So what I was what I'm going to go through to tonight is the
overall overall sort of path to making life multiplanetary.
So we're doing a lot of good things at space XI mean Starlink
is incredible providing connectivity throughout the
world and also you know paying for a lot of what we're doing
here and Falcon 9 is the the primary lift launch vehicle for
for earth just doing more non SpaceX launches than anything
else And but Starship is what is well well Starship is Starship
is the first design of a rocket that is actually capable of
making life multi planetary where success is one of the
possible outcomes no rocket before this has had the
potential to extend life to another planet and and I'll I'll
sort of wax esoteric here for a minute because this this may
sound sort of unusual but when you think about the question of
where are the aliens which I get asked a lot this is like the
Fermi paradox where are the aliens And I've not seen any
evidence that there are aliens on earth A lot of people think
there are aliens on earth and I'm like great I'd like to meet
one you know for a while there when I was getting my green card
and everything it said alien registration card.
I'm like, OK, but this this question of where the aliens, I
think a very profound one, because I'm aware of no evidence
of aliens whatsoever, which means that I think we're
probably alone. And if you look at the history
of Earth, like how long has Earth been around?
If, assuming that physics is correct, the universe is about
13.8 billion years old. Earth is about four and a half
billion years old. When you think about the how how
old is civilization? I think the the right measuring
point for civilization in my view or or a a good measuring
point would be the advent of writing.
So the first writing is generally considered to be the
ancient Sumerians. Where are they now?
They died out but the about 5500 years ago was archaic pre pre
cuneiform. In fact I suggest it's like an
interesting rabbit hole to read about the history of writing.
So if you consider say like OK, civilization, I think if you
don't have writing you kind of need writing for civilization.
So so there's only been around for like a little over 5000
years out of four and a half billion years that Earth has
been around and the 13.8 billion years of the universe.
So we're all of human. Civilization is basically the
blink of an eye. It's like a just a fraction.
It's almost it's nothing. And I think that that probably
means that that consciousness is incredibly rare and perhaps
fleeting. It may not last for very long
because otherwise we would have, I think we would have seen
aliens, some kind of sign of aliens.
I think the most likely explanation is that
consciousness is is so rare that that you and and does that
consciousness actually extend to another planet.
Does that consciousness extend to another star system?
I mean ultimately if we're able to become a a space bearing
civilization, a multi planet species and ultimately a a multi
stellar species and go out there and explore all these star
systems. I think we may find that there
are many long dead one planet civilizations.
We and as you've heard me say before we don't want to be one
of those lame one planet civilizations.
I mean we want to be a multi planet civilization, ultimately
be a multi stellar civil civilization, be out there among
the stars, like you know make science fiction, not fiction
forever can make Star Star Trek real.
That's so that's why I think that there's there's there's a
high urgency to making life multi planetary because this is
the first time in Earth's 4 1/2 billion year history that it's
been possible to extend life or consciousness beyond Earth.
And we've got to do that while civilization is still strong.
So that's that's that's the overarching goal of the company
is extend life sustainably to another planet.
Mars is the only option really and to do so ideally before
World War Three or some kind of bad thing.
The the key thing is that we we need enough people and enough
tonnage on Mars such that Mars can survive and continue
consciousness. Even if something would happen
to Earth now I still think well obviously I'm not talking about
abandoning Earth or anything like that and we want Earth to
be as good as possible for as long as possible but there are
certain things that may be outside of our control so.
So we want to just get get to Mars to be a self-sustaining
civilization as quickly as possible.
And I I think this can be done in around 20 years.
So. And this, this, you know, giant
Starship factory that we're building is obviously key to
that. And the launch sites that we're
building here and at and at the Cape and elsewhere in the future
will be key to that. I mean, it looks like CGI.
I mean it's hard to believe that that is unfiltered video.
That's just the actual what the camera saw, no filters, no
nothing. That's actually what the camera
saw, which is insane. So, you know, you're doing
incredible work that I think almost no one thought would
actually happen. So it's well that that this,
this strange spot, this we're basically on a sand spit by the
Rio Grande near the beach and that is actually the gateway to
Mars has to be like if if this was a movie, you'd be like, no
way, come on too, too implausible.
But it's it's real and that's due to you guys.
Congratulations, this is a side by side of the three flights.
You can see how thrust away it improved significantly.
So we've we've made tremendous progress from Flight 1 to Flight
2 to Flight 3, and we got Flight 4 coming up in about a month or
so. And with Flight 4 we should if
we get you know if fate smiles upon us, we'll get through the
high heating regime and smash into the ocean at a controlled
spot and then to hopefully be able to also do this with the
with the booster land on a essentially a virtual tower.
