It’s day four of the Donald Trump presidency and he’s already infuriated women’s rights campaigners, the environmental movement and free trade advocates by signing controversial executive orders. Tech mastermind, Steven Levy put it best in his latest tech report: God help us all.
Millions around the world took to the streets within hours of Trump’s inauguration, in anticipation of these actions and more to come. The San Jose Women’s March took place here in Silicon Valley on Saturday, and in my twenty years in the South Bay, I’ve never witnessed such an outpouring of alarm, dismay and rage. One 70-year old educator I interviewed said that this was the first time in her life, she’s ever felt the need to stand up and take to the streets: not for women’s rights, not for civil rights, but to protest Trump’s presidency. And she was fired up. Today, my report aired on the BBC World Service.
One protester had this message for Silicon Valley tech leaders:
“Lead with faith, lead with truth, and lead with a kind of human dignity that is absent in a lot of our daily conversations…They gotta get rid of the fake news, people are being led down a kind of primrose path, thinking that by being angry and violent they’re going to create a better world for the future…that’s not the path, the truth, the reality that everyone can see here today,” Patrick Adams, science teacher at Bellarmine College Preparatory School in San Jose
Gareth Mitchell: The President Elect became President on Friday….the crowds were back on the streets on Saturday, this time in protest at the new administration. The marches around the world were led by women, but in Silicon Valley, the tech people, male and female were venting their concerns too, along with scientists, and entrepreneurs, all of them worried by Trump’s stance on trade, innovation, science and the climate. It comes in an era of disquiet about Facebook and fake news, of post truth and cyber threats. To gauge the sentiment, our reporter in Silicon Valley, Alison van Diggelen, was at one of the marches.
Alison van Diggelen: I’m here at the San Jose Women’s March in the center of Silicon Valley and the women are out in force…
Alison: That was Yogacharya O’Brian, founder of the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment and one of the rally’s powerful speakers.
Alison van Diggelen: Silicon Valley took to the streets in record numbers on Saturday to protest the country’s new president. Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts and infrastructure investment could benefit the tech community; the U.S. economy and many of those marching in Silicon Valley. As could his plans to repatriate millions of dollars of tech companies’ overseas profits. Last month Trump even hosted a cordial summit with some top tech leaders. Despite all this, many in this community are fearful of what his presidency might mean for innovation, transparency, multiculturalism, and social progress.
Nick Shackleford: I’m here because of Trump’s election…he is bringing America back in time instead of leading us forward. As a nation we need to go forward and not backwards.
Alison van Diggelen: Here in the world tech center of innovation, what do you expect from this community of innovators?
Nick Shackleford: Like you said, we are innovators and I think we’re going to continue to innovate and lead the country – and sometimes the world – in the innovations that are being developed here in the Silicon Valley. And we have a lot of millionaires and billionaires who are liberal, believe in the cause and are true Californians and they will continue their fight, be it with their money, and their power or just lending their voice to causes that are important to our nation.
Alison van Diggelen: What would you say to Mark Zuckerberg and people like him with power?
Nick Shackleford: I think Mark Zuckerberg did not to enough to stop the fake news. I think he cared more about (getting it re-shared and) his personal stake in his company…and he can’t convince me otherwise. He’s to blame for a lot of the fake media.
Alison van Diggelen: What would you have him do?
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Nick Shackleford: I’ve reported about 100 things in the last six months and nothing has been in violation of their policy, but I’ve seen other people get the same picture and be sent to Facebook jail for it. So he’s not consistent, there needs to be more transparency on this fake news fight.
Patrick Adams: They gotta get rid of the fake news, people are being led down a kind of primrose path thinking that by being angry and violent they’re going to create a better world for the future…that’s not the path, the truth, the reality that everyone can see here today.
Alison van Diggelen:Patrick Adams was one of many men who came out to support the women’s march. Like many protesters who couldn’t keep quiet, he was energized by the proliferation of fake news, and Trump’s use of “alternative facts” which continues this week in the heated dispute over his inauguration numbers. Adams had a message for Silicon Valley’s tech leaders….
Patrick Adams: Lead with faith, lead with truth, and lead with a kind of human dignity that is absent in a lot of our daily conversations …Everywhere I go I see wonderful, amazing, beautiful people working together to make this future happen and I also see people who’re giving up…either to escape into an alternate world of the Internet or they want to pretend that this doesn’t affect them. But if affects everyone. Everyone is involved.
Yogacharya O’Brian: We do not wait for you to lead with sons and with daughters in hand, with husbands and with wives, lovers and friends by our side…we march!
