yeah going to Mars reads like that ad for for Shackleton going to the Antarctic you know it’s it’s dangerous uh it’s uncomfortable um it’s a long journey you might not you know come back alive um but it’s a glorious adventure and it’ll be amazing an amazing experience and your name will go in history yes you might die it’s going to be uncomfortable and you probably won’t have good food and all these things you know and a massive transformative purpose is what you’re telling the world it’s like this is who I am this is what I’m going to do this is the dent I’m going to make in the universe everybody I’d like to share with you a conversation I had with Elon Musk in Spring of 21 when we were in Florida near Kennedy Space Center it was the morning before SpaceX launch and we were launching aund million gigaton carbon removal xprize uh if you don’t know xprize is an organization I started 28 years ago where we Chen challenge the
[00:01:00] world to solve the biggest problems on the planet and there’s no question that you know what’s going on in the environment is one of our greatest challenges I’d had a conversation with Elon a few months earlier about you know putting forward a hundred million prize to address carbon removal on the atmosphere and literally a week later he said yes let’s do it so if you don’t know X prize that’s what we do we put up Grand challenges around the planet you can check it out at X pri.org this is a challenge in which we’ve already gotten 1200 teams from around the world almost every country coming into this student teams professional teams uh we’ve given away $5 million of the $100 million prize to student teams already we’ve given away $15 million to the top 15 teams a million dollars each and the remaining 80 million is on the table for the team that can actually demonstrate Megaton carbon removal that can scale to gigaton carbon removal check out this conversation I hope you like it please
[00:02:01] give it a thumbs up so others can hear about it and check out express.org as well thanks welcome welcome everybody uh welcome to a special live stream on Earth Day in a here we are on Earth on Earth in a beautiful uh nature preser yeah couldn’t do it better for 21 Earth Day yeah um here to talk about the launch of the largest prize ever uh $100 million x prize for carbon capture and here with a very special guest uh probably one of the greatest innovators and engineer of our time the CEO of Tesla of SpaceX of a bunch of other companies uh and someone I’m proud to call a friend Elon hey Peter good to see you good to see you yeah it’s uh it’s the perfect setting for our conversation today yeah we’ve known each other for a long time now yeah um 21 years I think it was like 2000 yeah whoa it is I think it was 2000 in in like uh Brazil Brazil it was actually a similarly nice sort of setting yeah was a deo’s birthday yeah
[00:03:00] Florianopolis in Florianopolis yeah and you’re trying to convince me not to start a rocket company I was trying to convince you to fund the original X prise before I met anoa yes but you also you’re like really advising me not to start art company because I would lose all my money which I thought uh I thought you probably right so I thought you know 10% chance of success but anyway seems to have worked out I’m sure glad you didn’t follow my advice yeah oh my God so we’re going to um talk a little bit about the rules uh try and C teams around the world to register for this thing as many innovators students talking about it I mean our goal is like basically to uh do something that uh is you know to have have it be sort of interesting fun and ultimately useful um and to Spur u u creative ideas for what is actually the smartest way to take the trillions of tons of carbon that we we’ve removed from the ground and will remove from the ground um from deep deep underground and and and we’ve we’ve placed that carbon
[00:04:00] in the atmosphere and oceans um which obviously changes the the chemical constituency of the surface of the Earth yeah um and um now now I I I I should sort of um measure measure my statements in that um I think I think we the Earth like I don’t I don’t think we’re currently doomed to be clear there’s a very important very importantly um you know there’s the there there are people in all all parts of the spectrum from ranging from nothing to worry about uh CO2 is just makes things better to uh we’re doomed and there’s nothing we can do about it I am somewhere in the middle so my concern with the CO2 is not kind of where we are today um or or even you know the current uh rate rate of Caron generation but really uh if it if we if common generation keeps accelerating and we keep getting um a u that that uh
