next? Sure, thank you, James. Um I'm Carrie Fehn. I live in Denver, Colorado. Um thank you for joining us today, Mr. Musk.

Um we do have a lot of questions um from 13-14-year-olds. So, I'm just going to pick one and ask you. Um it's from a a teenager and her name is Dara and she wants to be an engineer and build Starships and robots and her dream is working for SpaceX. What should she focus on to be an engineer? Well, I think there's all kinds of engineering that's needed. Um So, you don't have to be an aerospace engineer.

You could be um in um electronics, you know, mechanical engineer, um electrical engineer, you could be software engineer. Uh I mean, there's a lot of engineering basically almost any kind of engineering. Um we'll need chemical engineering, I think also for figuring out how to make a good propellant depot or propellant propellant production plant. Um And uh yeah, I think physics in general is a good background for thinking.

You know, I just generally recommend people take physics courses because physics has the best tools for critical thinking. Thank you, Elon. James? Yeah, thanks, Carrie. Um another question. The Boring Company, now is that just kind of a an outfit to build tunneling machines that can work on Mars? Uh no. The Boring Company actually started as kind of a joke.

Um And I for a lot lot of times people would ask me what what do I think of the opportunities are out there and for I don't know, 5 years or more I kept saying, "Can someone please start a tunneling company?" Uh cuz I think tunnels have a lot of opportunity for alleviating traffic in cities and just improving quality of life overall. I mean, there's a lot of streets you could turn into parks. Um you certainly wouldn't need parking.

You could just park cars underground. So, um and I just everyone thought I was joking and I was and then I was like, "Well, I I guess we'll see what it takes to drill a tunnel dig a tunnel." And and um and all these like so-called traffic experts and I and haven't really made much progress uh you know, cities like LA and DC are still a traffic nightmare.

I'm like, "Okay, guys, well, if you've got such great ideas, why don't why is it still a traffic nightmare?" Um so, if you build tunnels, you got to go 3D somehow, either underground or above ground. Uh like either air or ground. And the problem with air is like you know, any anything that can carry persons can generate a a lot of noise and a lot of wind force. So, and could fall on your head.

And also kind of not be good for privacy and like, you know, you're just sitting in your backyard and someone's like flying over you. It's like not that cool. So, but tunnels are are working on those things. They're also weather proof. Um yeah, um don't have any privacy issues and uh safe and All right. They they will be They would make a big difference to traffic.

And we have the first uh production tunnel or useful tunnel in Vegas that's going to open I think in a month or two. So, a few months, I guess. Um And hopefully we'll be ready for primetime around the Consumer Electronics Show. Um so, And now for for Mars, I think tunnels and and digging in general is good, but you need to build them very light system compared to what would matters on Earth.

You don't really care all that much about mass on Earth. We care a lot about mass going to Mars. Is it fair to say that you're learning some techniques that might apply to Mars with The Boring Company? Yeah. Yeah, probably. When do you think Starship will be able to be demonstrating refueling in lower Earth orbit? I think we've got a shot at doing that in '22. About 2 years. And then when do you guys think you'll have a Moon ship prototype?

Um I probably 2 or 3 years. As soon as you've got orbital refueling, you can you can send significant payload to the Moon. Like significant meaning 100 tons of useful payload at a shot. So then from there, I think you mentioned Mars is a couple years after that. It's only a couple years after that because the Mars transit window is every 26 months.

Um I think we we maybe have a shot of sending or you know, trying to send something to Mars in 3 years, but the window is is 4 years away because of the being in different parts of the solar system. Carrie asked a question from a young person. I'd like to also ask, do you have any tips for young people who love Mars but don't know how to help with the settlement of Mars?

Well, I think definitely I you know, anyone who is a strong advocate for Mars, I think this really makes a difference, you know. Um a lot of times it's not even people aren't even thinking about it. And you know, you could talk to people at a party and they or talk to friends and they're like, it's just not even not even a a topic of conversation.

So, I think it could really help if everyone out there who who thinks this is important for the future of humanity and consciousness as a whole, um to make it part of what people are thinking about. Bring it up at at parties and talking friends and online. It's like it should be a thing that we do. Um and I think it's worth uh you know, maybe 1% of our resources at least.

