The Colbert Report

For villain. That's what a super villain does. Superman doesn't say it will drop thermonuclear bombs. That's Lex Luthor, man. The slow way would be to release greenhouse gases like we're doing on Earth. We've gotten a lot of experience releasing greenhouse gases. We could export some of our green gases from Earth to Mars. Now you also have ways for us to get there. Because, as I said, you're one of the CEOs of SpaceX and I'm incredibly excited.

You're the CEO? I'm sorry. Okay, sorry. Struck a raw nerve. Again, super villain. Now, the thing that says SpaceX is that you want to have rockets like the sci-fi rockets. I was promised when I was a kid. Yeah, absolutely. You can reuse them. Yeah. This is the key to getting life to be multi-planetary is to have reusable rockets. If you throw the rockets away every time, it's crazy expensive to go to space.

But if you can re-fly the rockets, it could be comparable to air flight in its costs. And you've got a rocket call. Is it called the Falcon? Yeah. Okay. The Falcon rocket. And your goal is to try to land the Falcon rocket. on a barge at sea. So you use a ship? A ship? A pilot? It has an entrance. Everything I say seems to be insulting you this year. Well, if it's got an entrance, it's a ship. Okay, good. Okay. And is anybody driving the ship?

No, it's a drone ship. Okay. We have a footage of this is the last attempt, I think, to land the rocket after it successfully delivered a payload. Here it goes. And come on, baby. Yeah. Come on. You can do it. It broke a leg on landing. So it took over. It broke more than that. Yeah. Oh, how heartbreaking is that? To see that when you get that close. Definitely heartbreaking. Yeah. You don't seem heartbroken.

Well, that happened several months ago. So I think the get off. You can shake it off. I think we're actually feeling sad, but happy at the same time because if we could reduce the landing velocity, we could get it to land and stay upright and not explode. That is one of the goals of rockets is not to explode. Yes. How long before that's going to be safe enough that my wife would be okay with me getting on a rocket and going someplace?

Well, I'm not sure if I don't know your wife, but just right out there. Okay. Yeah. But I think in terms of when it will be safe enough for people, it's probably about two to three years. You're kidding. Yeah. That's nothing. Seriously. So two to three years from now, so two to three years now, it could be the beginning of like, here's George Jettin and yeah, Steve Colbert.

Well, in approximately two years, we'll be transporting NASA astronauts to the space station. What's the next thing that you want to do that is a hopeful future? So one of the things I like about what you do is that your vision of the future is very hopeful. That is, it is fixable. That the world, there's so much to spare. There's people throwing up their hands, the problems of the world that can't be solved.

You think that we can put our minds to it and actually make the world a better place? What do you think we need more than anything else? Well, I think the most important thing we need to solve this century is sustainable energy. Well, you seem like the guy to do it. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for trying to make the future a better place. you you you