March 19, 2025 • 30 mins
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Mars Exploration and Colonization:
- Elon Musk predicts humans will set foot on Mars by 2029.
- He emphasizes the importance of building a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure survival even if Earth faces catastrophic events.
- Technological advancements needed for a self-sustaining settlement include recreating Earth's industrial base on Mars.
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Alien Life:
- Musk is skeptical about finding alien life but considers the possibility of discovering ruins of ancient alien civilizations or subterranean microbial life.
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SpaceX and Rocket Development:
- Musk recounts the early days of SpaceX, including attempts to buy ICBMs from Russia and the realization that affordable space travel is crucial for Mars missions.
- He discusses the development of the SpaceX Starship rocket, which is designed to enable travel to Mars.
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Philosophy and Motivation:
- Musk's motivation is driven by curiosity and the desire to understand the universe.
- He believes expanding human consciousness and becoming a multi-planet species is essential for long-term survival.
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Business Ventures and Success:
- Musk shares his journey from PayPal to SpaceX, highlighting his approach to innovation and execution.
- He discusses the importance of intellectual property and his unique perspective on patents, advocating for open-source patents to maximize innovation.
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Personal Insights:
- Musk talks about his work ethic, often sleeping at the office and working almost every waking hour.
- He reflects on his early struggles, including living in his office to save money and his philosophy of continuous learning and improvement.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
It is the Ben Ferguson Podcast. Really nice to have
you with us. And if you missed part one of
my interview with Elon Musk with Senator Cruz, you may
have seen. It's gone viral, Elon Musk tweeting out multiple
clips for the interview and the media world covering it
wall to wall, being used everywhere, even in the mainstream media. Well,
(00:23):
now today's show is even more meaningful in part two
because we get into the conversation about the astronauts that
were supposed to be in outer space for eight days.
Instead they were there for nine months, and the Biden
administration in essence made them into political prisoners in outer space.
Now Elon Musk and Donald Trump have gotten them home.
(00:46):
So what was the backstory behind Wyatt took so long?
We have that for you in part two of our
interview with Elon Musk, And if you miss part one,
go back and listen to Monday's podcasts. So here it
is Part two two with the Mosque.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Let me start with a question. You know a lot
about what year does man first set foot on Mars.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,
And I don't think it's more than two to four
years beyond that.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
And that's not an unman, that's that's a human being
putting his foot on the surface.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, best case would be twenty nine.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
And what do you put the odds of finding either
alien life or evidence of alien life.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I don't think we're going to find aliens, okay.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
But do we find ruins, do we find remnants?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
We may we may find the ruins of a long
dead alien civilization, that's possible. And we may find subterranean
microbial life, that's possible. All Right.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
If man lands on Mars and twenty nine, how soon
after that do you land.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
On Mars remains? And I'm not sure. The important thing
is that we uh build a self sustaining city on
Mars as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when
that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper even
(02:18):
when the supply ships from Earth stop coming. At that point,
even if something would happen on Earth, it might might
It might not be World War three, but it might
be that a bad virus. Yeah, it might not be anything.
For those things. It's like like say, civilization, you could
die with a bang or whimper. It may be that
civilization dies with a whimper rather than a bang or
(02:42):
and simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars.
But so you absoenly need Mars to become self sustaining
and be able to grow by itself before the resupply
ships from Earth stopped coming. That that is the critical
a civilizational threshold beyond which the probable last span of
civilization is much greater.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
And how close are we technologically to be able to
do that, to have a self sustaining settlement on the
surface of Mars.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think it can be done in twenty years, but.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
It would take twenty years, so we're not in twenty nine.
We're not there. What are we missing? What are the
big technologies?
Speaker 1 (03:22):
We don't have a few people running around the surface
in a hostile environment is not going to make it
self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order
of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
So but you think we could have a million people
on Mars in twenty years, yes, And what's the technology
we're missing right now?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
When you think about a million people.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
On Mars, do we have the ability to get water,
to get food.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
To keep them safe. I mean, what do we need
to make that happen? Well, you need to recreate the
entire base of industry of Earth. So you know, we're
here at the top of a massive permit of industry.
That's thoughts with mining a vast array of materials, those
materials going through hundreds of steps of refinements. We grow food, obviously,
(04:13):
we grow trees, we make things out of the trees.
There's you know, you've got to You've got to build
all that on Mars. And Mars is a hostile environment.
It's you know, it sometimes gets above zero on a
warm summer day near the equator on Mars. Meanly it's
quite cold. How do you prep for that? Well, in
(04:33):
the beginning on Mars, you have to have a a
life support habitation module, right like you need you can't
just live outdoors. You can't breathe the air like a
dome you think is likely, Yeah, glass domes type of thing.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely
to be ideal for a habitat what.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Might be Arcadia planet here is one of the one
of the good options. That's one of my daughters is
named Arcadia after that. And what makes that attractive. My
eldest son's middle name is Ari's Mars.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
You've been thinking about this for a long time. If
you're name and your kids around it.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
My eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
When did you get the dream?
