{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVacRKN1tAo", "page_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVacRKN1tAo", "title": "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species (IAC 2016, with Q&A)", "show_or_channel": "International Astronautical Congress", "date": "2016-09-27", "duration_s": 5847, "type": "talk", "speakers": ["Elon Musk"], "confidence": "high", "notes": "Interplanetary Transport System unveil, Guadalajara. Full version incl. audience Q&A; SpaceX official (talk only): H7Uyfqi_TE8 (3886s).", "people": ["elon-musk"], "id": "2016-09-27_international-astronautic-making-humans-a-multiplanetary-species", "audio_duration_s": 5846.471125, "worker": "jc-w14", "transcribe_s": 65.3, "model": "large-v3", "segments": [{"start": 86.77, "end": 116.9, "text": "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am president of CNES, the French Space Agency, and the president-elect of the International Astronautical Federation. And it is my pleasure to welcome you here at the 67th International Astronautical Congress. Elon Musk is founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX. Elon founded SpaceX in 2002."}, {"start": 116.9, "end": 145.98, "text": "with the goal of revolutioning space technology and ultimately enabling humans to become a multi-planetary spaces and that the plan is going to lay out for us today. SpaceX has had a number of firsts including as the first private company to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station and the first entity to land an orbital glass booster back on land and on ships out at sea. Please."}, {"start": 145.98, "end": 187.26, "text": "Join me in welcoming Elon Musk. Thanks for having me. All right. Thank you very much for having me. I look forward to talking about the SpaceX Mars architecture. And what I really want to try to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible, make it seem as though it's something that we can do in our lifetimes and that you can go. And is there really a way that..."}, {"start": 187.26, "end": 219.36, "text": "That anyone could go if they wanted to. I think that's really the important thing. So, I mean, first of all, why go anywhere? Right? I think there are really two fundamental paths. History is going to bifurcate along two directions. One path is we stay on Earth forever, and then there will be some eventual extinction event. I don't have an immediate doomsday prophecy, but eventually history suggests there will be some..."}, {"start": 219.36, "end": 263.12, "text": "The alternative is to become a space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species, which I hope you would agree that is the right way to go. Yes? That's what we want. Yeah. So how do we figure out how to take you to Mars and create a self-sustaining city, a city that is not merely an outpost but can become a planet in its own right?"}, {"start": 263.12, "end": 293.2, "text": "And thus we could become a truly multi-planet species. Sometimes people wonder, well, what about other places in the solar system? Why Mars? Well, just to sort of put things into perspective, this is an actual scale of what the solar system looks like. So we're currently in the third little rock from the left. That's Earth. Yeah, exactly."}, {"start": 293.2, "end": 325.28, "text": "And our goal is to go to the fourth rock on the left. That's Mars. But you can get a sense for the real scale of the solar system, how big the sun is in Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus. And then the little guys on the right are Pluto and friends. This sort of helps see it not quite to scale, but it gives you a better sense for where things are. So our options for going to..."}, {"start": 325.28, "end": 354.26, "text": "Becoming a multi-planet species within our solar system are limited. We have, in terms of nearby options, we've got Venus. But Venus is a super high pressure hot acid bath. So that would be a tricky one. Venus is not at all like the goddess. This is not in no way similar to the actual goddess."}, {"start": 354.26, "end": 384.35, "text": "It's really difficult to make things work on Venus. Mercury is also way too close to the Sun. We could go potentially on one of the moons, Jupiter or Saturn, but those are quite far out, much further from the Sun, a lot harder to get to. It really leaves us with one option if we want to become a multi-planet civilization, and that's Mars. We could conceivably go to our moon, and I have nothing against going to the moon, but I think it's challenging."}, {"start": 384.35, "end": 415.87, "text": "to become multi-planetary on the moon because it's much smaller than a planet. It doesn't have any atmosphere. It's not as resource-rich as Mars. It's got a 28-day day, whereas the Mars day is 24 and a half hours. And in general, Mars is far better suited to ultimately scale up to be a self-sustaining civilization. So just to give some comparison between the"}, {"start": 415.87, "end": 445.25, "text": "The two planets. They're remarkably close in a lot of ways. In fact, we now believe that early Mars was a lot like Earth. And in fact, if we could warm Mars up, we would once again have a thick atmosphere and liquid oceans. But where things are right now, Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as Earth. So still decent sunlight."}, {"start": 445.25, "end": 475.2, "text": "It's a little cold, but we can warm it up. It has a very helpful atmosphere, which in the case of Mars being primarily CO2 with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements, means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere. And it has nitrogen too, which is also very important for growing plants. It would be quite fun to be on Mars because you'd have gravity, which is..."}, {"start": 475.2, "end": 509.46, "text": "About 37% that of Earth. So you'll be able to lift heavy things and bound around and have a lot of fun. And the day is remarkably close to that of Earth. And so we just need to change that bottom row. Because currently we have 7 billion people on Earth and zero on Mars. So there's been a lot of great work by NASA and other organizations in early exploration of Mars and understanding..."}, {"start": 509.46, "end": 541.07, "text": "What Mars is like, where could we land, what's the composition of the atmosphere, where is there water or ice, I should say. And so we need to go from these early exploration missions to actually building a city. The issue that we have today is that if you look at a Venn diagram, there's no intersection of sets of people who want to go and can afford to go."}, {"start": 541.07, "end": 573.81, "text": "In fact, right now, you cannot go to Mars for infinite money. Using traditional methods, if taking sort of Apollo-style approach, an optimistic cost number would be about $10 billion a person. So, for example, the Apollo program, the cost estimates are somewhere between $100 to $200 billion in current year dollars, and we sent 12 people to the surface of the Moon, which was an incredible..."}, {"start": 573.81, "end": 602.51, "text": "And I think probably one of the greatest achievements of humanity. But that is a steep price to pay for a ticket. That's why these circles only just barely touch. So you can't create a self-sustaining civilization if the ticket price is $10 billion a person. What we need is to move those circles together. And if we can get the cost of moving to Mars..."}, {"start": 602.51, "end": 632.48, "text": "To be roughly equivalent to a median house price in the U.S., which is around $200,000, then I think the probability of establishing a self-sustaining civilization is very high. I think it would almost certainly occur. Not everyone would want to go. In fact, I think a relatively small number of people from Earth would want to go. But enough would want to go, and who could afford the trip, that it would happen. And people get sponsorship. And I think it gets to the point where..."}, {"start": 632.48, "end": 663.22, "text": "Where almost anyone, if they saved up, and this was their goal, they could ultimately save up enough money to buy a ticket and move to Mars. And Mars would have a labor shortage for a long time, so jobs would not be in short supply. So it is a bit tricky, because we have to figure out how to improve the cost of trips to Mars by 5 million percent. So this is not easy."}, {"start": 663.22, "end": 694.51, "text": "I mean, it sounds like virtually impossible, but I think there are ways to do it. This translates to an improvement of approximately four and a half orders of magnitude. These are the key elements that are needed in order to achieve the four and a half order of magnitude improvement. Most of the improvement would come from full reusability, somewhere between two and two and a half orders of magnitude. And then the other two orders of magnitude would come from refilling in orbit."