Um And that's not going to fundamentally change change things, your quality of life. If we have one If we spend 1% of our resources, you know, much less than health care, obviously. Um May- maybe probably even less than we spend on cosmetics, frankly. Um then that that would be enough to make life multi-planetary. But I we really need to make this a thing people talk about at least 1% of the time. And that that really matter.

Um Like that as we're talking about earlier, we need we need the will, which is we need enough critical mass of people wanting to make it happen. The and and then we need the way and SpaceX is going to try hard to provide the way and and then once we show that there's a way, probably there will be other companies that also try to do it as well. Um So, we need the will and the way. They can provide either The will is extremely important.

It makes a huge difference. What's the coolest part of Starship development? Well, I guess the coolest part of Starship development is working with the just a great team of engineers um and coming up with uh interesting solutions. Um Yeah, you know, I I I think it's just fundamentally enjoyable if you're working with a lot of good smart people creatively towards solutions that have never existed before. That's very rewarding.

So, I guess probably like that the most. Can you talk a little bit about how Starship could be used for other destinations in the solar system like Venus and the outer planets? Starship is is definitely a general generalized uh ship. It basically can it it's it solves for transport anywhere in the solar system that where where there is a uh solid surface to land. So, if you can land there, we're going to take there.

We we're also actually going to the atmosphere of Venus, for example, just like going to orbit and uh and and to um perhaps to the upper atmosphere. Venus's atmosphere is extremely dense. It's also quite hot.

Um So, but because of that dense atmosphere, you could you could have something you could have a kind of like a some sort of dirigible, you know, kind of some kind of like Like things that could float on Venus that could not float on Earth in the atmosphere because of the dense atmosphere. So, you could go to Venus. I mean, it's not a super friendly place. Um And then like Mercury's super hot.

Um But I think that we could go to Ceres or any of the asteroids. Uh the moons of Jupiter, although be quite high radiation around there. Um and then out to Saturn, you know, eventually getting out to uh you know, the sort of Kuiper Belt or cloud like that thing in the outer solar system. So, so Starship once you have propellant depots, you can kind of like planet hop or moon hop um around the the solar system.

Um it's not it's not a vehicle that would enable us to go interstellar, but it's um that that's a that's a that's a tough one. But it we need to make this the leap of going to another planet first. Once we are multi-planet species, we'll create a forcing function for the rapid improvement of uh of spaceflight and um and we'll figure out new technologies that will ultimately allow us to go to other star systems.

What do you look for in the people you hire, especially the engineers? Uh really just look for evidence of exceptional ability. So, it's not or at least aspirationally. Like sometimes these things get messed up in recruiting or the recruiting pool turns out to be ends up being wrong. Like I sometimes wonder with Tesla, if Nikola Tesla applied to Tesla, would we even give him an interview? It's not clear.

You know, this is a guy came from like some weird college in somewhere in Eastern Europe. He's He's got some odd mannerisms. Now, we don't know if we should give him an interview. Like I I worry that that's actually what we're doing instead of like Right. It should be like, "Man, Nikola Tesla this this this kid's super smart. What What does he want? We'll pay him anything."

That should be That should be the reaction if Nikola Tesla applies, you know, to Tesla, um ironically. Uh but so I can tell you the intent is we're looking for evidence of exceptional ability, uh and it really doesn't matter if you went to graduate high school or college or anything. We're just looking for evidence of exceptional ability, uh such that it would be a good predictor for doing exceptional things at SpaceX. All right.

Do you have some more questions from the audience there, Jim? I've got one. Um so have you thought about communication networks between Earth and Mars and kind of I mean you're working on Starlink. What about like an internet around Mars? Have you thought about that? Yeah, I mean you could totally do some variants of Starlink.

I believe this is probably going to be the last question, uh cuz I've I've got a bunch of things piled up, but um yeah, you could just do it version of Starlink around Mars, and then you just need a big laser coming from Earth. Probably want it to be in orbit, so it doesn't get atmospheric diffraction or attenuation.

Um you want you want to go from a big laser from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, and then you're going to need some relay stations, uh for when Mars is on the other side of the sun. So, you can't just shoot a laser through the sun. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elon. We're all pulling for you. Good luck. I appreciate it. Uh I just like to I thank you to all the people out there that that are that are fighting hard for the cause of Mars.

There's There's not that many, and we need more. Thank you. All right. Thank you.