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I mean it's twenty twenty one soon, this is a
decade old. Yeah, dream?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
So like when you were ten, did you look up
and say I'm going to Mars?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
No? No. I read a lot of science fiction books
and program computers. But the first, finally off, the first
video game that I sold was a space video game
called Blastar. Maybe I spilled this way, how do you.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
How do you become Elon Musk? Look, you're obviously smart
as hell, but but there are lots there are a
lot of smart people that don't do squat and you've
managed everything you've touched has been an extraordinary success. Uh yeah, yeah, Look,
I mean that's just objectively right. So what has led
to that? Because there are other smart people that that's
(06:11):
not true, and they gaze at their navel and they
don't do anything. So what what do you do differently
that makes you so effective?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well? I suppose to have a philosophy of curiosity. I
want to find out the nature of the universe, understand
the universe, and in order to do that, we have
to travel to other planets, see other staw systems, maybe
other galaxies, find perhaps other alien civilizations or at least
(06:39):
the remnants of alien civilizations, gain a better understanding of words,
it's universe going ready to come from and what questions
do we not yet know to ask about? The answer
that is the universe.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
So let's go back twenty five years, late nineties. You're
at PayPal. How do you turned PayPal into the success
it was, which which then helped launch you to the
next one and the next.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah. So I studied physics and economics and college she's
a good foundation for understanding how the economy works and
how reality works. And then I was going to do
a PhD at Stanford in advanced ultra capacitors actually as
(07:26):
a potential means of energy storage for electric transport. Put
that on hold to start an internet company. Essentially came
to the conclusion that the Internet was one of those
rare things and I could either watch it happen while
a grad student or participate. And I figured I've always
(07:48):
go to back to grad school. Grad school is going
to be kind of the same. But I couldn't rather
thought of just watching the Internet happen, so I wanted
to be a part of building it. So I created
a net into the company. We did the first maps, directions,
yealow pages, white pages on the Internet. I actually wrote
the first version of software just by myself in ninety five,
(08:11):
and we ended up selling that to Compact Texas company.
I guess YEP for about three hundred million dollars in
cash about four years after I graduated. Wow, So I
should say just to preface that I graduated with about
one hundred thousand dollars a student debt. So it was
it yeah, you and me both, Yeah, yeah, right, I know.
(08:37):
And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived
with twenty five hundred dollars, a bag of books and
a bag of clothes.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
All right, So you sell the company for three hundred million,
How much does that change your life?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Well? I got twenty one million dollars black jack, and
but I wanted to do more on the Internet, so
started a company called x dot com, which merged with
a company called Confinity, which is Peter Teel and Max
leftun YEP and the combined company was actually at first
(09:10):
still called x dot com, but we later later changed
the name of the company to PayPal. Because of all
the name changes, it's kind of confusing. But the company
that people know is know as PayPal today was actually
I filed those incorporation documents for that company. Interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, well, and as you know, Peter Tiel and I
were buddies back in the mid nineties before he went
and did any of this, but you know, I became
friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in
New York and just sort of a young libertarian with
a lot of dreams.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
So it's been a heck of a journey. Yeah. Yeah. Now, sly,
Peter was involved in a coup. You know, we had
a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation where
you know that they did cooney at PayPal. I kind
of a make peace after that. Yeah yeah, yeah. I
(10:04):
mean I was doing a lot of sort of risky
moves that I think ultimately would have been successful. But
I then went on a two week trip which was
a dual money raising trip and honeymoon, and said not
done my honeymoon earlier in the year, So it was
raising money while doing doing Holly honeymoon, But I was
(10:24):
kind of awake. Did that go over by the way
it worked? It worked there, you go, kind of worked.
I raised money, yeah, and we had honeymoon. There are
young so yeah, but you don't want to be away
from the battle when things are scary. So I was
not there to assuage the concerns of the troops. And anyway,
(10:49):
we're passed things up. And I have been friends nonetheless,
and you know these days all like stay at his
house and stuff. So I was super friends and he
he's also invested in most of my companies.
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Speaker 3 (13:22):
All right, So two thousand and two you start SpaceX,
Like how do you start a rocket company? Like what's
the first day where you're like I want to make
rockets and I want to go to Mars?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Like what do you do on day one? So I
think you have to start with a some sort of
philosophical premise in order to have in order for the
in order to be in order to be highly motivated,
you have to have some philosophical foundation. In my case,
it was that that we want to expand the scope
(13:57):
and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of
the universe, and in order to expand scate, expand consciousness,
we need to go beyond one planet. If for one
planet there's too much risk. You know, hopefully Earth civilization
prospers very far into the future, but it may not.
(14:18):
There's always some risk that we are we self annihilate
through nuclear war, or that there's a big meter that
takes us out like the dinosaurs. Yep, there's always some
risk if all your eggs are in one basket. So
it's going to be better if we're a multiplanet species.
And then once we're multiplanet species, that the next step
would be to be a multi stellar and have a
(14:39):
civilization among on many different star systems. So in two
thousand and one, I didn't think that I could. I
didn't think I could sell rock companies, so I thought
I'd take some of the money from PayPal. In that case,
I think it was about one hundred and eighty million
dollars after tax, something like that, and I thought, you know,
(15:02):
I don't know one hundred eighty million dollars, so I'll
spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic Mars mission
to get the public excited about going back to Mars.
We're going to Mars, I should say. Yeah, Mars was
always going to be the destination after the Moon. Right.