Crowd chanting, cheering
[End of report]
Gareth Mitchell: What do you make of the comments you heard there, Bill Thomson?
Bill Thomson: It was fascinating to hear via Alison’s excellent report just how confused people are, and how uncertain they are; and how many different perspectives there are. For me, as a member of the press, what we need to be doing is reporting effectively on what’s actually happening, not just reporting on an agenda set by politicians…So the limitations on women’s reproductive rights, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Dakota Access pipeline, the Transpacific Trade Partnership, the nomination of the Supreme Court justice, are all far more important than the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd.
There’s a real sense from Alison’s report that many people are confused because they don’t know what’s actually going on and are trying to project on that. It’s the role of us in the press to cut through that and be much clearer about what’s actually happening and not get dragged into debates or agendas set by other people.
In 1996, space enthusiast, Peter Diamandis announced the $10 Million XPrize for the first private spaceship to fly 100 kilometers into space. The only problem was: he didn’t have $10 Million, not even close! Nevertheless, his audacious challenge inspired dozens of teams all over the world to compete and he did eventually find a sponsor…and a winning team. The dramatic story that helped jumpstart the private space race is told in Julian Guthrie’s new book “How to Make a Spaceship” which comes out on September 20th. The book has a foreword by Virgin’s Richard Branson and afterword by superstar scientist, Stephen Hawking.
I interviewed Julian and Peter at the Singularity University Summit and they shared their unique insights into the band of renegades who finally succeeded in winning the XPrize. Peter talked about how he was inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight to win a $25,000 prize. Today, this original XPrize has spawned many others. Over $80 Million in XPrizes continue to drive tech innovation in energy, education, medicine and space exploration.
“This incentive challenge really touched a nerve globally and brought out this entrepreneurial spirit internationally. You had people taking big risks and sacrificing a huge amount…They were fueled by their own passions and obsessions, and dismissed their own fears and naysayers. There’s a lot of bravery in what was done.” Author Julian Guthrie
Last week, the BBC’s Tech Tent aired my interview with Peter. Listen to the podcast excerpt:
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Backstage with Julian Guthrie, author of “How to Make a Spaceship”
Here’s a transcript of the introduction and report:
BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones:It’s 20 years since a space-obsessed entrepreneur called Peter Diamandis launched a $10M to stimulate private space flight. The XPrize spurred dozens of teams around the world to compete for the money and the glory and today the private space industry is one of the most exciting – and risky – sectors of tech innovation. This whole story is told in “How to Make a Spaceship” published later this month.
We asked the Silicon Valley journalist, Alison van Diggelen, to interview Peter Diamandis. He told her why he’s glad Virgin’s Richard Branson turned him down as a sponsor for the first XPrize.
Peter Diamandis: I pitched Richard (Branson) twice. I thought he was the perfect person to do this…The fact that he didn’t fund it and make it the Virgin XPrize, which could’ve been a cool name, led him to the point that when the $10M Ansari XPrize was ultimately won, Richard came in and bought the rights to the winning technology to create Virgin Galactic. So instead of spending $10 million on the prize purse, he spent quarter of a billion dollars developing Virgin Galactic….which I was very happy about.
Alison van Diggelen: Let’s talk about the Cambridge physicist, Stephen Hawking. He wrote (in) the afterword for your book: “The human race has no future if it doesn’t go to space.” Can you explain what he meant by that?
Peter Diamandis:I had a chance to meet Prof Hawking through the XPrize. We’re actually working right now on an ALS XPrize…. When I met him back in 2007 I invited him to fly on a zero G flight. It was amazing to give the world’s expert on gravity the experience of zero gravity…He was asked why he was doing something kind of risky…for someone in a wheelchair…that frail, it could be dangerous.
He said:
“I want to promote space travel… If the human race doesn’t go into space, we don’t have a future.” Stephen Hawking
His concerns are the existential threats of nuclear war, killer virus, asteroid impact…I’m an optimistic guy. I think we have a bigger future if we go into space. The concept that Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Stephen Hawking, myself…that we talk about is the notion that: It’s time to make the earth a multi-planetary species…that we can back-up the biosphere. We have the ability to take all the knowledge, all of the genomes on this planet…and to take all the eggs out of one basket…
Alison van Diggelen: And talk about the technology. Some are saying: OK the private sector has entered the space race but we’re not any further forward than when man landed on the moon with NASA (Apollo missions). Talk about how the technology has changed with the private sector on a much more limited budget and a faster timetable.