}, {"start": 694.51, "end": 723.25, "text": "Propellant production on Mars, and choosing the right propellant. So I'm going to go into detail on all those. Full reusability is really the super hard one. It's very difficult to achieve reusability for even an orbital system, and that challenge becomes substantially greater for a system that has to go to another planet."}, {"start": 723.25, "end": 750.66, "text": "But as an example of the difference between reusability and expendability in aircraft, and you could actually use any form of transport. You could say a car, bicycle, horse. If they were single use, almost no one would use them. It would be too expensive. But with frequent flights, you can take something like an aircraft that costs $90 million, and if it was single use, you'd have to pay half a million dollars per flight."}, {"start": 750.66, "end": 777.46, "text": "But you can actually buy a ticket on Southwest right now from LA to Vegas for $43, including taxes. So that's a massive improvement. Right there, it's showing a forward order of magnitude improvement. Now, this is harder. The reusability doesn't apply quite as much to Mars because the number of times they can reuse the spaceship is the spaceship part of the system."}, {"start": 777.46, "end": 804.85, "text": "It is less often because the Earth-Mars rendezvous only occurs every 26 months. So you get to use the spaceship part roughly every two years. Now you get to use the booster and the tanker as frequently as you'd like. And so that's why it really makes a lot of sense to load the spaceship into orbit with essentially tanks dry and have it have really quite big tanks that you then..."}, {"start": 804.85, "end": 838.64, "text": "Use the booster and tanker to refill while it's in orbit and maximize the payload of the spaceships that when it goes to Mars, you really have a very large payload capability. So as I said, refilling in orbit is one of the essential elements of this. Without refilling in orbit, you would have a half order of magnitude impact roughly on the cost. By half order of magnitude, I think the audience mostly knows,"}, {"start": 838.64, "end": 869.6, "text": "What that means is each order of magnitude is a factor of 10. So not refilling in orbit would mean a 500% roughly increase in the cost per ticket. It also allows us to build a smaller vehicle and lower the development cost, although this vehicle is quite big, but it would be much harder to build something that's 5 to 10 times the size. And it also reduces the sensitivity of performance"}, {"start": 869.6, "end": 901.84, "text": "The characteristics of the booster rocket and tanker. So if there's a shortfall in the performance of any of the elements, you can actually make up for it by having one or two extra refilling trips to the spaceship. So it's very important for reducing the susceptibility of the system to a performance shortfall. And then producing propellants on Mars is actually also very obviously important."}, {"start": 901.84, "end": 931.94, "text": "Again, if we didn't do this, it would have at least a half order of magnitude increase in the cost of a trip. So 500% increase in the cost of the trip. And it would be pretty absurd to try to build a city on Mars if your spaceships just kept staying on Mars and not going back to Earth. You have this massive graveyard of ships. You have to do something with them. So it really wouldn't make sense to leave your spaceships on Mars."}, {"start": 931.94, "end": 965.31, "text": "Build a propellant plant on Mars and send the ships back. And Mars happens to work out well for that because it has a CO2 atmosphere. It's got water ice in the soil. And with H2O and CO2, you can produce CH4, methane, and oxygen O2. So picking the right propellant is also important. Think of this as maybe there's three main choices. And they have their merits."}, {"start": 965.31, "end": 994.98, "text": "Kerosene or rocket propellant grade kerosene, which is also what jets use. Rockets use a very expensive form, a highly refined form of jet fuel essentially, which is a form of kerosene. It helps keep the vehicle size small, but because it's a very specialized form of jet fuel, it's quite expensive. The reusability potential is lower. Very difficult to make this on Mars because there's no oil."}, {"start": 994.98, "end": 1024.74, "text": "So really quite difficult to make the propellants on Mars. And then propellant transfer is pretty good, but not great. Hydrogen, although it has a high specific impulse, is very expensive, incredibly difficult to keep from boiling off because liquid hydrogen is very close to absolute zero as a liquid. So the installation required is tremendous."}, {"start": 1024.74, "end": 1053.98, "text": "The energy cost on Mars of producing and storing hydrogen is very high. So when we looked at the overall system optimization, it was clear to us that methane actually was the clear winner. So it would require maybe anywhere from 50% to 60% of the energy on Mars to refill propellants using the propellant depot."}, {"start": 1053.98, "end": 1086.22, "text": "Just the technical challenges are a lot easier. So we think methane is actually better on just really almost across the board. And we started off initially thinking that hydrogen would make sense, but ultimately came to the conclusion that the best way to optimize the cost per unit mass to Mars and back is to use an all-methane system, or technically deep cryomethalox. So those are the four elements that need to be achieved."}, {"start": 1086.22, "end": 1390.8, "text": "Whatever system is designed, whether by SpaceX or anyone, we think these are the four features that need to be addressed in order for the system to really achieve a low cost per ton to the surface of Mars. And this is a simulation of the overall system. What you saw there is really quite close to what we will actually build. It will look almost exactly like what you saw."}, {"start": 1390.8, "end": 1421.33, "text": "So this is not an artist's impression. The simulation was actually made from the SpaceX engineering CAD models. So this is not just, well, this is what it might look like. This is what we plan to try to make it look like. So in the video, you got a sense for what the system architecture looks like. The rocket booster in the spaceship take off, loads the spaceship into orbit."}, {"start": 1421.36, "end": 1449.55, "text": "The rocket booster then comes back. It comes back quite quickly, within about 20 minutes. And so it can actually launch the tanker version of the spacecraft, which is essentially the same as the spaceship, but filling up the unpressurized and pressurized cargo areas with propellant tanks. So they look almost identical. This also helps lower the development cost, which obviously will not be small."}, {"start": 1449.55, "end": 1480.16, "text": "And then the propellant tanker goes up, and actually it'll go up multiple times, anywhere from three to five times to fill the tanks of the spaceship in orbit. And then once the spaceship is, the tanks are full, the cargo has been transferred, and we reach the Mars rendezvous timing, which as mentioned is roughly every 26 months, that's when the ship would depart. Now, over time there would be many spaceships who would ultimately have, I think,"}, {"start": 1480.16, "end": 1508.86, "text": "Upwards of a thousand or more spaceships waiting in orbit. And so the Mars Colonial Fleet would depart en masse. Kind of like Battlestar Galactica. You've seen that thing. That's a good show. So a bit like that. But it actually makes sense to load the spaceships into orbit because you've got two years to do so. And then make frequent use of the booster and the tanker to get really heavy reuse out of those. And then with the..."}, {"start": 1508.86, "end": 1538.54, "text": "With the spaceship, you get less reuse because you have to say, well, how long is it going to last? Well, maybe 30 years. So that might be 12 to maybe 15 flights of the spaceship at most. So you really want to maximize the cargo of the spaceship and reuse the booster and the tank a lot. So the ship goes to Mars, gets replenished, and then returns to Earth."}, {"start": 1541.55, "end": 1587.46, "text": "So I'll go into some of the details of the vehicle design and performance. And I'm going to gloss over, or at least I'll only talk a little bit about the technical details in the actual presentation. And then I'll leave the detailed technical questions to the Q&A that follows. This is to give you a sense of size. It's quite big. And the funny thing is, I think..."}, {"start": 1587.46, "end": 1616.7, "text": "In the long term, the ships will be even bigger than this. I think this will represent, this will be relatively small compared to the Mars interplanetary ships of the future. But it kind of needs to be about this size because in order to fit 100 people or thereabouts in the pressurized section plus carry the luggage and all of the unpressurized cargo to build propellant plants and build everything from"}, {"start": 1616.7, "end": 1646.35, "text": "Iron foundries to pizza joints to you name it. But we need to carry a lot of cargo. So it really needs to be roughly on this order of magnitude. Because if we say the minimum threshold for a self-sustaining city on Mars or civilization would be a million people, and you can only go every two years, if you have 100 people per ship, that's 10,000 trips."