The following is a conversation with Elon Musk his third time on this the legs Friedman podcast. And now a quick view. Second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description is the best way to support this podcast. First is athletic greens, the all-in-one nutrition drink. I drink twice a day. Second is Butcher box. High-quality meat that makes up most of my diet. Third is inside tracker a service. I use to track my biological data fourth is real.
Oka. My favorite sunglasses and prescription glasses and fifth is a sleep, a self cooling mattress cover I sleep on. So the choice is nutrition food, Health style or sleep, Choose Wisely, my friends. And now on to the full ad reads, as always, no ads in the middle. I tried to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.
This show is brought to you by athletic
greens and its newly named AG one drink, which is an all-in-one daily drink to support Better Health and people formance it replaced a multivitamin for me and went far beyond that was 75 vitamins and minerals. It's the first thing I drink. Every day. I drink it twice a day. In fact, I drink it after a long run. I recently did a 16 mile run and I can't tell you how good it felt to get back and
Pour myself, a refreshing athletic greens and start the day. I ran fasted and that's probably one of my favorite things to do,
run for a
long period of time on an empty stomach thinking through the problems of the day or the problems of life in general. And then get back to sort of ground to normal life by drinking athletic greens getting in the shower and just hitting the ground running with a little bit of coffee.
And focus. Anyway, they'll give you one month supply of fish oil. When you sign up at athletic greens.com, Lex. That's athletic greens.com. Flex. This show is brought to you by butcher box, high-quality meat. That's pretty much. The only thing I eat, they ship a box of meat to your home, 8 to 14 pounds of it. You can
pick a premade box
or customize one, which is what I do. And that's it. It's pretty simple.
Spoken about this before. I thank me of different kinds is a makes up a large part of my diet. I just feel good. When I consume a large amount of meat. It's not an allergy thing. It's not some kind of reducing inflammation. Think I don't know what it is because I also I'm pretty happy eating carbs as well. I just feel better. I'm happier. I can perform better both physically and mentally. When I consume a large amount of me, whether that's a
carnivore or
Keto diet. I
just feel great and butcher box is just high quality meat that I can rely on. There's all kinds of cuts there, but ground beef is the basics and the thing I love the most for a limited time butcher box is offering new members. A great deal for the new year, sign up a butcher box.com Lex and you've received the ultimate New Year's bundle in your first box. This deal includes ground beef, chicken, thighs, and more. That's more than seven pounds of meat added to your first box for free.
Get this New Year's bundle, before it's gone by going to butcher box.com Lex. This show is also brought to you by inside tracker a service that used to track biological data. They have a bunch of plans most of which include a blood test that gives you a lot of information that you can. Then make decisions based on they have algorithms. I love the world that algorithms that analyze, your blood data DNA data and fitness tracker data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you and to offer, you signs.
Act recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes Andrew huberman. The great the powerful engine humor in talks a lot about it. David Sinclair.
Who, by the way, was just on
his podcast today. You should check
out also talks a lot about it,
in my conversation with him and in his conversation with others. I love this idea. It feels like the future. You should definitely be making lifestyle and health decision based on actual data connected to you. Not just the general population.
You are a special unique biological fingerprint that requires unique treatment, unique lifestyle decisions
for a limited time. You can get
25% off the entire inside tracker store. If you go to inside track a.com Flex, that's inside track or.com, Flex.
This show is brought
to you by Roka the maker of glasses and sunglasses that I love wearing for their design, feel and Innovation on materials Optics. And grip
Rocco was started by two All-American,
swimmers from Stanford and was born out of an obsession with performance. Like I said, I love the word Obsession and performance and I got a chance to meet a hangout a bunch with one of those Founders. Rob incredible human being here in Austin. They have a facility.
Austin, it's just cool to see people at the top of their game in terms of both design and manufacture and all that kind of stuff. These glasses. First of all, look badass look amazing, but they're also designed to be active in extremely lightweight. The grip is comfortable, but strong and the style, I said bad ass, but it's badass in a classy way. It holds up in all conditions when I'm wearing a suit or wearing running gear including on long runs in hundred degree, Austin.
Whether or in freezing Boston, whether both work,
check them out for both prescription
glasses and sunglasses and Roca.com and enter code. Lex to save 20% off your first order. That's Roku.com and enter code. Lex. This episode is also brought to you by eight sleep and it's pod Pro mattress. It controls temperature with an app is packed with sensors and can cool down to as low as 55 degrees on each side of the bed separately. Given that I just
Out of said bed, I could tell you because it's short-term memory. That the thing feels incredible. There's very few things and enjoying life as much as a power nap or full night's sleep and they cooled bed with a warm blanket. My mind. Empty of thoughts, having fought the battles of the day and just resting escaping it all in a little bit of a dream world Alice in Wonderland, but
But I like, Lex in Wonderland. They have a bod bro covers. You can just add that to your mattress without having to buy theirs, but their mattress is nice too. They can track a bunch of metrics, like heart rate variability. But cooling alone is worth the money. Go to a sleep duck. Calm legs to get special savings. That's eight. Sleep.com Lex and I will meet you there. My friend in the dream world. This is the Luxe Friedman podcast and here is my
And with the Elon Musk.
Yeah, make yourself comfortable. Now. Wow.
Okay, you don't do the headphones thing? No. Okay. I mean, how could I get me to give this thing?
The closer? You are the sexiest on?
Hey, babe? Yeah. Yeah, I get enough of your love, baby clip that out time. Somebody messaged me. Why you
come right out and tell me. So,
So good.
So good. Okay. So serious mode activate. All right,
serious mode. Funny Russian, you can be seriously and give it wants your soul of siren Russian. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there.
Yeah, it's gotten soft. Allow me to say that the SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30th. 2020 was seen by many as the first step in a new era of human space exploration.
These human spaceflight missions were a Beacon of Hope to me into millions over the past two years is our world has been going through one of the most difficult periods in recent human history. We saw we see the rise of division fear cynicism, and the loss of common Humanity, right? When it is needed. Most. So first Elon, let me say thank you for giving the world hope and reason to be excited about the
future. So it's kind of you to say, I do want to do that Humanity has
Obviously a lot of issues and, you know, people times do bad things but you know, despite all that, you know, I love humanity and I think we should make sure we do everything we can to have a good future and an exciting future and one way that maximizes the happiness of the
people. Let me ask about crew Dragon demo to so that that first flight with humans on board. How did you feel leading up to that launch? We scared.
Are you excited? I was going through your mind. So much was at
stake.
Yeah, no, that was extremely stressful. The question. We obviously could not let them down anyway, so,
Extremely stressful. It's a to say the least we did. I was confident that at the time that we launched, that no one could think of anything at all to do. That would improve the probability of success. And we racked our brains to think of any possible way to improve the probability of success. We cannot think of anything more and, and no could NASA. And so then that that's just the best that we could do. So then we had
We went ahead and launched. Now. I'm not a religious person, but I know unless I got on my knees and prayed for that mission.
We able to sleep.
No,
I didn't feel when it was a success first one. The launch was a success and when they return back home, or back to Earth.
It was a great relief. Yeah, it's before for high-stress situations. I find it's not so much Elation as relief and you know, I think once as we got more comfortable and proved out the systems because, you know, we really going to make sure everything works. I was it was definitely a lot more enjoyable with the subsequent asteroid missions.
And I thought the the inspiration mission was was actually very inspiring aspiration for Mission at a drink. I'd encourage people to watch the inspiration documentary on Netflix. It's actually really good and it really isn't. So II was actually inspired by that and I so that one I felt I was kind of able to enjoy the the actual Mission not just be super stressed all the time.
So for people that somehow don't know, it's the all civilian first time.
All civilian out to spaced out to
orbit. Yeah, it was that hot. I think the highest orbit that in like I know 30 or 40 years or something. The only one that was higher was the one shuttle or sorry. A Hubble servicing Mission and then before that it would have been Apollo in 72. It's pretty wild. So it's cool. It's good. You know, I think as you know as a species like we want to be, you know, continuing.
To do better and reach Higher Ground and like, I think would be tragic extremely tragic, if Apollo was the high-water mark for Humanity, you know, and that's as far as we ever got and it's, it's concerning that here. We are 49 years after the last mission to the moon. And so, almost half a century, and we've not been back and that's, that's wiring. It's
is that does that mean we've peaked as a civilization or what? So like, we got to get back to the moon and bouillabaisse there, you know, a science-based. I think we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe. If we have a proper science based on the moon, you're like, we have a science-based in Antarctica and you know many other parts of the world. And so that that's like think that they can next big thing. We've got to have like a serious like moon base and then get people
Ours. And, you know, get get out there and be a spacefaring
civilization. I'll ask you about some of those details, but since you're so busy with the hard engineering challenges of everything that's involved. Are you still able to Marvel at the magic of it? All of space? Travel of every time, the rocket goes up, especially when it's a crewed mission, or are you just so overwhelmed with all the challenges that you have to solve and actually sort of to add to that? The
Tonight, I want to ask this question of May 30th. It's been some time. So you can look back and think about the impact already. It's already at the time. It was an engineering problem. Maybe now it's becoming a historic moment. Like it's a moment that how many moments will be remembered about the 21st century to me that or something like that. Maybe inspiration for or one of those would be remembered as the early steps of a new age of space exploration.
Yeah. During the launches itself.
I mean, the thing, I think maybe some people know what a lot of people don't know. It's like I'm actually the chief engineer Space X. So the, you know, that I've signed off on pretty much all the design decisions. And, you know, so if there's something that goes wrong with that vehicle, it's fundamentally my fault, you know, so, so I'm really just thinking about all the things that like so. So when I see the rocket, I see all the things that
Could go wrong and the things that could be better and the same with the dragon spacecraft. It's like other people say oh this is a spacecraft or a rocket and that's, this looks really cool. I'm like, I've like a readout of like this is the, these are the, these are the risks. These are the problems. That's what I see like teacher. Not what other people see when they see the product, you know,
so let me ask you then to analyze Starship in that same way. I know you have you'll talk about
More detail about Starship in the near future. Perhaps your head that were quite a know if you want, but just in that same way like you said, you see, when you see up when you see a rocket, you see a sort of a list of risks in that same way. You said that Starship is a really hard problem. So many ways I can ask this but if you magically could solve one problem, perfectly one engineering problem perfectly. Which one would it be on Sasha, Ansari and Starship? So is it me?
Be related to the efficiency. The the engine, the weight of the different components, the complexity of various things, maybe the controls of the crazy thing as to do to land.
No, it's actually. The by far the biggest thing absorbing. My time is a engine production, not the design of the engine, but I can't. If I've often said prototypes are, easy production is hard.
So we have the most advanced rocket engine that's been designed the, because I say currently the best rocket engine ever is, probably the rd-180 want already 170. That that the door rushing engine basically. And and still it, I think an engine should only count if it's gotten something to orbit. So our engine is not gotten anything to orbit yet, but it is, it's the first engine that's
A better than the Russian army engines, which I were amazing design.
So you talking about Raptor engine, what makes it amazing? What are the different aspects of it? That make it like what are you the most excited about? If the whole thing works in terms of efficiency all those kind of things?
Well, it's the Raptor is a a full flow staged combustion.
Engine and it's at operating at a very high chamber pressure. So one of the key figures marriage. We have secret key figure of Merit is what is the chamber pressure at which the rocket engine can operate? That's the combustion chamber pressure. So a raptor is designed to operate it. 300 bar, possibly maybe higher the standard atmospheres. So,
The record right now. For operational engine is the R&D engine. That I mentioned the Russian army, which is, I believe Ron, 267 bar and the, the the difficulty of the chamber pressure is increases on a nonlinear basis. So 10% more chamber pressure is more like 50% more difficult, but that that chair pressure is that that is what allows you to get a very high.
Power density for for the engine. So enabling a very high thrust-to-weight ratio and a very high specific impulse. So specific impulse is like a measure of the efficiency of a rock and roll. It's really the, the exhaust, if the effective exhaust velocity of the gas coming out of the engine.
So whether with a very high chamber pressure, you can have a compact engine that nonetheless has a high expansion ratio, which is the ratio between the exit nozzle and the throat. So, you know engines got like you see rocket engines got like sort of like about like a hourglass shape. It's like a chamber and then it next down and there's a nozzle and the ratio of the the exit.
Amateur to the throat of expansion
ratio. So why is it such a hard engine to manufacture at scale?