If if the landing on the virtual tower with the booster works
then we will actually try with flight 5 to come back and land
on the tower. No, that's very much a success
oriented schedule but but it is in the realm of possibility.
But I would say like the the odds of us actually being able
to catch the the booster with the Mechazilla arms this year.
I think I don't. I don't want to tempt fate,
knock on wood. But I think the odds of actually
catching the booster with the tower probably like 80 or 90%
this year, which is insane. Like, actually, when we first
talked about it, it sounded so batshit crazy.
We're going to have a giant. It's like literally bigger than
Megazilla from this movie that you'd catch like the, like the
the biggest flying object ever made with mechanical arms out of
the air, then we're going to do it.
So yeah it may not work you know necessarily the first time but
it you know it will work. So really Starship is is really
the key to making life multi planetary and preserving the
lighter light of consciousness that's what it's all about and
it it may end up being the most important thing that that we
ever do. I think that you're you're like
the light of consciousness is like this this tiny candle in a
in a vast darkness and that candle has only been lit for a
very short time and it could easily go out.
So we obviously want to preserve that that the tiny light of
consciousness on Earth but extend it to Mars and then
ultimately to the rest of the solar system and then start
going to others other star systems.
And I mean I won't be allowed to see that but unless I'm like
frozen or something like that But but I, you know I think at
some point we will discover many civilizations that maybe lasted
a million years or 2 million years or 10 million years but a
civilization that lasted a million years which would be you
know vastly longer than our civilization has lasted.
I mean that that's only the the 3rd decimal point so like 13.8
billion something something years if your if your
civilization lasts a million years it's only goes that third
digit pass the decimal point goes up one and that's a million
years. So I mean I'd say like we should
think like how do we make civilization last a million
years. You know, we often get caught up
in like the day-to-day things, but we want them to have at
least a million year civilization, if not 100 million
year civilization or a billion year civilization.
So absolutely crucial to that goal is becoming a multi planet
species. People often people often ask
why, Why Mars? Well there's not a lot of
options frankly. So Venus is a super heated high
pressure acid bath. So not, not what you don't don't
want to go to Venus, but and then the moon is close, but it
it it doesn't have an atmosphere, the gravity is only
one sixth out of Earth and it's missing a lot of key resources.
So also the the the the insulating value of the moon
relative to Mars is much less. So if there's something that
takes out of like let's say there's a World War three global
thermonuclear warfare, they'll probably throw a few nukes at at
the moon. So whereas it's way harder to to
to shoot Mars with with in which Mars would see it coming and
probably have some time to stop the inbound missiles.
So that the the the the value of Mars the the the difficult or
the distance and time required to get to Mars actually has an
insulating benefit to the for the continuation of
consciousness. Even if there's something
terrible happens on Earth. And and then once we go beyond
Mars there's there's some asteroids like Cerus, some of
the moons of Jupiter Starship would ultimately be capable of
of reaching anywhere in the solar system and then we'll need
something a new level of technology to go to other star
systems. But if we can't at least get to
Mars then other star systems are hopeless.
I mean it's a fixer upper of a planet, OK, needs some work, but
it is it's it's really the only option for becoming
multiplanetary and long term. We can warm up Mars and we can
there. There would be, we can densify
the atmosphere and there'd be a liquid ocean on about 40% of the
surface, so we could make it an Earth like planet long term.
So let's see we've we've we've learned a tremendous amount from
when we started the company and and at first could we're unable
to get even a small rocket to orbit to now where we've done
three 327 successful launches almost 300 landings in fact you
know give it a few weeks and we'll have done 3300 landings, 2
161 reflights. So many times I was told that
that reusability was was impossible and even if you did
it there would there would be no point because nobody would want
to fly rockets that much. But now we routinely fly and
land the booster and we recover the fairing.
So we've learnt A tremendous amount from the Falcon program
that is then feeding into the Starship program and Falcon and
Starlink are what obviously keep keep the company going.
So I just like to give a hand to the the Falcon team for the
incredible work that they're doing.
And then Dragon Wow 45 launches of Dragon it's amazing and we've
flown flown 50 crew members to orbit 46 to the space station
and everyone has come home safely which is the most
important thing. So you know incredible work by
the Dragon team. So skim a hand that was couldn't
ask for a better outcome. And Starlink actually if you
look at the sort of the the plot of the all the satellites going
around Earth, this look kind of scary actually.
