Elon Reeve Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, investor, engineer, and inventor. Musk has stated that the goals of SolarCity, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX revolve around his vision to change the world and humanity. His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, and reducing the “risk of human extinction” by “making life multiplanetary” by setting up a human colony on Mars. He has also envisioned a high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop, and has proposed a VTOL supersonic jet aircraft with electric fan propulsion, known as the Musk electric jet.
When Something Is Important Enough, You Do It Even If The Odds Are Not In Your Favor.
I Think That's The Single Best Piece Of Advice: Constantly Think About How You Could Be Doing Things Better And Questioning Yourself.
I Think The High-tech Industry Is Used To Developing New Things Very Quickly. It's The Silicon Valley Way Of Doing Business: You Either Move Very Quickly And You Work Hard To Improve Your Product Technology, Or You Get Destroyed By Some Other Company.
I Tend To Approach Things From A Physics Framework. And Physics Teaches You To Reason From First Principles Rather Than By Analogy.
I'm Reasonably Optimistic About The Future, Especially The Future Of The United States - For The Century, At Least.
Government Isn't That Good At Rapid Advancement Of Technology. It Tends To Be Better At Funding Basic Research. To Have Things Take Off, You've Got To Have Commercial Companies Do It.
I'm A Silicon Valley Guy. I Just Think People From Silicon Valley Can Do Anything.
Rockets Are Cool. There's No Getting Around That.
The Lessons Of History Would Suggest That Civilisations Move In Cycles. You Can Track That Back Quite Far - The Babylonians, The Sumerians, Followed By The Egyptians, The Romans, China. We're Obviously In A Very Upward Cycle Right Now, And Hopefully That Remains The Case. But It May Not.
I Say Something, And Then It Usually Happens. Maybe Not On Schedule, But It Usually Happens.
People Should Pursue What They're Passionate About. That Will Make Them Happier Than Pretty Much Anything Else.
If We're Going To Have Any Chance Of Sending Stuff To Other Star Systems, We Need To Be Laser-focused On Becoming A Multi-planet Civilisation.
Patience Is A Virtue, And I'm Learning Patience. It's A Tough Lesson.
I Think You Should Always Bear In Mind That Entropy Is Not On Your Side.
Land On Mars, A Round-trip Ticket - Half A Million Dollars. It Can Be Done.
I Hate Writing About Personal Stuff. I Don't Have A Facebook Page. I Don't Use My Twitter Account. I Am Familiar With Both, But I Don't Use Them.
Physics Is Really Figuring Out How To Discover New Things That Are Counterintuitive, Like Quantum Mechanics. It's Really Counterintuitive.
If We Drive Down The Cost Of Transportation In Space, We Can Do Great Things.
A Prius Is Not A True Hybrid, Really. The Current Prius Is, Like, 2 Percent Electric. It's A Gasoline Car With Slightly Better Mileage.
When I Was In College, I Wanted To Be Involved In Things That Would Change The World.
In The Early Days Of Aviation, There Was A Great Deal Of Experimentation And A High Death Rate.
As You Heat The Planet Up, It's Just Like Boiling A Pot.
I'm Interested In Things That Change The World Or That Affect The Future And Wondrous, New Technology Where You See It, And You're Like, 'Wow, How Did That Even Happen? How Is That Possible?'
Life Is Too Short For Long-term Grudges.
I Think We Have A Duty To Maintain The Light Of Consciousness To Make Sure It Continues Into The Future.
If You Had To Buy A New Plane Every Time You Flew Somewhere, It Would Be Incredibly Expensive.
There's A Silly Notion That Failure's Not An Option At Nasa. Failure Is An Option Here. If Things Are Not Failing, You Are Not Innovating Enough.
Silicon Valley Has Some Of The Smartest Engineers And Technology Business People In The World.
Some Companies Out There Quote A Start Of Production That Is Substantially In Advance Of When Customers Get Their Cars.
You Need To Be In The Position Where It Is The Cost Of The Fuel That Actually Matters And Not The Cost Of Building The Rocket In The First Place.
I'm Anti-tax, But I'm Pro-carbon Tax.
Nobody Wants To Buy A $60,000 Electric Civic. But People Will Pay $90,000 For An Electric Sports Car.
The U.s. Automotive Industry Has Been Selling Cars The Same Way For Over 100 Years, And There Are Many Laws In Place To Govern Exactly How That Is To Be Accomplished.
I Think Most Of The Important Stuff On The Internet Has Been Built. There Will Be Continued Innovation, For Sure, But The Great Problems Of The Internet Have Essentially Been Solved.
It Is Definitely True That The Fundamental Enabling Technology For Electric Cars Is Lithium-ion As A Cell Chemistry Technology. In The Absence Of That, I Don't Think It's Possible To Make An Electric Car That Is Competitive With A Gasoline Car.
I Think It's Very Important To Have A Feedback Loop, Where You're Constantly Thinking About What You've Done And How You Could Be Doing It Better.
I've Been To Disneyland, Like, 10 Times. I'm Getting Really Tired Of Disneyland.
There's Nothing - I've Bought Everything I Want. I Don't Like Yachts Or Anything; You Know, I'm Not A Yacht Person, And I've Got Pretty Much The Nicest Plane I'd Want To Have.
I Wouldn't Say I Have A Lack Of Fear. In Fact, I'd Like My Fear Emotion To Be Less Because It's Very Distracting And Fries My Nervous System.
I Think A Lot Of The American People Feel More Than A Little Disappointed That The High-water Mark For Human Exploration Was 1969. The Dream Of Human Space Travel Has Almost Died For A Lot Of People.
In The Case Of Apple, They Did Originally Do Production Internally, But Then Along Came Unbelievably Good Outsourced Manufacturing From Companies Like Foxconn. We Don't Have That In The Rocket Business. There's No Foxconn In The Rocket Business.
We Could Definitely Make A Flying Car - But That's Not The Hard Part. The Hard Part Is, How Do You Make A Flying Car That's Super Safe And Quiet? Because If It's A Howler, You're Going To Make People Very Unhappy.
I Think Long Term You Can See Tesla Establishing Factories In Europe, In Other Parts Of The U.s. And In Asia.
Winning 'Motor Trend' Car Of The Year Is Probably The Closest Thing To Winning The Oscar Or Emmy Of The Car Industry.
To Make An Embarrassing Admission, I Like Video Games. That's What Got Me Into Software Engineering When I Was A Kid. I Wanted To Make Money So I Could Buy A Better Computer To Play Better Video Games - Nothing Like Saving The World.
You Need To Live In A Dome Initially, But Over Time You Could Terraform Mars To Look Like Earth And Eventually Walk Around Outside Without Anything On... So It's A Fixer-upper Of A Planet.
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.
The United States Is Definitely Ahead In Culture Of Innovation. If Someone Wants To Accomplish Great Things, There Is No Better Place Than The U.s.
I Had So Many People Try To Talk Me Out Of Starting A Rocket Company, It Was Crazy.
From An Evolutionary Standpoint, Human Consciousness Has Not Been Around Very Long. A Little Light Just Went On After Four And A Half Billion Years. How Often Does That Happen? Maybe It Is Quite Rare.