Peter Diamandis:It’s astounding how fast the technology has changed. It’s night and day. It doesn’t come out of the large industrial military complex, which is risk averse, it comes out of an entrepreneurial mindset that’s willing to do something completely different. I give credit to Elon Musk and a team at SpaceX. They’ve pulled off the impossible. They’ve built the Falcon 9 launch vehicle which has a fully reusable first stage which could drop the cost of launching satellites into space by a factor of 5.
There’s sensors on board, there’s 3D printing engines on the vehicle. You’re mass manufacturing everything in house. You’re using the latest materials, machine learning, and AI protocols for design. You’re able to create a vehicle that was never heretofore possible.
This is for me is the most exciting time ever to be alive.
Bonus Material(these make the final cut)
Alison van Diggelen: Instead of thinking out of the box, you’re saying you should “think in a small box.” Explain that rationale.
Peter Diamandis:In Julian Guthrie’s book “How to make a spaceship” I demonstrate this. I said: This competition is over on Dec 31 2004. It’s not any spaceship to any altitude. It’s 3 people to 100km. You have to land and in two weeks do it again.
When you’re able to constrain the problem that’s when people can innovate. It gives them the ability to throw out all old ways of thinking and really innovate with something new.
Alison van Diggelen: What stimulated all this spaceship innovation?
Julian Guthrie:Innovations came from very unexpected places: entrepreneurs…these scrappy teams. Small teams can do big things and in this case they can make history. They have the ability to fail and then to move forward very quickly, and test new things. You’re not dealing with bureaucratic nightmares. You’re iterating – which is the key to success – that rapid pivoting led to a new iteration of (spaceship) design.
Alison van Diggelen: Steve Bennett (the UK rocket builder) talked about the “American mindset” of dream big. After all your book research, do you believe this mindset is exclusively American?
Julian Guthrie: What Steve Bennet is doing in the UK and telling kids: think big, follow your dreams, whatever your spaceship is, make it happen, is great! But I think there is a uniquely American quality to rolling up your sleeves…there is an American bootstrap mentality. This is the epicenter of that “ anything is possible ” mentality.
“I always thought that we’d make much more progress in space…and it just didn’t happen…it was really disappointing, so I was really quite bothered by it. So when we went to the moon, we were supposed to have a base on the moon, we were supposed to send people to Mars and that stuff just didn’t happen. We went backwards. I thought, well maybe it’s a question of there not being enough intention or ‘will’ to do this. This was a wrong assumption. That’s the reason for the greenhouse idea…if there could be a small philanthropic mission to Mars…a small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrients, you’d have this great shot of a little greenhouse with little green plants on a red background. I thought that would get people excited…you have to imagine the money shot. I thought this would result in a bigger budget for NASA and then we could resume the journey…” Elon Musk
This week, I listened live to Tesla’s latest earnings call and was gobsmacked at Elon Musk’s audacious new goal to build half a million cars per year by 2018.
“This is based off the tremendous demand received for the Model 3, which I think is actually a fraction of the ultimate demand, when people fully understand what the car’s capable of….Tesla is going to be hell-bent on becoming the best manufacturer on earth.” Elon Musk
But how on earth is Tesla going to perform this ambitious ramp up in production? It’s a 1000% increase in Tesla’s 2015 production level (approx. 50,000 Model S and Xs). Here’s one more clue from Elon Musk, at the end of the conference call:
“We believe that there’s more potential for innovation in manufacturing, than there is in the design of the car by a long shot.” Elon Musk
Tesla’s Alexis Georgeson took me inside the Tesla factory last week to share some insights as to how this “mission impossible” just might be done.
BBC Host, Rory Cellan-Jones: This week, the entrepreneur behind the Tesla cars made an extraordinary promise to his investors. He said his company would manufacture half a million cars a year by 2018. Given the fact that Tesla has missed much smaller production targets in the past this seemed, well, brave. But as Alison van Diggelen reports from Silicon Valley, Elon Musk is confident that this time, things will be different.
Alison van Diggelen: Tesla Motors astounded the auto industry last month when it received over 400,000 reservations (325,000 in the first week) for its new Model 3, an “affordable” all-electric car. In response, CEO Elon Musk just announced a production goal of half a million cars by 2018.
Elon Musk: My desk is at the end of the production line…I have a sleeping bag in the conference room… which I use quite frequently. The whole team is super focused on achieving rate and quality at the target cost, so I feel very confident in us achieving that goal.