In fact, if you told people in nineteen sixty nine
(15:24):
that it would be twenty twenty five and we've not
even gone back to the Moon, let alone, it's hard
to believe, let alone Mars. They'd be like what happened
in the civilization collapse top like, they would be incomprehensible
that we've not been to Mars. By now, if you
told people this after landing on the Moon in sixty nine.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Why did you think in fifty years America never went
back to the Moon.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that was that
could take people to the Moon, and had the Space Shuttle,
which could only go to lowth orbit, and then there
really hasn't been anything to replace any No vehicle has
been made since then that can go to the Moon
or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah, so
(16:08):
you can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
So I remember you and I first met in twenty
thirteen when when I was a brand new baby senator. Yeah,
and I was still down in the basement office. They
stick freshman senators in the basement office kind of like hazey, yeah, yeah, say,
sounds like there aree hundred sected offices. But for six
months you stay in the base. It's like worry, mean,
(16:31):
you know where you're supposed to You know, I got
to stay. Now, thirteen years into it, I think there's
a lot of wisdom to doing that. But you were
down in the basement office, and I remember you were
coming and sitting down with SpaceX and at the time
the Air Force was not letting you all bid to
launch satellites, and so you were coming and saying, look,
we got a company. I think we can do a
really good job of this. And yet we're locked out
of this. It's a little amazing to think the journey
(16:54):
SpaceX is gone from then to now.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yes, it's hard to believe that this still because originally,
consistently with my belief that we need to become a
multiplant species, I thought the only way to do that
would be through NASA. So and I think I thought, well,
if I just get the public excited about Mars, then
they'll do admission to Mars. And so initially my thought
(17:20):
was to have to send a small greenhouse with seeds
and dehydrated nutrient gel. Then land the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds,
and you see these the sort of money shot proof.
The money shot would be green plants on a red background.
I also recently learned that money shot has a different
meaning in some other arenas. But yeah, story, But what
(17:45):
I'm trying to say is the captivating shot would be
the green plants on a red background. And then hopefully
that would if we did something like that, that would get
the public excited about Mars, that would increase NASA's budget,
and then we could send people to Mars. Your dream
was naicey to do this? Yes, not you. No, The
original original plan was literally to take a bunch of
(18:09):
the money from PayPal and I guess, by some people's definition,
waste it with no probit on a nonprofit thing. To
I wanted to spend a whole bunch of my money
for free to get nasta's budget to be bigger so
we could.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Go to friggin Mars. Right, Wow, that's what I wanted.
So that was the holy Grail, That's what I wanted.
I was like, so when did you Mars? That's what
I wanted to know.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
When when did it strike you? Okay, you're going to
have to do this.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
If you want, I'll tell you. It gets crazier, all right,
It gets crazier. So so that I couldn't afford any
of the US rockets because, as you know, the US
rockets are way too expensive, boying lucky rock Lucky rockets
are crazy money. I didn't have. I didn't even even
with one hundred eighty millions. The way I could have
afforded were they back then, well, the that with with
the additional stage to get to Mars, it would have
(18:56):
been about like eighty million. So technically I could have
afforded one of them, but I wanted to do too
in case one of them didn't work. Yeah. So, and
then I didn't have enough money for that. Yeah, And
I was sort of prepared to, you know, I don't know,
waste half the money. And I figured if I had
ninety million left, that'd be fine, you know, but ideally
(19:16):
all of it. So I went to Russia twice to
try to buy ICBMs. How'd that go? And who do
you call? The Russian rocket forces? Do they sell ICBMs?
Does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
You got to tell us a story that I want
to know who you can buy anything in Russia?
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, I like, please walk me down that.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I want to know how you made that phone call
and when you get there, how did that work?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm
going to Russian device in my CBMs. I might not return,
you know, in this situation. Literally, Yeah, so I guess
slightly less insane when you when you understand that the
Russians had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs because
(20:06):
of you know, salt talks like the piece, because basically
an agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce
the total number of ICBMs, Russia was actually obligated to
scrap a bunch of their ICBMs. So if you took
it the very biggest ICBMs, you could converte those into
a rocket, added additional stage and send something to Mars.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So those are big enough with one more stage to
get to Mars.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
To send a small payload to Mars. Yeah, so the
s S eighteen.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
So you try to buy CBMs, do you succeed or no?
Or do you figure out you got to build your
own instead?
Speaker 1 (20:39):
They kept raising the price on me, so because I figured, like, look,
they're going to throw these things in scrappy on anyway,
you should get a really good deal, right. So the
price out at four million. Then the next conversation there
were at eight million. Then the next conversation they were
like nineteen million, and I'm like, this is before we
(21:02):
signed a contract.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
By the way, was there another was there another bid
or were you the only one trying to buy them?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I think I don't know if there were other bits,
but they didn't mention any other bits. But I was like, man,
if if the price is increasing this much before the
contract signed, I'm really going to get fleeced after the contracts.
So so I got pretty frustrated there. Actually, in some
cases we got into like shouting matches in Moscow, some
(21:30):
guys shouting at me in Russia, and I'm shouting back
at him and really badly, you know, I'm like.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
So you are all I mean, you're all.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
In Moscow. Yeah, so man, I should have recorded that. That
would have been one for them.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
How many days were you there negotiating that first time?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I mean was this like ongoing? Yeah? Yeah, this this
took place. These conversations took place over probably six months
or so. Wow. So, and then the final trip trip
there was with the with was with Mike Revenue later
became as administrator. I actually realized in the course of
(22:15):
this that my original premise was wrong, that that America
actually has plenty of will to go to Mars, but
needs that. It just needs a way to Mars that
is affordable and that doesn't break the budget.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
You know, just as you know, we couldn't even get
to the space station.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
We needed the Russians to to get us to our
own space station. That was embarrassing. It really was pitiful.