It's very complex.
So a lot of them. What is complexity mean? Here's a lot of components involved.
There's a lot of, a lot of components and a lot of unique materials that. So we had to invent a several Alloys that don't exist in order to make this engine work.
Serials problem too.
So materials problem and it has staged combustion that full flood stage combustion. There are many feedback loops in the system. So basically, you've got propellants and and Hot Gas flowing simultaneously to so many different places on the engine and they all have a recursive effect on each other. So you change
Thing here has a recursive effect here, changes something over there and and it's quite hard to control but like there's a reason no one's made this before. But and the reason we're doing a stage combustion, full flow is because it has the highest up at the highest vertical possible efficiency. So,
In order to make a fully reusable rocket, which that's the really the Holy Grail of over rocketry. You have to have, everything's got to be the best. It's got to be the best engine, the best airframe. The best heat shield. Extremely light avionics. You're very clever control mechanisms. You've got to shed mass in any possible way that you
And for example, we are instead of putting Landing legs on the booster and ship. We are going to catch them with a tower to save the way to The Landing LED legs. So that's like, I mean, we're talking about catching the largest flying object ever made with on a giant Tower with with Chopstick arms. It's like Karate Kid with fly but much bigger. I mean pulling. This is like probably
Won't work the first time in area, so there's not as banana stuff.
So you mentioned that you doubt. Well, not you doubt. But there there's days are moments. When you doubt that, this is even possible. It's so difficult.
The possible part is well, at this point. Well, I think we will get Starship to work. There's a question of timing. How long will it take us to do this?
How long will it take us to actually achieve full and Rapid reusability? Because it will take a probably many launches before we are able to have full and Rapid reusability, but I can say that the physics pencils out like the like we're not
Like at this point, I'd say we're confident that that say, like, let's say, I'm very confident. So success is in the set of all possible outcomes
for all set
for a while there. I was not convinced that success was in the set of possible outcomes. So, which is a very important actually. But so, we were saying there's a chance. I'm saying, this is Chance. Exactly.
Just not sure how, how long it will take. We're very, very talented team. They're working night and day to make it happen. And I like sad that the critical thing to achieve for the revolution in spaceflight and for Humanity, to be a spacefaring civilization, is to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket over the rocket. There's not even been any over rocket that's been fully reusable ever and this is always been the
The Holy Grail of rocketry and many smart people, very smart. People have tried to do this before and they're not succeeded. So because it's such a hard
problem. What's your source of belief in situations like this, when the engineering problem is so difficult. There's a lot of experts, many of whom you admire who have failed in the past. Yes, and
A lot of people, you know, the a lot of experts may be journalists, all the kind of, you know, the public in general have a lot of doubt about whether it's possible and you yourself know that even if it's a non null set. Nonempty set of success. It's still unlikely or very difficult. Like where do you go to both personally intellectually as an engineer as a team like for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this.
And to add keep going with the project, take it to
completion.
As well as the strength. I just really not how I think about things. I mean, for me, it's simply this, this is something that is important to get done and we should just keep doing it or die trying and I I don't need a source of strength that
quitting is not even like
it's not it's not in my nature and I don't care about optimism or pessimism.
Muslim.
Fuck that. We're going to get it done.
Get it done.
Can you then Zoom back in to specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on? Can you try to introspect your particular biological neural network your thinking process and describe how you think through problems, the different engineering and design problems. Is there like a systematic process you spoken about first principles thinking? But they're kind of process to it. Well.
You know like saying like like physics is low and everything else was a recommendation. Like I've met a lot of people that can break the law but we have never met anyone who could break physics. So so first for, you know, in a kind of Technology problem, you have just sort of just make sure you're not violating physics and you know, first principles analysis, I think is something that
Be applied to really any Walk of Life. Anything, really. It's just, it's really just saying, you know, let's let's well, something down to the most fundamental principles. The things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level and that's just your at your success, your axiomatic base. And then you reason up from there and then you cross check your conclusion against the the axiomatic truth.
So, you know, some basics in physics would be like all you fighting conservation of energy or momentum or something like that, you know, then, you know, it's not going to work. So
that's so that's just to establish it. Is it is it possible? And then another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit. If you if you take a particular thing and you scale to a very large number or two, very small number hardest. How do things change
well-liked a like in number things you manufacture something like that and then in
time, yeah, like the 68 example of like like manufacturing which I think is just a very
Rated problem, and and likes it. It's much harder. To take it as an advanced technology product and bring it into volume manufacturing, that it is to design it in the first place, my orders of magnitude. So let's say you're trying to figure out is like, why is this this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally full?
Is that we're doing or is it because our volume is too low. And so then you say okay. Well, what if I volume was a million years here is a still expensive. That's what I mean, radical thinking about things to the Limit, if it's still expensive at a million units a year than volume is not. The reason why you would think is expensive. There's something fundamental about this
line and then you then can focus on the complete reducing complexity or something like that. In the
design, change the design to change trains. Depart to be something that is not fundamentally expensive.
But it's like, that's a common thing in rocketry because the, the unit volume is relatively low. And so a common excuse would be well, it's expensive because I unit volume is low, and if we were in like Automotive or something like that or consumer electronics, then our costs will be lower on like like, Okay. So let's say we skip. Now you're making a million year to year. Is this looks massive? If the answer is yes, then economies of scale are not the
issue.
Do you throw into manufacturing? You throw like supply chain talked about resources and materials, and stuff like that. Do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles? Like how we're going to make the supply chain work here? Yeah. Yeah, and then the cost of materials things like that or is that too much?
Exactly. So like another like a good example, I could thinking about things in the limit is if you take any
yeah, any product a machine or whatever like take a rocket or whatever and say,
If you've got, if you look at the room raw materials in the rocket, so you're going to have like an aluminum steel, titanium inconel, special specialty Alloys copper and and you say what are the, what's the weight of the constituent elements of each of these elements? And what is the raw material value? And that sets the asymptotic limit for how
Hello, the cost of the vehicle can be unless you change the materials. So and then when you do that, I'll call it like maybe the magic wand number or something like that. So that would be like if you had the you know, like just a pile of these raw materials here and you could wave a magic wand and rearrange the atoms into the final shape. That would be the lowest possible cost that you could make this thing for unless you change the materials. So then and that is always a, you're almost always a very low number.
So then what's actually causing these to be expensive, it is how you put the items into the
desired shape.
Yeah, actually if you don't mind me, taking a tiny tangent. Had a, I often talk to Jim Keller. Who's something to work
with you? So yeah, so yeah, good great work at Tesla. So
I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you're talking about now, and I guess I see that same thing at Tesla and and SpaceX folks who work there. They kind of learn this way of thinking and it kind of
Becomes obvious almost. But anyway, I had argument not argument. He educated me about how cheap it might be to manufacture Tesla bot. We just had an argument. What is, how can you reduce the cost of the scale of producing a robot? Because if I got a chance to interact quite a bit, obviously, in the academic circles with humanoid robots, and then my Boston Dynamics and stuff like that, and they're very expensive to build.
And then Jim kind of schooled me on saying, like, Okay, like this kind of first principles thinking of, how can we get the cost of manufacture down? I suppose you do that. You have done that kind of thinking for Tesla body and for all kinds of
All kinds of complex systems that are traditionally seen as complex, and you say, okay, how can we simplify everything
now?
Yeah, I mean, I think if you are really good at manufacturing, you can basically make at high volume. You can basically make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches is the room of raw material value of the constituents. Plus any IP intellectual property that you need to do license anything,
right?
But it's hard. It's not like that's a very hard thing to do, but it is possible for anything. Anything in volume can be made of
Like I said for a cost that asymptotically approaches is raw material constituents plus intellectual property license, right? So what do often happen in trying to design a product is people sought with the tools and parts and methods that they are familiar with and then and try to create the product using their existing tools and methods, the other way to think about it is actually imagine the try to imagine the platonic ideal.
Of the perfect product or technology, whatever it might be. And so, what is this? What is the perfect arrangement of atoms? That would be the best possible product. And now let us try to figure out how to get the atoms in that
shape.
I mean, it sounds, it's almost like Rick and Morty absurd until you start to really think about it. And you really should think about it in this way because everything else is kind of. If you think you might fall victim to the momentum of the way, things were done in the past, unless you thinking this way.
Well, just as a function of inertia people will want to use the same tools and methods that they are familiar with.
Um, they just that's what they'll do by default. Yeah, and then that will lead to an outcome of things that can be made with those tools and methods, but it is unlikely to be the platonic ideal of a perfect product. So then so that's why it's good to think of things in both directions, that like, what can we build with the tools that we have? But then, but also, what is the, what is the perfect, the theoretical perfect product look like, and and that, that theoretical private part is going to be moving Target because the, as you
Earn more, the definition of or for that perfect product will change because you don't actually know what the perfect party is, but you can successfully approximate a a more perfect product. So think about it like that. And then saying, okay now what tools methods materials, whatever do we need to create in order to get the atoms in that shape, but for people very rarely think about it that way.
It's a powerful tool.
I should mention that. The brilliant Siobhan's else is hanging hanging out with us. In case you hear a voice of wisdom from from from outside from up above.
Okay. So let me ask you about Mars. You mentioned, it would be great for science to put a base on the moon to do some research, but the truly big leap. Again, in this category of seemingly impossible is to put a human being on Mars. When do you think SpaceX will lend a human being at Mars?
Hmm?
Best case is about 5 years. Worst case, 10 years.
What are the determining factors? Would you say from an engineering perspective? Or is that that not the
bottlenecks?
I know it's fundamentally engineering the vehicle.
Every Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made by. I don't know order of magnitude or something like that. It's a lot. It's really Next Level. So
and the fundamental optimization of Sasha is minimizing cost per ton to over it and ultimately caused proton to the surface of Mars. This may seem like a Mercantile objective, but it is actually the thing that needs to be optimized. Like there is a certain cost per time to the surface of Mars where we can afford to establish a self-sustaining City and and then above that, we cannot afford to do it. So right now you couldn't fly.
Mars four trillion dollars doesn't know, amount of money could get your ticket to Mars. So we need to get that above, you know, to get that like something that is actually possible at all. But then, but that's, that's we don't, we don't just want to have, you know, with Mars flags and Footprints and then not come back for a half century. Like we did with the moon, in order to pass a very important, great filter. I think we need to be a
Janet species. This may sound somewhat esoteric to a lot of people but like, eventually given enough time. This is something which is likely to experience, some Calamity, that could be something that humans do to themselves or external event. Like happened to the dinosaurs and but a bit of you know, eventually
And if it doesn't if none of that happens and somehow magically we keep going then the sun will the Sun is gradually expanding and will engulf the Earth and probably Earth gets too hot for life in about 500 million years. It's a long time but that's only ten percent longer than Earth has been around.
and so, if you think about like the
the current situation is really remarkable and kind of hard to believe, but
It's been around for and a half billion years. This is the first time if 1/2 billion years that has been possible to extend life beyond Earth.
And that window of Charity, may be open for a long time and I hope it is but it also may be open for a short time and we shouldn't I think it is wise for us to act quickly while the window is open just in case it closes.
Yeah, the existence of nuclear weapons. Pandemics all kinds of threats. Yeah. Should should kind of give us some motivation.
I mean
Position could get good day with a bang or a whimper, you know, if it's a fad I's of demographic collapse, then it's more of a obviously. But if it's World War 3 is more of a bang. But these are all risks are it's important to think of these things. And just, you know, think of things like probabilities, not certainties. There's a certain probability that something bad will happen at on Earth. I'd like, I think most likely the future will be good.
Good, but there's like, let's say for argument's sake, a one percent chance per Century of of a civilization ending event. Like that was Stephen Hawking's estimate. I think you might be right about that. So then,
You know, we should, basically, think of us, like, being a multi-planet species, just like, taking out insurance for life itself, like life insurance, for life.
Also turned into an infomercial real
quick life insurance for Life. Yes, and, you know, we can bring the creatures from, you know, plants animals from Earth, to Mars, and breathe life into the planet. And, and have second planet with with life.
That would be great. They can't bring themselves there, you know, so if we don't bring them to Mars, then they will just for sure all died when the sun expands anyway, and then that'll be it.
What do you think is the most difficult aspect of building a civilization on Mars? Terraforming Mars, like from engineering perspective, from a financial perspective, human perspective to get to get a large number of folks there who will never
Turn back to Earth.
