Welcome back to the show. This is the Elon Musk podcast
where we talk about SpaceX, NASA.
We also talk about Tesla, Neurolink, Boring Company X,
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So anyway, that's out of the way.
Let's talk about some things that Elon has been doing
recently, some things that are happening down at Star Base
first. And then we're going to move
into some Tesla stuff. And we're also going to move
into some other kind of like NASA stuff that's been going on
with Jared Isaacman, who's a friend of Elon and who has also
bought private space flights from Elon's company, SpaceX in
the past. And he's also the first private
astronaut to do an Eva. If you're not familiar what an
Eva is, it's when you go outside of your spaceship.
That's incredible, especially for a private company or a
private person. Jerry is a billionaire, so he
buys these flights off Elon and off SpaceX because he just wants
to do cool adventure stuff and he wants to make his mark so and
also help people get excited about Space Flight.
But there are a few things that you know, that's been happening
in Jared's life lately that are huge, huge things.
One of them is that Donald Trump named him as the the next head
of NASA, which is wild. Think about it.
He's a 30 something. I think he's 40.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but he's around 40 ish
years old to be the head of NASA.
He's also an astronaut. Like that's cool.
Like that's the kind of leadership that NASA needs.
Not a bureaucrat, not a an ex governor or a mayor or anything
like that or a politician. NASA needs somebody in charge
that is an explorer and that's what Jared is.
So moving forward, if Jared does accept the position, if he gets
the position, which he will like, there's no reason why he
won't because he's what I was saying before, he's an
astronaut. He's also a fighter pilot jet.
He also runs a a company that sells like drones that US
fighter pilots fight against. It's like the training drones
that the US fighter pilots use. So he owns a company that builds
those, promotes the, produces those.
And yeah, of course he's a shoe in for this NASA head position.
So going forward I think he's going to do some really cool
stuff. Jared also said something to the
effect of, and I have to pull this up real quick because I
forgot what he said, but he said something about how NASA isn't
going to be a just sending astronauts to the space station
anymore or like low Earth orbit stuff in the like satellites and
things like that. But he said it's going to be a
new age of experimentation and also Space Flight
experimentation. So check this out.
This is the article from Ars Technica written by Stephen
Clark. And NASA's boss to NASA's boss
to be proclaims we're about to enter an age of experimentation.
You can get into a rhythm of using all of these providers to
get things up very quickly. So what he's talking about is
Elon Musk's SpaceX Blue origin Ula Boeing.
And NASA has been doing this for a long time.
NASA has been using outside providers for a very long time,
since their inception, to build the things that they need in
order to do the tasks that they want to do.
So if they want to go to Mars, NASA doesn't build that rocket.
NASA has a private contractor build that rocket for them, and
then they also have the private contractor build the Lander for
Mars to their specs. So NASA goes to a private
provider and says, hey, we need this Rover to do these certain
tasks, whatever those tasks are. It was mostly more than likely
science based tasks. I hope for sending it to Mars
like a Rover, they'll tell that to Rocketdyne or Boeing or ula
or whoever is going to build this thing.
And that's what they've always done.
They've always done this since since the beginning.
Space Shuttle. NASA didn't build that.
A contractor built that. Bunch of contractors built the
space shuttle. Same with the the Atlas rockets,
the Apollo program, everything. Like NASA didn't build it.
Other companies built that. So what they're doing now is
they're taking these privately funded companies and these are
companies for profit now. NASA used to do it in old way,
and the old way was you give them $5 billion to start the
project, right? And if they don't get the
project done with five billion, you give them another 500
million or something like that so they can finish the project.
They're like whoops, whoopsies, we still can't finish it.
So they give them another 500 billion or 500 million.
So you get an extra billion dollars out of it.
Out of the $5 billion contract, you get 6, seven, $8 billion.
That's not what they do now. They do completely different.
So what they do now is the provider, say SpaceX knows what
NASA needs. They need people to go to the
International Space Station, so they'll bid on it, and NASA will
pick the lowest bidder that can do the job properly.
That's not dangerous. So now they're going to use all
of these companies, all these different companies that I
mentioned before, but Jared mentioned this.
You talked of commercial investment, thriving space
economy, all these things that NASA was doing before.
They're going to do it at a much bigger scale because all these
companies, they don't just want to make money.
