Elon Musk Leaves the Audience SPEECHLESS One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever

i

try to think what did i say that could

actually be helpful or useful to you in

the future

and i thought perhaps tell the story of

how i sort of came to be here how did

some of these things happen and and

maybe there’s some lessons

there um because i often find myself

wondering how did this happen

so when i was young i i

i didn’t really know what i was going to

do when i got older

but but then eventually i thought that

the idea of inventing things

would be would be really cool the reason

i thought that was because

i i read a quote from author c clock

which said that

efficiently advanced technology is

indistinguishable from magic

and and that’s really true um if you

think if you go back

say 300 years the things that we take

for granted today

uh would be you’d be burned at the stake

for

you know being able to fly that’s crazy

being able to see over long distances

being able to communicate

having um effectively with with the

internet

a group mind of sorts and having access

to all the world’s information

instantly from almost anywhere on the

earth this is stuff that

that really would be magic it would be

considered magic

in times past in fact i think it

actually goes beyond that because there

are many things that we take for granted

today

that weren’t even imagined in times past

they weren’t even in the realm of magic

so that it actually goes goes beyond

that so i thought well

you know if if i can do some of those

things basically if i can

advance technology then that that’s like

magic and that would be really cool

and i always had sort of a slight

existential crisis because i was trying

to figure out

what does it all mean like what’s the

purpose of things and

i came to the conclusion that if if we

can advance the

the knowledge of the world if we can do

things that expand the scope and

and scale of consciousness then we’re

better able to

ask the right questions and become more

enlightened and

and that’s really the only way forward

so i i

studied physics and business because i

figured

in order to do a lot of these things you

need to

know how the universe works and you need

to know how

how the economy works and you also need

to be able to bring a lot of people

together to work with you to create

something because it’s very difficult to

do something as

as an individual if it’s if it’s a

significant technology

i originally came out to to california

to

try to figure out how to improve the

energy density of of electric vehicles

basically to

try to figure out if there was an

advanced capacitor that that could serve

as

an alternative to batteries and that was

in 95

and that’s also when the internet

started

to happen and it i i thought well i can

either

pursue this tech this technology where

success maybe

may not be one of the possible outcomes

which is always tricky

or participate in the internet and and

be part of it so i decided to to drop

out did some internet stuff

what one of which was paypal and i think

maybe it’s helpful to

say one of the things that was important

then in the creation of paypal

was was kind of how it started because

the initial

thought was with paypal was to create an

agglomeration of

financial services so you have one place

where

all your financial services needs would

be seamlessly integrated

and and worked smoothly and then we had

like a little feature which was to do

email payments

and whenever we showed show the system

off to someone

uh we’d show the hard part which was the

um the agglomeration of financial

services which was quite difficult to

put together nobody was interested

then we’d show people email payments

which was actually quite easy and

everybody was interested

so i think it’s important to to take

feedback from your environment

you know it’s it you want to be as

closed loop as possible

so we focus on email payments and really

try to make that work

and and that’s what really got things to

take off

but but if we hadn’t if we hadn’t

responded to what people said then we

we probably would not have been

successful so it’s important to look for

things like that

and and focus on them when when you when

you see them and you correct

your prior assumptions going from paypal

what what are some of the the other

problems that

are likely to most affect the future of

humanity

it really wasn’t from the perspective of

what what’s the rancor

best way to to make money um which which

is which is okay but

what i think is going to most affect the

future humanity so i think

the biggest terrestrial problem we’ve

got is uh sustainable energy

but the production and consumption of

energy in a sustainable manner

if we don’t solve that this the sensory

this is the century we’re

we’re in deep trouble and then the the

other one being

the extension of life beyond earth to

make life multi-planetary

so that’s the basis for that the latter

is the basis force

for spacex and the former is the basis

for tesla

and solar city and when i started spacex

it actually initially i thought

that well there’s no way one could

possibly start a rocket company

i wasn’t that crazy but but then i

thought well what is a way to

increase nasa’s budget that was actually

my initial goal

so i i thought well if we can do a

low-cost mission to mars something

called mars oasis

which would land seeds with with

dehydrate wood with seasoned dehydrated

nutrient gel

and you hydrate them upon landing and

then you’d have this great

sort of money shot of green plants on a

red background

and the public tends to respond to

precedents and superlatives and this

would be the first life on mars the

furthest that life’s ever traveled as

far as we

know and and i thought well that that

would get people really excited

and and and therefore increase at nasa’s

budget so

so obviously the financial outcome from

such a mission would probably be zero

so anything better than that was on the

upside

so i actually went to i went to russia

three times to look at buying

a refurbished icbm because that that was

the best deal

