- All Quotes
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I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems... It's got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.
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I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don't believe in the whole thing of just using other people's money. I don't think that's right. I'm not going to ask other people to invest in something if I'm not prepared to do so myself.
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If we can be one of the companies that makes it possible for humans to become a multi-planetary species, that would be the Holy Grail. It sounds a bit crazy but it's going to happen, and only if people build the means to do so. We're making progress toward a greater philosophical goal while building a sound business.
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In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.
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The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.
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So we originally expected to make about 35 gigawatt hours at the cell level and about 50 gigawatt hours at the module or pack level. Now we are expecting to do about 150 gigawatt hours in the same volumetric space as the original design.
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Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.
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As life’s agents, it’s on our shoulders.
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Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
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SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.
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Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It's really counterintuitive.
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I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view.
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I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.
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I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.
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There’s a graveyard of prior attempts, a big graveyard. There’s probably some freshly dug graves just waiting to be filled. Our aspiration is to avoid that destination.
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I didn’t really expect to make any money. If I could make enough to cover the rent and buy some food that would be fine. As it turns out, it turned out to be quite valuable in the end.
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Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.
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SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company's lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.
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An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.
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The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.
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I like the word 'autopilot' more than I like the word 'self-driving.' 'Self-driving' sounds like it's going to do something you don't want it to do. 'Autopilot' is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.
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Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure - the law firms, the real estate, all that - that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.
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I'm a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.
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Mars is the only place in the solar system where it's possible for life to become multi-planetarian.