}, {"start": 1646.83, "end": 1674.48, "text": "So I think at least 100 people per trip is the right order of magnitude. And I think we actually may end up expanding the crew section and ultimately taking more like 200 or more people per flight in order to reduce the cost per person. So 10,000 flights is a lot of flights. So you'd really want, ultimately, I think, on the order of 1,000 ships. It would take a while to build up to 1,000 ships."}, {"start": 1674.51, "end": 1707.52, "text": "So I think if you say when would we reach that million-person threshold, from the point at which the first ship goes to Mars, it's probably somewhere between 20 to 50 total Mars rendezvous. So it's probably somewhere between maybe 40 to 100 years to achieve a fully self-sustaining civilization on Mars. So that's the..."}, {"start": 1707.52, "end": 1737.14, "text": "It's sort of a cross-section of the ship and in some ways it's not that complicated really. It's made primarily of an advanced carbon fiber. The carbon fiber part is tricky when dealing with deep cryogens and trying to achieve both liquid and gas impermeability and not have gaps occur due to cracking or pressurization."}, {"start": 1737.14, "end": 1763.17, "text": "That would make the carbon fiber leaky. So this is a fairly significant technical challenge to make deeply cryogenic tanks out of carbon fiber. And it's only recently that we think that the carbon fiber technology has gotten to the point where we can actually do this without having to create a liner, some sort of metal liner."}, {"start": 1763.17, "end": 1791.63, "text": "So we'll gasify the methane and use that to pressurize the fuel tank, gasify the oxygen, use that to pressurize the oxygen tank."}, {"start": 1791.63, "end": 1821.6, "text": "And this is a much simpler system than what we have with Falcon 9, where we use helium for pressurization and we use nitrogen for gas thrusters. In this case, we would autogenously pressurize and then use gaseous methane and oxygen for the control thrusters. So really, you only need two ingredients for this, as opposed to four in the case of..."}, {"start": 1821.6, "end": 1857.6, "text": "Falcon 9, and actually 5 if you consider the ignition liquid. So we use a sort of complicated liquid to ignite the engines that isn't very usable. In this case, we would use spark ignition. So this gives you a sense of vehicles by performance, sort of current and historic. I hope you can actually read that. But in expandable mode,"}, {"start": 1857.6, "end": 1887.97, "text": "The vehicle approach that we're proposing would do about 550 tons and about 300 tons in reusable mode. That compares to SATAM's 5 max capability of 135 tons. But I think this really gives a better sense for things. The white bars show the performance of the vehicle. In other words, the payload to orbit of the vehicle. So you can see essentially what it represents is what's the size efficiency."}, {"start": 1887.97, "end": 1918.02, "text": "And most rockets, including ours that are currently flying, the performance bar is only a small percentage of the actual size of the rocket. But with the interplanetary system, which will initially be used for Mars, we've been able to, or we believe, massively improve the design performance."}, {"start": 1918.02, "end": 1952.59, "text": "It's the first time a rocket's sort of performance bar will actually exceed the physical size of the rocket. This gives you a more direct sort of comparison. The thrust level is quite enormous. We're talking about a lift-off thrust of 13,000 tons. So it's quite tectonic when it takes off. But it is a fit on..."}, {"start": 1952.59, "end": 1982.61, "text": "Pad 39A, which NASA has been kind enough to allow us to use, where they sort of oversized the pad in doing Saturn V, and as a result, we can actually do a much larger vehicle on that same launch pad. And in the future, we expect to add additional launch locations, probably adding one on the south coast of Texas. But this gives you a sense of the relative capability, if you can read those."}, {"start": 1986.0, "end": 2016.37, "text": "But these vehicles have very different purposes. This is really intended to carry huge numbers of people, ultimately millions of tons of cargo to Mars. So you really need something quite large in order to do that. So talk about some of the key elements of the interplanetary spaceship and rocket booster. We decided to start off the development with what we think are probably the two"}, {"start": 2016.37, "end": 2047.52, "text": "There are three most difficult elements of the design. One is the Raptor engine. This is going to be the highest chamber pressure engine of any kind ever built and probably the highest thrust to weight. It's a full flow stage combustion engine which maximizes the theoretical momentum that you can get out of a given source fuel and oxidizer."}, {"start": 2047.52, "end": 2074.43, "text": "We sub-cool the oxygen and methane to densify it. So compared to when propellants are normally used, they're used close to their boiling point in most rockets. In our case, we actually load the propellants close to their freezing point. And that can result in a density improvement of up to around 10% to 12%, which makes an enormous difference in the actual results of the rocket. It also makes the..."}, {"start": 2074.43, "end": 2107.41, "text": "It gets rid of any cavitation risk for the turbo pumps, and it makes it easier to feed a high-pressure turbo pump if you have very cold propellant. Really, one of the keys here, though, is the vacuum version of Raptor having a 382-second ISP. This is really quite critical to the whole MOS mission. And we can get to that number, or at least within a few seconds of that number, ultimately maybe exceeding it slightly."}, {"start": 2112.34, "end": 2139.5, "text": "So the rocket booster, in many ways, is really a scaled-up version of the Falcon 9 booster. You'll see a lot of similarities, such as the grid fins, obviously clustering a lot of engines at the base. And the big difference really being that the primary structure is an advanced form of carbon fiber, as opposed to aluminum lithium, and that we use autogenous pressurization."}, {"start": 2139.7, "end": 2168.14, "text": "And we get rid of the helium and the nitrogen. So this uses 42 Raptor engines. There's a lot of engines, but we use an ion on a Falcon 9. And with Falcon Heavy, which should launch early next year, there's 27 engines on the base. So we've got pretty good experience with having a large number of engines. It also gives us redundancy so that if some of the engines fail, you can still continue the mission and be fine."}, {"start": 2169.71, "end": 2199.39, "text": "But the main job of the booster is to accelerate the spaceship to around 8,500 kilometers an hour. For those that are less familiar with orbital dynamics, really it's all about velocity and not about height. So really that's the job of the booster. The booster is like the javelin thrower. It's got to toss that javelin, which is the spaceship."}, {"start": 2199.39, "end": 2228.54, "text": "In the case of other planets, though, which have a gravity well which is not as deep, so Mars, the moons of Jupiter, conceivably one day maybe even Venus, Venus will be a little trickier, but for most of the solar system, you only need the spaceship. So you don't need the booster if you have a lower gravity well. So no booster is needed on the moon."}, {"start": 2228.54, "end": 2258.91, "text": "We've also been able to optimize the propellant needed for boost back and landing to get it down to about 7% of the lift-off propellant load. We think with some optimization, maybe we can get it down to about 6%. And we also are now getting quite comfortable with the accuracy of the landing."}, {"start": 2258.91, "end": 2292.43, "text": "If you've been watching the Falcon 9 landings, you'll see that they're getting increasingly closer to the bullseye. And we think particularly with the addition of some thrusters, some maneuvering thrusters, we can actually put the booster right back on the launch stand. And then those fins at the base are essentially centering features to take out any minor position mismatch at the launch site. So this is what it looks like at the base."