StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson 6. November 2015 Tyson erkundet zusammen mit Bill Nye und Musk die Zukunft der Menschheit und behandelt dabei die NASA-Finanzierung, die Besiedlung des Mars und SpaceX.
Tyson erkundet zusammen mit Bill Nye und Musk die Zukunft der Menschheit und behandelt dabei die NASA-Finanzierung, die Besiedlung des Mars und SpaceX.
Transkript Neil deGrasse Tyson
Elon, what egg hatched you into this world? Where were you before you?
Elon Musk
Well, I was born in South Africa.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Born in South Africa and you come to America and make a billion dollars?
Elon Musk
Yeah, I mean, I didn't expect to make a billion dollars. I suppose I grew up in South Africa, honestly, seeing a lot of the same TV and movies and reading comic books, and it really didn't feel all that different from, say, Southern California, honestly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So you had a kind of baptism into American pop culture at the time?
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I ate a lot of hamburgers and went to steakhouses and read like every comic book, you know. So my father brought me on a trip to the United States when I think I was about 10. I remember it was a really awesome experience because the hotels all had arcades. So my number one thing was when we went to a new hotel or motel or whatever it is, go to the arcades. And so they had.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Forget any other services, forget whether they had bed bugs. You're looking for arcade games?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
What did video games do for you?
Elon Musk
They're incredibly engaging and they made me want to learn how to program computers because then I thought, well, I could make my own games and then I could also. I wanted to see how the games worked. Like, how did you create a video game? That's what led me to learn how to program computers.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So you became a programmer?
Elon Musk
Yeah, so I had one of the first video game consoles. It didn't even have cartridges. It had like four games that you could play and you could pick which one of the four games you could play. That was it. And then it went from there to the original Atari and then television. And then I was in a store and saw a Commodore Vic 20 and I was like, holy crow, you can actually have a computer and make your own games. I thought this was just one of the most incredible things possible. Took all of my saved allowance and then hounded my father until we got the Commodore VIC 20. And then it came with this manual on how to program in basic, which I sort of spent all night, several days in a row just absorbing that.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And on your own, no one forced you?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
This was self motivated. I gotta know this.
Elon Musk
This is good for me. I've just been like 9, 9 or 10 or something.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So you're fluent in basic at age 9 or 10?
Elon Musk
Yeah, I kind of went. Got OCD on the thing. Maybe it's not technically ocd, it's. But I still got obsessive. Let me put that at least the O part.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So programming has power you get to control something.
Elon Musk
You construct a little universe. And when you first do it, you're like, wow, this is incredible. You can actually make things happen. Like, you type these commands and then something happens on the screen that's pretty amazing. When I was in college, I sort of thought, well, what are the things that are most going to affect the future of humanity? And electric cars, solar power, essentially sustainable.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Most people think, I just want a job when I get out. And you're trying to reshape humanity as an undergraduate.
Elon Musk
I mean, it's pretty. In America, it's pretty easy to keep yourself alive. So, I mean, my threshold for existing is pretty low. I mean, I figured I could, like, be in some dingy apartment with my computer and be okay and not starve. In fact, when I first came to North America, I was in Canada when I was 17. And just to sort of see what it takes to live, I tried to live on $1 a day, which I was able to do. You sort of just buy food in bulk at the supermarket?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah. Rice and beans in there.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I went more for the hot dogs. Hot dogs and oranges. You get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after a while. And we can also pasta and green pepper and a big thing of source, and that can go pretty far, too. So it's like, oh, okay, you know, if I can live for a dollar a day, then at least from a food cost standpoint, well, it's pretty easy to earn, like $30 in a month, you know?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, I would think so.
Elon Musk
Probably be okay.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay. So that allowed you to not have to worry about money because you did the experiment.
Elon Musk
Yeah, I did the experiment, exactly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So this was an important psychological, philosophical anchor for you. Not to put words in your mouth, but that's a starting point to launch anywhere you want to go.
Elon Musk
Yeah, absolutely.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And so now you've got a baseline, a life baseline from which to go new places, intellectually, psychologically, financially. So what came first? Thoughts of an electric car or thoughts of space?
