1
00:00:02,160 --> 00:00:03,960
Speaker 1: Do they sell ICBMs? Does that work?

2
00:00:04,160 --> 00:00:05,480
Speaker 2: Yeah?

3
00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:07,680
Speaker 3: You gotta tell us a story that I want to

4
00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:08,320
Speaker 3: know who.

5
00:00:09,680 --> 00:00:10,440
Speaker 2: Anything in Russia?

6
00:00:10,480 --> 00:00:12,959
Speaker 4: And what do you tell your friends? Yeah, listen, I'm

7
00:00:12,960 --> 00:00:14,040
Speaker 4: going to rush a device and mice.

8
00:00:14,240 --> 00:00:18,840
Speaker 3: Yes, you are listening to a forty seven Morning Update

9
00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:23,159
Speaker 3: exclusive with Ben Ferguson. Good Wednesday morning, Ben Ferguson, with you.

10
00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:24,959
Speaker 3: It's so nice to have you on the forty seven

11
00:00:25,040 --> 00:00:27,440
Speaker 3: Morning Update. And this morning is part two of the

12
00:00:27,480 --> 00:00:29,319
Speaker 3: sit down interview that I was a part of with

13
00:00:29,480 --> 00:00:33,000
Speaker 3: Elon Musk. This part of the interview you're gonna love

14
00:00:33,120 --> 00:00:36,279
Speaker 3: because we talk about the astronauts that were caught as

15
00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:40,240
Speaker 3: political prisoners in outer space. As you know, the astronauts

16
00:00:40,240 --> 00:00:44,199
Speaker 3: stuck in space for nine months after what was supposed

17
00:00:44,240 --> 00:00:50,320
Speaker 3: to be a simple eight day mission. Well they're finally home.

18
00:00:50,800 --> 00:00:55,520
Speaker 3: Why because of Elon Musk in space x. So here

19
00:00:55,600 --> 00:00:58,680
Speaker 3: is part two of that interview with Elon Musk.

20
00:00:59,600 --> 00:01:03,240
Speaker 1: What does man first set foot on Mars?

21
00:01:04,600 --> 00:01:10,000
Speaker 4: I think the soonest would be twenty nine, twenty nine, yes,

22
00:01:10,920 --> 00:01:13,840
Speaker 4: and I don't think it's more than two to four

23
00:01:13,880 --> 00:01:14,600
Speaker 4: years beyond that.

24
00:01:15,200 --> 00:01:17,880
Speaker 1: And that's not an unman, that's that's a human being.

25
00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:20,440
Speaker 1: Putting his foot on the surface.

26
00:01:21,160 --> 00:01:22,720
Speaker 2: Yes, best case would be twenty nine.

27
00:01:24,240 --> 00:01:26,400
Speaker 1: And what do you what do you put the odds

28
00:01:27,040 --> 00:01:30,720
Speaker 1: of finding either alien life or evidence of alien life.

29
00:01:31,319 --> 00:01:34,800
Speaker 2: I don't think we're going to find aliens, okay, but do.

30
00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:36,440
Speaker 1: We find ruins? Do we find remnants?

31
00:01:37,319 --> 00:01:39,080
Speaker 4: We may We may find the ruins of a long

32
00:01:39,120 --> 00:01:44,520
Speaker 4: dead alien civilization, that's possible. And we may find subterranean

33
00:01:44,920 --> 00:01:45,840
Speaker 4: microbial life.

34
00:01:45,880 --> 00:01:46,560
Speaker 2: That's possible.

35
00:01:47,120 --> 00:01:49,760
Speaker 1: All right. If man lands on Mars in twenty nine,

36
00:01:50,640 --> 00:01:53,279
Speaker 1: how soon after that do you land on Mars?

37
00:01:54,480 --> 00:01:55,800
Speaker 2: It remains to be seen. I'm not sure.

38
00:01:55,920 --> 00:01:59,880
Speaker 4: The important thing is that are we uh both a

39
00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:04,720
Speaker 4: self sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible. The

40
00:02:05,520 --> 00:02:11,760
Speaker 4: key threshold is when that city can't continue to grow,

41
00:02:11,840 --> 00:02:16,080
Speaker 4: continue to prosper, even when the supply ships from Earth

42
00:02:16,240 --> 00:02:20,440
Speaker 4: stop coming. At that point, even if something would happen

43
00:02:21,200 --> 00:02:23,400
Speaker 4: on Earth, it might, it might. It might not be

44
00:02:23,480 --> 00:02:26,960
Speaker 4: World War three, but it might be that.