}, {"start": 2292.43, "end": 2322.13, "text": "So we think we only need to gimbal or steer the center cluster of engines. So there's seven engines in the center cluster. Those would be the ones that move for steering the rocket, and the other ones would be fixed in position, which gives us the best concentration of, we can max out the number of engines because we don't have to leave any room for gimbling or moving the engines. And like I said, this is all designed so that you could actually lose multiple engines"}, {"start": 2322.13, "end": 2356.37, "text": "Even at lift off or anywhere in flights and continue the mission safely. So for the spaceship itself, in the top we have the pressurized compartment. I'll show you a fly through of that in a moment. Then beneath that is where we'd have the unpressurized cargo, which would be really flat packed in a very dense format. And then below that is the liquid oxygen tank. The liquid oxygen tank is probably the hardest piece of this whole"}, {"start": 2356.37, "end": 2386.21, "text": "It's got to handle propellant at the coldest level. And the tanks themselves actually form the airframe. So the airframe structure and the tank structure are combined as it is in all modern rockets. And in aircraft, for example, the wing is really a fuel tank in wing shape. So it has to take the thrust loads of ascent,"}, {"start": 2386.21, "end": 2415.92, "text": "And then below the oxygen tank is the fuel tank. And then the engines are mounted directly to the thrust cone on the base."}, {"start": 2415.92, "end": 2445.23, "text": "And then there are six of the high-efficiency vacuum engines around the perimeter, and those don't gimbal. And then there are three of the sea-level versions of the engine which do gimbal and provide the steering. Although we can do some amount of steering if you're in space with differential thrust on the outside engines. The net effect is a cargo to Mars of up to 450 tons."}, {"start": 2445.23, "end": 2477.18, "text": "Depending upon how many refills you do with the tanker. And the goal is at least 100 passengers per ship, although I think ultimately we'll probably see that number grow to 200 or more. This chart's a little difficult to interpret at first, but we decided to put it there for people who want to watch the video afterwards and sort of take a closer look, analyze some of the numbers. The column on the left is probably what's most relevant, and that's..."}, {"start": 2477.18, "end": 2508.61, "text": "That gives you the trip time. So depending upon which Earth-Mars rendezvous you're aiming for, the trip time at 6 kilometers per second departure velocity can be as low as 80 days. And then over time, I think we'd obviously improve that. And ultimately, I suspect that you'd see Mars transit times of as little as 30 days in the more distant future. So it's fairly manageable considering"}, {"start": 2508.61, "end": 2542.54, "text": "The trips that people used to do in the old days that routinely take sailing voyages that would be six months or more. So on arrival, the heat shield technology is extremely important. We've been refining the heat shield technology using our Dragon spacecraft. And we're now on version three of PICA, which is phenolic impregnated carbon ablator. And it's getting more and more robust with each new version with less ablation, more resistance, less need for refurbishment."}, {"start": 2542.54, "end": 2612.94, "text": "The heat shield is basically a giant brake pad. So it's like how good can you make that brake pad against extreme reentry conditions and minimize the cost of refurbishment and make it so that you could have many flights with no refurbishment at all. So this is a fly-through of the crew compartment. I just want to give you a sense of what it would feel like to actually be in the spaceship. I mean, in order to make it appealing and increase that portion of the Venn diagram where people actually want to go,"}, {"start": 2612.94, "end": 2640.69, "text": "It's got to be really fun and exciting, and it can't feel cramped or boring. So the crew compartment or the occupant compartment is set up so that you can do zero-G games. You can float around. There'll be movies, lecture halls, cabins, a restaurant. It'll be really fun to go. You're going to have a great time."}, {"start": 2645.1, "end": 2672.51, "text": "So we've got the propellant plant on Mars. Again, this is one of those slides that I won't go into in detail here, but people can think about offline. The key point being that the ingredients are there on Mars to create a propellant plant with relative ease. Because the atmosphere is primarily CO2, and there's water ice almost everywhere, you've got the CO2 plus H2O to make methane, CH4, and oxygen, O2."}, {"start": 2672.51, "end": 2702.26, "text": "The trickiest thing really is the energy source, which we think we can do with a large field of solar panels. So then to give you a sense of the cost, really the key is making this affordable to almost anyone who wants to go. And we think based on this architecture, this architecture assuming optimization over time,"}, {"start": 2702.26, "end": 2731.28, "text": "The very first flights would be fairly expensive, but the architecture allows for a cost per ticket of less than $200,000. Maybe as little as $100,000 over time, depending upon how much mass a person takes. So we're right now estimating about $140,000 per ton to the surface of Mars. So if a person plus the luggage is less than that, technically..."}, {"start": 2731.28, "end": 2769.07, "text": "Account food consumption and life support, then we think that the cost of moving to Mars ultimately could drop below $100,000. So funding, we thought about funding sources. And so we could steal underpants, launch satellites, send cargo to the space station, Kickstarter, of course, followed by profit. So obviously it's going to be a challenge to fund this whole endeavor."}, {"start": 2769.36, "end": 2798.05, "text": "We do expect to generate pretty decent net cash flow from launching lots of satellites and servicing the space station from NASA, transferring cargo to and from the space station. And then I know that there's a lot of people in the private sector who are interested in helping fund a base on Mars. And then perhaps there will be interest."}, {"start": 2798.05, "end": 2827.33, "text": "We're on the government sector side to also do that. Ultimately, this is going to be a huge public-private partnership. And I think that's how the United States was established and many other countries around the world is a public-private partnership. So I think that's probably what occurs. And right now, we're just trying to make as much progress as we can with the resources that we have available and just sort of keep"}, {"start": 2827.33, "end": 2858.05, "text": "Keep moving both forward. And hopefully, I think as we show that this is possible, that this dream is real, not just a dream, it's something that can be made real, I think the support will snowball over time. And I should say also the main reason I'm personally accumulating assets is in order to fund this. So I really don't have any other motivation for..."}, {"start": 2858.05, "end": 2906.21, "text": "Personally accumulating assets except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multi-planetary. Timelines. I'm not the best at this sort of thing. But just to show you where we started off. In 2002, SpaceX basically consisted of carpet and a mariachi band. That was it. That's all of SpaceX in 2002."}, {"start": 2906.21, "end": 2936.86, "text": "As you can see, I'm a dancing machine. And yeah, I believe in kicking off celebratory events with mariachi bands. I really like mariachi bands. But that was what we started off with in 2002. And really, I mean, I thought we had maybe a 10% chance of doing anything, of even getting a rocket to orbit, let alone getting beyond that and taking Mars seriously."}, {"start": 2936.86, "end": 2966.8, "text": "But I came to the conclusion that if there wasn't some new entrance into the space arena with a strong ideological motivation, then it didn't seem like we were on a trajectory to ever be a space-faring civilization and be out there among the stars. Because in 69, we were able to go to the moon, and the space shuttle could get to low-earth orbit, and then obviously the space shuttle got retired, but that trend line is..."}, {"start": 2966.8, "end": 2996.56, "text": "So I think what a lot of people don't appreciate is that technology does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of really strong engineering talent is applied to the problem, that it improves. And there are many examples in history where civilizations have reached a certain technology level and then have fallen well below that and then recovered only"}, {"start": 2996.56, "end": 3028.54, "text": "Millennia later. So we go from 2002, where we basically were clueless, and then with Falcon 1, the smallest useful orbital rocket that we could think of, which would deliver half a ton to orbit. And then four years later, we developed and built the first vehicle. So we developed the main engine, the upper stage engine, the airframes, the fairing."