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It Would Take Six Months To Get To Mars If You Go There Slowly, With Optimal Energy Cost. Then It Would Take Eighteen Months For The Planets To Realign. Then It Would Take Six Months To Get Back, Though I Can See Getting The Travel Time Down To Three Months Pretty Quickly If America Has The Will.

-Elon Musk

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It Would Take Six

Elon Musk

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It Would Take Six Months To Get To Mars If You Go There Slowly, With Optimal Energy Cost. Then It Would Take Eighteen Months For The Planets To Realign. Then It Would Take Six Months To Get Back, Though I Can See Getting The Travel Time Down To Three Months Pretty Quickly If America Has The Will.

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Any Product That Needs A Manual To Work Is Broken.

It Was Obvious To Me That We Could Never Colonize Mars Without Reusability, Any More Than America Would Have Been Colonized If They Had To Burn The Ships After Every Trip.

I'm Extremely Confident That Solar Will Be At Least A Plurality Of Power, And Most Likely A Majority... In Less Than 20 Years.

Target Launch Date For Falcon I Maiden Flight Is Halloween(october 31) From Our Island Launch Complex In The Kwajalein Atoll. For Potential Customers Out There, I Should Mention That Kwajalein Has Some Of The Worlds Best Scuba Diving And Snorkeling! It Is Literally A Tropical Paradise.

One Bit Of Advice: It Is Important To View Knowledge As Sort Of A Semantic Tree - Make Sure You Understand The Fundamental Principles, Ie The Trunk And Big Branches, Before You Get Into The Leaves/details Or There Is Nothing For Them To Hang On To.

Self-driving Cars Are The Natural Extension Of Active Safety And Obviously Something We Should Do.

Silicon Valley Has Some Of The Smartest Engineers And Technology Business People In The World.

In Order For Us To Have A Future That's Exciting And Inspiring, It Has To Be One Where We're A Space-bearing Civilization.

I Feel Very Strongly That Spacex Would Not Have Been Able To Get Started, Nor Would We Have Made The Progress That We Have, Without The Help Of Nasa.

Work Like Hell. I Mean You Just Have To Put In 80 To 100 Hour Weeks Every Week. [this] Improves The Odds Of Success. If Other People Are Putting In 40 Hour Work Weeks And You’re Putting In 100 Hour Work Weeks, Then Even If You’re Doing The Same Thing You Know That You Will Achieve In 4 Months What It Takes Them A Year To Achieve.

For All The Supporters Of Tesla Over The Years, And It's Been Several Years Now And There Have Been Some Very Tough Times, I'd Just Like To Say Thank You Very Much. I Deeply Appreciate The Support, Particularly Through The Darkest Times.

In Order To Have Your Voice Be Heard In Washington, You Have To Make Some Little Contribution.

The Space Shuttle Was Often Used As An Example Of Why You Shouldn't Even Attempt To Make Something Reusable. But One Failed Experiment Does Not Invalidate The Greater Goal. If That Was The Case, We'd Never Have Had The Light Bulb.

It Is Despairing To Consider That The Cost And Reliability Of Access To Space Have Barely Changed Since The Apollo Era Over Three Decades Ago. Yet In Virtually Every Other Field Of Technology, We Have Made Great Strides In Reducing Cost And Increasing Capability.

Actively Seek Out And Listen Carefully To Negative Feedback.

Negative Feedback

So, There's Quite A Big Keep-out Zone, And When You Factor The Keep-out Zone Into Account, The Solar Panels Put On That Area Would Typically Generate More Power Than That Nuclear Power Plant.

If Anyone Has A Vested Interest In Space Solar Power, It Would Have To Be Me.

If You're Trying To Create A Company, It's Like Baking A Cake. You Have To Have All The Ingredients In The Right Proportion.

I Tend To Approach Things From A Physics Framework. And Physics Teaches You To Reason From First Principles Rather Than By Analogy.