But there's there's 6000 satellites in operation, over
6010 thousand lasers, almost 3 million customers.
So Starlink is doing a lot of good for people, for people on
Earth who don't either don't have Internet access or it's
very expensive. And so it's doing doing a lot of
good you know on Earth. Because when I say we want to be
a multi planet species I'm you know we obviously want Earth to
be as good as possible and Mars to be to be great.
So Starlink is is doing a tremendous amount of of that and
we're learning a lot by having this big fleet.
Starlink will also be very important for high bandwidth
communication to and on Mars. So from a from a tiny rocket to
Falcon 9 which is a much bigger rocket, many iterations of
Falcon Nine and then Falcon Heavy and then Starship and
Starship will get bigger. Obviously, you know this, this
year if if things go according to plan, SpaceX will do probably
90% of all Earth mass to orbit, and then China will do about 6%
and the rest of the world will do about 4%, which is pretty
wild. And then once Starship is
flying, we'll be doing over 99% of all Earth mass to orbit,
which you kind of have to do in order to build a city on Mars.
And I should say we'll also build a a a lunar base as well.
So it might as well along the way.
So you can see that actually Falcon One was really, yeah,
half a ton to orbit welling grief, slight error on the slide
there. So Falcon One was about half a
ton to orbit. Falcon 9, depending on in
expendable mode, I would do probably 25 tons to orbit.
And yeah, Falcon Heavy probably 70.
Anyway, these these are just obviously rapidly increasing
numbers and Starship in its final configuration or its final
form will probably do well over 200 tons to orbit with full
reusability and be able to fly, you know, multiple times a day.
So. So I'm pretty confident we will
achieve that this year like I said probably 8090% this year
and and then there's recovering and reusing the ship, the ship
will take longer. So the ship I think we will want
to have at least two consecutive successes of a given design
that's land at a specific point in the ocean or smashed into a
specific point in the ocean before we try to bring it back
to the launch site because we do, we do not want to rain
debris over Mexico or the US. So my guess is probably next
year is when we will be able to reuse Starship.
But I think it's it's I think it's highly likely that this
year we will bring Starship to or the ship, the ship side of it
to a controlled point in the ocean and have it basically land
on a virtual virtual tower in somewhere in the in the Pacific
or the Indian Ocean. And we've already proven that we
can do the final phase of landing.
So coming from sort of a belly first position to rotating the
ship and landing vertically we proved that right here.
So what we just really we just need to be confident that we can
get through the high heating portion of the of of RE entry.
Reliably and then we'll bring the ship back and it will land
on the tower as well. And we're going to build more
mekazillas. So there's going to be two
launch towers here and and I think and then two launch towers
at the Cape as well. So we'll have four launch towers
for 4 Starship probably you know by sometime next year.
So we're aiming to have the first Cape launch tower and
launch system operational around the middle of next year and
that'll be important for launch Azimuths that are sort of fly
over land. So I think what what we should
probably expect is that we, we do the kind of the development
launches here, test anything new here, build the, build the
Rockets and then play most of the operational launches would
be from the Cape. So this year, we're planning to
build another roughly 6 boosters and ships and and that
production rate will increase a lot next year.
That's why we're building the the giant factory.
Ultimately, we'll need to build a lot more ships than boosters,
especially for Mars, because it's the you'll actually want to
use the ship. Take apart the ship and use it
for raw materials on Mars, because the ship materials will
be so valuable you most of the ships you wouldn't want to bring
back, you'd want to just use them for raw materials.
Eventually we will want to bring ships back and I think we want
to give people the option of coming back because they're more
likely to want to go if there's some option of coming back.
But I think most of most of the people that go to Mars will
probably never come back to Earth.
So and we'll need to ramp production to pretty high
numbers like I think ultimately probably a ship every like
multiple ships per day basically.
And then next year we're aiming to demonstrate ship to ship
propellant transfer. It's it's hard to make this not
look a little bit naughty because it's two ships
connecting and doing a fluid transfer just what it is.
But it is this is actually a very important this is a very
important step on going to Mars because you need to put to get
the ship to orbit and then do orbital refilling kind of like
aerial refuelling and and that's that's really you'll need about
about 5 or 6 refilling missions for everyone mission that goes
to Mars. So roughly 5 to 1.
So and and this will also be very important for the Artemis
program for the to to get back to the moon.
So we want to have a ship that is, well, it's going to be a
specialized ship for the moon like this.