}, {"start": 3028.54, "end": 3057.39, "text": "And the launch system. And had our first attempted launch in 2006, which failed. So that lasted about 60 seconds, unfortunately. But 2006, four years after starting, is also when we actually got our first NASA contract. And I just want to say I'm incredibly grateful to NASA for supporting SpaceX, despite the fact that our rocket crashed."}, {"start": 3057.39, "end": 3096.26, "text": "Awesome. I'm NASA's biggest fan. So thank you very much to the people that had the faith to do that. Thank you. So then 2006, followed by a lot of grief, and then finally the fourth launch of Falcon 1 worked in 2008, and we were really down to our last pennies. In fact, I only thought I had enough money for three launches, and the first three bloody failed."}, {"start": 3096.26, "end": 3127.47, "text": "We were able to scrape together enough to just barely make it and do a fourth launch. And thank goodness that fourth launch succeeded in 2008. That was a lot of pain. And then also at the end of 2008 is when NASA awarded us the first major operational contract, which was for resupplying cargo to the space station and bringing cargo back. Then a couple years later, we did the first launch of Falcon 9."}, {"start": 3127.47, "end": 3156.98, "text": "Version 1. And that had about a 10 ton to orbit capability. So it was about 20 times the capability of Falcon 1. And also it was assigned to carry our Dragon spacecraft. Then 2010 is our first mission to the space station. So we were able to finish development of Dragon and dock with the space station in 2010."}, {"start": 3157.42, "end": 3187.71, "text": "Sorry, 2010 is expendable dragon. 2012 is when we delivered and returned cargo from the space station. 2013 is when we first started doing vertical takeoff and landing tests. And then 2014 is when we were able to have the first orbital booster do a soft landing in the ocean. The landing was soft. It fell over and exploded, but the landing, for seven seconds, it was good."}, {"start": 3187.71, "end": 3215.73, "text": "And we also improved the capability of the vehicle from 10 tons to about 13 tons to Leo. And then 2015, or last year, in December, that was definitely one of the best moments of my life when the rocket booster came back and landed at Cape Canaveral. So that was really, yeah."}, {"start": 3224.66, "end": 3254.85, "text": "So that really showed that we could bring an orbit class booster back from a very high velocity all the way to the launch site and land it safely and with almost no refurbishment required for reflight. And if things go well, we're hoping to refly one of the landed boosters in a few months. So yeah, and then 2016, we'll also demonstrate landing on a ship."}, {"start": 3254.85, "end": 3282.96, "text": "The landing on the ship is important for the very high-velocity geosynchronous missions, and that's important for usability of Falcon 9 because about roughly a quarter of our missions are sort of servicing the space station, and then there's a few other low-Earth orbit missions, but most of our missions, probably 60% of our missions are commercial geo-missions."}, {"start": 3282.96, "end": 3314.75, "text": "So we've got to do these high-velocity missions that really need to land on a ship out to sea that don't have enough propellant on board to boost back to the launch site. So looking into the future, next steps. We were kind of intentionally a bit fuzzy about this timeline. But we're going to try to make as much progress as we can. Obviously, it's with a very constrained budget."}, {"start": 3314.75, "end": 3343.82, "text": "But we're going to try to make as much progress as we can on the elements of the interplanetary transport booster and spaceship. And hopefully we'll be able to complete the first development spaceship in maybe about four years and start doing suborbital flights with that. In fact, it actually has enough capability that you could"}, {"start": 3343.86, "end": 3372.94, "text": "Maybe even go to orbit if you limit the amount of cargo with the spaceship. Well, you have to really strip it down, but in tanker form, it can definitely get to orbit. Can't get back when you get to orbit. It actually starts thinking like maybe there is some market for really fast transport of stuff around the world, provided we can land somewhere where noise is not a super big deal."}, {"start": 3372.94, "end": 3402.1, "text": "The rockets are very noisy. But we can transport cargo to anywhere on Earth in 45 minutes at the longest. So most places on Earth would be maybe 20, 25 minutes. So maybe if we had a floating platform off the coast of New York, say 20, 30 miles out, you could go from"}, {"start": 3402.1, "end": 3431.7, "text": "New York to Tokyo in, I don't know, 25 minutes. Cross the Atlantic in 10 minutes. Really, most of your time would be getting to the ship. And then it'd be real quick after that. So there's some intriguing possibilities there, although we're not counting on that. And then development of the booster. We actually think the booster part is relatively straightforward because it amounts to"}, {"start": 3431.7, "end": 3462.03, "text": "A scaling up of the Falcon 9 booster. So we don't see a lot of showstoppers there. But then trying to put it all together and make this actually work for Moz. If things go super well, it might be kind of in the 10-year time frame. I don't want to say that's when it will occur. It's like there's a huge amount of risk."}, {"start": 3462.42, "end": 3491.6, "text": "It's going to cost a lot. Good chance we don't succeed, but we're going to do our best and try to make as much progress as possible. And we're going to try to send something to Mars on every Mars rendezvous from here on out. So Dragon 2, which is a propulsive lander, we plan to send to Mars in a couple of years."}, {"start": 3491.6, "end": 3519.95, "text": "And then do probably another Dragon mission in 2020. In fact, we want to establish a steady cadence that there's always a flight leaving, like there's a train leaving the station. With every Mars rendezvous, we will be sending a Dragon, at least a Dragon to Mars and ultimately the big spaceship. So if there are people that are interested in putting payloads on Dragon, you know you can count on a ship that's going to transport."}, {"start": 3519.95, "end": 3558.58, "text": "Something on the order of at least two or three tons of useful payload to the surface of Mars. Yeah, so that's part of the reason why we designed Dragon 2 to be a propulsive lander, is as a propulsive lander, you can go anywhere in the solar system. So you could go to the moon, you could go to, well, anywhere really. Whereas if something relies on parachutes or wings, then you can pretty much only, well, if it's a..."}, {"start": 3558.58, "end": 3591.07, "text": "Wings, you can pretty much only land on Earth because you need a runway. Most places don't have a runway. And then any place that doesn't have a dense atmosphere, you can't use parachutes. But propulsive works anywhere. So Dragon should be capable of landing on any solid or liquid surface in the solar system. And then I was really excited to see that the team managed to do the all-up."}, {"start": 3591.07, "end": 3616.94, "text": "I just want to say thanks to the Raptor team for really working seven days a week to try to get this done in advance of the presentation. I really want to show that we've made some hardware progress in this direction. And the Raptor is a really tricky engine. It's a lot trickier than..."}, {"start": 3616.94, "end": 3665.12, "text": "I'm kind of amazed it didn't blow up on the first firing, but fortunately it was good. It's kind of interesting to see the mock diamonds forming. And part of the reason for making the engine sort of small, Raptor, although it has three times the thrust of a Merlin,"}, {"start": 3665.12, "end": 3694.53, "text": "Thank you very much."}, {"start": 3694.53, "end": 3726.19, "text": "That's well within our production capabilities for Merlin. And this is a similarly sized engine to Merlin, except for the expansion ratio. So we feel really comfortable about being able to make this engine in volume at a price that doesn't break our budget. And then we also wanted to make progress on the primary structure. So as I mentioned, this is really a very difficult thing to make, is to make something"}, {"start": 3726.19, "end": 3753.6, "text": "Out of carbon fiber, even though carbon fiber has incredible strength to weight, when you want to then put super cold liquid oxygen and liquid methane, particularly liquid oxygen, in the tank, it's subject to cracking and leaking. And it's a very difficult thing to make. Just the sheer scale of it is also challenging because you've got to lay up."}, {"start": 3753.6, "end": 3782.38, "text": "So that's the other thing we wanted to focus on was the Raptor and then building the first development tank for the"}, {"start": 3782.42, "end": 3812.38, "text": "This is really the hardest part of the spaceship. The other pieces we have a pretty good handle on, but this was the trickiest one, so we wanted to tackle it first. You get a size for how big the tank is. It's really quite big. Also, big congratulations to the team that worked on that. They also were working seven days a week to try to get this done in advance of the IAC."