Don't think it's with me. Return, some will return back to
Earth. They will choose to stay there for the rest of their lives. Many will,
but, you know it, we we need the spaceships back like the ones that go to Mars, Freedom back. So you can hop on if you want, you know, it's like but we can't just not have this patients. Come back with those things are expensive. We need to match like to come back and doing the trip.
I mean, do you think about the terraforming aspect like actually build a you so focused right now on the spaceship?
This part that's so critical in
tomorrow. So we have absolutely if you can't get there nothing else matters. So and like I said, you can, we can't get there with at some extraordinary high cost. I mean the current cost of let's say 1 ton to the surface of Mars is on the order of a billion dollars.
So please don't just need the rocket and launch and everything. You need like heat shield. You need, you know, guidance system, eight deep space Communications. You need some kind of Landing system. So like rough approximation would be a billion dollars per ton to the surface of Mars right now. This is obviously way too expensive to create a self-sustaining civilization. So we need to improve that.
I,
At least a factor of a
thousand, a million per ton.
Yes, ideally less that much less than a million ton. But if it's not like, it's got to be if they like what, well, how much can a society afford to spend, or want you to just want to spend on a self-sustaining City on Mars. The self-sustaining part is important. Like it's just the key threshold. The great, The Grateful to will have been passed when the city on Mars.
It can survive even if the space ships from Earth. Stop coming for any reason. Just matter what the reason is. But if they stop coming for any reason, will it die out? Or will it not? And if there's even one critical ingredient missing, then it still doesn't count. It's like if you're on a long sea voyage and you've got everything except vitamin C. It's only a matter of time, you know, you're going to die. So so we're going to get Mars, Mars City to the point where it's self-sustaining. I'm not sure this will really happen in my lifetime.
But I hope to see it at least have a lot of momentum. And and then you could say, okay. What is the minimum tonnage necessary to have a self-sustaining City? And there's a lot of uncertainty about this. We could say, like, I don't know. It's probably at least a million tons, because you have to set up a lot of infrastructure on Mars. Like I said, you can't be missing any anything that in order to be self-sustained. You can't be mistaken. Need a semiconductor.
Faves you need iron. Ore refineries like you need lots of things, you know, so and Mars is not super hospitable. It's the least inhospitable Planet, but it's definitely a fixer-upper of a planet outside of Earth. Yes. The Earth is pretty. It is like easy.
Yeah, and also I should we should clarify in the solar system. Yes, and this will see. That might be nice like vacation spots.
There might be some great planets out there, but it's always hard to get there.
Away way, way way, way too hard to say? The least. Let me
push back on that, not really a pushback, but click curveball of a question. So you did mention physics as the the first starting point. So, general relativity allows for wormholes. They technically can exist. Do you think those can ever be leveraged by humans to travel faster than the speed of light?
Well,
are you saying well, the thing
is debatable. The
The that we currently do not know of any means of going faster than the speed of light. There is like like there are some ideas about
Having space like so. So you can only move at the speed of light, through space. But if you can make space itself, move that, that, that's like that. That's what warming space space is capable of moving faster than the speed of light, right? Like the universe in The Big Bang Theory of the universe expanded at much, much, more than the speed of light by lat. Yeah, so,
But the if this is possible that the amount of energy required to of space is so gigantic. It's boggles the mind.
So although I came down with propulsion, how much Innovation is possible with rocket propulsion is this, I mean, you've seen it all and you're constantly innovating and every aspect how much is possible, like how much can you get 10x? Somehow? Is there something in there in physics?
That you can get significant Improvement in terms of efficiency of engines and all those kinds of things.
Well as a saying like the really the Holy Grail is a fully and rapidly reusable over the system. So right now the Falcon 9 is the only reusable rocket out there that are. But the booster comes back and Lance. I'm sure you've seen the videos and we get the nose cone or Ferring back, but we do not get the Opera stage back. So
that means we have a minimum cost of building up for stage. You can think of like a two-stage rocket of sort of like two airplanes like a big airplane and a small airplane and we get bigger airplane back but not the smaller airplane and so it still cost a lot, you know, so that upper stage is at least 10 million dollars. And then the degree of the booster is not as reuse is not as rapidly and completely reusable as would like an order the fairings. So
Our kind of minimum marginal cost not counting overhead for per flight is on the order of 15 to 20 million dollars. Maybe so that's extremely good for is by far better than any rocket ever in history, but with full and Rapid reusability, we can reduce the cost per ton to orbit by a
of 100.
Just think of it like like imagine if you had an aircraft or something, or a car and if you had to buy a new car, every time you went for a drive, they'll be very expensive. Every silly frankly. But but you, in fact, you just refuel the car or recharge, the car and that's makes your trip. Like, I don't know, a thousand times cheaper, so,
It's the same for Rockets. If you very difficult to make this complex machine that can go to orbit. And so if you cannot reuse it, after throw, even any part of any significant part of it away, that massively increases the cost. So,
yes, Starship in theory, could do a cost per launch of like a million, maybe two million dollars or something like that and and put over 100 tons and all but
this is crazy. Yeah, so
that's incredible. So you're saying like it's by far the biggest bang for the Bacchus to make the fully reusable versus like some kind of brilliant breakthrough in
theoretical physics. No. No, there's no, there's no problem breaking up. There's no just met. You're going to make the rocket reusable. Is this? This is an extremely difficult engineering problem. Got it. But no new physics is required.
Just brilliant engineering. Let me ask a slightly philosophical. Fun question.
Ask I know you're focused on getting to Mars. But once we're there on Mars, what do you what form of government economic system? Political system, do you think would work best for an early civilization of humans is? I mean the interesting reason to talk about the stuff, it also May helps people dream about the future. I know you're really focused about the short-term engineering dream, but it's like, I don't know. There's something about imagining an actual civilization on Mars.
As the gives people to really gives people
help, what would be a new frontier and an opportunity to rethink the whole nature of government just as was done in the creation of the United States. So I mean I would suggest
Having direct democracy, like people vote directly on things as opposed to representative democracy. So, representative democracy I think, is to subject to special interest and, you know, a coercion of the politicians and that kind of thing. So, I'd recommend that those just direct democracy people vote.
On laws the population, votes on laws themselves, and then the laws must be short enough that people can understand them.
Yeah, and then like keeping a well-informed populist like really being transparent about all the information about what they're voting for. Absolute transparency. Yeah. And not make it as annoying. As those cookies. We have to accept the
trailer exotic rookies. I've always liked, you know, it was like, where's like a slight amount of trepidation when you click accept cookies, like I feel as though, there's like perhaps like a like a very tiny chance. That'll open up.
Portal to hell or something like that. That's exactly how I feel. Why why do they why do they keep wanting me to accept it? What do they want with this cookie? It's like somebody got upset with accepting cookies or something somewhere over, who cares. Like, so annoying to get keep accepting. All these cookies
me. This is just
a greater extent. Yes, you can have my damn cookie. I don't care. Whatever you heard it from me. I'm first, he accepts all your damn cookies. Yeah. It's all right with me.
Annoying.
Yeah, it's is one example of implementation of a good idea done. Really horribly.
Yeah, it's somebody was like there's some good intentions of like privacy or whatever but now everyone's just has to kick accept cookies and there's nowt, you know, you have billions of people who have to keep clicking accept cookie and super annoying. Then we just accept that. I'm cookie, it's fine. There is like, I think fundamental problem that, we're because we've not really had.
A major like a world war or something like that in a while. And obviously we would like to not have World Wars. The there's not been a cleansing function for rules and regulations. So wars did have some silver lining in that there would be a reset on rules and regulations after a war. So what was one and two? There were huge resets on rules and regulations. Now as if the site is society, does not have a war that the end there.
Cleansing function or garbage collection for rules and regulations. Then rules regulations will accumulate every year because they are Immortal. There's no actual humans die, but the lowest don't so that we need a garbage collection function for rules and regulations. They should not just be immortal, because some of the rules regulations that are put in place will be counterproductive done with good intentions, but counterproductive sometimes not done with good intentions. So if you just if rules and regulations, just accumulate everything.
Every year you get more and more of them than eventually, you won't be able to do anything. You just like Gulliver with, you know, tied down by thousands of little strings and we see that in you know, us and it like basically all the colonies that have been around for a while and and regulators and legislators create new rules regulations every year, but they don't put effort into removing them and I think that's very important.
Put effort into removing rules and regulations, but it gets tough because you get special interest that then are dependent on like they have a you know, a vested interest in that whatever role regulation and that they they fight to not get it removed.
Yeah, so it, I mean, I guess the problem with the Constitution is it's kind of like, C versus Java because it doesn't have any garbage collection built and I think there should be AI when you first said that the, the matter,
For garbage collection. I love recording some point from a quality standpoint. Yeah, I it would be interested, interesting as the laws themselves. Kind of had a built-in thing where they kind of died after a while like somebody explicitly publicly defends them. So, that's sort of it's not like somebody has to kill them. They kind of die themselves. They
disappear. Yeah,
not to defend Java or anything. But, you know C++, you can also have going great garbage collection in Python and so on.
Yeah, so yeah, something something needs to happen or just the civilizations arteries autores just hardened over time and you can just get less and less done because there's just a rule against everything. So, so I think like, I don't know, for Mars order. I say, are we importing you obviously both as well. Like, I think there should be an active process for removing a rules and regulations and questioning their existence just like you.
I've got a function for creating rules regulations because rules regulations can also think of as like, they're like software or lines of code for operating a civilization that's rules and regulations. So it's like we shouldn't have rules regulations, but the you have your code accumulation but no card removal and so just gets to become basically archaic bloatware after a while and then it's just it makes it hard for it. Thanks to progress. So I don't maybe Mars.
Have like a, you know, any given law. I must have a sunset, you know, and and and require active voting to give we're starting to keep it up there, you know, and I should also say like these just I don't know, recommendations of thoughts and ultimately will be up to the people on Mars to decide but I think it should be easier to remove a lower than to add one because of the just to overcome the inertia.
Oh of laws. So maybe it's like for argument's sake, you need likes a 60% vote to have a law, take effect. But only a 40% vote to remove it.
So let me be the guy you post a meme on Twitter recently, where there's the, there's like a row of urinals and guy just walks all the way across and he tells you about crypto.
So this is, I mean, that's happened. So many times. I think maybe even literally. Yeah,
do you think technologically speaking? There's any room for ideas of smart contracts, or so on because you mentioned laws, that's an interesting Implement use of things like smart contracts.
Is to implement the laws by which governments function.
I'd like something built on a theorem, or maybe.
A dog coin that enables smart contracts
somehow. I never under quite understand this whole small Contracting, you know, I mean, so it's too dumb times have small contracts.
It's a good line.
I mean my general approach to any kind of like deal or whatever is just make sure this Clarity of understanding. That's the most important thing and and just keep any kind of deal. Very short and simple, plain language.
And just make sure everyone understands. This is the deal that everyone is a clear and and and what are the consequences if first things don't happen, but usually deals are, you know, business deals or whatever are way too long and complex and overly layered and pointlessly.
You mention that doge is the the people's coin. Yeah, and you said that you are literally going SpaceX, may consider literally putting a Dogecoin on the moon. It is this something you're still considering Mars, perhaps do you think? There's some chance we've talked about political systems on Mars that Dogecoin is the official currency of Mars at some time in the
future.
Well, I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency because you can't synchronize, do to speed of light or not easily.
So must be complete Standalone from Earth.
Well, yeah, because the Mars is at closest approach is for light-minutes away, roughly, and then adverse approach. It's roughly 20 light minutes away, maybe a little more, so you can't really have something.
Synchronizing, you know, if you could if you got a 20 minutes to be light issue, if it's got a one minute blockchain, it's not going to synchronize properly. So Mars, we would, I don't know if monster have a cryptocurrency is the thing but probably seems likely, but it would be some kind of localized thing on Mars
and you let the people decide.
Yeah. Absolutely. This is the future of our should be up to the Martians. Yeah, so
I think the cryptocurrency thing is an interesting approach to reducing the
Error in the database that is called money. Yeah. I think I have a pretty deep understanding of the of what money actually is on a practical day-to-day basis because of PayPal, you know, we really got in deep there and right now, the money system actually, for practical purposes is, is is really a bunch of heterogeneous.
Mainframes running old Coble.