I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we
were being fleeced. Like I think they got up to
ninety million dollars a seat, yeah wow, Yeah, for a
seat that cost them like ten It was pretty obviously,
but it was the only Yeah it was before space X.
Ninety million dollars a seat for a seat that cost
(22:53):
them ten million is high. Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
So a few months ago you and I were down
in Bocachica with the President for a starship launch, and
it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica. You know,
five years ago it was an empty beach at the southern.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Tip of tex this soundbar.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, and it's now a city and a factory where
you're building a rocket ship a month with incredible precision.
But one of the things you said to me when
we were down there that really stood out to me
is is you said, your philosophy on intellectual property talked
to lots of CEOs or we fight to guard our IP,
and you had a very different approach. What's what's your
(23:34):
view of IP?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Patterns of the week, patterns of for those innovation slowly.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I literally do not know anyone else in business who
would say something like that, like like it was a
startling and and and what Elon said down there is
he said, look this stuff, I assume everyone will steal everything,
but by the time they steal it will be five
generations beyond and it won't matter.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yes, at Tesla, we actually opened social life patents, so
we said that our patents are anyone can use it
for free. Really, yeah. The only we only do patterns
at Tesla to to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble.
So we'll try to look ahead and say, Okay, patent
trolls are going to trial, pat file patterns to block
(24:16):
certain things, will file patents and then open source to
make it free. I mean, I want to say patents
for the week. Now, there are a few cases, in
say with pharmaceuticals, where it might cost you billion dollars
to do a phase three human file, but then subsequently
the drug is very cheap to manufacture. So cases there
are some, in my opinion, which is massively reduced what
(24:37):
can be patented and and and say, because the whole
point of patenting is to maximize innovation, not inhibit it.
And in my opinion, maybe a controversial opinion, most patents
inhibit innovation, they do not help it. But there are
cases I want to do want to single out cases
like where such as a phase three clinical trial that
(24:58):
might cost a billion dollars, but the than the drugs
thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacture, and if you
can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars,
no one will pay for the billion dollars. A free
writer problem. Free writer problem, yeah, exactly, So you have
to address the free writer problem. But other than that,
there should be no patterns. Ideas are easy.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
You want ideas to flow maximum to people to get
there faster and do things bigger.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
The idea is the easy pot the herd. Execution is
the hard part. As the old saying goes, it's one
percent inspiration, if not less than one percent, and nineteen
nine percent perspiration.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
But I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good
at also because you're making. You know, the companies you're
building are actually building stuff. They're building cars, they're building spaceships,
they're building things that if they don't work, it's a
real problem. And the precision you manufacture things with, how
do you get that level of precision? How do you
(25:53):
get how do you build a culture? You're not you're
amazing at thinking outside the box. But what's interesting thing
is you're you may even be better at execution, which
is how do you execute so effectively?
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Well, I take a physics first principles approach to everything.
It's not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing.
It's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So, uh,
you know, the idea at the beginning of Tesla was
that we would outsource almost all the manufacturing, but then
(26:27):
it turned out there was no there were no good
companies to outsourced manufacturing too, which there wasn't a really really,
it wasn't peaceable. Outsourced manufacturing actually is the exception of
the rule. And and just over time we had to
in source almost everything for Tesla and same for SpaceX.
(26:48):
I became very good at manufacturing because I had to
lose no choice. At this point, I might know more
about manufacturing than any any human ever has, because I've
done so many I've manufactured so many different things and
so many different arenas. I think probably more than anyone
ever has.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Look, that's that sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's
not a crazy statement. And you're somehow running Tesla and
running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company
and running doralink and doing doge.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
How much do you sleep in a given night? About
six hours and average.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
So about six So that's it wouldn't have shocked me
if you said three or four.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
So the Crenet rush is how many hours do you
work a day? I work almost every working hour.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And Ben, he's not kidding at that. Like when Elan
and I were first getting to know each other, I suggested,
I said, hey, let's grab dinner sometime and I don't
know if you remember what you said.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You said, I don't eat dinner. I don't have social dinners,
really right, I mean that, Yeah, I mean you obviously
eat food, but.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Yeah, idea in a restaurant for two hours, but the
idea of like, I don't, But it was it was
just kind of a matter of fact, what why would.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
I go to dinner like you jump you work? Uh yeah,
I literally just thought I'll have lunch, and then it
brought during meetings and continue being.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
How many nights have you slept at your offices? You
think your career percentage wise where you say, I just
got to take this nap basically because my body forces
me to, and I got to get back to work
fast and efficiently without going somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Well, I guess it started out even with the first company,
SO two, which is a terrible name, but the first
interior company, we were able to rent an office which
was like in a leaky attack, essentially full five hundred
dollars a month, and the cheapest apartment we could find
(28:44):
was eight hundred dollars a month, so like, and we
only had about five thousand dollars between our brother and I.
So like we're not, We'll we'll just stay in the office. Yep.
So we got some couches that converted into beds and
we'd can't sleep at night, and then we just have
like turn the beds back into catches before anyone came,
(29:10):
and then we would shout the YMCA down the road.