}, {"start": 3812.38, "end": 3848.62, "text": "And so we managed to build the first tank. And the initial tests with cryogenic propellant actually look quite positive. We have not seen any leaks or major issues. This is what the tank looks like on the inside. So you can get a real sense for just how big this tank is. It's actually completely smooth on the inside, but the way that the carbon fiber applies, lay up, and reflect the light makes it look faceted."}, {"start": 3852.72, "end": 3882.08, "text": "So then what about beyond Mars? So as we thought about the system, and the reason we call it a system, because generally I don't like calling things systems because everything's a system, including your dog, is that it's actually more than a vehicle. There's obviously the rocket booster, the spaceship, the tanker, and the propellant plant, the in situ propellant production."}, {"start": 3882.08, "end": 3911.25, "text": "If you have all of those four elements, you can actually go anywhere in the solar system by planet hopping or moon hopping. So by establishing a propellant depot in the asteroid belt or on one of the moons of Jupiter, you can make flights from Mars to Jupiter no problem. In fact, even without a propellant depot at Mars, you can do a flyby of Jupiter."}, {"start": 3911.25, "end": 3942.54, "text": "Without a propellant depot. But by establishing a propellant depot, let's say Enceladus or Europa or any of those few options. And then doing another one on Titan, Saturn's moon. And then perhaps another one further out on Pluto or elsewhere in the solar system."}, {"start": 3942.54, "end": 3971.09, "text": "This system really gives you freedom to go anywhere you want in the greater solar system. So you can actually travel out to the Cape of Bell, to the Earth cloud. I wouldn't recommend this for interstellar journeys, but this basic system, provided we have filling stations along the way, means full access to the entire greater solar system."}, {"start": 3982.58, "end": 4028.5, "text": "It would be really great to do a mission to Europa particularly. All right, so any questions that I can answer? Yeah, Derek Stamos. I can't see a thing, by the way, so I won't try to look at you. I'll just hear the disembodied voice. Okay, Derek Stamos of NASASpaceFlight.com. Can you talk a little bit about, from the video, it looks like Launch Complex 39A is going to be the initial launch site. Can you talk about some of the initial test flights?"}, {"start": 4028.5, "end": 4059.41, "text": "Modifications to the pad and where the booster and spacecraft may be built. Sorry, I think you may need to speak a little bit louder. Sure. The video showed launching from Launch Complex 39. Can you talk a little bit about initial test flights, booster construction site, and where the spacecraft may be built, as it seems to be too large to transport by road or any other terrestrial transport? Yeah, so we are expecting to do the initial flights from 39A."}, {"start": 4059.41, "end": 4089.38, "text": "So we're planning to set up 39A such that it can launch either Falcon Heavy or the interplanetary system. It's quite a big launch site, so I think we can do that. In terms of construction of the ship and booster, you're right, it is quite big, not something you can really transport on the roads."}, {"start": 4089.38, "end": 4120.98, "text": "I think we would probably look at construction of the booster and the spacecraft at some of the Gulf states. We're actually looking at Michoud, Louisiana as one of the possibilities. But I think we would end up constructing the booster and spacecraft in probably multiple states and then perhaps doing final assembly at the launch site."}, {"start": 4121.81, "end": 4155.57, "text": "Thank you. Right here. Hi, Alan, right here in front of you. I'll jump. Okay, great. It's very nice to meet you. My name is Aldo, and three weeks ago, I was at Burning Man in the Nevada desert. Great. And it felt like I was in Mars. It was a dusty storm, and it was really cold at night, and there was no water. But there was one problem at Burning Man. With a population of only 75,000,"}, {"start": 4155.57, "end": 4182.99, "text": "There was a lot of shit. And there was no water to take it into the rivers, which is kind of what we do today in our current sanitation system. So I was like, is this what Mars is going to be like? Just a dusty, waterless shitstorm? So I was like, hey, Ellen, are you working on a sustainable sanitation? Are we going to have a toilet in Mars that doesn't use water?"}, {"start": 4183.31, "end": 4212.64, "text": "Today on Earth, there's 3 billion people that don't have a toilet. Guys, I actually have to say, we have to keep it, no essays, only questions. All right, so are you working on the toilet for Mars? Yeah. I think Mars actually has a huge amount of water and water ice, so I don't think we'll really suffer a water shortage in Mars. The main thing about Mars is actually going to be energy. If you have energy, there's plenty of water because there's massive amounts of ice. So it's really just about..."}, {"start": 4212.64, "end": 4243.57, "text": "Getting huge numbers of solar panels out there and potentially doing geothermal energy. And ultimately, I think assuming the public is receptive, there might be nuclear. I think certainly if you build nuclear on Mars as to whether you transport nuclear to Mars would be kind of up to the public to decide. All right, next question. I'm George Lourdos from MIT SDM and MIT GSLI."}, {"start": 4243.57, "end": 4269.23, "text": "Elon, the first humans on Mars will be in the history books, as we all know. Who should these men and women be? Maybe children too. Who should these people be carrying the light of humanity to Mars for all of us? Thank you. Well, I think the first journeys to Mars are going to be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There's just no way around it."}, {"start": 4269.58, "end": 4301.23, "text": "So I would not suggest to have extending children. It would be basically, are you prepared to die? Then if that's okay, then you're a candidate for going. But really, this is less about who goes there first. The thing that really matters is making a self-sustaining civilization on Mars as fast as possible. It's just different from Apollo."}, {"start": 4301.68, "end": 4329.95, "text": "You know, this is really about minimizing existential risk and having a tremendous sense of adventure. I mean, the thing that Moz really represents, I mean, there's the whole life insurance and protecting life and ensuring that the light of consciousness is not extinguished, which I think is incredibly important, backing up the biosphere. And to be clear, this is not about..."}, {"start": 4329.95, "end": 4357.9, "text": "It's about everyone moving to Mars. It's about becoming multi-planetary. I think Earth will be a good place for a long time. But it's the probable lifespan of human civilization will be much greater if we're a multi-planet species. Now that's the defensive argument, but the argument I actually find most compelling is that it would be an incredible adventure. I think it would be the most inspiring thing that I could possibly imagine. And life needs to be more than..."}, {"start": 4357.9, "end": 4391.18, "text": "Just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future and be inspired and want to live. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hey, Elon. Dick Rocket, New Space Global. You're the best. Everybody get up for Elon, please. This guy inspires the shit out of us. Come on. I've got a gift for you. It's a comic book called The Future of Fusion. It's about the first man on Mars. Looks like you. I can't get past El Chapo's militia, though. So I don't know. Should I just throw this onto the stage?"}, {"start": 4391.63, "end": 4421.42, "text": "My question is, can I give you this gift? It's the future of fusion. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Hi, Elon. Lauren Gresh from The Verge. You talk about how the Mars colonization architecture is meant to serve as a backup plan. There's so many mics here. Yeah, if you can see me. The Mars architecture is supposed to serve as a backup plan for humanity, but you didn't touch much on how you will keep humans safe."}, {"start": 4421.42, "end": 4449.97, "text": "On the way over there from either deep space radiation or how they will live on the planet, can you give us some insight into the life support systems, habitats, stuff like that? Sure. My view on the radiation thing is that there's certainly some risk of radiation, but it's not deadly. There'll be some slight increased risk of cancer, but it's, I think, relatively minor."