and uh i can tell you it was very weird

going there in 2000

late 2001 2002 going to the russian

rocket forces and saying i’d like to buy

two of your biggest rockets but you can

keep the nuke

that’s a lot more um

and uh that was 10 years ago i guess so

they thought i was crazy but but i did

have money so that was

that was okay after making several trips

to to russia

i came to the conclusion that that

actually uh

my initial impression was was wrong

about

because my initial thought was well that

that there’s not enough

will to explore and expand beyond earth

and have a mars base and that kind of

thing

but i can’t conclusion that that was

wrong um

in fact there’s plenty of will

particularly in the united states

uh because the united states is a nation

of explorers of people who came here

from

from other parts of the world and i

think the united states really

a distillation of the spirit of human

exploration

but but if people think it’s impossible

then or it’s going to

completely break the federal budget then

they’re not going to do it

so after my third trip i said okay

what we really need to do here is try to

solve the space transport problem

and uh and started spacex and

this this was against the advice of

pretty much everyone i talked to

but one friend made me sit down and

watch a bunch of videos of rockets

blowing

up let me tell you he wasn’t far wrong i

think it was it was tough going there in

the beginning

because i’d never built anything

physical i mean i built like

little model rockets as a kid and that

kind of thing but um

i never had a company that built

anything physical so i figured out how

to how to do all these things and

and bring together the right team of

people and so we

we did all that and and then failed

three times um

it it was tough tough going because

thing about

a rocket is that the the passing grade

is a hundred percent

and uh you you don’t get to

actually test the rocket in the real

environment that it’s going to be in

so i think so the best analogy for for

rocket engineering is

it’s like if you want to create a really

complicated bit of software

um you could you can’t run the software

as an integrated hole and you can’t run

it on the computer it’s intended to run

on

but the first time you put it all

together and write it on that computer

it must run with no bugs

that’s that’s basically the essence of

it so so

we missed the mark there that the first

launch i was picking up bits of rocket

near the

the launch site was a bit sad and uh

but we we learned with with each

successive flight

and and were able to with uh eventually

with the fourth flight

in 2008 uh reached orbit and that was

also with the last bit of money that we

had thank goodness

uh that that happened i think the saying

is fourth time’s the charm

so that’s we got the falcon one two

orbit and then

uh began to scale that up to to the

falcon 9 which is um

about an order of magnitude more a

thrust it’s

around a million pounds of thrust and

we managed to get that to orbit and then

uh developed a dragon spacecraft

which um recently was able to dock and

return to earth from the space station

that was a white knuckled event so yeah

it’s a huge relief still can’t quite

believe it actually happened

but but there’s a lot more that that

that must happen beyond this

in order for humanity to be to become a

space

and ultimately a multi-planet species

and that’s something i think it’s it’s

it’s vitally important and and i hope

that that some of you will will

participate in in that either at spacex

or at other companies

because it’s just really one of the the

most important things for the

preservation and extension of

consciousness

it’s worth noting as i’m sure people are

aware that

the earth has been around for four

billion years

and civilization at least in terms of

having writing has been around for 10

000 years

and that’s being generous and i think

i’m actually i’m actually fairly

optimistic about the future of earth so

i don’t want to

i don’t want to sort of people to have

the wrong impression that i think we’re

all about to die

i think things will most likely be okay

for a lot for a long time on earth

but not not for sure but most likely but

but even if it’s if it’s sort of 99

likely one a one percent chance is still

it’s still worth

spending a fair bit of effort to ensure

that we have we’ve backed up the

biosphere you know planetary redundancy

if you will

and so i think i think it’s really

really quite important and

in order to do that there’s a

breakthrough that needs to occur which

is to create a rapidly and completely

reusable transport system to mars

which which is one of those things

that’s right on the borderline of

of impossible but that that’s sort of

the the thing that we’re

we’re going to try to achieve there with

with with spacex

and then on the on the on the tesla

front uh

the goal with tesla was really to try to

show that what electric cars

can do because people had the wrong

impression we had to change

people’s perception of an electric

vehicle because they used to think of it

as something that was

slow and ugly and had low range kind of

like a golf cart

and and so that’s why we created the

tesla roadster to show that you can be

fast

attractive and and long range and it’s

amazing how

even though you can show that something

works on paper uh you know

and the calculations are very clear

until you actually have the physical

object and they can they can drive it it

doesn’t really sink in for people

um and so that that i think is is

something worth noting if if you’re

going to create a company the first

thing you should try to do is create a

working prototype

um you know everything everything looks

great on powerpoint

um but if you have if you have an actual

demonstration article

even if it’s in primitive form that’s

much much more effective for convincing

people

i i think the the the overarching point

i want to make is

that um you guys are the magicians of

the 21st century

don’t like anything hold you back

imagination is the limit

and go out there and create some magic

thank you

you