So the moon obviously there's no Mechazola, so we need landing
legs and you don't need a heat shield and you don't need flaps
because there's no atmosphere. So the moon ship would be
specialized and now ultimately I think we we want to build a moon
base, moon base alpha and have a permanently occupied base on the
moon like that would be super exciting.
And so you'd have a bunch of ships that are specialised for
going to and from the moon, but they never come back to, they
never land back on Earth. They just would would dock with
propellant, propellant tankers to get overload refilling.
So in terms of performance, we've made dramatic progress on
on every level for Starship. It's remarkable that we can see
the Raptor engines and how how it, how it has evolved from you
know optimistically 185 tons to 280.
And I think ultimately we'll probably the booster engines
will will aim to get the booster engines over 330 tonnes of
thrust which would mean 10,000 tonnes of total thrust at lift
off. So and then the Raptor 3 also
will not need a heat shield. So Raptor 3 looks looks very
simple and it is actually simplified in a lot of ways, but
a lot of the complexity is hidden because we have integral
cooling channels in in many parts of the engine that that
don't exist in Raptor 2. So in order to not have a heat
shield it has to be very resilient, but that it is
actually what Raptor 3 would look like.
Looks like Raptor 3 looks like it's missing a bunch of parts,
but actually those parts have either been deleted or they've
been integrated into the system and like I said with integral
cooling channels and where where you need secondary plumbing, the
secondary plumbing has also been integrated into the pump and
into the the chamber jacket. And yeah, so it's much simpler.
Well it's it's it's yeah it's actually extremely difficult to
build Raptor 3 but but it will be easy to integrate and will
have higher performance and lower total mass and be more
reliable. So
well that can go on for a while. So I I find it interesting to
look at the if you look at the the flame tail on Starship and
how long it is, it's a it's a very long flame tail which is
due to the fact that the the the chamber pressure well it's it's
just outputting a lot more yeah a lot more gas at a higher
velocity. But I think the flame tail is
like maybe 1000 feet long. It's like more than twice the
length of the rocket and that will actually get as as we
increase the thrust that will get longer.
So yeah and inevitably the rocket grows in height.
So Starship 2 we're aiming for like I currently flight 3 would
be around 40 or 50 tons to orbit.
So the current design, Starship 2 will be over 100 tons and then
Starship 3 will be over 200 tons.
And yeah, it's going from around 7000 tons thrust to over 8000.
But I I think we'll we'll we'll end up ultimately with more than
three, more than 10,000 tons of thrust, probably 7 or 8000 tons
of lift off mass and at least 10 meters taller.
We'll see. Tends to grow, Yeah, exactly.
So it probably grows a bit more than that, even really.
So if you look at Falcon Nine, it's we're not going to do the
length to diameter of Falcon Nine.
That would be crazy. But Falcon 9 is a very long
rocket, and so I suspect it'll probably get a bit longer than
this. But at 200 tons per flight,
fully reusable, that is, that is pretty incredible.
And yeah, this will be on the order of 500 feet tall.
And then we're this, this, there's thousands of design
improvements here. So I mean, I think maybe the
most, one of the most profound things is Starship 3 will cost
less per flight than Falcon one. So that's the difference between
if you've got a fully reusable rocket or an expendable rocket.
The fully reusable rocket with low cost propellant and
autogenous pressurization actually costs less than a a
tiny expendable rocket. So and it'll do like I said,
Falcon one is about half a ton to orbit.
The Starship 3 will be 400 times more payload for less than the
cost of a Falcon one. Ultimately, I think we might be
able to get the cost per flight to Earth orbit down around
$2,000,000 or $3,000,000. So these are sort of unthinkable
numbers from the, you know, nobody ever thought this was
possible, but we're not breaking any physics to achieve this.
So this is within the without breaking physics, we can do
this. So the Mars missions are two
years apart or 26 months. And if you look closely at the
Starlink router, you see the the home and transfer from Earth
orbit to Mars orbit. And that's basically to say to
people, the Starlink system that you're buying is helping get
humanity to Mars. I think it's pretty cool.
So roughly every two years, thousands of ships would depart
from Earth to Mars. It would look like Battlestar
Galactica, but in a good way, you know, hopefully without
being chased by the Cylons. But it would be an incredible
thing to see these thousands of ships departing every every 26
months. For Mars.
What this diagram is basically saying is that for getting to
Mars, we would essentially create a kind of a propellant
depot ship. The propellant depot would look
more like a hot dog than like a spear, surely just makes a long
ship with a lot of insulation, and we'd pull that ship up and
then shortly before or as as they're going to Mars, the ships
would take off with, I don't know, a couple 100 tons of
payload from Earth reach orbit with very almost no propellant.