[00:05:00] increase in the in the keing curve you know the CO2 possil in the atmosphere and if if if if we keep going and if we’re complacent uh then I think we we could there’s some risk of of um sort of nonlinear climate change um so um so you know thus far we we’ve seen the CO2 POS million be be fairly linear on on our time scale uh although it looks very exponential on uh geologic time scale um and uh but there there are certain potential nonlinear events like uh if we raise the temperature to the point where we um melt the Siberian traps or something like that and escapes yeah yeah there there’s just a a massive amount of of sort of Frozen dead plant animal matter um in um in Siberia there’s potentially trapped uh gases deep in the ocean if you ocean warms that could be released so uh you know these this is just these are just risks that are not wise to take um and since
[00:06:01] we know that longterm we’re going to have to have renewable energy anyway um uh because we’ll we’ll run out of oil and gas it’s not going to last forever um so we know we know where this ends up this has to end up with uh renewable sustainable energy um it’s to logical um really just the question of do we try to get there sooner or later and and we should try to get there sooner it’s obvious why run the why run the how long do you run this experiment yeah it’s it’s also true that even if we stopped CO2 production that’s probably still not enough that we do need mechanisms for extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere in the oceans that don’t exist right now you know I said I I I am people sometimes think I’m sort of like I’m kind of in the middle of the spectrum you know um I think if we stop CO2 production today which obviously we could not do without civilization coming to a grinding halt um and mop and and
[00:07:00] all sorts of terrible things happening um so we could not stop CO2 generation today but I think at the you know the sort of 400 possibly even 500 PPM level I I think it’s Pro probably okay um but if uh you know as as the world industrializes and we’re sort of at 8 billion people get to 9 billion people um have uh a lot more industrial output per person um you could see the you know you know at at what what might be okay it’s sort of 4 or 500 um possib mil of CO2 in the atmosphere might become quite dire at a thousand y um and the trend is certainly in that direction if we don’t do anything about it so um that that’s why I think it’s just probably an unwise experiment to to run um even if you think that the this this is why I think should be a compelling argument to even those who um would uh assign a low prob ability to um increase CO2 causing
[00:08:03] problems like let’s say you think it’s 99.9% likely that uh that adding all the CO2 to the ocean’s atmosphere is is going to be fine so so you’re saying there’s a 0.1% chance of disaster well there’s only one right now we’re at one planet even a .1% chance of disaster why run that risk that’s crazy so um so I think what’s likely to play out is that we will continue to add a lot of uh lot more CO2 to the oceans atmosphere um and also you know ocean cerification as you know is is also an issue it’s you don’t want to you don’t want to sort of add carbonic acid to the oceans and change the pH level um because it destroys reefs and and all that so which it’s actively doing right now as we’re watching yeah yeah yeah exactly you know I remember when I first met you Elon uh you had it was about 2000 and I remember you had two m massively transformative
[00:09:00] missions it was one making the making Humanity multi interplanetary yeah and the second was bringing us to a sustainable economy yeah sustainable energy economy right exactly and I think you’ve done pretty damn good are you are you happy with the progress you made um yeah I think it’s uh it’s hard to complain this part you know outcome so far has been been great um although obviously to you know we’ve we’ve not uh We’ve not yet sent anyone to Mars and um and hopefully will in the future and um in fact just a few days ago or last early last late last week I guess um NASA awarded SpaceX contract awesome 2.8 2.9 billion uh for the next lunar lander yeah to so SpaceX SpaceX craft will be the the next craft to put humans on uh on the moon I believe the first human will be a woman actually this time so uh this is very this great yeah um so um but of course we have to actually do it um and uh and uh then we’ got tomorrow we’ve got
[00:10:01] the uh our third astronaut launch to before we dive into the to the carbon removal rules and so forth uh I mean it’s a bit of dichotomy because our Rockets do produce carbon you know what a hypocrite you know he’s OB he’s just in for the money um but but let’s talk about let’s talk about the crew T crew I should address this this being hocr by want of rockets that that produce carbon here here’s the problem is right now there is there’s really no way to get around the physics of a rocket so uh I think it’s important for the long-term uh pres preservation and and ultimately the expansion and extension of the the scope and scale of Consciousness U and the long-term uh probably a survival of humanity and Life as we know it we must become a multipled species U because all these risks that we can’t control existential risks asteroid strikes yeah yeah there’s like super volcano we could do you know we could have World War III or something you know there’s um like
