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January 6, 2025 17 mins
"Don't Let Anything Hold You Back!"

Elon said that when something is important enough, you do it, even if the odds are not in your favor.

Known for the success of his many companies, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Solar City and PayPal, Elon is a renaissance man with a passion for learning and unleashing the human potential.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In a recent CBS sixty Minutes interview, Elon said that
when something is important enough, you do it even if
the odds are not in your favor. In his intimidable style,
Elon followed this guiding principle when creating SpaceX. This past month,

(00:22):
SpaceX successfully launched the Dragon space capital on top of
its Falcon rocket, and Dragons successfully docked at the International
Space Station, simultaneously launching a new era of commercial spaceflight.
As an inventor, entrepreneur, visionary, and relentless dreamer, Elon has

(00:45):
proven over and over that his dedication to advancing science
and engineering is boundless. Known for the success of his
many companies SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Solar City, and PayPal, Elon
is a renaissance man with a passion for learning and

(01:08):
unleashing the human potential. Today, we welcome Elon to Caltech
as a friend, a fellow engineer, and a mentor to
our students. Please join me in welcoming mister Elon Musk.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
All right, all right, I'd like to thank you for
leaving crazy person out of the description. So I thought
I was trying to think, what is the most useful
thing that I could What could I say that that
could actually be helpful or useful to you in the future.

(01:55):
And I thought, perhaps tell a story of how I,
how I sort of came to be here, or how
did some of these things happen, and maybe there's some
lessons there, because I often find myself wondering how did
this happen? So when I was young, I I I
didn't really know what I was going to do. When
when I got older, people kept asking me and and

(02:18):
but then eventually I thought that the idea of inventing
things would be would be really cool. And the reason
I thought that was because I read a quote from
Art C. Clarke which said that a sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic. And that's really true. If you

(02:39):
think if you go back, say three hundred years, the
things that we take for granted today would be you'd
be burned at the stake for you know, being able
to fly, that's crazy. Being able to see over long distances,
being able to communicate, having effectively with with the internet,

(03:00):
a group mind of sorts, and having access to all
the world's information instantly from almost anywhere on the earth.
This is stuff that that really would be magic, that
would be considered magic in times past. In fact, I
think it actually goes beyond that, because there are many
things that we take for granted today that weren't even

(03:21):
imagined in times past. They weren't even in the realm
of magic, So it actually goes beyond that. So I thought, well,
you know, if I can do some of those things, basically,
if I can advance technology, then that that's like magic,
and that would be really cool.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
And the.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I was had sort of a slight existential crisis because
I was trying to figure out what does it all mean,
like what's the purpose of things? And I came to
the conclusion that if we can advance the knowledge of
the world, if we can do things that expand the
scope and scale of consciousness, then we're better able to
to ask the right questions and become more enlightened and

(04:04):
and that's really the only way forward. So so I
studied physics and business because I figured in order to
do a lot of these things, you need to know
how the universe works, and you need to know how
the economy works, and you also need to build to
bring a lot of people together to work with you

(04:25):
to create something, because it's very difficult to do something
as as an individual if it's if it's a significant technology.
So I originally came out to California to try to
figure out how to improve the energy density of of
electric vehicles, basically to try to figure out if there

(04:47):
was an advanced capacitor that that could serve as an
alternative to batteries. And that was in ninety five, and
that's also when the Internet started to happen, and and
I thought, well, I can either pursue this this technology
where success maybe may not be one of the possible outcomes,

(05:10):
which is always tricky, or participate in the Internet and
be part of it. So I decided to drop out.
And obviously, unfortunately we're past graduation, so I can't be
accused of recommending that to you. And so SO did

(05:31):
some Internet stuff. You know, they did a few things
here and there, one of which was PayPal. And I
think maybe it's helpful to say one of the things
that was important then in the creation of PayPal was
was kind of how it started. Because initially, the initial

(05:54):
I thought was with PayPal was to create an agglomeration
of financial services, so to be one place where all
your financial services needs would be seamlessly integrated and and
and work smoothly. And then we had like a little
feature which was to do email payments. And whenever we'd
show show the system off to someone, we'd show the