And so that went that that that that literally was
for several months. What we did, it was in great shape,
you know, work out the y. I still remember that
that y m C a Atu page Miller al Camino
in Palo Alto. So that was a long time. Again,
(29:31):
so it's been I don't know, I've never thought to
count it, but several hundred days maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
So you're now the richest man on earth. Do you
still sleep at the office, Well, that's true, maybe Mars,
we'll find someone else.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
But I think if if someone is a sovereign head
of a country there to facto richer by a lot,
do you still sleep at the office now? I have
sometimes left at the office.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, don't forget Share this podcast please on social media
wherever your list, grab it, hit that auto button, that
forward button, share it. Put it out there so other
people can find this show. Without you guys doing that,
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to help fight back against what we're exposing, share it
on social media.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
I'll see you back here tomorrow
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
It is the Ben Ferguson Podcast. Really nice to have
you with us. And if you missed part one of
my interview with Elon Musk with Senator Cruz, you may
have seen. It's gone viral, Elon Musk tweeting out multiple
clips for the interview and the media world covering it
wall to wall, being used everywhere, even in the mainstream media. Well,
(00:23):
now today's show is even more meaningful in part two
because we get into the conversation about the astronauts that
were supposed to be in outer space for eight days.
Instead they were there for nine months, and the Biden
administration in essence made them into political prisoners in outer space.
Now Elon Musk and Donald Trump have gotten them home.
(00:46):
So what was the backstory behind Wyatt took so long?
We have that for you in part two of our
interview with Elon Musk, And if you miss part one,
go back and listen to Monday's podcasts. So here it
is Part two two with the Mosque.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Let me start with a question. You know a lot
about what year does man first set foot on Mars.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,
And I don't think it's more than two to four
years beyond that.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
And that's not an unman, that's that's a human being
putting his foot on the surface.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, best case would be twenty nine.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
And what do you put the odds of finding either
alien life or evidence of alien life.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I don't think we're going to find aliens, okay.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
But do we find ruins, do we find remnants?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
We may we may find the ruins of a long
dead alien civilization, that's possible. And we may find subterranean
microbial life, that's possible. All Right.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
If man lands on Mars and twenty nine, how soon
after that do you land.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
On Mars remains? And I'm not sure. The important thing
is that we uh build a self sustaining city on
Mars as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when
that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper even
(02:18):
when the supply ships from Earth stop coming. At that point,
even if something would happen on Earth, it might might
It might not be World War three, but it might
be that a bad virus. Yeah, it might not be anything.
For those things. It's like like say, civilization, you could
die with a bang or whimper. It may be that
civilization dies with a whimper rather than a bang or
(02:42):
and simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars.
But so you absoenly need Mars to become self sustaining
and be able to grow by itself before the resupply
ships from Earth stopped coming. That that is the critical
a civilizational threshold beyond which the probable last span of
civilization is much greater.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
And how close are we technologically to be able to
do that, to have a self sustaining settlement on the
surface of Mars.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think it can be done in twenty years, but.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
It would take twenty years, so we're not in twenty nine.
We're not there. What are we missing? What are the
big technologies?
Speaker 1 (03:22):
We don't have a few people running around the surface
in a hostile environment is not going to make it
self sustaining. So you're going to need on the order
of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
So but you think we could have a million people
on Mars in twenty years, yes, And what's the technology
we're missing right now?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
When you think about a million people.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
On Mars, do we have the ability to get water,
to get food.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
To keep them safe. I mean, what do we need
to make that happen? Well, you need to recreate the
entire base of industry of Earth. So you know, we're
here at the top of a massive permit of industry.
That's thoughts with mining a vast array of materials, those
materials going through hundreds of steps of refinements. We grow food, obviously,
(04:13):
we grow trees, we make things out of the trees.
There's you know, you've got to You've got to build
all that on Mars. And Mars is a hostile environment.
It's you know, it sometimes gets above zero on a
warm summer day near the equator on Mars. Meanly it's
quite cold. How do you prep for that? Well, in
(04:33):
the beginning on Mars, you have to have a a
life support habitation module, right like you need you can't
just live outdoors. You can't breathe the air like a
dome you think is likely, Yeah, glass domes type of thing.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Have you identified a location on Mars that is likely
to be ideal for a habitat what.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Might be Arcadia planet here is one of the one
of the good options. That's one of my daughters is
named Arcadia after that. And what makes that attractive. My
eldest son's middle name is Ari's Mars.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
You've been thinking about this for a long time. If
you're name and your kids around it.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
My eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
When did you get the dream?
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I mean it's twenty twenty one soon, this is a
decade old. Yeah, dream?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
So like when you were ten, did you look up
and say I'm going to Mars?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
No? No. I read a lot of science fiction books
and program computers. But the first, finally off, the first
video game that I sold was a space video game
called Blastar. Maybe I spilled this way, how do you.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
How do you become Elon Musk? Look, you're obviously smart
as hell, but but there are lots there are a
lot of smart people that don't do squat and you've
managed everything you've touched has been an extraordinary success. Uh yeah, yeah, Look,
I mean that's just objectively right. So what has led
to that? Because there are other smart people that that's
(06:11):
not true, and they gaze at their navel and they
don't do anything. So what what do you do differently
that makes you so effective?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well? I suppose to have a philosophy of curiosity. I
want to find out the nature of the universe, understand
the universe, and in order to do that, we have
to travel to other planets, see other staw systems, maybe
other galaxies, find perhaps other alien civilizations or at least
(06:39):
the remnants of alien civilizations, gain a better understanding of words,
it's universe going ready to come from and what questions
do we not yet know to ask about? The answer
that is the universe.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
So let's go back twenty five years, late nineties. You're
at PayPal. How do you turned PayPal into the success
it was, which which then helped launch you to the
next one and the next.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah. So I studied physics and economics and college she's
a good foundation for understanding how the economy works and
how reality works. And then I was going to do
a PhD at Stanford in advanced ultra capacitors actually as
(07:26):
a potential means of energy storage for electric transport. Put
that on hold to start an internet company. Essentially came
to the conclusion that the Internet was one of those
rare things and I could either watch it happen while
a grad student or participate. And I figured I've always
(07:48):
go to back to grad school. Grad school is going
to be kind of the same. But I couldn't rather
thought of just watching the Internet happen, so I wanted
to be a part of building it. So I created
a net into the company. We did the first maps, directions,
yealow pages, white pages on the Internet. I actually wrote
the first version of software just by myself in ninety five,
(08:11):
and we ended up selling that to Compact Texas company.