}, {"start": 4449.97, "end": 4477.18, "text": "You need to have some shielding, particularly if there's a solar flare or sort of a big, any kind of solar storm. We'd want to basically point the rocket at the sun and maximize your shielding effect. Point the rear of the rocket at the sun so you maximize your shielding effect and have the passengers cluster around a column of water. But I think the radiation risk there is relatively small."}, {"start": 4477.18, "end": 4506.98, "text": "Once you're on Mars, obviously you cut your radiation in half just because you've got the planet shielding you, and then there's at least some atmosphere. And I think then what you could construct over time is an artificial magnetic field to deflect high-energy particles. So I actually think the radiation thing is often brought up, but I think it's not too big of a deal. And then there's what happens once people are there."}, {"start": 4506.98, "end": 4535.02, "text": "The goal of SpaceX is really to build the transport system. It's like building the Union Pacific Railroad. And once that transport system is built, then there's a tremendous opportunity for anyone who wants to go to Mars and create something new or build the foundations of a new planet."}, {"start": 4535.02, "end": 4562.16, "text": "Among the founding members of a new planet. And like I said, built everything from iron refineries to the first pizza joint. We won them all. And then things on Mars that people can't even imagine today that might be unique or would be unique to Mars. But that's really where a tremendous amount of entrepreneurship and talent would flourish."}, {"start": 4562.16, "end": 4592.35, "text": "Just as happened in California when the Union Pacific Railroad was completed. And when they were building the Union Pacific, a lot of people said, well, that's a super dumb idea because hardly anybody lives in California. But now, today, we've got at least the U.S. epicenter of technology development and entertainment, and it's the biggest state in the nation. But you need that transport link. If you can't get there, none of those opportunities..."}, {"start": 4592.35, "end": 4628.43, "text": "So our goal is just to make sure you can get there. Thank you. Okay. Hi, Elin. My name is Anastasia. I would like to ask you the following thing. I'm Russian, and a lot of people here are from many different countries. You're going interplanetary, but you're not going international. When are you going to hire people from other countries than the US? Yeah, so I think people are a bit confused about this."}, {"start": 4628.43, "end": 4658.29, "text": "Unfortunately, this is not up to us. So the US government regulations, well, they make getting a job in the US hard as it is, just getting a job visa hard as it is. But if you're working on rocket technology, that's considered an advanced weapons technology. So even a normal work visa isn't sufficient unless you get a special permission from the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State."}, {"start": 4658.29, "end": 4686.66, "text": "I want to be clear, this is not out of some desire of SpaceX to just hire people with green cards. It's because we're not allowed to do anything else. I think this is not a wise policy for the US because there's so many talented people all around the world that we would love to have work at our company."}, {"start": 4686.66, "end": 4717.82, "text": "Thank you. Cool."}, {"start": 4717.82, "end": 4746.67, "text": "Hey, Elon. So, can't wait for the SpaceX improbability drive. Looking forward to that. But you often talk about wanting to inspire the masses and kind of push technology forward for conquest. And I'm developing a series with Funny or Die, which is like the top online comedy site found by Will Ferrell. Quick questions, not essays. Yeah, yeah. Quick question. So, it's about you sending someone to Mars, but kind of like that first monkey that got shot into space. They're never coming back. It's going to be a one-way trip. Not necessarily."}, {"start": 4746.67, "end": 4776.58, "text": "Well, maybe. So you mathematically determine the world's most expendable human being to make the journey, and that's Michael Cera. So I wanted to see if this is a project that you might have any interest in supporting. Funny or Die just drove 31 million views to a Hillary Clinton, Zach Galifianakis video a few days ago. I want to see if you might be able to talk about it after. I think it's pretty important to give people the option of returning. The number of people who will be willing to"}, {"start": 4776.58, "end": 4805.58, "text": "Move to Mars is much greater if they know that they have the option of returning, even if they never actually return. I mean, most of the people that went to the original English colonies in North America, they never returned to Europe even once. But some did, and just knowing that if you don't like it there, you can come back, I think makes a big difference in people's willingness to go there in the first place. And in any case, we need the spaceship back, so it's coming."}, {"start": 4805.58, "end": 4834.88, "text": "You can jump on board or not. It's cool. You get a free return trip if you want. Hi, Elon. Cameron Ashgar here from the Outer Space Education Alliance. Over the years, we've watched in admiration as you've drawn up great blueprints of how we are going to get to Mars. I'm just curious about what type of initiatives you have."}, {"start": 4834.88, "end": 4864.75, "text": "Thank you very much."}, {"start": 4864.75, "end": 4894.18, "text": "Movies, and there's some TV shows that I know that are getting written. And you really want to create the dream of Moz in people's minds and have it be like, you know, it's the new frontier. And make it as exciting and fun and desirable as possible. So I think this is where the entertainment industry can play a huge role."}, {"start": 4894.18, "end": 4922.99, "text": "And just imagine putting that dream in people's heads, showing them what it can be like. And I think this is really something that appeals to anybody with an exploratory spirit. If you're an explorer, if you want to be on the frontier and push the envelope and be where things are super exciting, even if it's dangerous, that's..."}, {"start": 4922.99, "end": 4951.54, "text": "I mean, that's really who we're appealing to here. And I think anything that anyone here could do in that direction would be great. Getting people excited about going, getting the public behind this. And the truth is, like, right now on Earth, you can basically go anywhere in 24 hours. I mean, anywhere. You can fly over the..."}, {"start": 4951.54, "end": 4979.97, "text": "You can get to the top of Mount Everest from the right plane. You can go to the bottom of the ocean. Earth, from a physical standpoint, you can go anywhere, anywhere. So there is no real physical frontier on Earth anymore."}, {"start": 4979.97, "end": 5012.3, "text": "Space is that frontier. And so I think it's going to appeal to anyone with that exploratory spirit. Thank you very much. Hey, hello, I'm Lara. Back here. It's really hard to figure out where the disembodied voice is coming from. I wanted to ask you, for some normal people like me, what would it take physically? Do you need some requirements or something to get to Mars?"}, {"start": 5012.82, "end": 5044.0, "text": "Sorry, I can't hear you. Yeah, like, if normal people want to travel to Mars, do we need some specific requirements, or do normal people can go there? No, I mean, we're trying to make it such that anyone can go. Yeah, but, you know, do we need, like, a lot of training or something special? Nope, maybe a few days of training. Yeah, also... I mean, train more if you want."}, {"start": 5044.0, "end": 5068.69, "text": "I wanted to ask you, on behalf of all the ladies, can I go upstairs and give your kids a good luck kiss? Sounds great. I don't have them here, but I appreciate the thought. Hi, Jeff Faust, Space News, over on your right."}, {"start": 5068.69, "end": 5098.42, "text": "Question on resources. How much resources are you putting into this development right now in terms of funding, employees, and so on? And how do you expect that to change as the development of the booster and spaceship ramp up? Well, right now the resources that are being put into the interplanetary transport system are pretty low. I mean, certainly well under 5% of the company. And maybe we're spending a few tens of millions of dollars on it right now."}, {"start": 5098.42, "end": 5128.05, "text": "So it's relatively small. But then as we finish development of the final version of Falcon 9, which should be sometime next year, and Dragon 2, and get the reusability of the Boost stage and reusability of Dragon 2 sorted out, then we'll gradually apply more and more resources to the interplanetary system."