And then get refilled by the tanker and then go to Mars and
and land go all the way to Mars with over 200 tonnes of useful
payload. Then on Mars at in the beginning
we would I think we would simply reuse the ship materials so most
of the ships wouldn't come back but then over time you'd want to
bring the ships back so you could reuse them and and for
that we would need to create methane chapter 4 and oxygen O2
on Mars which you can do with H2O and CO2.
So the atmosphere is CO2 and there's plenty of water ice H2O
and so it's it's kind of like tailor made for well actually
the reason we have methane oxygen system is because you can
make methane and oxygen on Mars fairly easily.
Like not just not a total walk in the park but the ingredients
are readily available to create methane and oxygen on Mars.
So so you build a propellant depot and and bring the ships
back and build out as quickly as possible a self-sustaining
civilization on Mars. And we want to get the we want
to get the cost of going to Mars such that almost anyone could
afford it. So like if somebody were to just
work hard on Earth save up and that they'd be able to go to
Mars. So it's like anyone ideally
almost anyone could go to Mars and I think you'll see a lot of
governments also sponsor people and ultimately we'll we'll want
to get. So there's kind of an optimal
landing zone on Mars where you have resources so you've got
access to water or frozen water that you're not too close to the
poles so you can use solar power.
It would it would be nice to use nuclear.
I don't know if we'll get get the approval, but nuclear would
be very handy on Mars because you can use the heat and you can
generate electricity. So and then you kind of want to
be about two kilometers below sea level.
So if Mars did have an ocean, you'd actually be quite deep in
the ocean at least at 1st. And yeah, so let's see, that's
Mars kind of kind of want to land about halfway between the
the pole and the equator in a kind of a deep area of Mars.
If if you the deeper it is, the more you can use the atmosphere
to break and the atmospheric density is higher.
So these are all the things that would have to be developed.
So as people ask me, are we developing these things?
I'm like not yet because this is the cart and we need the horse
first, so the rocket is the horse and then this is the cart.
But ultimately we'll need all these things, lesser power
generation, mining in general, ice mining, propellant
production, long duration life support construct, a lot of
construction and and the global communication.
So I think this would open up a lot of opportunities for
entrepreneurs that want to create any create things on
Mars, whether that is a propellant.
Well, I think we'll have to do the propellant depot.
But whether it's like iron ore refining or a pizza joint or a
bar, you know, there'll be an opportunity to do all the things
that we like on Earth, on Mars, like a Mars bar would be, yeah,
great. So I think I think probably the
a rough order of magnitude guess for what you need, how many
people do you need for a self-sustaining city is about a
million and several million tonnes of of cargo.
So yeah, which we can do and we can do this in 20 years.
But like I said, in order for it to be self-sustaining, you
actually need the entire base of industry.
You can't be missing any element.
So that's that's really what's going to take take a while is do
you have everything you need to survive on Mars At that point
the future of consciousness is assured.
So if you do 10 launches a day at 200 tons per launch, million
and a half tons to Leo per opportunity, you you net that
out to a quarter million tons to Mars per opportunity.
So that means you can get to 1,000,000 tons in about 8 years
since the opportunities of two years apart.
So I think it's pretty doable. And I'm like, we're actually
going to do this, Are we? You know, we are actually going
to do it, which is insane to think so.
Millions of tons to Mars. Yeah, Wild.
And we're going to build a lot of vehicles.
So yeah, several thousand vehicles per year is what we'll
need, which really quite, quite doable actually.
It sounds like a lot, but it's very doable.
Yeah. If you compare it to sort of car
production, it's a small number. Of course this is much bigger
than a car. But even if you look at the
total tonnage, the it's still very, it's very doable to both
several thousand vehicles a year.
So that's what we need to do and we're going to do it.
And then long term, we'll probably have some offshore
launch sites. They can just imagine all of
these starships waiting in orbit for the planets to align and
then this gigantic Starfleet taking off from Mars.
All right, So we're actually going to do this.
And when you think about where this started out, this was
literally just a like a, a sandbar where we're standing
right now. And now look at what we've done
here and that we've gotten three flights off of Starship and
we've got a 4th, 4th 1 coming up and we're building a gigantic
factory that will be able to output a massive number of
ships. So.
It's surreal, but it but it's real.
So we're actually going to do this.
We're going to take humanity to Mars and I'm confident you can
do it.