(06:15):
hard part, which was the the agglomeration of financial services,
which was quite difficult to put together. Nobody was interested.
Then we'd show people email payments, which was actually quite easy,
and everybody was interested. So this is I think it's
important to take feedback from your environment. You know, it's

(06:36):
you want to be as closed loop as possible. And
so we focus on email payments and really try to
make that work and and that's what really got things
to take off. But but if we hadn't, if we
hadn't responded to what people said, then we probably would
not have been successful. So it's important to look for
things like that and and focus on them when when

(06:59):
you when you see them and you correct your prior assumptions.
And then the going from PayPal, I thought, well, what
what are some of the other problems that are likely
to most affect the future of humanity. It really wasn't

(07:21):
from the perspective of what what's the rank orded best
way to make money, which which is which is okay,
but it was really what I think is going to
most affect the future humanity. So the I think the
biggest terrestrial problem we've got is sustainable energy, but the
production and consumption of energy in a sustainable manner. If

(07:44):
we don't solve that, this the sensory is the century
we're in deep trouble, and then the other one being
the extension of life beyond Earth to make life multiplanetary.
So that's that's that's the basis for that. The latter
is the basis for SpaceX, and the former is the
basis for Teslin and Solar City. And when I started SpaceX,

(08:10):
it actually initially I thought that, well, there's there's no
way one could possibly start a rocket company. I wasn't
that crazy. But then I thought, well, what is a
way to increase NASA's budget. That was actually my initial goal.
So I thought, well, if we can do a low

(08:31):
cost mission to Mars, something called Mars Oasis, which would
land seeds with dehydrate with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel,
and you hydrate them upon landing, and then you'd have
this great sort of money shot of green plants on
a red background and the yeah, the public tends to
respond to precedents and superlatives, and this would be the

(08:55):
first life on Mars, the furthest that life's ever traveled,
as far as we know. And I thought, well that
that would get people really excited and and and therefore
increase at NASA's budget. So obviously the financial outcome from
such a mission would probably be zero, so anything better
than that was on the upside. So I actually went

(09:15):
to I went to Russia three times to look at
buying a refurbished ICBM because that was the best deal.
And I can tell you it was very weird going
there in two thousand, late two thousand and one, two
thousand and two, going to the Russian Rocket forces and saying,

(09:37):
I'd like to buy two of your biggest rockets, but
you can keep the nuke that's a lot more. And
that was ten years ago, I guess, so they thought
I was crazy. But I did have money, so that
was that was okay. And after making several trips to

(10:04):
to Russia, I came to the conclusion that that actually
my initial impression was wrong about that, because my initial
thought was, well, that that there's not enough will to
explore and expand beyond Earth and have a Mars based
and that kind of thing. But I can't conclusion that
that that was wrong. In fact, there's plenty of will,

(10:26):
particularly in the United States, because the United States is
a nation of explorers, the people who came here from
from other parts of the world. I think the United
States is really a distillation of the spirit of human exploration.
So but but if people think it's impossible then or
it's going to completely break the federal budget, then they're

(10:48):
not going to do it. So after my third trip,
I said, okay, well, what we really need to do
here is try to solve the space transport problem and
started space sex. And this this was against the advice
of pretty much everyone I talked to. One friend made
me sit down and watch a bunch of videos of

(11:09):
rockets glowing up. Let me tell you he wasn't far wrong, uh,
I think it was. It was tough going there in
the beginning because I'd never built anything physical. I mean,
I'd built like little model rockets as a kid and
that kind of thing, but i never had a company
that built any physical So to kind of figure out

(11:30):
how to how to do all these things and and
bring together the right team of people and and and
so we we did all that and and then failed
three times. It was tough, tough going because thing about
a rocket is that the passing grade is one hundred
percent uh and uh. You don't get to actually test

(11:55):
the rocket in the real environment that it's going to
be in. So I think to the best analogy for
for rocket engineering is it's like, if you want to
create a really complicated bit of software, you could you
can't run the software as an integrated whole, and you
can't run it on the computer it's intended to run on.
But the first time you put it all together and
run it on that computer, it must run with no bugs.