45
00:02:27,120 --> 00:02:28,080
Speaker 1: A bad virus.

46
00:02:28,280 --> 00:02:30,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might not be anything. For those things.

47
00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:32,200
Speaker 4: It's like like like say, civilization, you could die with

48
00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:34,160
Speaker 4: a bang or a whimper. It may be that civilization

49
00:02:34,520 --> 00:02:37,960
Speaker 4: dies with a whimper rather than a bang or and

50
00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:41,640
Speaker 4: simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars. But

51
00:02:42,040 --> 00:02:45,200
Speaker 4: so you obviously need Mars to become self sustaining and

52
00:02:45,240 --> 00:02:49,480
Speaker 4: be able to grow by itself before the resupply ships

53
00:02:49,520 --> 00:02:53,000
Speaker 4: from Earth stopped coming. That that is the critical a

54
00:02:53,080 --> 00:02:58,359
Speaker 4: civilizational threshold beyond which the probable life span of civilization

55
00:02:58,560 --> 00:02:59,200
Speaker 4: is much greater.

56
00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:02,560
Speaker 1: And how close are we technologically to be able to

57
00:03:02,600 --> 00:03:06,920
Speaker 1: do that, to have a self sustaining settlement on the

58
00:03:06,919 --> 00:03:08,280
Speaker 1: surface of Mars.

59
00:03:08,840 --> 00:03:10,440
Speaker 2: I think it can be done in twenty years.

60
00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:13,520
Speaker 1: How do you turn PayPal into the success it was,

61
00:03:13,600 --> 00:03:15,720
Speaker 1: which then helped launch you to the next one and

62
00:03:15,800 --> 00:03:16,240
Speaker 1: the next one.

63
00:03:16,720 --> 00:03:16,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

64
00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:20,440
Speaker 4: So I studied physics and economics and college. She's a

65
00:03:20,440 --> 00:03:23,600
Speaker 4: good foundation for understanding how the economy works and how

66
00:03:23,800 --> 00:03:29,880
Speaker 4: reality works. And then I was going to do a

67
00:03:29,919 --> 00:03:38,280
Speaker 4: PhD at Stanford in advanced ultra capacitors actually as a

68
00:03:39,520 --> 00:03:46,240
Speaker 4: potential means of energy storage for electric transport. Put that

69
00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:51,920
Speaker 4: on hold to start an Internet company. Essentially came to

70
00:03:51,960 --> 00:03:53,920
Speaker 4: the conclusion that the Internet was one of those rare

71
00:03:53,960 --> 00:03:57,160
Speaker 4: things and I could either watch it happen while a

72
00:03:57,160 --> 00:03:59,840
Speaker 4: grad student or participate. And I figured I've always go

73
00:03:59,880 --> 00:04:01,560
Speaker 4: to act to grad school you know, grad school is

74
00:04:01,560 --> 00:04:05,480
Speaker 4: going to be kind of the same. But I couldn't

75
00:04:05,560 --> 00:04:07,680
Speaker 4: rather thought of just watching the Internet happen, so I

76
00:04:07,680 --> 00:04:09,960
Speaker 4: wanted to be a part of building it. So I

77
00:04:10,040 --> 00:04:14,640
Speaker 4: created an Internet Internet company. We did the first maps, directions,

78
00:04:14,680 --> 00:04:18,279
Speaker 4: yellow pages, white pages on the Internet. I actually wrote

79
00:04:18,320 --> 00:04:21,800
Speaker 4: the first version of software just by myself in ninety five,

80
00:04:22,720 --> 00:04:29,280
Speaker 4: and we ended up selling that to Compact Texas company

81
00:04:29,320 --> 00:04:32,719
Speaker 4: I guess YEP for about three hundred million dollars in

82
00:04:32,760 --> 00:04:37,360
Speaker 4: cash about four years after I graduated. Wow, So I

83
00:04:37,360 --> 00:04:40,040
Speaker 4: should say just to preface that I graduated with about

84
00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:41,479
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand dollars a student debt.