When Henry Ford Made Cheap, Reliable Cars People Said, 'nah, What's Wrong With A Horse?' That Was A Huge Bet He Made, And It Worked.

It's Not As Though We Can Keep Burning Coal In Our Power Plants. Coal Is A Finite Resource, Too. We Must Find Alternatives, And It's A Better Idea To Find Alternatives Sooner Then Wait Until We Run Out Of Coal, And In The Meantime, Put God Knows How Many Trillions Of Tons Of Co2 That Used To Be Buried Underground Into The Atmosphere.

I Think You Should Always Be Seeking Negative Feedback.

I Think Tesla Will Most Likely Develop Its Own Autopilot System For The Car, As I Think It Should Be Camera-based, Not Lidar-based. However, It Is Also Possible That We Do Something Jointly With Google.

Really, The Only Thing That Makes Sense Is To Strive For Greater Collective Enlightenment.

Yeah, Well I Think Anyone Who Likes Fast Cars Will Love The Tesla. And It Has Fantastic Handling By The Way. I Mean This Car Will Crush A Porsche On The Track, Just Crush It. So If You Like Fast Cars, You'll Love This Car. And Then Oh, By The Way, It Happens To Be Electric And It's Twice The Efficiency Of A Prius.

The Future Of Humanity Is Going To Bifurcate In Two Directions: Either It's Going To Become Multiplanetary, Or It's Going To Remain Confined To One Planet And Eventually There's Going To Be An Extinction Event.

I Think Most Of The Important Stuff On The Internet Has Been Built. There Will Be Continued Innovation, For Sure, But The Great Problems Of The Internet Have Essentially Been Solved.

I Think The High-tech Industry Is Used To Developing New Things Very Quickly. It's The Silicon Valley Way Of Doing Business: You Either Move Very Quickly And You Work Hard To Improve Your Product Technology, Or You Get Destroyed By Some Other Company.

You Need To Be In The Position Where It Is The Cost Of The Fuel That Actually Matters And Not The Cost Of Building The Rocket In The First Place.

We Have A Strict 'no A-hole Policy' At Spacex. And We Fire People They Are. I Mean, We Give Them A Little Bit Of Warning. But If They Continue To Be An A-hole, Then They're Fired.

Even If Producing Co2 Was Good For The Environment, Given That We're Going To Run Out Of Hydrocarbons, We Need To Find Some Sustainable Means Of Operating.

Land On Mars, A Round-trip Ticket - Half A Million Dollars. It Can Be Done.

If You're Co-founder Or Ceo, You Have To Do All Kinds Of Tasks You Might Not Want To Do. If You Don't Do Your Chores, The Company Won't Succeed. No Task Is Too Menial.

Tesla Is Here To Stay And Keep Fighting For The Electric Car Revolution.

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A Battery By Definition Is A Collection Of Cells. So The Cell Is A Little Can Of Chemicals. And The Challenge Is Taking A Very High-energy Cell, And A Large Number Of Them, And Combining Them Safely Into A Large Battery.

I Just Want To Retire Before I Go Senile Because If I Don't Retire Before I Go Senile, Then I'll Do More Damage Than Good At That Point.

My Opinion Is It's A Bridge Too Far To Go To Fully Autonomous Cars.

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The Reason We Should Do A Carbon Tax Is Because It's The Right Thing To Do. It's Economics 101, Elementary Stuff.

If You Go Back Back A Few Hundred Years, What We Take For Granted Today Would Seem Like Magic - Being Able To Talk To People Over Long Distances, To Transmit Images, Flying, Accessing Vast Amounts Of Data Like An Oracle. These Are All Things That Would Have Been Considered Magic A Few Hundred Years Ago.

Winning 'motor Trend' Car Of The Year Is Probably The Closest Thing To Winning The Oscar Or Emmy Of The Car Industry.

Engineering Is The Closest Thing To Magic That Exists In The World.

My Mentality Is That Of A Samurai. I Would Rather Commit Seppuku Than Fail.