Alison van Diggelen: I visited the Tesla factory in Silicon Valley to find out how they can deliver on time and in such huge numbers. Though beloved by fans, Tesla is also notorious for production delays.
Last year, the company spent over 1.5 Billion dollars in capital. Its cash burn-rate looks unsustainable. With General Motors coming out with a longer range electric car later this year and other competitors hot on their wheels, Tesla is under pressure to deliver, and fast.
Alexis Georgeson: There’s already been one major reorg since Model S production started in 2012. The original end of line used to be right here… we straightened out the line so we could expand and increase production.
Alison van Diggelen: That’s Alexis Georgeson, a Tesla spokesperson who explains in great detail the 7-day process that transforms a roll of aluminium into a shiny electric car. The two-week reorg and retooling in 2014 means that Tesla now has over 1000 state of the art robots, which helped ramp-up production by over 100% last year.
A separate production line for the Model 3 is planned and hard lessons from earlier models will help speed up their manufacture, especially more in-house capabilities and more thorough supplier validation. Musk says the new Model 3 will be designed to be easy to make.
Alexis Georgeson: We’re constantly learning and innovating. The great thing about Tesla is that so much is in-house and that we are so nimble.
Alison van Diggelen: I asked about the long delays in the Model X, largely caused by the flashy Falcon Wing doors.
What’s the trade off between hubris and caution at Tesla?
Alexis Georgeson: Our mission is not just to accelerate sustainable energy and transportation …You’re creating new features that haven’t been done before in the auto industry. With that comes natural growing pains…
Georgeson: The thing that’s missed there is the capital-intensive nature of the auto industry. Especially for a company like Tesla that’s ramping production so quickly…
Alison van Diggelen: Here’s Elon Musk…
Elon Musk: Tesla is hellbent on being the best in manufacturing… We believe that there is more potential for innovation in manufacturing than in design of the car, by a long shot.
Alison van Diggelen: Musk says the first Model 3 deliveries will start in late 2017. If he can prove naysayers wrong again, the majority of Model 3 reservation holders might see their cars coming off the production line in Silicon Valley within the next two years…
Read more Fresh Dialogues reports on Tesla here (scroll down for archives back to 2012)
Elon Musk has been hailed as the next Steve Jobs, a serial disruptor and a genius. Others call him just crazy. Yet Musk has defied the naysayers and made remarkable innovations in both electric cars and spaceflight over the last ten years. But just how accurate is the Steve Jobs comparison?
“Most innovation is like a new melody,” writes Ted curator Chris Anderson. “For Jobs and Musk, it’s the whole symphony.”
Anderson’s analogy is right. Neither men do things in small measures. They seek to change the world.
I interviewed Elon Musk last year in one of his most revealing public appearances, and he exposed a complex character that is both deadly serious yet comedic at times; driven yet sensitive; single minded, and yet eclectic in his desire to change the world in multiple ways.
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That sensitivity was apparent several times during our dialogue when his eyes welled up in response to my questions about the future of NASA, Neil Armstrong, and candlelight vigils for the EV1 (@28:35, 1:04:00 & 39:50 in the video). Steve Jobs was also known to weep.
Musk has many traits in common with Jobs and yet in subtle ways their characters are distinct. Elon Musk vs Steve Jobs. The two did meet, but it didn’t go well.
Here are five revealing moments from our conversation that emphasize the common threads between the two businessmen.
1. Ability to Sell Great Ideas
Jobs used his infamous “reality distortion field” to push his teams hard to achieve much more that they thought was possible. His oft-quoted phrase was “insanely great” and his product launches were passionate and brash.
Musk is more pragmatic in his approach, he rarely uses buzzwords*, and although his product launches are often equally dazzling, his delivery is less assured, more halting.
*Granted, he does talk about getting a “money shot” of his greenhouse on Mars idea (@30:00 in the video).
“In the beginning there will be few people who believe in you or in what you’re doing but then over time… the evidence will build and more and more people will believe in what you’re doing. So, I think it’s a good idea when creating a company to … have a demonstration or to be able to sketch something so people can really envision what it’s about. Try to get to that point as soon as possible.” Elon Musk
This Word Art of our 90-minute conversation reveals no catchy buzzwords, though the word THINK stands out prominently.
Stories abound of Steve Jobs’ intense attention to detail. He notoriously spent months agonizing over the internal layout of the Mac computer’s circuit board.
“I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.” Steve Jobs
When his team failed to deliver on his vision, Jobs often flew into terrible rages. Case in point: the first fanless computer.