They want to make continuous profit because if they continue
doing what they used to do, which is take that money and
run, you know, they get the job done.
But there's like, I can't get it done with five billion.
I need 6, seven, $8 billion. They're not going to be able to
do that. From now on.
NASA is leaving some commercial expertise on the field, in this
case on the ground. And so here we go.
Space Power Conference in Orlando says.
I love all about commercial space industry right now, Isaac
Man said in a discussion at the Space Force Association Space
Power Conference in Orlando. They're all generally doing the
same thing, which is putting a lot of their own dollars on the
line because they believe in the future that it holds.
So all of these things, all these things that these
companies are building, whether it's rockets or booster stages
or kick stages, which is a, it's sort of like if you have a
rocket and then you have like the upper stage of the rocket
that goes to space, but that upper stage can't make it to a
certain trajectory or a certain orbit.
Kick stage goes, kicks it off to where it needs to go.
So builds kick stage, ground equipment, anything that NASA
needs, these people will be building it.
And they're putting their own money on the line because they
have to make a profit. He says it's not just a launch.
More Serbs are pursuing satellite manufacturing Earth
return vehicles, which is wild to think about.
An earth return vehicle instead of the ship that sends people to
the space station. An earth return vehicle.
A ship that could bring people back to Earth from the space
station. Build one of those.
Cool. So once the first ship docks
with it, they can just leave if they want to.
But rockets have to be one of the most mature segments of the
commercial industry. Yeah, Blue Origin is putting a
ton of their own money online. I'd love everything Blue Rock
Rocket Lab did as kind of another small, scrappy startup
that's doing great things. And for sure, SpaceX and their
approach with a fully reusable first and second stage, which is
the Starship. Yeah, pretty awesome stuff.
Starship is huge. I spent ten months, 1012 months
covering it at Starbase. I was on the ground reporting
live every single day from the side of the road filming
Starbase. And I, I'll tell you what, man,
that thing is 400 feet tall. You don't realize how big it is
until you actually get there. It's gigantic.
But he was talking about how SpaceX is going to change the
like how well these companies are going to change the
industry. Blue Origin, which is Jeff
Bezos's company, putting their own money on the line, billions
of dollars just to build a giant rocket that's similar to
Spacex's Starship, which can take massive payloads to space.
Things that are like the size of the space shuttle or like send a
bust of space. You know, think about think
about that like how big could you what kind of things would
you send into space if you could just think the dream that up.
And that's what they're trying to do, whether it's through a
single launch or multiple launches.
That's what blue ordinance trying to do.
Isaac Mitt 2 is a wealthy entrepreneur.
According to Forbes, $1.9 billion wild right Polaris
program, two more missions to fly with SpaceX of the players
program is what I was talking about before where they send
people to space. The first one was the capsule.
The Dragon had a giant window at the top of it, which hasn't been
done before. The second one he did an Eva
where he walked outside of the of the ship kind of just like
pop the top off. It was in a vacuum.
So like everybody inside the the capsule was also in the vacuum
of space, climbed out of it, looked around, a little bit
cool. And then he went back in.
It was really, really wild. No one's done that before other
than, you know, like a NASA astronaut or Russian astronaut
or something like that. So Jared was the first person to
do that privately. He bought the ticket.
Basically, he bought his own ticket to fly to space.
And then he goes on to say the future of the players program is
a little bit of a question mark right now.
It may wind up on hold for a little bit.
We'll have to see. But overall, it's just I'm just
super passionate about humankind's future among the
stars and what's approaching, because it's going to arrive a
lot quicker than probably many of us think.
What's he talking about? It's going to happen soon,
right? Next 10 years.
Even Starship, Spacex's Starship will be in a place in the next
year or so where they can start taking payloads to low Earth
orbit, maybe make it around the moon in the next few years and
land on the moon it within 3-4 years get to Mars.
Elon wants to get to Mars in five years or so, like send his
giant rocket to Mars with some stuff in it.
I don't know what the stuff's going to be, but it'll probably
be supplies for a later mission or some some science equipment,
we're not sure, but here we go. Shockingly, the government does
do business very differently than the rest of the country,
said Isaac Men. And that's true.
Cost reductions enabled by using reusable rockets will allow us
to experiment in really grand ways.