I guess YEP for about three hundred million dollars in
cash about four years after I graduated. Wow, So I
should say just to preface that I graduated with about
one hundred thousand dollars a student debt. So it was
it yeah, you and me both, Yeah, yeah, right, I know.
(08:37):
And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived
with twenty five hundred dollars, a bag of books and
a bag of clothes.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
All right, So you sell the company for three hundred million,
How much does that change your life?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Well? I got twenty one million dollars black jack, and
but I wanted to do more on the Internet, so
started a company called x dot com, which merged with
a company called Confinity, which is Peter Teel and Max
leftun YEP and the combined company was actually at first
(09:10):
still called x dot com, but we later later changed
the name of the company to PayPal. Because of all
the name changes, it's kind of confusing. But the company
that people know is know as PayPal today was actually
I filed those incorporation documents for that company. Interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, well, and as you know, Peter Tiel and I
were buddies back in the mid nineties before he went
and did any of this, but you know, I became
friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in
New York and just sort of a young libertarian with
a lot of dreams.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
So it's been a heck of a journey. Yeah. Yeah. Now, sly,
Peter was involved in a coup. You know, we had
a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation where
you know that they did cooney at PayPal. I kind
of a make peace after that. Yeah yeah, yeah. I
(10:04):
mean I was doing a lot of sort of risky
moves that I think ultimately would have been successful. But
I then went on a two week trip which was
a dual money raising trip and honeymoon, and said not
done my honeymoon earlier in the year, So it was
raising money while doing doing Holly honeymoon, But I was
(10:24):
kind of awake. Did that go over by the way
it worked? It worked there, you go, kind of worked.
I raised money, yeah, and we had honeymoon. There are
young so yeah, but you don't want to be away
from the battle when things are scary. So I was
not there to assuage the concerns of the troops. And anyway,
(10:49):
we're passed things up. And I have been friends nonetheless,
and you know these days all like stay at his
house and stuff. So I was super friends and he
he's also invested in most of my companies.
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Speaker 3 (13:22):
All right, So two thousand and two you start SpaceX,
Like how do you start a rocket company? Like what's
the first day where you're like I want to make
rockets and I want to go to Mars?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Like what do you do on day one? So I
think you have to start with a some sort of
philosophical premise in order to have in order for the
in order to be in order to be highly motivated,
you have to have some philosophical foundation. In my case,
it was that that we want to expand the scope
(13:57):
and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of
the universe, and in order to expand scate, expand consciousness,
we need to go beyond one planet. If for one
planet there's too much risk. You know, hopefully Earth civilization
prospers very far into the future, but it may not.
(14:18):
There's always some risk that we are we self annihilate
through nuclear war, or that there's a big meter that
takes us out like the dinosaurs. Yep, there's always some
risk if all your eggs are in one basket. So
it's going to be better if we're a multiplanet species.
And then once we're multiplanet species, that the next step
would be to be a multi stellar and have a
(14:39):
civilization among on many different star systems. So in two
thousand and one, I didn't think that I could. I
didn't think I could sell rock companies, so I thought
I'd take some of the money from PayPal. In that case,
I think it was about one hundred and eighty million
dollars after tax, something like that, and I thought, you know,
(15:02):
I don't know one hundred eighty million dollars, so I'll
spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic Mars mission
to get the public excited about going back to Mars.
We're going to Mars, I should say. Yeah, Mars was
always going to be the destination after the Moon. Right.
In fact, if you told people in nineteen sixty nine
(15:24):
that it would be twenty twenty five and we've not
even gone back to the Moon, let alone, it's hard
to believe, let alone Mars. They'd be like what happened
in the civilization collapse top like, they would be incomprehensible
that we've not been to Mars. By now, if you
told people this after landing on the Moon in sixty nine.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Why did you think in fifty years America never went
back to the Moon.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that was that
could take people to the Moon, and had the Space Shuttle,
which could only go to lowth orbit, and then there
really hasn't been anything to replace any No vehicle has
been made since then that can go to the Moon
or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah, so
(16:08):
you can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
So I remember you and I first met in twenty
thirteen when when I was a brand new baby senator. Yeah,
and I was still down in the basement office. They
stick freshman senators in the basement office kind of like hazey, yeah, yeah, say,
sounds like there aree hundred sected offices. But for six
months you stay in the base. It's like worry, mean,
(16:31):
you know where you're supposed to You know, I got
to stay. Now, thirteen years into it, I think there's
a lot of wisdom to doing that. But you were
down in the basement office, and I remember you were
coming and sitting down with SpaceX and at the time
the Air Force was not letting you all bid to
launch satellites, and so you were coming and saying, look,
we got a company. I think we can do a
really good job of this. And yet we're locked out
of this. It's a little amazing to think the journey
(16:54):
SpaceX is gone from then to now.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yes, it's hard to believe that this still because originally,
consistently with my belief that we need to become a
multiplant species, I thought the only way to do that
would be through NASA. So and I think I thought, well,
if I just get the public excited about Mars, then
they'll do admission to Mars. And so initially my thought
(17:20):
was to have to send a small greenhouse with seeds
and dehydrated nutrient gel. Then land the greenhouse, hydrate the seeds,
and you see these the sort of money shot proof.