85
00:04:41,760 --> 00:04:44,880
Speaker 2: So it wasn't yeah you and me both yeah, yeah,

86
00:04:45,080 --> 00:04:46,960
Speaker 2: where right? I know?

87
00:04:48,520 --> 00:04:50,400
Speaker 4: And when I first arrived in North America, I arrived

88
00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:53,560
Speaker 4: with twenty five hundred dollars, a bag of books and

89
00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:54,839
Speaker 4: a bag of clothes.

90
00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:55,760
Speaker 2: All right.

91
00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:58,800
Speaker 1: So two thousand and two you start SpaceX, Like, how

92
00:04:58,800 --> 00:05:01,120
Speaker 1: do you start a rocket compan Like what's the first

93
00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:03,760
Speaker 1: day where you're like, I want to make rockets and

94
00:05:03,800 --> 00:05:05,159
Speaker 1: I want to go to Mars? Like what do you

95
00:05:05,200 --> 00:05:05,880
Speaker 1: do on day one?

96
00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:09,120
Speaker 4: So I think you have to start with a some

97
00:05:09,160 --> 00:05:13,000
Speaker 4: sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order

98
00:05:13,080 --> 00:05:16,240
Speaker 4: for the in order to be in order to be

99
00:05:16,279 --> 00:05:19,480
Speaker 4: highly motivated, you have to have some.

100
00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:24,600
Speaker 2: Philosophical foundation. In my case, it was.

101
00:05:26,400 --> 00:05:29,440
Speaker 4: That that we want to expand the scale, the scope

102
00:05:29,440 --> 00:05:33,960
Speaker 4: and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of

103
00:05:33,960 --> 00:05:40,320
Speaker 4: the universe. And in order to expand scale, expand consciousness,

104
00:05:40,320 --> 00:05:43,080
Speaker 4: we need to go beyond one planet. If for one

105
00:05:43,120 --> 00:05:46,760
Speaker 4: planet there's there's too much risk. You know, hopefully Earth

106
00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:49,760
Speaker 4: civilization prospers very far into the future, but it may not.

107
00:05:49,839 --> 00:05:52,840
Speaker 4: There's always some risk that we are we self annihilate

108
00:05:52,839 --> 00:05:56,479
Speaker 4: through nuclear war, or that there's a big meter that

109
00:05:56,640 --> 00:05:59,080
Speaker 4: takes us out like the dinosaurs. Ye, there's always some

110
00:05:59,160 --> 00:06:00,919
Speaker 4: risk if all your eggit are in one basket. So

111
00:06:00,960 --> 00:06:04,840
Speaker 4: it's going to be better if we're a multiplanet species.

112
00:06:05,480 --> 00:06:07,560
Speaker 4: And then once we're a multiplanet species, that the next

113
00:06:07,560 --> 00:06:10,000
Speaker 4: step would be to be a multi stellar and have

114
00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:16,480
Speaker 4: a civilization on many different star systems. So in two

115
00:06:16,520 --> 00:06:18,760
Speaker 4: thousand and one, I didn't think that I could I

116
00:06:18,760 --> 00:06:20,320
Speaker 4: didn't think I could sell a rock company, so I

117
00:06:21,440 --> 00:06:26,160
Speaker 4: thought I'd take some of the money from PayPal. In

118
00:06:26,400 --> 00:06:29,080
Speaker 4: that case, I think was about one hundred and eighty

119
00:06:29,160 --> 00:06:33,360
Speaker 4: million dollars after tax something like that, and I thought,

120
00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:35,440
Speaker 4: you know, I don't need one hundred and eighty million dollars,

121
00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:40,240
Speaker 4: so I'll spend a bunch of it on a philanthropic

122
00:06:40,320 --> 00:06:45,040
Speaker 4: Mars mission to get the public excited about going back

123
00:06:45,040 --> 00:06:49,039
Speaker 4: to Mars. We're going to Mars, I should say. Yeah,

124
00:06:49,440 --> 00:06:51,960
Speaker 4: Mars was always going to be the destination after the Moon. Right.