So basically any of these reusable rockets, they can fly
to space, drop off their cargo and then fly back down to Earth,
refuel, and then fly back up possibly the next 24 hours, 48
hours. So the cost reductions for that
because there's not as much prep work either.
So even though people think a lot of the cost is like the
actual rocket launching, a ton of cost is from the ground
systems, the people working there getting this place
prepped. So in like manufacturing a new
rocket every time is just stupid and silly.
So toss one of those rockets in the ocean.
It's not a good thing, but now if with fully reusable rockets
like the Falcon 9 and now the Starship and Boeing Super Heavy
rocket as well, it's going to be a completely different game
changing flight pattern for all these rockets.
So yeah, Jared is going to be the head of going to be the head
of NASA, hopefully in the next administration.
He's going to go for it. I mean, he's going to do it.
It's like, of course he's going to get it, but there's there's
no doubt that he's going to take that position and run with it
because he is absolutely like he's perfect for that job.
I don't see why he wouldn't be perfect for that job.
Also, if you're here right now live, leave a comment.
I want to know or leave a leave a chat.
I'd like to know what you think about Jared Isaacman and also,
you know, the next administration, because I think
it's going to be kind of crazy. I think it's going to be wild
what happens with the next iteration of our government and
the next iteration of NASA, because it's, it's an iterative
process. Everything changes all the time
with NASA. So, but it hasn't changed a lot
in a while. So it's, it's going to be a, a
pretty huge change once Jared gets his hands on the reins
there. Another thing, Elon is even
richer. Elon Musk's net worth tops $400
billion, a historic first. Elon Musk, whose wealth has been
turbocharged since president-elect Donald Trump's
win last month, became the first person to reach $400 billion net
worth, Latest milestone for the world's richest individual Elon
has been the richest guy for on and off for a long time, but now
he's $400 billion. Like what he's going to be the
first trillionaire. I, I think he, he or his
successor will be the first trillionaire because all the
automation that he's making with Tesla, SpaceX is a huge one.
But I think Tesla's robots in AI are going to bump it up even
higher. Maybe we'll get up to 700
billion, but that's, that's wild to think about the first
trillionaire. Now, the most recent catalyst
was an insider share sale privately held SpaceX, who
boosts Musk's net worth by roughly $50 billion.
Could you imagine selling off shares of your company and by
the end of the day, you know, or by the end of the the sell time,
you're like, oh, I just made fifty bill.
That's incredible. Like this guy is so wealthy.
It doesn't make any sense. Like $50 billion.
Do you know what that looks like?
I don't. Could you imagine?
I mean, $1,000,000 in like $1.00 bills, that's an, that's an
insane amount of money, insane amount of dollar bills.
But $447 billion, that's wild. Musk's one day wealth jump of
62.8 billion is the largest on record.
Help propel the combined fortune of the world's richest 500
people above $10 trillion. Also, for the first time,
according to the index, the group's net worth are similar in
size to last year's combined gross domestic products of
Germany, Japan and Australia. So these people have 500 people
have more money than Germany, Japan and Australia.
That's wild. Musk added 218 billion to his
net worth since the start of 2024 as well.
That's a nice, nice fact, $218 billion to your net worth.
Of course he doesn't walk around with like $218 billion in his
pocket. It's all mostly stock.
But he, yeah, I just want to share this with you.
Over $400 billion in net worth. I want to share this with you to
show you that Elon isn't just stagnant.
He's continuing to make money, sell off shares and SpaceX, even
if he had like he's always going to have a controlling share,
He's always going to have power at SpaceX.
But if he can continue selling shares, making the money,
because he needs to make that money so he can leverage it so
he can build more Starships, so he can launch more Starlinks, so
the Starlinks can make him more money so we can build more
Starships, so we can launch more star links, then it keeps going.
And then who's going to get launch partners with NASA?
Private industry people will eventually go on Starship too.
So he's selling shares of SpaceX.
So all these things can happen. XAI too.
It mentioned something about XA down here.
Meanwhile, the valuation, the value of his artificial
intelligence startup XAI is more than double to 50 billion since
it last raised money in May. And that's going to XAI is going
to kind of supercharge everything that Elon touches.
So I thought that was an interesting tidbit.
Video cannot play to a network issue.
Whatever I got network. And here's another cool thing
about Tesla cyber truck has gotten approval in China.
So your merit on X? Breaking news.