Elon Musk
You know, when you're starting out in college, like in your freshman sophomore year, like, you have these sort of sophomore philosophical wanderings. And I try to think of, okay, what are the things that will seem to me would most affect the future of humanity? There were really five things, three of which I thought would be interesting to be involved in. The three that I thought were definitely positive would be the Internet, sustainable energy, both production and consumption, and space exploration, more specifically, the extension of life beyond Earth on a permanent basis. And then, although I never thought I would actually be involved in that. That was really something I thought that was important in the abstract, but not something I thought I would ever have an opportunity to be involved in. And then the fourth one was artificial intelligence, and the fifth one was rewriting human genetics. These were just the five things that I thought would most affect the future of humanity. When I started out, my goal was to do a philanthropic mission with the intent of increasing NASA's budget. That was my goal. I was confused as to why we had not yet sent a person to Mars. It seemed like this was obviously the goal after the moon and we'd not made progress on that. And when it became clear that paper was going to get sold, a friend of mine asked me what I'm going to do next. And I said, well, I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I'm always curious about what's going on with space and why have we made progress. I just wonder when we're going to send a person to Mars. So I went on NASA website and I couldn't find a date. I was like, well maybe it's here somewhere and I just can't find it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The date that NASA wants to land on Mars.
Elon Musk
Yeah, there's got to be like some schedule or something. We're looking for a game plan or it's this date, even if it's far in the future. There was not to be found anywhere. And anyways, I started learning about that back history and I thought, well, okay, maybe there's something that I can do to send a small mission to the surface of Mars that would get the public excited. And as a result of that public excitement, NASA's budget will be increased and we could resume process of sending people to Mars, essentially.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So you thought you can do that with your lousy billion dollars?
Elon Musk
No, I didn't have a billion dollars at that time. I had about 180 million, still a lot. And I figured, well, maybe I could spent half of that on a mission to Mars. So I spent a fair bit of time investigating the space industry and eventually started on this idea of sending a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars called the Mars Oasis mission. And so you have seas in dehydrated gel. It would land, you hydrate the gel upon landing and you'd have this great shot of green plants on a red background. And the public responds to precedents and supporters. So this would be the first life on another planet furthest that life's ever traveled as far as we know.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That's how you Get a headline.
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's got to be something new or something superlative. And I thought, well, and that would maybe reinvigorate excitement, and the result would be NASA's budget gets increased. So the whole goal in the beginning was just how do we get more money for NASA? But after spending a fair bit of time on this, I came to the conclusion that I was actually incorrect. My initial assumption was wrong because I thought that where there's a will, there's a way, and that we just sort of lost our will. That's false. There's plenty of will. People needed to believe that there was a way and a way that would not bankrupt the country or mean that they would have to sacrifice something of critical importance, like healthcare. So it became clear that the space transport problem had to be solved. Unless there was a dramatic improvement in the cost of space transport, then none of it would matter.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So in your first successful launch, what was the cost per pound to orbit?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
6,000. Okay, that's an improvement.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Not $100 a pound.
Elon Musk
No, to get to $100 a pound, you need a big rocket that's fully reusable.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Are you there yet?
Elon Musk
No, we're making progress, though it's been 12 years. So far, we've not recovered a stage, but I think we'll recover a stage within the next year and be able to reflight.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Is there a date on your website
Elon Musk
where someone can say he's going to land on Mars? Touche. Good point.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That sounds like a no.
Elon Musk
Well, I mean, I've said it publicly many times. Although maybe we should put something on the website, which is that I think we've got a decent shot of being able to send a person to Mars in about 11 or 12 years. From a terrestrial standpoint, the biggest problem we need to solve in Earth this century is sustainable production and consumption of energy. This really is quite a serious problem. People really should take this quite seriously. Even if you put the environmental consequences of dramatically changing the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere aside, we will eventually run out of oil.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Holding that aside, well, if we don't
Elon Musk
find a solution to burning oil for transport and we then run out of oil, the economy will collapse and civilization will come to an end. Or as we know it, with or without global warming. Yeah, with or without warming, exactly. I mean, and so if we know that we have to ultimately get off oil no matter what, we know that that is an inescapable outcome. It's simply a question of when, not if. Then why would you run this crazy experiment of changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans by adding enormous amounts of CO2 that have been buried since the pre Cambrian era? That's crazy. That is the dumbest experiment in history by far.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's not even.
Elon Musk
Can you think of a dumber experiment? I honestly cannot. What good could possibly come of it?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So therefore, we need another solution here. But of course, electric cars still uses coal.
Elon Musk
That's why you need sustainable power production
Neil deGrasse Tyson
like solar and wind, which can still charge your car.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
What we all really want are flying cars.
Elon Musk
Actually, let me ask you, so are you sure you want a flying car?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
No, but it looks cool.
Elon Musk
It does look cool. I mean, you know, whenever you see sort of cities and like some futuristic concept, they always throw the flying car in there.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And you can't tell me you never thought of it.
