Quotes by Elon Musk

“Today it costs over a billion dollars for a space shuttle flight. The cost… is fundamentally whats holding us back from becoming a space traveling civilization and ultimately a multi-planet species.”

“is analogous to building part of an airplane in a factory and part of the airplane on the runway. You can imagine thats a pretty expensive way to split the construction so the fact that we can just do the entire integrated rocket, transport it as a single unit, that definitely reduces costs.”

“[What Space X ultimately contributes to space travel might please the government in other ways.] One of the significant innovations of Falcon V is that because its got five engines on the main stage, it can actually lose an engine and reach orbit safely, ... If the space shuttle were to lose one of its solid rocket boosters the people on the shuttle would be doomed.”

“[Hed better be, because the new space race already is under way and competition is shaping up as fierce. Rutans chief rival may ultimately be Elon Musk. A former Internet mogul who in 2002 sold his online payment company, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, Musk now runs SpaceX in El Segundo, Calif., which is developing an orbital space vehicle. Musk notes that making it into orbit requires going eight times faster and producing 65 times more rocket energy than a suborbital vehicle like SpaceShipOne. Musk has already put more than $50 million into SpaceX and says he is prepared to invest $50 million more. He expects it to take at least five years to get passengers into orbit. In the meantime, SpaceX is generating revenue by booking orders to launch satellites; its first such launch is scheduled for January.] Our earned revenue will be $35 million after a little more than two years of operation, ... By comparison, the X-Prize was a one-off of $10 million, and it took Burt something like five years to do it.”

“the Internet; changing the energy cycle from petroleum-based to solar-electric; and moving into space.”

“I dont want to say specific numbers. But Ive certainly spent more than I expected to spend,”

“that are happy to sign up as soon as they see a launch that works.”

“Were developing two engines. These are state-of-the-art, world-class, world-beating engines. These are not just sort of ho-hum engines.”

“The way its looking right now, our engine might be one percent below our specifications, but still be the best engine ever done. We prefer not to...but it looks like we may be one percent low.”

“Im very pro-environment, but lets figure out how to do it better and not jump through a dozen hoops to achieve what is obvious in the first place. There should be a categorical exclusion [for Falcon] just like airplanes that use non-toxic propellants. That would be a huge improvement,”

It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.

Im not trying to be anyones savior. I just try to think about the future and not be sad

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 its a fixer-upper of a planet.

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

I could go and buy one of the islands in theBahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build andcreate a new company.

My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

In terms of the Internet, its like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. Its a hugely impactful thing.

If youre trying to create a company, its like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.