February 12, 2021

Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience #1609

***Want more from Elon? We’ve compiled the most insightful ideas and advice from Elon into one master set of notes***

A Guide To The Best Advice From Elon Musk: A Podcast Notes Collection

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk predicts that by 2023, there will be regular orbital flights on the Starship with people
• The starship is the largest flying object ever made, weighing over 5,000 tons.
• The Holy Grail of the rocket industry is to create a fully and rapidly reusable rocket–that’s the current goal of SpaceX
• “In order to understand the meaning of life, we got to expand the scope and scale of consciousness…A species that does not become multi-planetary is simply waiting around till there’s some extinction event.” – Elon Musk
• There’s either a lot of aliens or no aliens–either situation is terrifying
  • “Maybe there are aliens but they’re very subtle. If they’re, they’re being pretty shy…Nor are we seeing signals from any other solar system” – Elon Musk
• Humans are taking billions of tons of CO2 that was trapped in the ground and releasing it into to atmosphere to see what happens instead of playing it safe and shifting to sustainable energy which will be required for civilization to survive in the long term anyway
  • “It’s literally the craziest experiment in human history…What the hell are we running this experiment for?” – Elon Musk
• Elon’s advice to listeners: 5G doesn’t cause COVID nor is it harmful to the human body
  • The same goes for cell phones. Having a phone on your body for long periods of time won’t cause cancer.
    • “Don’t worry about your phone, it’s fine” – Elon Musk
• Neuralink is not coming to the masses anytime soon. The first people to get it will be those who are quadriplegic or tetraplegic 

Intro

• Elon Musk (@elonmusk) is the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company
  • Read our notes for his first appearance on JRE here
• Host: Joe Rogan (@joerogan) 

SpaceX and Getting To Mars

• Elon told the SpaceX team to make the Starship more pointy because of the movie The Dictator
• Elon predicts that by 2023, there will be regular orbital flights on the Starship with people
• The starship is the largest flying object ever made, weighing over 5,000 tons.
• The Holy Grail of the rocket industry is to create a fully and rapidly reusable rocket–that’s the current goal of SpaceX
• Because of Newton’s Third Law, rockets require gas for thrust
  • “Everything will go electric except for rockets” – Elon Musk
• The gas used in Starship is actually 80% oxygen and only 20% fuel
• A current trip to Mars would take 6 months but Elon says that in the future, by taking another path, trips will only take 3 months
• Why isn’t SpaceX public?
  • The company issued stock to investors and employees but doesn’t plan to go public anytime soon because they have a long time horizon and is focused on the next 10-20 years instead of the next 1-2 years like most public companies

Becoming Multi-Planetary Is Essential

• Elon views becoming multi-planetary as essential for the survival of the human species
  • If humans only stay on Earth, there’s are many things that could wipe them out: natural disasters, super volcanoes, meteors, World War III, etc.
    • Throughout history, there have been several extinction events, not just one
      • In the Permian extinction, 90% of all species were wiped out
• For Elon, the meaning of life is to understand the universe
  • “In order to understand the meaning of life, we got to expand the scope and scale of consciousness…A species that does not become multi-planetary is simply waiting around till there’s some extinction event.” – Elon Musk

Do Aliens Exist? 

• There’s either a lot of aliens or no aliens–either situation is terrifying
  • Elon is open to the idea of aliens existing but doesn’t believe humans have interacted with aliens yet
    • “There’s no direct evidence for alien life” – Elon Musk
• “Maybe there are aliens but they’re very subtle. If they’re, they’re being pretty shy…Nor are we seeing signals from any other solar system” – Elon Musk

Moving To Mars

• Steps needed to create a base on Mars:
  • First, you need to create energy with a solar panel farm
  • Then you need to have propellant production so you can make fuel to return back to Earth
  • After that, you need to build a greenhouse so you can grow plants and food
• Since there’s frozen water on Mars, if people could warm up the planet, the ice would melt and create oceans
  • How do you warm up a planet? You can build giant solar reflectors or create miniature suns over the poles by detonating nuclear explosions

Update on Tesla 

• Elon says that the new Tesla Roadster will start shipping out in 2022
  • There’s a possibility that it will have rocket technology that would allow it to hover
• The newest Model S Plaid goes from 0-60 mph in 1.96 seconds
  • It can do a quarter-mile in less than 9 seconds
• The new Model S will have a yoke-style steering wheel and will be able to automatically drive to your work or home
• Elon’s favorite game to play in his Tesla is The Battle of Polytopia
  • As car become more and more autonomous, they will become less about driving and more about entertainment and productivity
• Tesla car ranges:
  • Current Model S: 400+ miles
  • Model S Plaid Plus coming out 2022: 500+ miles
  • Cybertruck: 300+ miles
• There’s a possibility Tesla will build vans with a solar roof on top of the vehicle
• Tesla vehicles update how their airbags will deploy based on your location and weight distribution to provide maximum safety
  • “It’s dynamically updating the airbag firing according to where you’re sitting, how much you weigh, in real-time” – Elon Musk
    • Tesla’s airbags are so good that whether or not you’re wearing a seatbelt, it won’t make much of a difference if you’re in an accident
• Tesla vehicles have the lowest probability of injury of any car ever tested
  • They also have the most advanced air filtration system of any car
• Elon calls the Model X the Fabergé egg of cars because of all the tiny details needed to make it (falcon-wing doors, HEPA air filter, glass ceiling, etc.)
• Tesla will make a Model X Plaid in the near future
• Elon is committed to running Tesla for several years into the future
• Elon is open to the possibility of Tesla making electric supersonic jets with vertical takeoff in the future, but first, he wants to produce cars, trucks, and boats first