Okay, you mean literally, that's literally literally what's happening in batch mode.
Okay, patch mode. Yeah, pretty the poor bastards. Who have to maintain that code. Okay, that's it as a painter. That's
pain. Not even for Trans Cobalt. Yep. It's
kobol like and they still banks are still buying mainframes in 2021 and running engine COBOL code. And you know, the Federal Reserve is like probably even older than the but what the banks have and they have an old Coble Mainframe and so
And so the with the government effectively has editing privileges on the on the money database and they use those editing privileges to make more money when if they want. And this increases the error in the database that is money. So if I think money should really be viewed through the lens of information Theory and and so it's your kind of like like an internet connection like what's the bandwidth, you know?
Total bitrate. What is the latency? Jetter packet drop you. No errors errors and network communication just like money like that. Basically, I think that's probably right way to think of it. And and then say, what, what system from information Theory, standpoint allows an economy to function the best. And, you know, crypto is an attempt to reduce the
The error in in money. That is contributed by governments. Diluting the money supply as basically a pernicious for pernicious form of
Taxation.
So, both policy in terms of with inflation and actual like technological, Cobalt, like cryptocurrency takes us into the 21st century in terms of the actual systems that allow you to do the transaction to store with all those kinds of things.
Bikes are just think of money as information. People, often will think of money as having power in and of itself. It does not. It money is information and it does not have power in and of itself, like, you know, Grant applying the physics tools of thinking about things in the limit this helpful if you are stranded on a tropical island and
You have a trillion dollars, so useless.
Because there's no, there's no resource. Allocation. My name is a database for resource allocation for. There's no resources to allocate, except yourself. So money is useless. If you're stranded on a desert island, with no food, you all the Bitcoin in the world will not stop you from starving. Yeah, so
so I could just think of money as a
database will resource allocation across time and space and and then what, what, what system it is. What what, in, what form should that that database or data system? What would be most effective? Now? The there's there is a fundamental issue with say but coin in its current form in that, it's the transaction, volume is very limited.
And the latency if the latency for probably confirm transaction is too is too long much longer than you'd like. So it's not it's actually not great from transaction volume standpoint or latency standpoint. So it is perhaps useful as as to search to solve an aspect of the money database problem, which is the sort of store of wealth or
Like an accounting of relative obligations I suppose, but it is not useful, as a currency as a day-to-day currency. The
people have proposed different technological solutions lightning. He had lightning Network in the layer 2 Technologies, on top of that. It's all it seems to be all kind of a trade-off, but the point is it's kind of brilliant to say that just think about it information. Think about what kind of database will kind of infrastructure enables. They
exchanged like you're operating in economy.
And you need to have some thing that allows for the efficient to have efficient value ratios between products and services. So you go to this massive number of products and services. They need to. You can't just barge barter just like. That would be extremely unwieldy. So you need something that gives you the ratio of exchange between goods and services.
And then I'd something that allows you to shift obligations across time like that debt and Equity shift obligations across time. Then what does, what does the best job of that pod reason? Why I think there's some Merit Dogecoin, even though it was obviously created as a joke is that it actually does have a much higher transaction volume capability than Bitcoin. And
And the you know the cut the costs of doing a transaction that the the do squared V is very low. Like right now if you want to do a Bitcoin transaction, the price of doing that transaction is very high so you could not use it effectively for most things and an ordinal. Could it even scale to a high volume?
And we're recording was, you know, started. I guess what around 2008 or something like that. The internet connections were much worse than they are today. Look order of magnitude couple. I mean, there's the way way worse, you know, it in 2008. So so like having us, you know, small block size or whatever it is, you know, and and along synchronization time is made sense in 2008, but you know, 2021 or fast forward 10 years.
It's like, it gets like a comically low, you know, it's a so.
And I think there's some value to having a linear increase in the amount of currency that is generated. So, because I'm out of the comments that you'd like, like, if a car, if a currency is to deflationary or, like, or should say, if, if, if if a currency is expected to increase in value over time, there's a reluctance to spend it because they like, oh, I fi I'll just hold it and not spend it, because it's scarcity is increasing.
I'm so if I spend it now then I will regret the wedding. It's odd we'll just you know total it but if there's some dilution of the currency occurring over time, that's that's more of an incentive to use it as a currency. So those coins somewhat randomly, has a just a fixed number of of sort of coins or hash strings that are generated every year. So this, this
The some inflation. But it's not a percentage based it so that the it's a fixed number. So the percentage of inflation will necessarily decline over time. So it just add. I'm not saying that it's like the ideal system for a currency, but I think it actually is just fundamentally better than anything else. I've seen just by accident. So
I like I said around 2008. So you're
Not, you know, some people suggest that you might be Satoshi Nakamoto. You've previously said, you're not sick. You're not for sure. Would you tell us if you
are? Yeah. Okay.
Do you think it's a feature of bug that he's anonymous or she or day?
It's an interesting kind of cork of human history that there is a particular technology. That is a completely Anonymous inventor.
Or creator.
Well, I'm you can, you can look at the evolution of ideas.
Before the launch of Bitcoin and see who wrote.
You know, about those ideas and then I like, I don't know exactly, but I don't know who created bitcoin for practical purposes, but the evolution of ideas is pretty clear for that and like, it seems as though, like Nick Szabo probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas. So he claims not to be so cut Nakamoto, but I'm not sure, that's, that's neither here nor there, but he seems to
Be the one more responsible for the ideas behind the coin there anyone else.
So it's not perhaps like singular figures aren't even as important as the figures involved in the evolution of ideas that led to thing. So yeah. Yeah, you know most perhaps it's that to think about history but maybe most names will be forgotten. Anyway,
what is the name anyway, so name name attached to an idea?
Was it even mean really?
I think Shakespeare had a thing about roses and stuff. Whatever. He
said, rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
I got you on to quote Shakespeare. I feel I feel like I accomplished something
today. Shall I compare thee to a summers day Clip that out. That's more temperate and Welfare
autopilot
testimony.
Does a lot of pile has been through an incredible journey over the past six years or perhaps even longer in the minds of in your mind and the minds of many involved.
I think that's what we're supposed to like connected. Really was the autopilot stuff autonomy
and like the whole journey is incredible to me to watch. I was
Because I knew well part of his I was at MIT and I knew the difficulty of computer vision. Yeah, and I knew the whole at a lot of colleagues and friends about the DARPA Challenge and you how difficult it is. And so there is a natural skepticism. When I first drove a Tesla with the initial system based on mobile. I yeah, I thought there's no way the first one I had in. I thought there's no way this car could maintain.
Like stay in lane and create a comfortable experience. So, my intuition initially was that the lane keeping problem is way too difficult to solve.
Thank you for. Yeah, that's relatively easy.
Well, yeah, like, but not this but solve in the way that we just. We talked about previous this prototype versus a thing that actually creates a pleasant experience over hundreds of thousands of miles Orleans. Yeah, so
we're to wrap a lot of code around the mobile. I thing it
this doesn't just work by itself. Yes.
I mean, there's part that's part of the story of how you approach things. Sometimes. Sometimes you do things from scratch. Sometimes the first you kind of see what's out there and then you decide to from scratch. That was one of the boldest decisions I've seen is both on the hardware and the software to decide to eventually go from scratch. I thought again, I was skeptical whether that's going to be able to work out because it's such a difficult problem. And so it was an incredible journey when I see now with everything the hard way,
To compute the sensors. The things I maybe Karen love about most is the, the stuff that Andre capacity is leading with the data set selection, the whole data engine process, the neural network architectures. The way that's in the real world that network is tested validated. All the different test sets, you know versus the imagenet model of computer vision, like what's in Academia is like real world. Artificial intelligence. So,
Under is awesome and obviously plays an important role but we have a lot of really talented people driving things. So and Ashok is actually the head of autopilot engineering Andres should director of
AI stuff. Yeah. So yeah, there's I'm aware that there's an incredible team of just a lot
going on. Yeah, just you know, just people pure will give up will give me too much credit and they'll give it under a too much credit. So
and people should realize how much is
going on on
The
yeah, so a lot of really talented people the Tesla autopilot item is extremely talented. It's like some of the smartest people in the world. So yeah, we're getting it done.
What are some insights you've gained over those five? Six years of autopilot about the problem of autonomous driving. So you leaped in having some sort of first principles kinds of intuitions, but nobody knows.
So how difficult
the project? Like I thought the still trying problem would be hard but it was harder than I thought. So like I thought it'd be easier. Three very hard, but it was actually harder than than even that. So, I were comes down to you. At the end of the day is just so soft driving. You have to solve your, have you basically need to recreate, what you what humans do to drive which is humans drive with Optical sensors eyes.
And biological neural net. And so in order to that, that's how the entire Road system is designed to work with with basically passive Optical and your let it biologically and now that we need to so far actually for full self driving to work. We have to recreate that in digital form. So we have to that that means cameras with Advanced neural Nets in so
To conform and and then you it will obviously solve for for self-driving. That's the only way. I don't think there's any other
way, but the question is, what aspects of human nature. Do you have to encode into the machine? Right? So, you have to solve the perception problem like detect and then you first arrive while realize, what is the perception problem for driving? Like all the kinds of things you have to be able to see, like, what do we even look at when we drive? There's a just recently heard Andre talked about it.
It about car doors. I think it was the world's greatest talk of all time. About car doors. Yeah, the the, you know, the fine details of corridors, like what is even an open car door, man. So like the the ontology of that, that's a perception problem. We humans solve that perception problem and Tesla has to solve that problem. And then there's the control and the planning coupled with the perception. You have to figure out like what's involved in driving like especially in all the different edge cases.
And then, I mean, maybe you can comment on this how much game theoretic kind of stuff needs to be involved, you know, at a four-way stop sign, you know, are as humans, when we drive our actions, affect the world, like sure, it changes. How others? Behave? Most autonomous driving? If you you're usually just responding to the scene as opposed to like really asserting yourself in the scene. Do you think
I think these, so I think, I think these could be sort of control control, logic can under arms are not are not the hard part, the, you know, let's
see.
What do you think is the hard part in this whole beautiful complex problem?
So it's a lot of freakin software man. A lot of smart lines of code for sure in order to
have
create an accurate Vector space. So like you've you're coming from image space which is like this, this flow of photons cut. You're going to camera cameras and
And then since you have this massive bitstream in image space and then you have to effectively compress the massive but stream corresponding to photons that knocked off an electron and camera sensor, and it turned that, but stream into into Vector space.
A bike by Vector space. I mean, like,
Yeah, you've got cars and, and humans and Lane lines and curves and traffic lights, and that kind of thing. Once you have an accurate Vector space, the control problem is similar to that of a video game, like a Grand Theft Auto of cyberpunk. If you have accurate accurate, best Vector space, it's the control problem is its I wouldn't say it's trouble. It's not trivial, but it's
But it's not like some insurmountable thing. It's but having accurate Vector space is very difficult.
Yeah, I think we humans don't give enough respect to how incredible human perception system is the mapping. The raw photons to the vector space representation in our heads.
Your brain is doing an incredible amount of processing and giving you an image. That is a very clean.
Up image. Like, when we look around here, we seek like you see color in the corners of your eyes, but actually your eyes have very few cones, like a cone receptors in the peripheral vision. Your eyes are painting color in the peripheral vision. You don't realize it, but their eyes are actually painting color and your eyes are also have like this blood vessels and all sorts of gnarly things. And there's a blind spot to produce your blind spot. Know your your brain is painting in the missing the blind spot.
You going to do these like these things online? Where you look here and look at this point. And then look at this point, and it's, as if it's in your blind spot, it that your brain will just fill in the missing,
vessel the peripheral vision Circle. Yes, you realize all the Illusions provision science. And so it makes you realize just how incredible the brain
is the raised during crazy amount of post processing on the vision signals for your eyes. It's insane.
So and then, even once you get all those fish and signals, your your brain is constantly trying to figure to forget as much as possible. So here in memory is perhaps the weakest thing about the brain is memory. So, because memory is so expensive to a brain. And so limited your brain is trying to forget as much as possible and distill the things that you see into the smallest of the smallest amounts of information possible. So your brain is
Try to not just get to a vector space, but get to a vector space. That is the smallest possible Vector space of only relevant objects. And I think like, you can sort of look inside your brain, or least I can like, when you drive down the road and, and try to think about what your brain is actually doing consciously, and it's constant. It's, it's, it's like, you'll see a card that you could, because you're not have cameras, your, I don't know.