The money shot would be green plants on a red background.
I also recently learned that money shot has a different
meaning in some other arenas. But yeah, story, But what
(17:45):
I'm trying to say is the captivating shot would be
the green plants on a red background. And then hopefully
that would if we did something like that, that would get
the public excited about Mars, that would increase NASA's budget,
and then we could send people to Mars. Your dream
was naicey to do this? Yes, not you. No, The
original original plan was literally to take a bunch of
(18:09):
the money from PayPal and I guess, by some people's definition,
waste it with no probit on a nonprofit thing. To
I wanted to spend a whole bunch of my money
for free to get nasta's budget to be bigger so
we could.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Go to friggin Mars. Right, Wow, that's what I wanted.
So that was the holy Grail, That's what I wanted.
I was like, so when did you Mars? That's what
I wanted to know.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
When when did it strike you? Okay, you're going to
have to do this.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
If you want, I'll tell you. It gets crazier, all right,
It gets crazier. So so that I couldn't afford any
of the US rockets because, as you know, the US
rockets are way too expensive, boying lucky rock Lucky rockets
are crazy money. I didn't have. I didn't even even
with one hundred eighty millions. The way I could have
afforded were they back then, well, the that with with
the additional stage to get to Mars, it would have
(18:56):
been about like eighty million. So technically I could have
afforded one of them, but I wanted to do too
in case one of them didn't work. Yeah. So, and
then I didn't have enough money for that. Yeah, And
I was sort of prepared to, you know, I don't know,
waste half the money. And I figured if I had
ninety million left, that'd be fine, you know, but ideally
(19:16):
all of it. So I went to Russia twice to
try to buy ICBMs. How'd that go? And who do
you call? The Russian rocket forces? Do they sell ICBMs?
Does that work? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
You got to tell us a story that I want
to know who you can buy anything in Russia?
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, I like, please walk me down that.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I want to know how you made that phone call
and when you get there, how did that work?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm
going to Russian device in my CBMs. I might not return,
you know, in this situation. Literally, Yeah, so I guess
slightly less insane when you when you understand that the
Russians had to demolish a bunch of their ICBMs because
(20:06):
of you know, salt talks like the piece, because basically
an agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce
the total number of ICBMs, Russia was actually obligated to
scrap a bunch of their ICBMs. So if you took
it the very biggest ICBMs, you could converte those into
a rocket, added additional stage and send something to Mars.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So those are big enough with one more stage to
get to Mars.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
To send a small payload to Mars. Yeah, so the
s S eighteen.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
So you try to buy CBMs, do you succeed or no?
Or do you figure out you got to build your
own instead?
Speaker 1 (20:39):
They kept raising the price on me, so because I figured, like, look,
they're going to throw these things in scrappy on anyway,
you should get a really good deal, right. So the
price out at four million. Then the next conversation there
were at eight million. Then the next conversation they were
like nineteen million, and I'm like, this is before we
(21:02):
signed a contract.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
By the way, was there another was there another bid
or were you the only one trying to buy them?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I think I don't know if there were other bits,
but they didn't mention any other bits. But I was like, man,
if if the price is increasing this much before the
contract signed, I'm really going to get fleeced after the contracts.
So so I got pretty frustrated there. Actually, in some
cases we got into like shouting matches in Moscow, some
(21:30):
guys shouting at me in Russia, and I'm shouting back
at him and really badly, you know, I'm like.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
So you are all I mean, you're all.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
In Moscow. Yeah, so man, I should have recorded that. That
would have been one for them.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
How many days were you there negotiating that first time?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I mean was this like ongoing? Yeah? Yeah, this this
took place. These conversations took place over probably six months
or so. Wow. So, and then the final trip trip
there was with the with was with Mike Revenue later
became as administrator. I actually realized in the course of
(22:15):
this that my original premise was wrong, that that America
actually has plenty of will to go to Mars, but
needs that. It just needs a way to Mars that
is affordable and that doesn't break the budget.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
You know, just as you know, we couldn't even get
to the space station.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
We needed the Russians to to get us to our
own space station. That was embarrassing. It really was pitiful.
I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we
were being fleeced. Like I think they got up to
ninety million dollars a seat, yeah wow, Yeah, for a
seat that cost them like ten It was pretty obviously,
but it was the only Yeah it was before space X.
Ninety million dollars a seat for a seat that cost
(22:53):
them ten million is high. Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
So a few months ago you and I were down
in Bocachica with the President for a starship launch, and
it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica. You know,
five years ago it was an empty beach at the southern.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Tip of tex this soundbar.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, and it's now a city and a factory where
you're building a rocket ship a month with incredible precision.