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I Read Books And Talked To People. I Mean That's Kind Of How One Learns Anything. There's Lots Of Great Books Out There & Lots Of Smart People.

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Funded By The Government Just Means Funded By The People. Government, By The Way, Has No Money. It Only Takes Money From The People. Sometimes People Forget That That's Really What Occurs.

I Could Either Watch It Happen Or Be A Part Of It.

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I've Actually Not Read Any Books On Time Management.

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I Want To Make Rockets 100 Times, If Not 1,000 Times Better. The Ultimate Objective Is To Make Humanity A Multiplanet Species. Thirty Years From Now, There'll Be A Base On The Moon And On Mars, And People Will Be Going Back And Forth On Spacex Rockets.

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Failure Is An Option Here. If Things Are Not Failing, You Are Not Innovating Enough.

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I Would Like To Fly In Space. Absolutely. That Would Be Cool. I Used To Just Do Personally Risky Things, But Now I've Got Kids And Responsibilities, So I Can't Be My Own Test Pilot. That Wouldn't Be A Good Idea. But I Definitely Want To Fly As Soon As It's A Sensible Thing To Do.

Trying To Read Our Dna Is Like Trying To Understand Software Code - With Only 90% Of The Code Riddled With Errors. It's Very Difficult In That Case To Understand And Predict What That Software Code Is Going To Do.

I've Always Wanted To Be Part Of Something That Would Radically Change The World. . . . People Forget The Power Of Inspiration. All Of Humanity Went To The Moon With The Apollo Missions. The Issue Was Cost. There Was No Chance To Build A Base And Create Frequent Flights. That's The Problem I Would Like To Solve.

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Life Is Too Short

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When I Was In College, I Wanted To Be Involved In Things That Would Change The World.

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There Are Really Two Things That Have To Occur In Order For A New Technology To Be Affordable To The Mass Market. One Is You Need Economies Of Scale. The Other Is You Need To Iterate On The Design. You Need To Go Through A Few Versions.

If We Drive Down The Cost Of Transportation In Space, We Can Do Great Things.

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Persistence Is Very Important. You Should Not Give Up Unless You Are Forced To Give Up.

It's Just Mind-blowingly Awesome. I Apologize, And I Wish I Was More Articulate, But It's Hard To Be Articulate When Your Mind's Blown-but In A Very Good Way.

My Background Educationally Is Physics And Economics, And I Grew Up In Sort Of An Engineering Environment - My Father Is An Electromechanical Engineer. And So There Were Lots Of Engineery Things Around Me.

If Anyone Thinks They'd Rather Be In A Different Part Of History, They're Probably Not A Very Good Student Of History. Life Sucked In The Old Days. People Knew Very Little, And You Were Likely To Die At A Young Age Of Some Horrible Disease. You'd Probably Have No Teeth By Now. It Would Be Particularly Awful If You Were A Woman.

If You Get Up In The Morning And Think The Future Is Going To Be Better, It Is A Bright Day. Otherwise, It’s Not.

Many Things Are Improbable, Only A Few Are Impossible.

My Family Fears That The Russians Will Assassinate Me.

For Me It Was Never About Money, But Solving Problems For The Future Of Humanity.

Problem Solving

Talent Is Extremely Important. It's Like A Sports Team, The Team That Has The Best Individual Player Will Often Win, But Then There’s A Multiplier From How Those Players Work Together And The Strategy They Employ.

The Odds Of Me Coming Into The Rocket Business, Not Knowing Anything About Rockets, Not Having Ever Built Anything, I Mean, I Would Have To Be Insane If I Thought The Odds Were In My Favor.

Optimism, Pessimism, F**k That; We're Going To Make It Happen. As God Is My Bloody Witness, I'm Hell-bent On Making It Work.

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You Want To Be Extra Rigorous About Making The Best Possible Thing You Can. Find Everything That's Wrong With It And Fix It.

Entrepreneurship

The Tough Thing Is Figuring Out What Questions To Ask, But […] Once You Do That, The Rest Is Really Easy.

