"We need to be a multiplanetary species,"?that?s the ambitious way Elon Musk begins his talks. And it?s the kind of attitude that won Musk the 2012 PM Breakthrough Leadership Award. Today he came by PM?s home base to talk about his twin ventures, SpaceX and Tesla Motors.
In May, his company SpaceX successfully launched a 227-foot tall rocket from Cape Canaveral and berthed its Dragon capsule with the International Space Station.
Testing beforehand was extensive. "Something terrible could happen to the Space Station, people inside could be hurt, so we ran a million simulations, so did NASA." In the end the historic docking went off with only a small hitch. The onboard computer wasn?t sure the lock was secure, so Musk and the SpaceX team on the ground ran diagnostics and fixed the glitch.
How would the Dragon capsules translate to manned space flight? "It?s an autonomous vehicle," Musk says. "It pauses at intervals to ask permission to continue, but it?s doing everything itself." If the Dragon were adapted to carry astronauts, little would need to change, other than the increased payload and an added emergency escape system with higher safety margins.
He?s also planned upgrades to the landing system. Version 1, which is on the Dragon capsules now, uses parachutes to achieve a water landing. Version 1.5, which he hopes to achieve by next year, would use parachutes to bring down the Dragon for a soft touchdown on land. Version 2 will use the escape thrusters to decelerate towards the earth, like a moon landing.
While SpaceX gets plenty of publicity for its attempt to take over the mission of carrying NASA astronauts, Musk was quick to emphasize the company?s business beyond those governments contracts. Of the 46 missions SpaceX has contracted, only 12 are for NASA. The rest are commercial. "I don?t think people realize that," Musk says.
However, he says, SpaceX isn?t just in it to make money on those contracts. Ultimately, Musk envisions a self-sustaining civilization on Mars?thus his remark about becoming an interplanetary species. That way, in case the worst happens and Earth is obliterated or used up, "the light of consciousness is not extinguished." But his vision requires tens of thousands or even millions of people on the red planet. "We?d need really big rockets launching a lot," he says
Musk?s other big current venture, Tesla Motors, isn?t quite making money yet. But Musk said today that its newest vehicle, the Model S sedan, will be making money within a month or so. PM already awarded the first model of Tesla, the Roadster, a Breakthrough award. Musk brought a Model S sedan and one of the new Model X SUV prototypes to the awards today.
Why did he start Tesla? "People were operating under the illusion that an electric car needs to be aesthetically challenged, low performance, low range, but these things don?t have to be true," Musk says. When people still didn?t believe him, he went ahead and did it himself. "So we decided to just make a car?that?s harder to ignore."
Musk?s newest innovation on the car front is the supercharger?he wants to build a nationwide network of ultra-fast chargers. The supercharger is free when you buy a Model S. "You can charge your car with the same level of convenience as putting gas in it. Charge for an hour, drive for 6 hours," he says. "The tagline is: Drive anywhere for free on pure sunlight forever."
One thing we learned today: While Musk loves electric cars and spaceflight, there?s one thing he hates: space solar power. "You?d have to convert photon to electron to photon back to electron. What?s the conversion rate?" he says, getting riled up for the first time during his talk. "Stab that bloody thing in the heart!"
He doesn?t react well to bad ideas. Hey, everyone?s got a pet peeve.
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