My eyes in the back of your head or side, you know, so you say like you're basically your head is like a, you know, basically of like two cameras on a slow Gimbal and and what's you? And I said something great. Okay, you and I is a, you know, like at people constantly distracted and thinking about things and texting and doing all sorts things. They shouldn't do in the car, changing the radio station, so
Having arguments, you know is like so. So then it's like so like like like when's the last time you look right and left and you know or and rare word or even diagonally, you know forward to actually refresh your vector space. So you're glancing around and what your mind is doing is is is trying to still relevant, vectors basically objects with a position and motion.
And and then and then editing that down to the least amount that that's necessary for you to
drive. It does seem to be able to edit it down or compress it even further into things like concept. So it's not it's like it goes beyond the human mind seems to go sometimes Beyond Vector space to sort of space of Concepts to where you'll see a thing. It's no longer represented spatially somehow. It's almost like a concept that you should be aware of. Like, if this is a school zone, you
Remember that as a concept which is a weird thing to represent, but perhaps for driving. You don't need to fully represent those things or maybe you get those kind of well, you directly,
you know, it's like a stylish Vector space and then actually have predictions for that. But those Vector spaces, so, like, you know, like if
You know, like you drive past say say a bus and the and you see that this is people before you drove past the bus useful, people crossing the interested like or some just imagine this like a large truck or something blocking site, but you before you came out to the truck you saw that there were some kids about to cross the road in front of the truck. Now, you can no longer see the kids but you you need to be able to but you would now know, okay. Those kids are probably going.
Passed by the truck and cross the road, even though you cannot see them. So you have to have memory yet. Need to remember the little kids there, and you need to have some forward prediction of what their Position will be really hard, but I'm irrelevant
so with occlusions and computer vision, when you can't see an object anymore, even when just walks behind a tree and reappears, that's a really, really, I mean, at least in academic literature, it's true.
Hacking through occlusions. It's very difficult.
Yeah, we're doing it.
I understand this. Yeah,
so some of its I object permanence like same thing happens with the humans with your neural Nets like we're in like a toddler grows up. Like there's a there's a point in time where they develop they have a sense of object permanence. So before certain age if you have a bowl or a toy or whatever and you put it behind your back and you pop it out. If they don't before they have object, permanence, it's like a new thing every time. It's like, whoa, this Pretoria went booth.
Spirit. And now it's back again and I can't believe it and that they can play peek-a-boo all day long because peekaboo is fresh every time, but then we forgot our object. Permanence, then they realize, oh, no, the object is not gone. It's just behind your back.
Sometimes. I wish we never did figure
out object permanence. Yeah, so that's a
That's an important problem to
solve. Yes. It's so and like an important evolution of the neural Nets in the car is
Memory, I caught remember across both time and space. So now you can't remember like you have to say like how long do you want to remember things for? And and it's there's there's a cost to remembering things for a long time. So you could you you know, like run out of memory to try to remember too much for too long. And then you also have things that are stale if the trick remember them for too long and then you also need things that are member remembered over time. So even if
You like say have like fragments Take 5 Seconds of memory on a Time basis. But like let's say you your product at a light and you and you saw use a pedestrian example that people were waiting to cross the cross the road and you can't you can't quite see them because when occlusion and but they might wait for a minute before the light changes will for them to cross the road. You still need to remember that they had that. That's where they were and that they're probably
Lovely going to Crossroad type of thing. So even if that exceeds your your time based memory should not exceed your space memory.
And I just think the data engine side of that. So getting the data to learn all the concepts that you're saying now is an incredible process. It's this iterative process of just it's this is hydrogen atom. In many projects that
we're changing the name to something else.
Okay. I'm sure the equally as yeah, Rick and Morty like a
lot of we architected the neural, net, generalizing the cars. So many times is crazy.
See. Also every time there's a new major version. You'll rename it to something more ridiculous or or memorable and beautiful. Sorry, not ridiculous. Of course,
if you see the full before like a ray of neural Nets that they're operating the cards. It kind of boggles the Mind the. So it there's so many layers. It's crazy. So yeah, but and we we started off with
Simple neural Nets. That were basically image recognition on a single frame from a single camera and then trying to knit those together with, you know, it with C or I should say, we really primarily running see here because people have plus is too much overhead and we have our own C compiler. So to get maximum performance. We actually wrote around C compiler and are continuing to optimize.
So you compiler for maximum efficiency? In fact, we've just recently done a new River on a c compiler that will compile directly to our autopilot. Hardware.
You want to compile the whole thing down and with your own
compiler? Yeah, like so officially here
because there's all kinds of computer CPU GPU. There's like the basic steps of things that you have to somehow figure out the schedule across all of those things. And so you're compiling the code down. Yeah, it does all. Okay, this is so that's why there's a lot of people involved.
Claire's, there's a lot of Hardcore software engineering at a very sort of bare metal level because you're trying to do a lot of compute that's constraint to the, you know, are also driving computer. So, and we want to try to have the highest frames per second possible. In a sort of very finite amount of compute and power, so,
We really put a lot of effort into the efficiency of our compute. And and so there's actually a lot of work done by some very talented software engineers at Tesla. That at a very foundational level, to improve the efficiency of compute and how we use the the trip accelerators which are basically, you know doing Matrix math, but dot product like it Brazilian dot product.
It's like, what are your lights? It's like, computer wise, like 99% dot products. So, you know, and you want to achieve
as many high frame rates, like a video game you want. Yeah, for resolution,
higher frame rate, high frame rate, low latency.
Loader. So,
I think one of the things were moving towards now is no post processing of the image through the the image signal processor. So like, for what happens for cameras is that almost all cameras is they there's a lot of post processing done in order to make pictures look pretty. And so we don't care about pictures looking pretty. We just want the data.
We're so we're moving just wrote, roll Photon counts. So the system will like the image that the, that the computer sees is actually much more than what each see. If you represented on a camera. Let's go up much more data and even in very low light conditions, you can see that there's a small Photon counter fronts between, you know, the spot here. And that's what there, which means that. So it can see in the dark incredibly well because it can detect these tiny.
Fences and Photon counts. The like what much better than you could possibly imagine. So and then we also save 13 milliseconds on a latency. So if I'm
removing the post processing and the
image, yes, yeah. It's like because we've got your eight cameras and then there's roughly I don't know, 1/2 milliseconds or so. We one point six milliseconds of latency.
For each camera and it's like going to just basically by passing the image processor gets us back 13 milliseconds of latency, which is important. And we tracked leads you away from, you know, Photon hits the camera to show all the steps that has got to go through to get it, go through the various neural Nets and the C code and and
There's a little bit of C++ there as well. Well, I can maybe a lot but it, the core stuff is it? Heavy duty computers all in C and and so we track that latency all the way to an output command to the Drive Unit to accelerate the brakes to slow down this during your turn left or right. So, because you're going to Output a command that's going to go to a controller and like, some of these controllers have an update frequency. That's maybe.
10 Hertz or something like that, which is slow. That's like, now you lose 100 milliseconds. Potentially. So so then we want to update the the drivers on the fixation steering and braking control to have more like 100 Hertz that there are 10 Hertz and you're going to 10 millisecond latency is that 100 milliseconds, worst case latency and actually Jitter is more of a challenge than latency could latency is like you can you can you can anticipate and predict but if you put if you've got a stack up of things.
Going from the camera to the to the computer through then a series of other computers and finally to an actuator on the car. If you have a stack up of of tolerances of timing tolerances, then you can have quite a variable latency which is called gender and and that makes it a hard to to anticipate exactly what how you should turn the car accelerate. Because if you got maybe 150 term milliseconds of Jitter, then you could be off by a two point. Two.
I'm just going to make this could make a big difference.
So yes, the interpolate some Hall to test to deal with the effects of Jitter. So you did they can make like robust control decisions the exam you have to. So the Jitters and the sensor information or is it the Jitter can occur at any stage in the
pipeline? You can if you have just if you have fixed latency, you can anticipate and and like say okay, we know that.
Our information is for argument's sake 150 milliseconds Dale like so we're 445 as 150 milliseconds from Photon s camera to where you can measure a change in the acceleration of the vehicle. So then then you're going to say, okay. Well we're going to enter we know it's our 40 milliseconds. So we're going to take that into account and
Accommodate for that latency. However, if you got then 130 milliseconds of latency plus 100 milliseconds of Jitter that switch could be anywhere from 0 0 to 100 most motorcycles on top. So then your latency could be from 150, to 250 milliseconds. I got 100 milliseconds that you don't know what to do with, and again, that's basically random.
So getting rid of Jitter is extremely
important and that affects your control decisions and all those kinds of things. Okay?
Yeah, because is going to fundamentally maneuver better with larger. Got it. Look at the cause will maneuver with superhuman ability and reaction time much faster than a human.
I mean, I think over time the tell that autopilot for surviving will be capable of Maneuvers that, you know.
You know, are far more than what like James Bond could do and like the best movie type of thing.
That's exactly what I was imagining my mind. As I said,
it's like an impossible Maneuvers that a human couldn't do, you know, so
well, let me ask sort of looking back the six years looking out into the future, based on your current understanding. How hard do you think this? Is this full self-driving problem? When do you think Tesla will solve level for FSD?
It's looking quite likely that it will be next year.
And what is the solution look? Like? Is it the current pool of FSD beta candidates? They start getting greater and greater, as they have been degrees of autonomy. And then there's a certain level Beyond, which they can, they can do their own, they can
read a book.
Yeah, so are you can see anybody who's been following the full so driving beta closely will see that the the rate of disengagement has been dropping rapidly. So like, it doesn't Agent B word where the driver intervenes to prevent the car from doing something dangerous potentially, so
So that the interventions, you know, per million miles has been dropping dramatically at some point. The and that Trend looks like it happens. Next year is that the probability of an accident on FSD is less than that of the average human and then, and then significantly less than that of the average human. So
It certainly appears like we will get there next year then of course that the then there's going to be a case. Okay. Well, we're not have to prove this to regulators and prove it to, you know, and and we want to standard that is not just equivalent to a human but much better than the average human. I think it's going to be at least two or three times higher safety than a human. So two or three times lower probability of injury than a human before before we would actually say like, okay, it's okay.
It's not going to be a cool. It's going to be much better.
So if you look 10 point F SD 10.6 just came out recently 10.7, is on the way, maybe 11 is on the way. So we're in the future. Yeah,
we were hoping to get 11 out this year, but it's 11 actually has a whole bunch of fundamental rewrites on the neural network architecture. And add, some fundamental improvements in creating.
Vector space. So
there is a some fundamental like leap that really deserves the 11. I mean, it's a pretty cool number.
Yeah.
Levin would be a single stack for all, you know, one stack to rule them all and but they're, they're just some really fundamental neural. Net architecture changes that are that will allow for much more capability, but Vic, but you know, at first, they're going to have issues. So, like we have this working on, like, sort of alpha software and it's good, but it's
It's basically taking a whole bunch of C C++ code and and, and leading a massive number amount of C++ code and replacing it with a neural net and Andre makes this point a lot which is like neural Nets. A kind of eating software, you know, over time. There's like less and less conventional software more and more neural net. We were just all software but it's still comes out line software, but let's it's more. More neural net stuff and less.
You know, heuristics basically, if you're more Matrix based stuff and less heuristics based stuff.
and,
you know, like like, like one of the big changes will be, like, right now. The neural Nets will deliver. It dried bag of points to the C++ or C and C++ code. Yeah, we called the giant bag of points. Yeah, and it's like, so you got a pixel and and something associated with that pixel. Like this pixel is probably car pixel is
It landline, then you've got to assemble this dry bag of points in the C code and turn it into vectors and does a pretty good job of it. But it's it's a it's we want to just we need another layer of neural Nets. On top of that to take the giant bag of points and distill that down to Vector space in the neural net part of the software as opposed to the
heuristics part of the software. This is a big Improvement,
you know, and that's all the way down. So you want.
It's not even your own your own it, but it's, this will be just a game. This is a game changer to not have the bag of points. Giant bag of points that has to be assembled with many lines of C++ and, and have the and have a neural net, just assemble those into a vector so that the neural net is outputting.
Much, much less data. It's are putting this. This is a landline. This is a curve. This is drivable space. This is a card. This is, you know, a pedestrian or cyclist or something like that. It's outputting. It's really about putting profit vectors to the Tsetse flies, first control, control code as opposed to the sort of constructing the vectors.