Tesla’s Cybertruck 

• The Cybertruck will be built in the Tesla factory in Austin. The factory is on 2,500 acres of land.
  • Elon expects to have volume production by 2022
• Why did the glass on the Cybertrunk shatter during the Tesla reveal event?
  • Hitting the door with a sledgehammer likely cracked the base of the glass which caused the glass to lose all of its strength
    • Additionally, demo glass is weaker than production glass that will eventually be used for the Cybertruck
    • The truck will also be bullet-proof to handguns

Update on Starlink

• SpaceX is developing a low latency, broadband internet system called Starlink to meet the needs of consumers across the globe
• In the long term, Starlink satellites will provide gigabit level internet speeds to people around the globe
  • The satellites will be zooming around the Earth at 25x the speed of sound
• Starlink satellites will work best for rural, low population-dense areas than high-density populated areas
• Elon’s advice to listeners: 5G doesn’t cause COVID nor is it harmful to the human body
  • The same goes for cell phones. Having a phone on your body for long periods of time won’t cause cancer.
    • “Don’t worry about your phone, it’s fine” – Elon Musk

Concerns About AI

• In the movie Terminator, Skynet was created as a defense system. But then when humans tried to turn it off, Skynet saw humans as a threat and determined it needed to terminate all humans.
  • Joe and Elon both fear that a similar scenario could happen with artificial intelligence in the future
• Just like there’s the FAA for to govern civil aviation, Elon believes there should be a government agency monitoring artificial intelligence
  • However, just like there were several planes crashes before the FAA was established, Elon is worried there will need to be several negative AI events before the government establishes an agency for overseeing AI
• Elon sees the government as a referee in a sports game, the referee might be annoying at times, but they play a crucial role in keeping the game fair

The Quest for Sustainable Energy 

• Elon judges the success of Tesla by how many years the company accelerated the advent of sustainable energy
• Elon became interested in electric cars in high school because he realized that one day the world would run out of oil and it would need sustainable energy in order to avoid the collapse of civilization
  • During his summer internships in college, Elon worked for a company researching high-energy-density capacitors in batteries
• The lithium-ion batteries Tesla uses is actually made up mostly of nickel and iron, both of which are common resources and aren’t conflict minerals

Carbon Tax & The Craziest Experiment In Human History 

• To accelerate the shift to sustainable energy, Elon would like to see a carbon tax
  • Because there is no current tax on carbon emissions, companies don’t have any monetary incentive to decrease their emission. However, that would quickly change with a carbon tax.
    • “Markets work great if the pricing is correct…As soon as you put a price on it, the right thing will happen automatically.” – Elon Musk
      • Elon has talked to the Biden administration about passing a carbon tax but they said it would be politically difficult to pass
• If the amount of CO2 keeps rising the Earth will heat up and cause rising water levels, a higher probability of extreme weather events, and other negative consequences
• Humans are taking billions of tons of CO2 that was trapped in the ground and releasing it into to atmosphere to see what happens instead of playing it safe and shifting to sustainable energy which will be required for civilization to survive in the long term anyway
  • “It’s literally the craziest experiment in human history…What the hell are we running this experiment for?” – Elon Musk
• Elon is funding a $100 million prize for a new carbon capture technology

Tesla Semi-Truck Update 

• Tesla has working prototypes of their semi-trucks. They have 300+ miles of range and are being used to transport goods for Tesla.
  • The semi-trucks will have individual control over each of the wheels which will prevent jackknifing
    • It’s going to take several years before the trucks are fully autonomous, but in the near future, there will be semi-autonomous convoys. Meaning a person will be driving the first truck and there will be one or more autonomous trucks following it.

Additional Notes

• Elon gets about 6 hours of sleep a night and usually ends up working till 1 or 2 am
• While driving, Elon enjoys listening to sea shanties
• Elon is very bullish on Austin, Texas:
  • “I think Austin is going to be the biggest boomtown that America has seen in half a century” – Elon Musk
• Neuralink is not coming to the masses anytime soon. The first people to get it will be those who are quadriplegic or tetraplegic 
• When Tesla originally lent a car to the TV show Top Gear, the show had written a script where the Tesla broke down even before receiving the delivery of any Tesla vehicle
• Elon enjoyed the documentary Who Killed The Electric Car?

***Want more from Elon? We’ve compiled the most insightful ideas and advice from Elon into one master set of notes***

A Guide To The Best Advice From Elon Musk: A Podcast Notes Collection

Joe Rogan Experience : artificial intelligence, elon musk, energy, green energy, spacex, tesla
Notes By Alex Wiec