[00:11:02] I’m optimistic about the future but but you also say like okay well so how long do you think civilization will last before there’s a catastrophic event if you say infinity you’re this is not correct yes okay this is this is not uh history does not suggest that history just suggests we do dumb things to our civilizations all the time you know and and you know ancient Egyptians the Romans ancient Romans where are they now let’s do the video series where where are they now bonian samans the yeah you name it you know so so there’s uh been many civilizations that risen in Fallen and anyway we got to preserve uh we got to become multiplanetary and right now the only way to do that is with um with with rockets that do burn fuel um but we do have a long-term plan for sustainability of um of even rocket flights uh by generating uh propellant uh using um sustainable energy wind and solar uh to to generate starting first
[00:12:00] with the liquid oxygen um and for our Starship vehicle uh it’s uh almost 80% liquid oxygen and um 20% U liquid methane um and um the oxygen it’s obviously pretty easy to create that uh you just use um wind and solar electricity and um and you do air separator because you got the oxygen already in the air the plants are making the oxygen um so you can use just you can just use electricity basically renewable electricity to create 80% of the propellant on the rocket and then for the remaining uh 20% you can use the sub body process where you take you actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere and you combine that with water to create CH4 and and more O2 y um and that’s and that’s in fact what we would do on Mars sure to generate propellent sure so so so there is a long-term plan for sustainable generation of propellent uh for the Rockets I do want to emphasize that um and if there’s if there’s some other way to do that now we we certainly would yeah uh but I’m I’m just trying trying to sort of address this apparent inconsistency and um you know if Dar and cin is bad
[00:13:02] why why are you doing that with rockets and listen I think it’s a moral imperative for the human race to be able to move off Earth while we have the opportunity everything we know is right here and just because like it’s um it’s not they just one of the other CH so people think oh is this some escape hatch for rich people no no you know they think it’s like so you know gam Mars reads like that ad for for Shackleton going to the Antarctic you know it’s it’s dangerous uh it’s uncomfortable um it’s a long journey you might not you know come back alive um but it’s a glorious adventure and it’ll be amazing an amazing experience and your name will go in history yes you might die and it’s going to be uncomfortable and you probably won’t have good food and all these things you know so if if if an uous and dangerous Journey where you may not come back alive um but it’s a glorious Adventure sounds appealing and you still have thousands of
[00:14:01] volunteers if not millions of volunteers who would want to go I mean honestly a bunch of people probably will die in the beginning it’s it’s tough sledding over there you know we’re an exploring species yeah yeah exactly not forever we don’t to make anyone go so it’s like it’s volunteers only uh you have a you have a uh a Dragon capsule on the pad Crew 2 is nominally are you still go for launch tomorrow yeah awesome you want to just spend 2 minutes uh talking about the crew two Mission yeah so so we’ve got hopefully a great Mission planned for tomorrow uh this will be out thir flight of uh of people to the space station we had the test mission with two astronauts then the first sort of operational Mission with four this our second operational Mission with four um you know it’s an international crew um a great group um I was just looking online they’re sort of you know picking their sort of uh hopefully not final meal but you know they can whatever their favorite favorite food is you know from from their country and um so I’m
[00:15:01] actually heading over there tonight to just to um wish him wish him well I was out at pad 39a uh to see the stack yesterday a couple of things one pad 39a historic yeah this is where people went to the moon yeah Apollo 11 from that pad from that pad uh the first space shuttle launch back in ’ 81 sts1 and uh so that’s it’s a lot of like karmic responsibility to be operating it’s like Time Square the Time Square of launch launch pads it’s amazing yeah amazing and uh and the first stage has a beautiful patina on it it does it’s uh this yeah there’ll be the it’ll be it’s a Reus stage so um when the stages come back they they kind of get scorched so the the black there some people think is is that s or something no that’s it got scorched from reentry your team said they used to wipe it off to clean it and then it’s just like why bother it’s kind of hard to wipe off it doesn’t wipe off easily cuz it it’s kind of like baked on there and it’s interesting kind to repain it really we’re having a discussion about is it safer to use a