By contrast, Musk is known for his attention to detail and being a demanding boss, but he focuses his Vulcan rage at the media over issues like damning test drives, and Tesla car fires; and at foes such as auto dealerships.
His rage also turns inward. For example, when he discovered the wrong type of screw used in the Model S sun visors. He reportedly said, “they felt like daggers in my eyes.”
While doing pre-interviews with Musk’s colleagues, I heard a revealing story about his obsession with the Tesla Model S key fob. A colleague described how he agonized for weeks over the shape, the girth, the weight of the fob till it was just right. Take a peek at the end result and see if you think it was all worth it.
When I visited the Tesla factory (on assignment for KQED), I heard a similar story from the mechanics working on the iconic Model S door handles. Responsive door handles that sit flush with car doors looked like mission impossible, yet Musk and his team eventually prevailed. The result is so highly prized that my tour guide, Gilbert Passin (VP for manufacturing at Tesla) forbade me to take close-up photos of the components, for fear of copycats.
3. Ability to Think Differently Stems from Splendid Isolation
When I asked Musk if he was a lonely kid, he replied:
“I wasn’t all that much of a loner…at least not willingly. I was very very bookish.” Elon Musk
As a kid he was consumed by his own world, reading books like “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” and playing Dungeons and Dragons for hours. Musk found coding a piece of cake and created his own software at the tender age of 12. Thanks to his bookish childhood, his innovative ideas could flourish without being squashed by friends or family.
Similarly, Jobs had an isolated childhood, and was bullied at school. He did no competitive school sports and was obsessed by electronics and gadgets.
4. Deep Thinking
Although Jobs was less techie, more visionary; and Musk is a geeky engineer who prides himself on innovation using scientific first principles, both are deep thinkers.
Elon Musk explained how Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy inspired him while he was looking for the meaning of life as a teenager.
“It highlighted an important point, which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer. And if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part. To the degree that we can better understand the universe, then we can better know what questions to ask. Then whatever the question is that most approximates: what’s the meaning of life? That’s the question we can ultimately get closer to understanding. And so I thought to the degree that we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness and knowledge, then that would be a good thing.” Elon Musk
Walter Isaacson, the author of Jobs’ biography wrote that Jobs felt throughout his life that he was on a journey — and he often said, ‘The journey was the reward.’ But that journey involved resolving conflicts about his role in this world: why he was here and what it was all about. He had a lifelong interest in Zen Buddhism and they discussed whether or not he believed in an afterlife.
“Sometimes I’m 50-50 on whether there’s a God. It’s the great mystery we never quite know. But I like to believe there’s an afterlife. I like to believe the accumulated wisdom doesn’t just disappear when you die, but somehow it endures.” Steve Jobs
5. Impact
Although Musk isn’t yet the household name that Jobs has become, those who’re familiar with Musk’s work and genius compare him to Leonardo da Vinci and The Atlantic recently described him as one of the most ambitious innovators of this era. And what about Steve Jobs? He was described in the study as “a star of popular culture.”
Ouch!
During our interview, Musk shared the story of his brief encounter with the great Steve Jobs. The two were introduced by Google’s Larry Page at a party and Musk describes Jobs as being “super rude” to him. Nevertheless, this didn’t dent his admiration for the Apple guru. Here’s our dialogue:
Elon Musk: “The guy had a certain magic about him that was really inspiring. I think that’s really great.”
Alison van Diggelen: “Is it that magic that you try to emulate?”
Elon Musk: “No, I think Steve Jobs was way cooler than I am.”
Although Apple fans will agree strongly with that assessment, feedback at YouTube loudly contradicts Musk. Here’s one of the more polite reactions:
“Sounds just like Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Except Elon Musk will probably end up being much more memorable than Steve Jobs :P”
As 2014 begins, Musk is still right, Steve Jobs is generally perceived as being “way cooler” than him. But that could change.
What will the history books conclude, in ten or twenty years from now? Steve Jobs certainly has big shoes to fill, but Elon Musk is already beginning to fill them. A lot will depend on Musk’s ability to see his grand visions come to fruition. First, he must complete his “Secret Master Plan for Tesla,” which includes the creation of a popular mass market electric car; and second, his vision of making space rockets reusable just like modern day jets.
One day, he may even achieve his life’s mission of dying on Mars, but as he describes it, “Just not on impact.”
Last month, I interviewed Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley and asked him what he’s learned from Steve Jobs and whether, in his view, innovation is plateauing. We also discussed how he felt about critics like his hero Neil Armstrong who spoke out against SpaceX and the commercialization of space. His answers may surprise you.