}, {"start": 5128.08, "end": 5158.11, "text": "And so hopefully over time we'll be able to have most of our engineering team, well we will, perhaps within a year and a half to two years we should have most of SpaceX engineering working on the interplanetary system. And hopefully be able to spend maybe more on the order of a couple hundred million dollars a year, maybe 300 million dollars a year on the system. So not a lot relative to the"}, {"start": 5158.11, "end": 5189.65, "text": "Hi Elon, my name is Zach, I'm a space enthusiast and a local idiot for Rooster Teeth. And I was just wondering, you know,"}, {"start": 5189.87, "end": 5220.78, "text": "Can you talk a little bit about the future of humans in space? And are you going to go to Mars? Because I would hate to put in all this work and then not go. Yeah, I would definitely like to go to orbit and maybe visit the space station and then ultimately go to Mars. I've got to make sure that if something goes wrong on the flight and I die, then..."}, {"start": 5221.17, "end": 5253.14, "text": "That there's a good succession plan and that the mission of the company continues and that it doesn't somehow get taken over by investors who just want to maximize the profit of the company and not go to Mars. That would be my biggest fear in that situation. Thank you so much. Hi, Mr. Musk. This is Nancy Wolfson with Outer Space Education Alliance."}, {"start": 5253.14, "end": 5285.2, "text": "I know you've been talking about getting to Mars. Can you see me here? I can, yes. I can see your arms. Right here. I know we need to get first to Mars, but I have a question. In the back of your head, have you been thinking about interstellar travel? Interstellar, yes. I think if we were to do interstellar travel, the best way to do it would be with an antimatter drive."}, {"start": 5285.2, "end": 5314.83, "text": "That would give you the best, obviously, mass efficiency, difficult to beat anti-matter. But even in the best case scenario, that's really quite a long journey even to get to Proxima Centauri. I think the key thing is to establish a base on Mars. And as soon as there's a base on Mars, then there's a very powerful forcing function for improving"}, {"start": 5314.86, "end": 5344.53, "text": "Space transport technology. I mean, right now, there just isn't that forcing function, because all we do is very local stuff in Earth orbit. So as soon as we've got a base on Mars, we can see even a base on the moon, but certainly a base on Mars, that creates a very powerful forcing function for making space technology better and better every year. And that's ultimately what will lead us to..."}, {"start": 5344.53, "end": 5374.58, "text": "Yeah, I agree, but you agree that"}, {"start": 5374.58, "end": 5399.02, "text": "It's something that we need to start talking about. Yeah, I think it's definitely worth talking about. I mean, I think the technical solution, like I said, is, I think, optimally anti-matter. I see, yes. Okay, thank you for coming to the IAC 2016, by the way. Thanks, thanks for having me."}, {"start": 5400.53, "end": 5428.11, "text": "I was curious to know if you ever considered the idea of using a cycler and a semi-cycler to go to Mars on a routine basis. And if yes, why didn't you eventually go for it? Yeah, I think the... I don't know, when we do the... trying to figure out the best cost per unit mass to the surface of Mars, the... I mean, you could do a cycler, but I would..."}, {"start": 5428.91, "end": 5456.94, "text": "Our calculations at least show that it's just better to go directly there and not have a cycler. The transit time actually matters quite a lot for reuse of the spaceship. So if you can reuse that spaceship very frequently, then your cost per ton to Mars drops a lot."}, {"start": 5456.94, "end": 5483.46, "text": "Now, we could be wrong about that, and it could turn out in the future that having a cycler is a good way to go. But I would consider that to be in the realm of potential future optimization, along with having a propellant depot on the moon. That might make sense, but I would say put that in the category of future optimization. Thank you. Hello, Elon. Tim Dodd here, the everyday astronaut with Spaceflight Now."}, {"start": 5483.46, "end": 5513.14, "text": "And now in the animation you showed the passengers loading up onto MCT, or sorry, the interplanetary IPT, and then going into orbit. We're thinking about names. I mean, the names thing is really hard. I think maybe for the name of the first ship that goes to Mars, not the name of the whole ship line or whatever necessarily, but the first ship that goes to Mars, like my current favorite is Heart of Gold."}, {"start": 5513.14, "end": 5543.39, "text": "From the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So I think I probably will name the first ship that goes to Mars, Heart of Gold. And I like the fact that it's driven by infinite improbability. Because I think our ship is also extremely improbable. So I like the infinite improbability drive. The acronym is not the best."}, {"start": 5543.39, "end": 5571.47, "text": "But you show it going into orbit with the 100 passengers and then refueling it three to five times and then doing your Mars injection. Is this the plan or is it to have a fully fueled IPT or MCT or whatever and then put passengers on board? Can you tell me a little bit about that process? Yeah. So it really kind of depends on how quickly we do the propellant replenishment."}, {"start": 5571.82, "end": 5603.63, "text": "And how many missions are pure cargo versus have people on board? If we can do the refueling very quickly, then we can send people up there and maybe complete the refueling process in a few weeks. But if we're loading spacecraft into orbit with crew compartments, say, a year in advance, you wouldn't want people on board then. So what we would do is probably just launch a..."}, {"start": 5603.63, "end": 5631.22, "text": "Just do a mission which all it does is transfer people. So it would wait until the spacecraft is fully fueled, then launch another spacecraft which docks and transfers people from the one with tanks empty to one with tanks full. Yep, that makes sense. Thank you. Hello, England. My name is Alfonso. I think what you presented today is just incredible."}, {"start": 5631.22, "end": 5658.08, "text": "What I want to change a little bit topic. I have a startup to make electric public transport buses. Space questions only, sorry. The thing is I just have my prototype outside. It would be awesome if you could go out and see it. It's a 30-ton electric bus. Great. Space questions. This is the IAC, so we're space questions only. My name is David Todd of Serodata Space Intelligence."}, {"start": 5658.08, "end": 5687.09, "text": "And it looks like we just have time for a few more questions. So maybe take two or three more questions and then... My question is with respect to NASA and its own Mars plan, do you think they should back your plan and use SLS for just the lunar missions instead? And also, do you intend to be the first man on Mars? I think it's good for there to be multiple paths to Mars. So I wouldn't suggest anything..."}, {"start": 5687.09, "end": 5715.82, "text": "Any attempt at interplanetary travel will be cancelled. I think it's good to have multiple irons in the fire. In fact, a big part of me coming here today was to really try to encourage the international community to think about building architectures like this. I think it's actually much better for the world if there are multiple companies or organisations"}, {"start": 5715.82, "end": 5744.58, "text": "Building interplanetary spacecraft. The more the better. Anything, I think, that improves the probability that the future is good. And multiple companies doing it, I think, would be great. So I wanted to come and describe the architecture actually in the hopes that this would encourage"}, {"start": 5744.58, "end": 5772.5, "text": "Companies and organizations around the world to perhaps do something like this or maybe they've got a better architecture. That's what I wanted to do at the IEC was to really encourage people to compete with SpaceX or potentially team up or just get the community in general to think about going to Mars and taking Mars seriously. But you could use more funding from NASA, of course."}, {"start": 5772.66, "end": 5802.13, "text": "Sorry, I can't hear you. You could use some more funding from NASA. And also, will you be the first man on Mars? I don't think so. Maybe. But I'm not really sure. I have to, I don't know. There's pros and cons to that because, like I said, I would definitely need to have a very good succession plan because the probability of death is quite high on the first mission. And I'd like to see my kids grow up and everything."}, {"start": 5802.16, "end": 5842.35, "text": "Some pros and cons there. Thank you. I'm sorry, we're out of time and have to make way for a new session, so this is going to be our last question. Sorry, yeah, we have to make room for a new session. Sorry, guys. Thank you for coming. Thanks for listening. All right. The last question, please. Thank you."}]}