125
00:06:52,880 --> 00:06:55,640
Speaker 4: In fact, if you told people in nineteen sixty nine

126
00:06:55,920 --> 00:06:58,120
Speaker 4: that it would be twenty twenty five and we've not

127
00:06:58,160 --> 00:07:00,440
Speaker 4: even gone back to the Moon, let alone, it's hard

128
00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:03,000
Speaker 4: to believe, let alone Mars, they'd be like what happened

129
00:07:03,040 --> 00:07:07,720
Speaker 4: in the civilization collapse top, Yeah, like they would be

130
00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:10,560
Speaker 4: incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars. By now, if

131
00:07:10,560 --> 00:07:12,600
Speaker 4: you told people listen, after landing on the Moon in

132
00:07:12,640 --> 00:07:13,360
Speaker 4: sixty nine.

133
00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:15,920
Speaker 1: What do you think in fifty years America never went

134
00:07:15,960 --> 00:07:16,480
Speaker 1: back to the Moon.

135
00:07:17,240 --> 00:07:20,200
Speaker 4: Well, we destroyed the Saturn five rocket that was that

136
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:22,520
Speaker 4: could take people to the Moon, and had the Space Shuttle,

137
00:07:22,520 --> 00:07:26,520
Speaker 4: which could only go to lowth orbit, and then there

138
00:07:26,520 --> 00:07:30,800
Speaker 4: really hasn't been anything to replace any No vehicle has

139
00:07:30,800 --> 00:07:33,600
Speaker 4: been made since then that can go to the Moon

140
00:07:33,680 --> 00:07:38,480
Speaker 4: or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket. Yeah, so

141
00:07:39,160 --> 00:07:40,760
Speaker 4: you can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride.

142
00:07:41,040 --> 00:07:43,360
Speaker 1: So a few months ago you and I were down

143
00:07:43,640 --> 00:07:46,280
Speaker 1: in Boca Chica with a president for a starship launch.

144
00:07:46,560 --> 00:07:49,760
Speaker 1: And it is incredible what you built in Boca Chica.

145
00:07:49,760 --> 00:07:52,160
Speaker 1: You know, five years ago it was an empty beach

146
00:07:52,640 --> 00:07:55,440
Speaker 1: at the southern tip of this sandbar. Yeah, and it's

147
00:07:55,520 --> 00:07:58,440
Speaker 1: now a city and a factory where you're building a

148
00:07:58,480 --> 00:08:02,160
Speaker 1: rocket ship a month within incredible precision. But one of

149
00:08:02,160 --> 00:08:03,960
Speaker 1: the things you said to me when we were down

150
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:06,680
Speaker 1: there that really stood out to me is is you said,

151
00:08:06,720 --> 00:08:10,440
Speaker 1: your philosophy on intellectual property talked to lots of CEOs

152
00:08:10,560 --> 00:08:13,120
Speaker 1: or we fight to guard our i P. And and

153
00:08:13,160 --> 00:08:15,800
Speaker 1: you had a very different approach. What's what's your view.

154
00:08:15,640 --> 00:08:20,840
Speaker 4: Of i P, patents of the week, patterents of for

155
00:08:20,880 --> 00:08:21,840
Speaker 4: those innovation slowly.

156
00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:25,240
Speaker 1: I literally do not know anyone else in business who

157
00:08:25,240 --> 00:08:27,120
Speaker 1: would say something like that, like like it was a

158
00:08:27,440 --> 00:08:30,800
Speaker 1: startling and and and what Elon said down there is

159
00:08:30,840 --> 00:08:34,120
Speaker 1: he said, look this stuff, I assume everyone will steal everything,

160
00:08:34,120 --> 00:08:35,680
Speaker 1: but by the time they steal it will be five

161
00:08:35,679 --> 00:08:37,160
Speaker 1: generations beyond and it won't matter.

162
00:08:37,320 --> 00:08:41,040
Speaker 4: Yes, at Tesla, we actually opened sourcialte patents, so we

163
00:08:41,080 --> 00:08:43,600
Speaker 4: said our patents are anyone can use them for free.

164
00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:47,439
Speaker 4: Really yeah, uh, the only really your patents of Tesla

165
00:08:47,760 --> 00:08:53,280
Speaker 4: to to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble. So we'll

166
00:08:53,280 --> 00:08:55,200
Speaker 4: try to look ahead and say, okay, patent trolls are

167
00:08:55,559 --> 00:08:58,319
Speaker 4: going to trial file patents to blocks and things, will

168
00:08:58,360 --> 00:09:00,640
Speaker 4: file patents and then open source to patent make it free.