[00:16:01] stage that’s flown already versus a new stage yeah so um I I think what we’d say is like flight proven flight proven yes yeah so me if this was an airplane uh do you want to be on the First Flight of the airplane when it comes out of the factory or do you want to be on a later flight I’d say let somebody you let the test pilots do their thing before you you you know if you fly fly a plane so you flying a plane you want to see that plane is flown a few times before you get an i yeah I I I think it should be on balance better um and then uh and then we also we’ll also be refly the start replying the the spacecraft the dragon spacecraft beautiful so we’re trying to get reusability is obviously very important um you know in many Arenas reusability is important and reability in Rockets is important I remember uh being in a Hawthorne seeing your first your Falcon one there and it was just amazing it’s comes there’s some funny pictures of uh of basically the the sort of SpaceX as a as kind of like a kindergart whatever you know um and me
[00:17:03] be being like whatever 20 years younger um and uh yeah we’re just in this tiny little Warehouse in Elo yeah I remember well before we go to jump into the guidelines one last question update on Starship cuz that’s what I mean starship’s taking us to the Moon taking us to Mars and it’s it’s the it is audacious can you compare it to the Apollo a compare it to the Apollo vehicle uh the Saturn for comparison for a second for folks to know get a sense of it sure well I think the thing that’s least obvious from when it’s um on the ground is from the front of the videos and pictures is the size of it so it’s um it’s going to be the largest flying object ever so it’ll be uh twice the thrust and uh weight of the Saturn 5 amazing so that’s uh just from a and taller um so including the launch Escape Tower so it’s a very tall rocket um 120 M tall and and because it’s so
[00:18:00] wide the the proportions uh are obscure that fact how big it is yeah you can see in some of the pictures that have been released when it’s landing on the moon and the the people look like ants it’s very it’s big rocket this is this this rocket is uh capable of um you know at least 100 tons and probably closer to 200 tons of useful payload to the surface of the Moon so designed to be far in excess of NASA’s requirements um and so was really intended to be something that you know that can enable a permanently occupied uh base on the moon so you know we got put PR the occupied base in in Antarctica um and it would be great to have one of one on the moon as well yeah um and you could do you know I think a lot more research if you have the scientists actually there um and we could have uh some some very powerful telescopes um no it’s the moon you know there’s some great sayings from uh from Robert heinlin that said of you know if God had wanted Humanity to have space
[00:19:00] flight they would have you know she would have given us a moon yeah right exactly it’s a great staging place exactly it’s sort of it’s just just just off the coast um um Mars is is much much much much further actually more important than the size of Starship is the fact that it is intended to be fully and rapidly reusable yeah so this is the fundamental Holy Grail breakthrough needed for for uh access to space uh to make Humanity a space Brank civilization we must have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket um now we’ve made some progress in that direction with falcon9 where the booster is reusable and the uh dragon spacecraft upper portion is reusable um but the the the the second stage is not reusable um and the and and I would say right now I would not say the Falcon booster spacecraft and uh and fairing they’re they’re not rapidly reusable like it takes a fair bit of effort less effort than the much less
[00:20:02] effort than the space shuttle took yeah um but uh but turn around every year or so yeah yeah exactly that four and take about year year to turn them around um you know we’re getting it down to um a few months basically and soon I think probably under a month uh to turn around a booster um but it Landing out to seea and then having to bring it back and then sort of uh taking a month or so to to get it ready for launches still we call it rapid by air aircraft standards um whereas um Starship is intended to be both fully and rapidly usable so the the booster comes right back to the launch pad um literally is caught by the the the launch Tower y so it’s it lands and is actually caught by launch Tower arms that’s aspirationally I mean there shouldn’t be S that looks like science fiction excitement guaranteed um so the booster gets it comes back about