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To Our Knowledge, Life Exists On Only One Planet, Earth. If Something Bad Happens, It's Gone. I Think We Should Establish Life On Another Planet-mars In Particular-but We 're Not Making Very Good Progress. Spacex Is Intended To Make That Happen.

The First Step Is To Establish That Something Is Possible; Then Probability Will Occur.

Starting And Growing A Business Is As Much About The Innovation, Drive And Determination Of The People Who Do It As It Is About The Product They Sell.

The Fuel Cell Is Just A Fundamentally Inferior Way Of Delivering Electrical Energy To An Electric Motor Than Batteries.

Electric Motors

I'd Like To Dial It Back 5% Or 10% And Try To Have A Vacation That's Not Just E-mail With A View.

I've Actually Made A Prediction That Within 30 Years A Majority Of New Cars Made In The United States Will Be Electric. And I Don't Mean Hybrid, I Mean Fully Electric.

I Think That's The Single Best Piece Of Advice: Constantly Think About How You Could Be Doing Things Better And Questioning Yourself.

You Could Warm Mars Up, Over Time, With Greenhouse Gases.

Greenhouse Gases

The Extension Of Life Beyond Earth Is The Most Important Thing We Can Do As A Species.

You Need To Live In A Dome Initially But Over Time You Could Terraform Mars To Look Like Earth And Eventually Walk Around Outside Without Anything On. ... So It's A Fixer-upper Of A Planet.

The Idea Of Lying On A Beach As My Main Thing Just Sounds Like The Worst. It Sounds Horrible To Me. I Would Go Bonkers. I Would Have To Be On Serious Drugs. I'd Be Super-duper Bored. I Like High Intensity.

Spacex Has The Potential Of Saving The U.s. Government $1 Billion A Year. We Are Opposed To Creating An Entrenched Monopoly With No Realistic Means For Anyone To Compete.

I Think Long Term You Can See Tesla Establishing Factories In Europe, In Other Parts Of The U.s. And In Asia.

A Prius Is Not A True Hybrid, Really. The Current Prius Is, Like, 2 Percent Electric. It's A Gasoline Car With Slightly Better Mileage.

I'm Personally A Moderate And A Registered Independent, So I'm Not Strongly Democratic Or Strongly Republican.

I Started Spacex With The Expectation Of Failure.

I Would Like To Die On Mars. Just Not On Impact.

It's Obviously Tricky To Convert Cellulose To A Useful Biofuel. I Think Actually The Most Efficient Way To Use Cellulose Is To Burn It In A Co-generation Power Plant. That Will Yield The Most Energy And That Is Something You Can Do Today.

I Think It Is Possible For Ordinary People To Choose To Be Extraordinary.

Brand Is Just A Perception, And Perception Will Match Reality Over Time. Sometimes It Will Be Ahead, Other Times It Will Be Behind. But Brand Is Simply A Collective Impression Some Have About A Product.

Mars Is The Only Place In The Solar System Where It's Possible For Life To Become Multi-planetarian.

Focus On Something That Has High Value To Someone Else, Be Really Rigorous In Making That Assessment, Because Natural Human Tendency Is Wishful Thinking, So The Challenge To Entrepreneurs Is Telling What's The Difference Between Really Believing In Your Ideals And Sticking To Them As Opposed To Pursuing Some Unrealistic Dream That Doesn't Actually Have Merit, Be Very Rigorous In Your Self Analysis, Certainly Being Extremely Tenacious, And Just Work Like Hell. Put In 80-100 Hours Every Week. All These Things Improves The Odds Of Success

Some Companies Out There Quote A Start Of Production That Is Substantially In Advance Of When Customers Get Their Cars.

I Always See What’s... Wrong. Would You Want That? When I See A Car Or A Rocket Or Spacecraft, I Only See What’s Wrong. I Never See What’s Right. It’s Not A Recipe For Happiness.

