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