[00:21:01] six or seven minutes later and and it’s caught so it’s it’s right there and then caught by launch Tower arms and placed right back onto the launch stand amazing and then the the ship is I actually want the ship also to be caught by the um the launch Tower uh now the ship will take it takes at least 90 minutes to Orit the Earth yeah um and um we may take more than one it may take uh three or four orbits to get uh the ground track realigned with the um Landing Zone yeah the landing Zone depending on where you are U but the point is that the ship will come back and be be be right land right by the tower and be placed right back on and so uh like a 767 just refuel and go it’s it’s intended to be such that the booster can be used I don’t know uh a dozen times a day and the and the ship the ship could be you know like basically every couple hours and the that that’s mostly about uh reloading prop pent and um and mounting the ship
[00:22:01] uh and then the ship could probably be used um you know probably every in in theory every 3 hours if you can make the ground track match um but certainly every say 6 to 9 hours C twice a day for the ship and we’ll make more shifts than there are boosters so and I think if once we have the uh floating space platforms we we can set the put the um position them such that the ship can come back in aing but amazing um so then it could be like you know let’s say if you get three ship launches per day that’s 1,000 flights a year of each with 100 to 150 tons of now we’re talking a real space program so Elon this is the largest prize ever ever uh largest incentive prize ever and I would argue for one of the most largest CI uh civilization scale challenges we have sure and uh we’re going get into the rules in a second so that folks who are looking at creating teams can understand why why why we created those rules but why did you fund this let’s
[00:23:01] start with the the why there yeah I think um I wanted to Spur ideas and thinking about uh the long-term need to um capture carbon um and uh you know I think this is one of those things that’s going to take a while to figure out what the right solution is MH um and especially to figure out what what the best economics are for uh for CO2 removal um and uh and and all the think through all the consequences you don’t want the cure to be worse than the disease yeah uh so uh you know some people say we’ll just plant a bunch of trees I’m like that’s not so easy you know like like a trillion trees sure exactly and then you got to like okay well how you need to get fertilizer you going to water them where’s the water going to come from uh what habitat are you potentially destroying with the trees used to be it’s not it’s not just a Nob brainer just go plan a bunch but it’s not to say that’s not a good VI option we should plant some trees I I’m in favor of
[00:24:00] planting trees it’s just not a question of like okay um you know there are like vast sections of like say like the Sahara Desert or or um uh the you know the some large Barren areas very dry areas in the US um where you could in the plant a lot of trees but you’re going to need a lot of water yeah and you’re going to need like like you’re going to have to cultivate them it’s not like uh they don’t just throw some cheese on the ground um we drop them from orbit yeah and I mean so just we I think it’ be good to sort of uh kind of frame the the frame the debate and and understand okay what things are really going to move the needle how much are they going to move the needle um you know uh if we’re talking about getting tens of hundreds of billions of tons of carbon in what form will that carbon be yeah will it be stable over time um and like I said like what is this going to cost Humanity to do however it’s paid for what what is it going to C what
[00:25:00] what’s the thing that’s uh going to be take the you know be most affordable um I think there are a lot of open questions on this there are let me let me chunk the rules for for those listening and uh you and your team an amazing team and uh Marcus extraor and Zenia Tata and their team work really well together so the first thing is that for a team to win this and we’ll talk about the prize amounts and so forth they’ve got actually build something that works and demonstrate something that can extract a th000 tons per year A kiloton of carbon per year as a demo scale model yeah I think um by the way we’re we’re very much open to adjusting the rules to be clear to everyone like like meaning um if things aren’t working or for whatever reason like uh we need to adjust rules we we’ll adjust rules the the the the fundamental goal is to um have spent uh 100 million and actually end up being probably like 12 20 million or whatever with um you know