Tesla Cybertruck has passed the specification declaration of
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and is
expected to enter the Chinese market in the near future.
See why Foxconn on X said that and Sawyer just retweeted it.
Well, re exed it. It's always a weird thing like
just shared it. They shared it on their
timeline, but that's wild cyber trucks out there in the wild.
I see it in the wild all the time.
I drive past it all the time. Like I think it's wild looking
compared to like a regular car. So I could see in China when
they're building up the cyber truck over there, building up
the presence of the cyber truck, like there's going to be some
crazy social presence on it on X and all the other platforms out
there. I'm sure there's going to be a
bunch of YouTube videos, bunch of different shorts and
different Tik Toks about it too. When they see it the first time
because it is a wild thing to see if you haven't seen it in
person, it's like, whoa, I think it's strikingly weird.
It's like, where did this come from?
So one more little tidbit here, another SpaceX thing, and this
is, this is for the future of SpaceX.
I know this is a SpaceX heavy episode, but I wanted to let you
guys know about the cyber truck and Elon's big wealth here.
But Starbase wants to. SpaceX wants Starbase to become
its own little city. So they're about 20 minutes ish
away from Brownsville. It's down this long road that
nobody ever goes down. If you don't go to Starbase,
there's a beach at the end of it, really, really cute little
beach. But really nobody ever goes down
there other than to work at SpaceX or to look at Starbase
and look at this. the Rockets and things you can see like
right on the road, they're right there.
So there's, you know, there's there's some things that this
could help with SpaceX. So here's a little bit of this
Cameron County from Cathy leader is the general manager of
Starbase. To continue growing the
workforce necessary rapidly develop and manufacture
Starship. We need the ability to grow
Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting
the Cameron County call an election to enable the
incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande
Rio Grande Valley. So it looks like taxes, things
like that. Trevino, who's the local judge,
said our legal and elections administration will review the
petition, see whether or not it complied with all the statutory
requirements and then we'll go from there.
And they work really close together.
Trevino and SpaceX, they work very close together.
Judge Eddie Trevino, top elected official in Cameron County.
So more than likely, if they did the paperwork properly, this is
going to pass easily. I mean, Cameron County needs the
the tax dollars. So make it into a city and like
certain things happen. The county has to provide
certain services, I'm not exactly sure what those services
are, but also SpaceX has to pay certain different things to the
county and to the state if they are a city.
So it's basically like Star Base city.
Like that's what like you name it, a city.
That's crazy. More than 3400 full time SpaceX
employees and contractors work at the Star Base site, according
to a local impact study issued by Trevino earlier this year.
So there aren't many people that live there, but there's always
about 3500 to 4000 people at Starbase like in and out all
time. So it's a small city, if you
could call it a city, because most of the people visit during
the day and then they all take off at night.
It's I mean, there are, it does, they do kind of work around the
clock there, but they're different shifts and it's always
busy. But out of those 3400 people,
full time employees, half go in the morning or thirds I guess
and do 3 shifts or whatever. They have different shifts
throughout the day. So if they are a city, like I
said before, they'll do different taxes and they'll
they'll be treated differently than just like a project that
Elon Musk is working on down at the down at the middle of
nowhere. It really is the middle of
nowhere too. It's like you don't want to go
down there if you don't have to. And it's, there's no resources
anywhere. There's no bathrooms, there's no
like convenience stores, there's no gas stations.
So it's out in the middle of nowhere.
But there's 3400 people there, you know, throughout the day,
which is kind of wild to think about because in a city of like
couple 100,000 people of Brownsville, there's people all
over the place all the time. But when you go to Star Base,
there are people there, but it's very desolate.
So I don't know how like becoming a city works or like
what you need. Like what are the what are the
qualifications? Like?
Do you need a population of certain amount of people in
order to become a city? Because it looks like maybe
SpaceX might have that amount. I don't know.
They might. But 3400 people is not that big
of a city, man. I grew up in a town a little bit
smaller than that. It's not that many people just
say, just saying. So that's all I have for today.
Everybody. I want to thank you for becoming
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Take care of yourselves and each other and I'm out of here.
Take care. I got it.
I don't even have an end screen. I never have an end screen.
I should probably make one of those, huh?
There we go, There we go. That's kind of the end screen
right there, right? Bye everybody.