As in see, we're done, I think quite a good job of but it's a group kind of hitting a local maximum on the how well this you can do this. So this is this is really this is really a big deal and just all of the networks in the car needs to move to surround video. There's still some Legacy networks that are not surround video and all of the training needs to move to surround video and the efficiency of the
Training needs to get better and it is and then we need to move everything to Raw Photon counts as opposed to processed images. Okay. So for music, which is quite a big reset on the training because the system is trained on post processed image images. So we need to redo all the training to train against the, the raw Photon accounts instead of the post processed image.
So ultimately, it's kind of reducing the
Complexity of the whole thing. So reducing
reducing lines of code will actually go
lower. Yeah, that's fascinating. So you doing Fusion, while the sensors are reducing the complexity of having to deal with these digital
cameras is like a really right. Yes.
Same with humans. Yeah. Oh God, I guess we got years to,
okay. Yeah. Well actually need to incorporate sound as well because, you know, you need to like listen for ambulance sirens or you know, fire trucks, put you
Somebody like, you know, yelling at you or something. I don't know. Just this there's a little bit of audio that needs to be incorporated as well. Yeah, quick bathroom break. Yeah. We listen. Charles take a break. Okay, honestly,
frankly,
like the ideas are the easy thing and implementation is the hard thing like the idea of going to the Moon is the easy part not going to the Moon, is the hard part, and there's a lot of, like, hardcore engineering that's got to get done at the hardware and software level.
She likes it, optimizing the C compiler and just, you know, cutting out latency everywhere. Like this is, if you don't do this, this isn't over not work properly. So the work of the engineers doing this. They are like the unsung heroes to sort of, you know, but they are critical to the success of the situation. I think I made it clear. I mean at
least to me is super exciting. Everything's going outside of what Andres doing. Yeah, just the whole
Structure the software.
I love the everything is going on with data engine, whatever, whatever it's called, the whole process is it is
just yeah, welcome heart. And the sheer scale of it is boggles the mind like the training, the amount of work done with like we're done. All this custom software for training and labeling and do order labeling. Auto-leveling is essential because especially when you've got like surround video, it's very difficult to like label surround video from scratch, is extremely difficult.
Built like take a human's, such a long time to even label one video clip like several hours or the order label it. Basically we're just apply a like heavy duty like a lot of compute to the to the video clips to pre-assign. And guess what? All the things are that are going on in this round video
and then there's like, correcting it.
Yeah, the old human has to do is like tweet, like say the, you know Chata just what is incorrect.
This is like increased increases productivity by effect 100 or
more. Yeah, so you've presented Tesla bot as primarily useful in the factory. First of all, I think humanoid robots are incredible from a fan of Robotics. I think the Elegance of movement that human the humanoid robots that bipedal robots show are just so cool. So it's really interesting that you're working on this and also talking about applying the same kind of all the ideas of some of which we've talked about with data.
Engine all the things that were talking about with test. Autopilot, just transferring that over to the just yet. Another robotic problem. I have to ask, since I care about human, robot interaction. So the human side of that. So you've talked about mostly in the factory. Do you see it? Also DC's part of this problem that Tesla but has to solve is interacting with humans and potentially having a place like, in the home. So interacting, I just throw not replacing labor, but also like, I don't know what I think.
Friend or Earnest?
Yeah, I think the possibilities are endless.
Yeah, I mean, it's obviously like a it. So quiet in tells us primary Mission direction of accelerating sustainable energy, but it is a, an extremely useful thing that we can do for the world, which is to make it useful, humanoid robot. That is capable of interacting with the world and helping, and in many different ways. So, so late. And in fact reason, I really just just, I mean, I think if you say like,
Extrapolate to, you know, many years in the future. It's like I think work will become optional. So like there's a lot of jobs that if you're if you're if you weren't paid to do it, they they wouldn't do it. Like, it's not-it's not fun, you know, necessarily like if you're washing dishes all day. It's like, you know, even if you really like washing dishes, you really want to do it for eight hours a day, every day, probably not. So
And then there's like dangerous work. And basically if it's dangerous, boring has like potential for repetitive stress injury, that kind of thing. Then that's really where humanoid robots would add the most value initially. So that's where we're aiming for is to for the humanoid robots to do. Drop the people don't volunteer really want to do.
And then that will have to pair that obviously with some kind of universal basic basic income in future. So I think
you see a world one. There's like hundreds of millions of Tesla Bots doing different performing different tasks throughout the
world.
Yeah, I haven't really thought about it that far into the future, but I guess there may be something like that. So.
Jessica wild question. So the number of Tesla cars has been accelerating. It has been close to 2 million produced, many of them have
autopilot. I think we're over 2 million now. Yeah,
do you think there will ever be a time when there will be more Tesla Bots than Tesla
cars?
Yeah, I actually is this for you asked this question because I don't, normally I do try to think pretty far into the future, but I haven't really thought that far into the future with the Tesla bot or it's coordinated Optimist. I will I called octopus subprime. He's let's not so like a giant, you know, transformer robot. So if it's meant to be a general purpose, help helper bot.
And and basically like the things that we're basically like Tessa I think is the has the most advanced real-world AI for interacting with the real world, which were developed as a function of age to make self-driving work and so along with custom hardware and like a lot of, you know, hardcore low level software to have it run efficiently and be power efficient because it gives, you know, it's one thing to do neural Nets. If you've got a gigantic
Server room with 10,000 computers, but now let's say you just you have to now just all that down into one computer that's running at low, power in a humanoid robot or a car that's actually very difficult and a lot of hard core soft work is required for that. So, so since we're kind of like solving the navigate the real world.
With neural Nets problem for cars which are like robots with four wheels, then it's like kind of a natural extension of that is to put it in a robot with arms and legs an action actuators. So like the to like hard things are like you basically need to make the other row of be intelligent enough to interact in a sensible way with
It. So you see it, real real world Ai and you need to be very good at manufacturing which is a very hard problem tells us very good manufacturing and also has the real world AI. So making the humanoid robot work is basically, it means developing Custom Motors and sensors that are different from what car would use but
we've also, we have
I think we're about the the best expertise in developing Advanced electric motors and Power Electronics. So it just has to be for humanoid robot application of the car.
Still, you do talk about love sometimes. So let me ask. This isn't like for like sex robots or something. I love is the answer. Yes. There is something compelling to us. Not compelling, but we
Act with humanoid robots or even legged robots like with the dog and shapes the dogs. It just it seems like you know, there's a huge amount of loneliness in this world. All of us, seek companionship and with other humans friendship and all those kinds of things with a lot of here in Austin. A lot of people have dogs. So there seems to be a huge opportunity to also have robots that decrease, the the amount of loneliness in the world or help us.
Humans, connect with each with each other. So in a way, the dogs can do. You think about that would test about at all? Or is it really focused on the problem of Performing specific tasks? Not connecting with humans.
I mean 33 honest. I have not actually thought about it from the companionship standpoint, but I think it actually would end up being. It could be actually a very good companion and it could educate youth.
Philip it like a personality over time that is that is like unique. Like, you know, it's not like they're just all the robots are the same and that personality could evolve to be you know, match match the the owner or the, you know, yes, the owner. Well, whatever you want to call
it. The other companion half right in the same way. That friends do. See I think that, yeah.
Huge opportunity. I
think, ya know if that's interesting like
Because, you know, like this Japanese phrase, I like the why we Sabe, you know, the subtle. Imperfections are what make something special and sort of imperfections of the personality of the robot mapped to the subtle, imperfections of the robots. Human.
Friend don't know owners have like maybe the wrong word but could actually make it an incredible buddy,
basically and in that way the
imperfect R2D2 or like C-3PO sort of thing, you know,
so from one machine learning perspective. I think the flaws being a feature is really nice. You could be quite terrible at being a robot for quite a while. In the general home environment are all the in general world and that's kind of adorable. And that's
Like those of your flaws and you fall in love with those flaws. So it's in that is very different than autonomous driving where it's a very high-stakes environment. You cannot mess up. And so this. Yeah, it's more fun to be a robot in the home.
In fact, if you think of like C-3PO and R2-D2. Yeah, like they actually had a lot of like flaws and Imperfections and silly things and they would argue with each other and
with they actually good at doing anything not exactly sure.
Sure,
I definitely added a lot to the story. But but but there's they're sort of quirky elements and you know that they would like make mistakes and do things. Like it was like, it made them.
Relatable, I don't know. Enduring. So so yeah, I think that could be something that probably would happen but I our initial focus is just to make it useful. So so I'm confident, we'll get it done. I'm not sure what the exact timeframe is, but I like we're probably have, I don't know, a decent prototype towards the end of next year, or something like that.
And it's cool that it's connected to Tesla.
The car, the so. So, yeah, it's using a
lot of, you know, it would use the autopilot in first computer and a lot of the training that we've done for the four cars. In terms of recognizing real world, things could be applied directly to the robot. So it's but there's there's a lot of custom actuators and sensors that need to be
developed and an extra module on top of the vector space for love. Yeah, that's me. See.
See, okay,
that's the car to,
that's true. That could be useful in all environments. Like you said, a lot of people argue in the car. So maybe we can help him out. You're a student of History fan of Dan Carlin's, Hardcore, History, Podcast. Yeah, it's great greatest podcast ever.
Yeah, I think it is. Actually.
It almost doesn't really count as a pot. Yeah,
so it's more like a audiobook. Yeah,
so you were on
I
guess we're dad. Just had a chat with him about it. He said, you guys want military and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, it's really. It was basically at the it should be titled engineer Wars, essentially, like when there's a rapid change in the rate of Technology, then, engineering plays a pivotal role in Victory in battle.
Do you get how far in back in history? Did you go? You go World War Two,
it was posted.
Well, it was supposed to be a deep dive on Fighters and bomber technology in World War Two, but the ended up being more wide-ranging than that because I just went down the total Rat Hole of like studying all of the fighters and bombers WWII and like the constant rock-paper-scissors game that like, you know, one country of make this plan that I make it plain to beat that. And that's part of a plan to be bad. And then they and really what matters like the pace of innovation.
Um, and also access to high quality Fuel and raw materials. So like Germany had like, some amazing designs, but they couldn't make them because they can get the raw materials and they had a real problem with the oil and fuel. Basically, the fuel quality was extremely variable.
So the design wasn't the bottleneck
because that yeah, like if the US had Kick-Ass fuel that was like very consistent like the problems if you.
Make a very high performance aircraft engine. In order to make high performance. You have to the the, the fuel, the aviation gas has to be a consistent mixture and it has a high octane like high octane is the most important thing. But also can't have like impurities and stuff because you're fell up the engine and and and German just never had good excess oil like the try to get it by invading the caucus.
But that didn't work too. Well that never works. Well, that's, that's for you. So, the oysters Germany was always struggling with shit with basically sure your oil and then they could not they couldn't count on a on high quality fuel for their aircraft. So they had to add all that have all these additives and and stuff. So, whereas the US had or some fuel and that provided that to Britain as well.
So that allowed the British and the Americans to design aircraft engines, that were super high performance better than anything else in the world. The director, Germany could design the engines to just didn't have the fuel. And then also the likes of the the the quality of the aluminum Alloys that they were getting was also not that great. And so
yeah, did you is this like the you talked about all this with Dan? Yep, awesome.
Broadly looking at history. When you look at Jenkins Khan, when you look at Stalin Hitler, the darkest moments of human history. What do you take away from those moments? Does it help you gain? Insight about human nature about human behavior today, whether it's the wars or the individuals, or just the behavior of people, any aspects of History.
Yeah, find history. Fascinating.
I'm just a lot of incredible things that have been done good and bad that they
help yourself, you understand the nature of civilization and individuals,
and
Does it make you sad that humans, do these kinds of things to each other? You look at the 20th century World, War 2, the cruelty, the abuse of power, talk about communism, Marxism. Installing.
I really think it's Duke. I mean, if you like, there's a lot of human history, but most of it is actually people just getting on with their lives, you know, and it's not like human history is just what non-stop war and disaster is it.
But those are actually just, those are intermittent and rare, and if they weren't then, you know, humans would soon cease to exist.
But it does just that Wars tend to be written about a lot and where it's like something being like well a normal year where nothing major happened was just get written about much. But that's you know, most people just like farming and kind of like living their life, you know, being a villager, it somewhere at every now and again, there's a war and I think so.