169
00:09:00,920 --> 00:09:02,400
Speaker 2: I mean I when I say patents for the week.

170
00:09:02,600 --> 00:09:06,720
Speaker 4: Now, there are a few cases, in say with pharmaceuticals,

171
00:09:06,760 --> 00:09:08,600
Speaker 4: where it might cost you billion dollars to do a

172
00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:13,320
Speaker 4: Phase three human file, but then subsequently the drug is

173
00:09:13,400 --> 00:09:16,560
Speaker 4: very cheap to manufacture. So cases there are some, in

174
00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:19,600
Speaker 4: my opinion, which its massively reduced what can be patented.

175
00:09:21,200 --> 00:09:24,040
Speaker 4: And and say, because the whole point of patenting is

176
00:09:24,360 --> 00:09:28,680
Speaker 4: to maximize innovation, not inhibit it. And in my opinion,

177
00:09:29,040 --> 00:09:32,600
Speaker 4: maybe a controversial opinion, most patents inhibit innovation, they do

178
00:09:32,679 --> 00:09:33,199
Speaker 4: not help it.

179
00:09:33,400 --> 00:09:36,800
Speaker 5: How many nights have you slept at your offices? You

180
00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:40,280
Speaker 5: think your career percentage wise where you say I just

181
00:09:40,320 --> 00:09:42,840
Speaker 5: got to take this nap basically because my body forces

182
00:09:42,880 --> 00:09:44,280
Speaker 5: me to and I got to get back to work

183
00:09:44,480 --> 00:09:46,760
Speaker 5: fast and efficiently without going somewhere else.

184
00:09:47,640 --> 00:09:49,280
Speaker 2: Well, I guess it started out.

185
00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:54,880
Speaker 4: Even with the first company, so two, which is a

186
00:09:54,960 --> 00:10:00,000
Speaker 4: terrible name, but the first internet company. We're able to

187
00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:02,720
Speaker 4: rent an office, which was like in a leaky attack

188
00:10:02,880 --> 00:10:06,800
Speaker 4: essentially for five hundred dollars a month, and the cheapest

189
00:10:07,640 --> 00:10:09,640
Speaker 4: apartment we could find was eight hundred dollars a month.

190
00:10:10,200 --> 00:10:13,200
Speaker 4: So like, and we only had about five thousand dollars

191
00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:16,520
Speaker 4: between our brother and I, so like, we're not we'll.

192
00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:19,320
Speaker 2: We'll, we'll just stay in the office. Yep. So we

193
00:10:19,400 --> 00:10:19,760
Speaker 2: got some.

194
00:10:21,920 --> 00:10:27,679
Speaker 4: Couches that converted into beds and we'd can't sleep at night,

195
00:10:27,679 --> 00:10:30,600
Speaker 4: and then we just have like turn the beds back

196
00:10:30,640 --> 00:10:35,440
Speaker 4: into couches before anyone came, and then we would shout

197
00:10:35,480 --> 00:10:38,520
Speaker 4: the YMCA down the road and so that went that

198
00:10:38,520 --> 00:10:42,600
Speaker 4: that that that literally was for several months what we did.

199
00:10:43,480 --> 00:10:45,959
Speaker 4: I was in great shape, you know, work out the

200
00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:51,240
Speaker 4: y I still remember that that YMCA at Page Mill

201
00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:53,679
Speaker 4: al Camino in Palo Alto.

202
00:10:54,559 --> 00:10:55,520
Speaker 1: So that was a long time.

203
00:10:55,520 --> 00:10:57,920
Speaker 4: Again, so it's been I don't know, I've never thought

204
00:10:57,960 --> 00:11:02,000
Speaker 4: to count it, but several hundred days maybe, I don't know.

205
00:11:02,320 --> 00:11:05,200
Speaker 3: Now, if you'd like to hear the rest of the conversation.

206
00:11:05,640 --> 00:11:09,040
Speaker 3: Make sure you download Verdict with Ted Cruz right now

207
00:11:09,240 --> 00:11:12,480
Speaker 3: wherever you're listening to this podcast, and you can hear

208
00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:15,880
Speaker 3: Part two in its entirety. And I'll see you back

209
00:11:15,920 --> 00:11:16,920
Speaker 3: here tomorrow