In The Case Of Apple, They Did Originally Do Production Internally, But Then Along Came Unbelievably Good Outsourced Manufacturing From Companies Like Foxconn. We Don't Have That In The Rocket Business. There's No Foxconn In The Rocket Business.

People Will Buy The Car Just Because It's A Great Car. We Want Them To Think It's Excellent Value For Money And Then, Oh Yeah, It Happens To Be Electric.

Being An Entrepreneur Is Like Eating Glass And Staring Into The Abyss Of Death.

We Need To Be Super Careful With Ai. Potentially More Dangerous Than Nukes.

It's Ok To Have Your Eggs In One Basket As Long As You Control What Happens To That Basket.

With Artificial Intelligence We Are Summoning The Demon.

Artificial Intelligence

I'm Reasonably Optimistic About The Future, Especially The Future Of The United States - For The Century, At Least.

Obviously Tesla Is About Helping Solve The Consumption Of Energy In A Sustainable Manner But You Need The Production Of Energy In A Sustainable Manner.

The Primary Means Of Energy Generation Is Going To Solar. It Will At Least Be A Plurality, And Probably Be A Slight Majority In The Long Term.

Biofuels Such As Ethanol Require Enormous Amounts Of Cropland And End Up Displacing Either Food Crops Or Natural Wilderness, Neither Of Which Is Good.

Boeing Just Took $20 Billion And 10 Years To Improve The Efficiency Of Their Planes By 10 Percent. That's Pretty Lame. I Have A Design In Mind For A Vertical Liftoff Supersonic Jet That Would Be A Really Big Improvement.

I Realized That A Methane-oxygen Rocket Engine Could Achieve A Specific Impulse Greater Than 380.

I Think It's Important To Reason From First Principles Rather Than By Analogy. The Normal Way We Conduct Our Lives Is We Reason By Analogy. [with Analogy] We Are Doing This Because It's Like Something Else That Was Done, Or It Is Like What Other People Are Doing. [with First Principles] You Boil Things Down To The Most Fundamental Truths…and Then Reason Up From There.

Fear Is A Hard Thing To Deal With. I Feel It Quite Strongly. If I Think Something Is Important Enough, I'll Make Myself Do It In Spite Of Fear. But It Can Really Sap The Will. I Hate Fear, I Wish I Had It Less.

You Should Be Innovating So Fast That You're Invalidating Your Prior Patents.

Government Isn't That Good At Rapid Advancement Of Technology. It Tends To Be Better At Funding Basic Research. To Have Things Take Off, You've Got To Have Commercial Companies Do It.

The Biggest Mistake, In General, I've Made, Is To Put Too Much Of A Weighting On Someone's Talent And Not Enough On Their Personality. And I've Made That Mistake Several Times. I Think It Actually Matters Whether Somebody Has A Good Heart, It Really Does. I've Made The Mistake Of Thinking That It's Sometimes Just About The Brain.

I Don't Think Very Highly Of Henrik Fisker. [...h]e Thinks The Reason We Don't Have Electric Cars Is For Lack Of Styling

That's My Lesson For Taking A Vacation: Vacation Will Kill You.

It's A Fixer-upper Of A Planet But We Could Make It Work.

As You Heat The Planet Up, It's Just Like Boiling A Pot.

The Overarching Goal Of Tesla Is To Help Reduce Carbon Emissions And That Means Low Cost And High Volume. We Will Also Serve As An Example To The Auto Industry, Proving That The Technology Really Works And Customers Want To Buy Electric Vehicles.

Electric Vehicles

The United States Is Definitely Ahead In Culture Of Innovation. If Someone Wants To Accomplish Great Things, There Is No Better Place Than The U.s.

I Always Had An Existential Crisis, Trying To Figure Out ‘what Does It All Mean?’ I Came To The Conclusion That If We Can Advance The Knowledge Of The World, If We Can Expand The Scope And Scale Of Consciousness, Then, We’re Better Able To Ask The Right Questions And Become More Enlightened. That’s The Only Way To Move Forward.

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