(12:17):
That's that's basically the essence of it. So so we
missed the mark there that the first launch, I was
picking up bits of rocket near the the launch sitis
but sad and but we we learnt with with each
successive flight, and and we're able to with eventually with

(12:37):
the fourth flight in two thousand and eight, reach orbit.
And that was also with the last bit of money
that we had, so thank thank goodness that that happened.
I think the saying is fourth times to charm. So
that's so we got the Falcon one to orbit, and

(13:00):
then I began to scale that up to the Falcon nine,
which is but an order of magnitude more thrust. It's
around a million pounds of thrust, and we managed to
get that to orbit and then developed Dragon spacecraft, which
recently was able to dark and return to Earth from

(13:21):
the space station. That was uh thanks, that was a
white nucled event. So yeah, it's a it's a huge relief.

(13:41):
I still can't quite believe it actually happened. But but
there's a lot more that that that that must happen
beyond this in order for humanity to become a space
faring civilization ultimately a multiplanet species, and that's something I
think it's it's it's vitally important, and I hope that
that some of you will will participate in that, either

(14:02):
at SpaceX or at other companies, because it's just really
one of the most important things for the preservation and
extension of consciousness. I mean, it's worth noting, as I'm
sure people are aware of the Earth has been around
for four billion years, and civilization, at least in terms
of having writing, has been around for ten thousand years.

(14:24):
And that's been generous so it's really somewhat of a
tenuous existence that that's civilization and consciousness as we know
it has been on Earth. And I think I'm actually,
I'm actually fairly optimistic about the future of Earth. So
I don't want to I don't want to sort of

(14:45):
people have the wrong impression that I think we're all
about to die. I think I think we'll I think
things will most likely be okay for a long time
on Earth, but not not for sure, but most likely.
But even if it's if it's sort of nineteen nine
percent likely, a one percent chance is still it's still
worth spending a fair bit of effort to ensure that

(15:07):
we have we've backed up the biosphere planetary redundancy, if
you will. And uh, and so I think I think
it's really really quite important. And in order to do that,
there's a breakthrough that needs to occur, which is to
create a rapidly and completely reusable transport system to Mars,

(15:28):
which which is one of those things that's right on
the borderline of of of of of impossible, but that
that's sort of the thing that we're we're going to
try to achieve that with with with SpaceX and then
on the on the on the Tesla front, the goal
with Tesla was really to try to show that what

(15:50):
what electric cars can do because people had the wrong impression.
We had to change people's perception of an electric vehicle
because they used to think of it as something that
was low and ugly and had low range, kind of
like a golf cart. And so that's why we create
the Tesla roads set to show that you can be fast, attractive,
and long range. And it's amazing how even though you

(16:14):
can show that something works on paper, you know, and
the calculations are very clear, until you actually have the
physical object and then they can drive it, it doesn't
really sink in for people. And so that that I
think is something worth noting. If if you're going to
create a company, the first thing you try to do
is create a working prototype. You know, everything, everything looks
great on PowerPoint. You can you can make anything work

(16:37):
on PowerPoint, but if you have, if you have an
actual demonstration article, even if it's in primitive form, that's
much much more effective for convincing people. So we made
the Tesla roads there, and now we're coming out soon
with the Model S, which is a four door sedan
because after we made the Tesla roads to people said,

(16:57):
oh sure, sure, we always knew you could make car
like that. It's an expensive car and it's low volume
and it's small and all that, but you can make
a real car like Okay, fine, we've gotta make that too.
So that that's coming out soon and yeah, so that
that's that's that's the I think the where things are

(17:21):
and and and hopefully that there are some lessons to
be to be drawn there. But I think the overwatching
point I want to make is that you guys are
the magicians of the twenty first century. You know, don't
let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit, and

(17:43):
go out there and create some magic. Thank you.
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