But one of the things you said to me when
we were down there that really stood out to me
is is you said, your philosophy on intellectual property talked
to lots of CEOs or we fight to guard our IP,
and you had a very different approach. What's what's your
(23:34):
view of IP?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Patterns of the week, patterns of for those innovation slowly.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I literally do not know anyone else in business who
would say something like that, like like it was a
startling and and and what Elon said down there is
he said, look this stuff, I assume everyone will steal everything,
but by the time they steal it will be five
generations beyond and it won't matter.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yes, at Tesla, we actually opened social life patents, so
we said that our patents are anyone can use it
for free. Really, yeah. The only we only do patterns
at Tesla to to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble.
So we'll try to look ahead and say, Okay, patent
trolls are going to trial, pat file patterns to block
(24:16):
certain things, will file patents and then open source to
make it free. I mean, I want to say patents
for the week. Now, there are a few cases, in
say with pharmaceuticals, where it might cost you billion dollars
to do a phase three human file, but then subsequently
the drug is very cheap to manufacture. So cases there
are some, in my opinion, which is massively reduced what
(24:37):
can be patented and and and say, because the whole
point of patenting is to maximize innovation, not inhibit it.
And in my opinion, maybe a controversial opinion, most patents
inhibit innovation, they do not help it. But there are
cases I want to do want to single out cases
like where such as a phase three clinical trial that
(24:58):
might cost a billion dollars, but the than the drugs
thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacture, and if you
can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars,
no one will pay for the billion dollars. A free
writer problem. Free writer problem, yeah, exactly, So you have
to address the free writer problem. But other than that,
there should be no patterns. Ideas are easy.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
You want ideas to flow maximum to people to get
there faster and do things bigger.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
The idea is the easy pot the herd. Execution is
the hard part. As the old saying goes, it's one
percent inspiration, if not less than one percent, and nineteen
nine percent perspiration.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
But I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good
at also because you're making. You know, the companies you're
building are actually building stuff. They're building cars, they're building spaceships,
they're building things that if they don't work, it's a
real problem. And the precision you manufacture things with, how
do you get that level of precision? How do you
(25:53):
get how do you build a culture? You're not you're
amazing at thinking outside the box. But what's interesting thing
is you're you may even be better at execution, which
is how do you execute so effectively?
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Well, I take a physics first principles approach to everything.
It's not as though I wanted to in source manufacturing.
It's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. So, uh,
you know, the idea at the beginning of Tesla was
that we would outsource almost all the manufacturing, but then
(26:27):
it turned out there was no there were no good
companies to outsourced manufacturing too, which there wasn't a really really,
it wasn't peaceable. Outsourced manufacturing actually is the exception of
the rule. And and just over time we had to
in source almost everything for Tesla and same for SpaceX.
(26:48):
I became very good at manufacturing because I had to
lose no choice. At this point, I might know more
about manufacturing than any any human ever has, because I've
done so many I've manufactured so many different things and
so many different arenas. I think probably more than anyone
ever has.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Look, that's that sounds like an astonishing statement, but it's
not a crazy statement. And you're somehow running Tesla and
running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company
and running doralink and doing doge.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
How much do you sleep in a given night? About
six hours and average.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
So about six So that's it wouldn't have shocked me
if you said three or four.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
So the Crenet rush is how many hours do you
work a day? I work almost every working hour.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And Ben, he's not kidding at that. Like when Elan
and I were first getting to know each other, I suggested,
I said, hey, let's grab dinner sometime and I don't
know if you remember what you said.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You said, I don't eat dinner. I don't have social dinners,
really right, I mean that, Yeah, I mean you obviously
eat food, but.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Yeah, idea in a restaurant for two hours, but the
idea of like, I don't, But it was it was
just kind of a matter of fact, what why would.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
I go to dinner like you jump you work? Uh yeah,
I literally just thought I'll have lunch, and then it
brought during meetings and continue being.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
How many nights have you slept at your offices? You
think your career percentage wise where you say, I just
got to take this nap basically because my body forces
me to, and I got to get back to work
fast and efficiently without going somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Well, I guess it started out even with the first company,
SO two, which is a terrible name, but the first
interior company, we were able to rent an office which
was like in a leaky attack, essentially full five hundred
dollars a month, and the cheapest apartment we could find
(28:44):
was eight hundred dollars a month, so like, and we
only had about five thousand dollars between our brother and I.
So like we're not, We'll we'll just stay in the office. Yep.
So we got some couches that converted into beds and
we'd can't sleep at night, and then we just have
like turn the beds back into catches before anyone came,
(29:10):
and then we would shout the YMCA down the road.
And so that went that that that that literally was
for several months. What we did, it was in great shape,
you know, work out the y. I still remember that
that y m C a Atu page Miller al Camino
in Palo Alto. So that was a long time. Again,
(29:31):
so it's been I don't know, I've never thought to
count it, but several hundred days maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
So you're now the richest man on earth. Do you
still sleep at the office, Well, that's true, maybe Mars,
we'll find someone else.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
But I think if if someone is a sovereign head
of a country there to facto richer by a lot,
do you still sleep at the office now? I have
sometimes left at the office.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, don't forget Share this podcast please on social media
wherever your list, grab it, hit that auto button, that
forward button, share it. Put it out there so other
people can find this show. Without you guys doing that,
we don't get new audience members. So if you want
to help fight back against what we're exposing, share it
on social media.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
I'll see you back here tomorrow
Host
Ben Ferguson
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