Here’s a transcript of our conversation that starts @51:19. (Page down for more transcripts)
Alison van Diggelen: I’d like to move on to innovation and motivation.There’s been a lot of talk lately about that fact that innovation is leveling off, we’re not making dramatic increases or improvements in innovation, like we did when the plane was invented…do you agree with that?
Elon Musk: No I don’t agree with that. We’ve seen huge improvements in the Internet, and new things…In recent years: Twitter, Facebook being pretty huge…when people thought the Internet was done. Some of the things we’re doing like electric cars are a new thing. And I do think there are some pretty significant breakthroughs in genomics. We’re getting and better and better at decoding genomes and being able to write genetics. That’s going to be a huge, huge area. There’s likely to be breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence…and I suspect we will even see the flying car…
Alison van Diggelen: Is that going to be an Elon Musk production?
Elon Musk: No.
Alison van Diggelen: Are you going to let someone else do that?
Elon Musk: Yeah, Well, I think…someone else is doing that.
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@1.00.30 On Steve Jobs
Alison van Diggelen: I’d now…let’s move on to focus on Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs was and is a wonderful Silicon Valley icon. Is he someone you’ve admired and what have you learned from Steve’s life and work?
Elon Musk: Well he’s certainly someone I’ve admired. Although I did try to talk to him once at a party and he was super rude to me… But I don’t think it was me, I think it was par for the course.
Alison van Diggelen: I don’t think you were the first.
Elon Musk: No not the first. No. I was actually there with… an old friend… Larry Page. I’ve known Larry since before he got venture funding for Google. He was the one who introduced me to Steve Jobs. It’s not like I was tugging on his coat (saying), ‘please talk to me.’ But obviously he was an incredible guy and made fantastic products. The guy had a certain magic about him that was really inspiring. I think that’s really great.
Alison van Diggelen: Is it that magic that you try to emulate?
Elon Musk: No, I think Steve Jobs was way cooler than I am.
@1.02.00
Alison van Diggelen: So I’d like to get inside your head a little bit. When you come up with an idea, do you doodle it on a pad of paper, or do you get your iPad out and take notes? I mean, when you come up with something new, a new rocket design or whatever it is, how does that manifest itself? Could we see you being creative?
Elon Musk: It’s somewhat clichéd but it happens a lot in the shower. I don’t know what it is about showers. (audience whistles). I know, exactly. Get the camera. (laughter) Like, yeah. I just kind of stand there in the shower and ..
Alison van Diggelen: So you have long showers…create lots of ideas…
Elon Musk: I do actually (laughter). Long showers. It sounds wrong…
Alison van Diggelen: So there’s no iPad in the shower?
Elon Musk: …Not to mention the Burning Man epiphanies. Those are huge. And then there are some times late at night when I’ve been thinking about something and I can’t sleep then I’ll be up for several hours pacing around the house, thinking about things. Occasionally I might sketch something or send myself an email…(see FD)
Alison van Diggelen: So we have a question from the audience. Who inspires you or do you have a mentor?
Elon Musk: I don’t have a mentor, though I do try to get feedback from as many people as possible. I have friends and I ask them what I think of this that and the other thing. Larry Page is a good friend of mine…I value his advice a lot, and I have many other good friends, so I think it’s good to solicit feedback, particularly negative feedback actually. Obviously people don’t love the idea of giving you negative feedback, unless it’s on blogs…they do that.
Alison van Diggelen: How do you deal with negative feedback, because you get some tough criticism, especially with SpaceX, you had incumbents like Neil Armstrong even, speaking out and saying this is wrong, you know. We don’t want commercial companies in space, it’s not a place for commerce. So how did you deal with that and how with naysayers in general, because you’ve had a lot.
Elon Musk: Yeah, that was kind of troubling, cos growing up Neil Armstrong was kind of a hero. So it kind of sucks to…
Alison van Diggelen: Knife in the back…?
Elon Musk: Yeah, that’s a bit of a blow. I think he was somewhat manipulated by other interests. I don’t know if he knew quite what he was saying in those congressional hearings.
Continues…
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Want to continue reading the transcript? Here’s the final part of the interview:
Peter Diamandis: I had a chance to meet Prof Hawking through the XPrize. We’re actually working right now on an ALS XPrize…. When I met him back in 2007 I invited him to fly on a zero G flight. It was amazing to give the world’s expert on gravity the experience of zero gravity…He was asked why he was doing something kind of risky…for someone in a wheelchair…that frail, it could be dangerous.