And you would have said like that. There aren't very many books that I wear. I just had to stop reading because it was just too too dark, but the book about Stalin the court of the reds are.
I had could had stopped reading. It was just too too bad. Dark rough. Yeah,
the 30s. There's a lot of lessons that are to me in particular, that it feels like humans. Like all of us have that is 0. So genius and line that the line between good and evil runs the hard. Every man that all of us are capable of evil, all of us are capable of good. It's almost like this kind of
Possibility that all of us have to to tend towards the good. And so like to me looking at history is almost like an example of look, you have some charismatic leader that convinces you of things is too easy. Based on that story to do evil onto each other on to your family and to all the others and so it's like our responsibility to do good. It's not like now somehow different from history that can happen.
Again, all the can happen again. And yes, most of the time, you're right. I mean, the optimistic view here is mostly people just living life. And as you've often memed about the quality of life was way worse back in the day and it keeps improving over time through Innovation to technology. But still it's somehow notable that these blimps of atrocities happen, sir.
Yeah, I mean life was really tough most of history. I mean, what if most of human history, the Goodyear would be one where not that many people in your village died of the plague starvation freezing to death or being killed by a neighboring Village. It's like, well, it wasn't that bad. You know, it was only like, you know, we lost 5% this year. That was a good year. You know, that would be par for the course. Like just just
Not starving to death, would have been like the primary goal of most people and through throughout history is making sure we have enough food to last through the winter and not get a not freeze or whatever. So
um,
Now food is plentiful with if I have an obesity problem.
Well, yeah the lesson there's to be grateful for the way things are now 4 for some of us. We've spoken about this offline. I'd love to get your thought about it here.
If I sat down for a long form, in-person conversation with the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, would you potentially want to call in for a few minutes to join in on a conversation with them? Moderate it, translated by
me? Sure. Yeah. Sure. I'll be happy to do it.
You've shown interest in the Russian language. Is this grounded in your interest? In history of linguistics culture? General curiosity? I think it sounds cool.
Sounds cool, not looks cool. So
well, it's you know, it's a it takes a moment to read Cyrillic once you know what, the sort of like characters stand for actually, then reading Russian becomes a lot easier because there are a lot of words that are actually the same, like, bank is bank and
the find the words they exactly the same. And now you start to understand Cyrillic.
Yeah.
If you can, if you can sound it out. Yeah, it's much. There's at least some commonality of words.
What about the culture? You, you love great engineering physics. There's a tradition of the Sciences there. Certainly look at the 20th century from rocketry. So, you know, some of the greatest Rockets of the space exploration has been done and the Soviet in the former Soviet Union. Yeah. So do you draw inspiration from that history? Just how this culture that it?
Anyways, he one of the sad things is because of the language, a lot of it is lost to history because it's not translated all those kinds of things because it it is, in some ways, an isolated culture and it flourishes within its within its borders. Yeah. So do you draw inspiration from those folks from from the history of? Yes, I'm here in
there. I mean the third Union Russia and Ukraine as well and have a really
strong history in spaceflight, like, some of the most advanced impressive things in history were done, you know, by the Soviet Union, so,
One can cannot help but admire the Empress of Rocket technology that was developed after the fall of the Soviet Union. The there's the there's much less that that happened but still things are happening, but it's not not quite at the frenetic Pace that was happening before the Soviet Union kind of
It dissolved into separate,
republics.
Yeah, I mean II there's roscosmos, the Russian, the agency, a I look forward to a time when those countries with China working together you in the United States are all working together. Maybe a little bit of friendly competition,
but a friendly competition is good, you know, the government's was slow and the only thing slower than one government is a collection of girlfriends. So yeah, the Olympics would be boring. If everyone just crossed the finishing line at the same time. Yeah.
Nobody would watch. Yeah. And and proven try hard to run fast and stuff. So I think friendly competition is good thing.
This is also a good place to give a shout out to a video titled. The entire Soviet rocket engine family tree by Tim Dodd AKA every day off astronaut. It's like an hour and a half, gives the full history of Soviet rockets and people should definitely go check on support. Tim in general. That guy was super excited about the future, super excited about space flight every time I see.
Thing by them, I just have a stupid smile on my face because he's so excited about stuff.
Yeah. Well, if people think about us really great, if your survey, I think through a space. He's in terms of explaining rocket technology to your average person. He's awesome. The best, I'd say and I should say, like the fathers and like a, I switched us from like Raptor at one point was going to be a hydrogen engine, but hydrogen has
Two challenges. It's very low density. It's a deep cryogen. So it's only liquid a very, very close to absolute zero requires a lot of insulation. It's so it was a lot of challenges there and I was actually reading a bit about Russian rocket engine development. And at least the impression I had was that that Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine primarily were actually in the process of
Of switching to methyl ox and there were some interesting tests and data for ISP. Like they were able to get like after like three hundred eighty s is p with metal oxygen and I was like, well, okay, that's
That's actually really impressive. So, so I think we could, you can actually get a much lower cost like in optimizing cost per ton to overcast, pretend to Mars. It's I think methane oxygen is the way to go, and I was partly inspired by the Russian work on the test ends, with methyl oxygens.
And now for something completely
different, do you mind doing a bit of a meme review in the spirit of the great? The powerful? PewDiePie? Let's say, 1211 just go over a few documents printed out. We can try. Let's try this.
I present to you document and Numero
Uno.
Okay,
Vlad the Impaler discovers
marshmallows.
That's my bad.
So you get it, because here. So, your healing
things I do three, but are that's not very good.
This is ground in some engineering, some history.
Haha. Yeah, give us an 8 out of 10.
What do you think about nuclear power?
I'm in favor of nuclear power. I think it's in a place that is not subject to extreme natural disasters. I think it's a nuclear power is a great way to generate electricity.
I don't think we should be shutting down, your clear, power stations.
Yeah, but what about your Noble?
Exactly? So I think people just like a lot of fear of radiation and stuff. And it's, I guess we're probably like, a lot of people just don't understand. I didn't study engineering or physics. They don't it's just the word radiation. Just sounds scary, you know, so they don't they
Can't calibrate what radiation means but radiation is much less dangerous than than you think. So.
Like, for example Fukushima, you know, when the folks remember prom happened?
Gee, that tsunami the. I got people in California, asking me if they should worry about radiation from Fukushima on, like, definitely not. Not even slightly. Not at all. That is crazy. And just too.
show like look, this is how
Like the dangerous is so much overplayed. Compared to what what it really is that I actually flew to focus Shima and I actually I donated a solar power system for water, treatment plant and and I made a point of eating locally grown vegetables on TV in Fukushima.
Like I'm still alive. Okay,
it's not even at the risk of these events is low. But the impact of them
is impacted greatly exaggerated. It's just very my nature. It's people who don't know what radiation is. Like, I've had people ask me, like, what about radiation from cell phones according to Courtney brain cancer. I'm like we say, radiation. Do you mean photons or particles? The like that? I don't know. What. What do you mean foretells particles? So do you mean, let's say photons, what, what? Frequency?
Wavelength and they're like, no idea. Like, do you know that everything is radiating all the time? Like what do you mean? Like everything is radiating. All time photons are being emitted by all objects, all the time, basically. So and if you want to know what it's what it means to stand in front of nuclear fire. Go outside. The sun is a gigantic, you know, Thermo nuclear reactor, that you're staring right at it.
Are you still alive? Yes. Okay, amazing.
Yeah, I guess radiation is one of the words that can be used as a tool to fear Monger by certain people. That's it. And I hope you'll
start to understand. So
that's the way to fight that that fear. I suppose is to understand is to learn.
Yeah, just say like, okay how many people have actually died from nuclear accidents? It's like practically nothing and say how many people have died from coal plants and it's a very big number.
So like obviously we should not be starting up coal plants and shutting down nuclear plants just doesn't make any sense at all coal plants. Like I don't know, a hundred to a thousand times worse for for health and nuclear power plants.
You want to go to the next one. It did this really bad.
So that 90 180 and 360 degrees. Everybody loves the math. Nobody gives a shit about 270.
It's not super funny. I don't like two or three. Yeah, this is not, you know, LOL situation.
Yeah.
That's pretty good. United States oscillating between establishing and destroying dictatorships like metres. And I'm like, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a out of seven out of ten. It's kind of true.
Oh, yeah. This is, this is kind of personal for me. Next one.
Oh man. This is like a
yeah. Well, no,
this is or it's like referring to like,
ghostly as like as like, husband husband. Yeah. Hello.
Yes, this is dog. Your wife was launched into space. And then the last one is him with his eyes closed and a bottle of
vodka. Yeah, like a didn't come back. No.
Tell you the full story of the you know, what? What the love, the impact they had on the loved ones. After that one gets in 11 for me. Sure, the Soviet shut up. Oh, yeah. It just keeps going on the Russian theme first man in space. Nobody cares first man on the moon.
Well, I think people do care, 90.
But there is your Gardens names will be forever in history. I think
there is something special about placing like stepping foot on to another totally foreign land. It's not the journey like people that explore the oceans. It's not as important to explore the oceans as to land on a whole new continent.
Yeah,
this is what you are. Yeah, I'd love to get your comment on this. Your musk after sending six point six billion dollars to the UN to end world hunger. You have three hours.
Yeah, I mean obviously six billion dollars look at and World auger. So so I mean realities of this point, the world is producing for more food than it, can really consumed. Like we don't have a caloric constraint at this point. So where there is hunger. It is almost always due to like servile War strive or some like
Not a thing that is extremely rare for it to be just a matter of like, like, lack of money. It's like, get out. It's like some, the Civil War and some some country and like, one part of the country, literally, try to starve the other part of the country.
So it's much more complex and something that money could solve is politics geopolitics. It's, it's a lot of things. It's human nature. It's government's money, monetary systems, all that kind of
stuff. Yeah, if food is
Tremely cheap these days. It's like it's I mean the u.s. Of this point, you know among low-income families. Obesity is the actual another problem. It's not like obviously it's not hungry. It's like too much it's you know, too many calories. So it's not that nobody's hungry hungry anywhere. It's just it's just this is a
Not not a simple matter of adding money and solving it. Hmm.
What do you think that one gets this getting
to?
This is going after Empires world. Where did you get those artifacts? The British museum is shut out to Monty Python. We found them.
Yeah, it's pretty great. I mean, yeah, it really wouldn't it take these historical artifacts from around the world and put them in London, but you know, it's not like people can't go see them.
It is a convenient place to see these ancient artifacts is is London for you know for a large segment of the world. So I think you know on balance the British museum is a net good. Well, I'm sure the low countries argue
about that. Yeah.
It's like you want to make these historical artifacts accessible to as many people as possible and the British museum. I think there's a good job of that.
Even if there's a darker aspect is like the history of empire in general whatever the Empire's
However, things were done.
Is it is the history that happened? You can't sort of erase that history. Unfortunately, you could just become better in the future. It's the point.
Yeah, I mean, it's like well, how are we going to pass while judgment on these things? Like it's like if you know if you'd if one is going to judge, say the British Empire, you're going to judge. You know, what everyone was doing at the time and how were the British relative to everyone and I think
I think they would approach would actually get like a relatively good grade relatively. Good grade, not an absolute terms, but compared to whatever else was doing it. There were not the worst like said, you gotta look at these things in the context of the history of the time and say, what were the Alternatives? And what are you comparing it against? Yes, and I do, I do not think it will be the case that Britain would get a bad grade in when looking at history at the time.
You know, if you judge history from, you know, from what is morally acceptable, today, you basically are going to give everyone a failing grade. I'm not clear. So I don't think anyone would get a passing grade in their morality of like you go back 300 years ago, like who's getting a passing grade? Basically no one.
And we might not get a passing grade from Generations, but the come after us, what was that one? Get?
It
sure is 6s 7s and
number for the Monty Python. Maybe
it was a modified from the great Ryan in the Quest, for the Grail or incredible. Yeah, that looks serious. Eyebrows
is bragging to tell like, how important thing is facial hair. The two great leaders. Well, got a new haircut. Is that, is that is this? How does that affect your
leadership? I don't know. Hopefully not, it doesn't.
Yeah, the second is no one.
There is no one competing with Rosie. I'm not one to those who like epic eyebrows. So sure that's ridiculous. 607 honor.