Elon Musk
No, I thought a lot about it. Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah. Okay.
Elon Musk
And there's some people I know that are working on flying cars or flying personal transport devices, if you will.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Hoverboards.
Elon Musk
There are people working on hoverboards. But, I mean, I sort of wonder.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
After the interview, you can show me your hoverboard room.
Elon Musk
Okay. I know some people on a hoverboard.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I won't tell anybody. The microphone is on mute now, so
Elon Musk
you can just between. Just between us. It's awesome. I'm debating, like, should there be flying cars or shouldn't there be flying cars? I'm of two minds on that. Because if there are flying cars, then, well, obviously you have added this additional dimension where now a car could potentially fall in your head and will be susceptible to weather. And of course, you'd have to have a flying car where it would be like an autopilot, because, I mean, otherwise, forget it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You don't want people navigating.
Elon Musk
Yeah, it's got to be autopilot. But even in autopilot scenario, and even if you've got redundant motors and blades, you've still gone from near zero chance of something falling on your head to something greater than that. And there's also a noise challenge. So I saw.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
We don't know how to fly quietly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay, so I'll wait it out some longer.
Elon Musk
Something that I do think would definitely help a lot in cities is more tunnels, essentially, with a flying car, you're talking about going 3D. And there's a fundamental flaw with cities where you've got dense office buildings and apartment buildings and duplexes, and they're operating on three dimensions. But Then you go to the street and suddenly you're two dimensional because it's
Neil deGrasse Tyson
a flat, it's a surface. This is how New York City solved this, with the subway going underneath multiple layers of subway. So we are actually traveling in three dimensions, but below the ground rather than in the air.
Elon Musk
But I think if you were to extrapolate that to cars and have more car tunnels, then you would alleviate congestion completely.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And you wouldn't need the flying car.
Elon Musk
You would not need a flying car in that case. And it would always work. Even if the weather's bad, it would never ice up. It would never ice up and it would not fall on your head.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
We're going to get started on that right away.
Elon Musk
I mean, I'm quite worried about artificial super intelligence these days. I think, and I've said this publicly, I think it's maybe something more dangerous than nuclear weapons. So we should be really careful about that. If there was a very deep super digital super intelligence that was created that could go into rapid recursive self improvement in a non logarithmic way, then that was.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And it's self learning.
Elon Musk
Yes. So like it just could reprogram itself to be smarter and iterate very quickly and do that 24 hours a day on millions of computers.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Well, that's all she wrote.
Elon Musk
That's all she wrote. I mean, we will be like a pet Labrador if we're lucky. I have a pet Labrador, by the way.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
We'll be their pet.
Elon Musk
She's like the friendliest creature.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
No, they'll domesticate us so that we will be lap pets to them.
Elon Musk
Yes. I mean, or something strange is going to happen.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
They'll keep the docile humans and get rid of the violent ones and then breed the docile humans.
Elon Musk
Yeah. I mean, the utility function of the digital superintelligence is of stupendous importance. What does it try to optimize? And we need to be really careful with saying, oh well, how about human happiness? Because it may conclude that all unhappy humans should be terminated and that we should all just be captured with dopamine and serotonin directly injected into our brains to maximize happiness. Happiness. Because it's concluded that dopamine and serotonin are what cause happiness.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Therefore.
Elon Musk
Therefore maximize. I'm just saying we should exercise caution. I'm quite optimistic about the future. I mean, I don't think we're about to enter a dark age. It could happen, but it's not, I think, not likely anytime soon before you get to Mars. Hopefully not before you get to Mars, but Bear in mind that and part
Neil deGrasse Tyson
of the act of trying to get to Mars is a force to keep us out of the Dark ages.
Elon Musk
I mean, there's always a chance that something calamitous could happen to Earth. Either a natural man made catastrophe. Certainly we see that in the fossil record and we've invented all sorts of ways of, of doing ourselves in that the dinosaurs didn't have. And we haven't managed to solve the asteroid problem. So therefore our risk is higher. Okay, I'm sure people realize this. If you haven't solved the problems that have caused the prior extinctions and you've added new ones, you've not improved the situation. And that's sort of where we are right now. And you know, there are people, there are some really smart people that are a lot more pessimistic than I am. Like the Stephen Hawkings of the world and the Martin Reese, the astronomer. They're all quite pessimistic. I'm a naturally optimistic person, but I do think that there's value in establishing life insurance, which if life as we know it is on more than one planet, then the light of consciousness as we know it is likely preserved into the future for much longer.