I like this like Shakespeare analysis of memes,
my birthday. He had a flair for drama as well. Like, you know Showmanship.
Yeah. It must come from the
eyebrows. All right
invention, great.
Cheering. Look what I invented. Yeah, that's the best thing since reptile bread. Yeah, because they are just sliced bread and my just explaining memes at this point. This is what my life has become like a scribe like runs around with the Kings and
memes. I mean, there was a cheeseburger inventor that's like an epic convention.
Like like, wow, you know, that was versus just like a burger or sugar. I guess the burger in general is like, you know, then there's like, what is a burger? What's a
sandwich? And then you start getting. It's a pizza sandwich. And what is the original? It's it gets into an
ontology argument. Yeah, but everybody knows like if you order like a burger a cheeseburger, whatever you like, you get like, you know, tomato and some lettuce, and onions, and whatever, and, you know, mayo and ketchup and mustard. It's like epic. Yeah, but I'm sure they did.
Had
bread and meat separately for a long time and it was kind of a burger on the same plate, but somebody who actually combined them into the same thing and yeah, bite and hold it make, makes it convenient. It's a materials problem. If your hands don't get dirty and whatever. Yes, bro.
Well, that is not what I would have guessed
whatever. And I was like you you like if you order a cheeseburger, you know, where you getting, you know, it's not like some up to slyke. While wonder what I'll get, you know, you know, frizer. I mean, great. I mean they were the devil but fries are awesome and
Yeah. Chip pizza is incredible.
Who didn't the vacation doesn't get enough love. Yeah, I guess is what we're getting
at Great.
What about the Matthew McConaughey, Austin? I hear President Kennedy. Do you know how to put men on the moon yet now, so no President. Kennedy be a lot cooler if you
did pretty much sure it's like six or seven, I suppose.
That's the last one.
Haha. That's funny.
Someone drew a bunch of chicks all over the walls. Sistine Chapel boys
bath. Sure. I'll give it a 9. It's super. Is this really true?
Hi, this is our highest ranking meme for today.
I mean, it's like how do they get away with it? Lots of nakedness. Dick, pics are. I mean, just something throughout history? As long as people can draw things. There's been a big big. It's the staple of human history is a staple.
It's isn't throughout human history. You tweeted the aspire to Comedy. Your friends with Joe Rogan
might, you do a short stand-up comedy set at some point in the future. May be open for Joe. Something like that is that is
that we stand up actual just blown, stand up
for lost and up, is that in there was
that? I've never thought about that. It's extremely difficult.
If at least. That's what like Joe says, in the comedian say,
huh? I wonder if I could
Could I mean,
like one way to find out, you know, I have done
stand-up for friends, just impromptu, you know, I'll get get on like a roof and they they do laugh, but their friends too. So, I don't know if you go to court, you know, like a room of strangers. Are they going to actually? Also find it funny but I could try see what
happens. I think it learned something either way. Yeah, I kind of love.
Both the when you bomb and when when you do great just watching people how they deal with it. It's so difficult. It's so you're so fragile up there. It's just you. And you do you think you're going to be funny and when it completely Falls flat is just it's beautiful to see. People deal with like that
might have enough material to do style night. I've never thought about it, but I might have enough material. I don't like 15 minutes or
something.
Yeah, yeah, do it do on Netflix special?
Special. Sure.
What's your favorite? Rick and Morty concept, just to Spring that on you, is there? There's a lot of sort of scientific engineering ideas explored there. There's the quivering. Like there's the butter robots.
There's a great to scripture. You'll um, yeah, we're going Works. Awesome.
Somebody that's exactly like you from an alternate Dimension showed up there Ilan Tusk. Yeah. That's right. There. You
voiced. Yeah. Rigor mortis only expose a lot.
Interesting concept. So like what's the favor when I know that the butter of I certainly is, you know, it's like it's only possible to have too much sentience in a device. Like, you don't have your toast to be like super genius toaster. It's going to hate life because or could just make this toast. But if it's like, you know what, I would like to point out just stuck in a very limited device.
You think? It's too easy for my if we're talking about from the engineering perspective super-intelligent.
Agents, like with Marvin. The robot like, is it? It seems like it might be very easy to engineer. Just a depressed robot. I guess it's not obvious to engineer. A robot that's going to find a fulfilling existence. Same as humans, I suppose, but I wonder if that's like the default. If you don't do a good job on building a robot. It's going to be sad a lot.
Well, we can reprogram robots easier than we can reprogram humans.
so,
I guess if you let it evolve without tinkering that it might get sad, but you can change the optimization function and have it be a cheery robot.
You like I mentioned with the SpaceX you give a lot of people hope and a lot of people look up to you. Millions of people look up to you. If we think about young people in high school, maybe in college. What advice would you give to them about if?
Want to try to do something big in this world. They want to really have a big positive impact. What advice would you give them about their career? Maybe about life
in general?
Try to be useful. If you do things that are useful to your fellow human beings to the world. It's very hard to be useful.
Very hard, you know you contributing more than you consume, you know, like like okay. Can you try to have a positive net contribution to society?
I think that's the thing to aim for you know, not not to try to be sort of a leader for just for the sake of being a leader or whatever. A lot of time with people who a lot of times the people you want, as leaders are other people who don't want to be leaders. So
If you lovely useful life.
that is a good life, a life with having lived, you know, and I'd like said, oh, I would encourage people to
I used the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. There are the best tools
when you think about education and self-education. What do you recommend to? So, there's the university, there is a self study. There is a Hands-On sort of finding a company or a place or set of people that do the thing you're passionate about and joining them as early as possible. There's taking a road trip across Europe for a few years and writing some
Three which which, which trajectory do you suggest in terms of learning about how you can become useful? As you mentioned, how you can have the most positive
impact.
All right, encourage people to read a lot of books. Just read. I going to basically try to ingest as much information as you can.
And try to also just develop it a good general knowledge. So you so you least have like a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape. Like try to learn a little bit about a lot of things. You might not know what you're really interested in. How would you know what you're really interested in. If you're at least aren't like doing it peripheral explore exploration of broadly of of the knowledge landscape.
Talk to people from different walks of life, and different Industries and professions and skills and our occupations, like just try to learn as much as possible Man's Search. For meaning,
isn't the whole thing a search for meaning.
Is
yeah, what's the meaning of life and all, you know, but just generally, I'd like I said, I would encourage people to read, broadly in many different subject areas, and and then try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and and what you're interested in. So people may be good at something but although they may have skill at a particular thing, but they don't like doing it. So you want to try to find a thing where you have your that's a good.
combination of your other things that you are inherently good at, but you also like doing
And and reading is a
super-fast shortcut to figure out. Which, where are you? You both good at it. You like doing it and it will actually have a positive impact.
What you got to learn about think somehow, So reading a broad range, it just it really read it. You know, one point was that kid, I can read through the encyclopedia. So that's pretty helpful. And it also,
Things. I don't even know existed a lot. So
obviously and like, as broad as it gets,
it's like L word adjustable. I think, you know, whatever, 40 years ago. So maybe read through the click, the condensed version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I'd recommend that you do is like, skip subjects. Are you read a few paragraphs and you know, you're not interested, just jump to the next one. That's our read. The cyclopedia or skits skim through it.
and,
But I, you know, put a lot of stock into it. We have a lot of respect for someone who puts in an honest day's work to do useful things and, and just generally to have, like, not a zero-sum mindset or a like, have more of a grow. The pie mindset. Like, the, if you sort of say, like, when when I see people like, perhaps some click, some very smart people.
Kept taking an attitude of like what I like doing things that seem like morally questionable. It's often because they have a database sort of axiomatic level, a zero-sum mindset. And, and they without realizing it, they don't realize they have a busier zero-sum mindset or these that they don't realize it consciously. And so, if you have a zero-sum mindset than the only way to get ahead is by taking things from others, if it's like, if the pipe is fixed,
Then the only way to have more pie is to take someone else's by, but but this is false. Like obviously the pie has grown dramatically over time the economic pie. So the real in reality you can have the so over use this analogy. We have a lot of account. There's a lot of pie. Yeah, five eyes won't fix. So you really want to make sure you don't you're not operating without realizing it from a zero, so I might say
It where where the only way to get ahead is to take things from others. Then that's going to result in you to try to take things from others, which is not what good. It's much better to work on adding to the economic pie. Maybe, you know, so quit creating.
Flex it creating more than you consume doing more than you. Yeah, so that's a big deal. I think there's like, you know, a fair number of people in in finance that do have a bit of a zero-sum mindset and it's all
walks of life. I've seen that. I wanted the one of the reasons Rogan inspires me is he celebrates. All there's a lot. There's not not creating a constant competition, like there's a scarcity of resources.
What happens when you celebrate others, and you promote others, the ideas of others. It it actually grows that by. I mean it did every like the the resources, the resources, become less scarce and that that applies in a lot of kinds of domains that applies in Academia, where a lot of people are very. See some funding for academic research is zero sum and it is not if you celebrate each other. If you make, if you get everybody to be excited about AI about physics above mathematics, I think it would be more
More funding and I think everybody wins. Yeah, that applies I think broadly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So the last last question about love and meaning
What is the role of Love In The Human Condition? Broadly, and more specific to you? How has love? Romantic? Love are otherwise made you a better person, a better human being.
But our engineer
know you're asking really perplexing questions.
And so, it's hard to give up. I mean, there are many, books, poems and songs written about what is love and what is it? Exactly? You know, what is love, baby? Don't hurt me.
That's one of the great ones.
Yes. Yeah, you vote you have earlier
quoted Shakespeare, put that that's really up there. Yeah.
Let me there was a Many-Splendored Thing.
I mean there's a it's because we've talked about it so many inspiring things like be useful in the world sort of like solve problems alleviate suffering but it seems like connection between humans is a source, you know, it's the source of joy is the source of meaning and that that's what love is friendship love.
I just wonder if you think about that kind of thing. When you talk about preserving the light of human consciousness, right now. It's becoming a multiplet, are a multiplanetary species. I mean, to me at least that that means, like, if we're just alone and conscious and intelligent. It doesn't mean nearly as much as if we're with others. All right, and there's some magic created when we're together. The the
Inch of of it. And I think the highest form of it is love which I think broadly is much bigger than just sort of romantic. But also, yes, romantic love and family and those kinds of things.
Well, I mean, the reason I guess, I care about us becoming multi-planet species in a spacefaring, civilization, is foundationally, I love Humanity.
and and so I wish to see it prosper, and
do great things, and be happy and
And if I did not love Humanity, I would not care about these
things.
Then you look at the whole of it that the human history, all the people who's ever lived all the people live now, it's pretty. We're okay. I'm on the whole, we're pretty interesting
Bunch. Yeah, well things considered and I've read a lot of history, including the darkest worst parts of it. And it despite all that I think on balance I let I still love Humanity,
you joked about it and with the for
To what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing is I'd like is there a non
numerical actually location? Yeah, it will really I think what Douglas Adams was saying in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that the universe is the answer. And what we really need to figure out our what questions to ask about the answer. That is the universe. Yeah, and that the question is the really the hard part and if you can properly frame the question, then the
Answer relatively speaking is easy. So so therefore if you want to understand what questions to ask about, the university won't understand the meaning of life. We need to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness. So there were better able to understand the nature of the universe and and understand the meaning of life.
And ultimately, the most important part will be to ask the right
question.
Yes,
thereby elevating. The role of the interviewer.
Yes, exactly. As the most important human in the
room. I've interviewed good questions. Are, you know, it's a hot. It's hard to come up with good questions. Absolutely. But yeah, like like, it's like that. That is the foundation of My Philosophy is that I am curious about the nature of the universe and you know, and obviously I will die.
I know we're not have it. I would live forever, but I would like to know that we're on a path to understanding the nature of the universe and the meaning of life. And what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And, and so, if we expand the scope and scale of humanity and Consciousness in general, which include silicon Consciousness, then,
That, you know, there weren't that. That seems like a fundamentally good thing,
Ilan. Like I said, I'm deeply grateful that you would spend your extremely valuable time with me today, and also that you are given millions of people hope and this difficult time, this divisive time in this cynical time. So I hope you do continue doing what you're doing. Thank you so much for talking
today. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for your excellent
questions. Thanks for listening to this conversation.
Your mosque. Support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Elon Musk himself. When something is important enough, you do it, even if the odds are not in your favor. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