[00:26:00] cost of managing the prize and everything um so it’ll be you know at the end of the day probably something like $120 million spent um and uh hopefully they spent well and usefully um and that what comes out of it is something that um uh Matters To The Future um so that that’s that’s the goal to be clear um and so if people have you know uh ideas for adjusting the rules um yeah we’re going out as guidelines and uh we’re going to have I think till miday for get public feedback tell us if we miss something we will turn them from guidelines to rules once we get really feedback and we’ve gone out to so many of the amazing climate scientists out there and it’s yeah unless the rules need to need to be valid uh for the for the four years of this prize duration yeah so we’re super open to critical feedback um don’t hesitate to you know yell and and say if he this this is how it should be different in some way or whatever you know um the goal is just to like let’s have it be a useful exercise and and have people have a good time
[00:27:00] trying to figure out this problem I think it’s sort of a it’s a fun problem to try to to work on um and uh yeah we just wanted to be useful at the end of the day you know and and and and have it not be sort of uh an academic exercise or something that never amounts to anything I think one of the things that you’ve said and I’ve said is you know everything works on PowerPoint everything works on PowerPoint exactly you could have a PowerPoint presentation for a teleportation system to the Andromeda galaxy and and and even have a simulation of like look here we are boom you’re in the according to the slide you’re now teleported to Andromeda I’m like uh but it doesn’t actually work you know so to win this prize uh a team actually during the four years has to build something that can at minimum pull out uh 1,000 tons of carbon per year so that they can show us that do they have to do they have to pull out 1,000 tons or just show that the rate it works no they have to pull out like a literal thousand tons we weigh it we’re on a scale and we’re going to we’re going to like you know think can calculate it to be 1,000 tons but the
[00:28:00] rate at which yes they’ll have to run it for a year to get 1,000 tons out but if they run it for a month that’s okay probably it’s okay all right and I mean I mean a month they have you know like 100 tons and it needs to fit on our weighing machine or something you know like I don’t we going to weigh it some we’ll use one of ships done sh be automa um um and you know part of the the actual phys Ally doing it is that they can they have enough data to calculate costs which are going to be important uh but we’re we’re not looking for Theory we’re looking for practice and and you know how hard it is to make something real it’s very hard to make something real I in in my view prototypes are trivial and production is hard yeah um and there and the general um generally people think it’s the Prototype that is the hard thing prototypes are well I mean obviously you going to have that 1% of inspiration but as the say goes it’s 1% insiration 99% postp paration um ideas are plentiful actually
[00:29:01] getting it done is very hard you could say for example U what about the you know the idea of going to the Moon is easy going to the Moon is hard that’s why it’s not the idea man yeah yeah there’s plenty of ideas out there it’s execution all right so the second was my idea to go to the Moon I patented it okay good see you there yeah uh the second thing is and this is a term that you that you use first is that the teams have to able to calculate the fully considered cost of pulling out the CO2 and what does that mean to you yeah so I think fully considered cost actually just means that if there are um you want to look at both the benefits and the the the cost actually so if uh if in um sequestering carob and removing it from the atmosphere oceans uh uh has has some uh perhaps some environmental impact uh which might be small but it’s not
[00:30:00] negative that certainly needs to be taken into account um and uh uh and then by the same token if uh what’s done is in extracting carbon is a useful product from which you can generate Revenue then that should count too all right so I don’t know I’m just sort of saying for argument sake like let’s say uh you could create um you know um construction construction material like you know um cement cement yeah ex which we I’ll talk about that later some kind of useful rocks that are rocks that are useful sand or I don’t know um something that’s useful for construction um then uh you could say okay well this is what we could sell it for and uh you know and then just fully consider pros and cons and and and and say okay this is what you know if um if we need to pay to have it done in the future which we probably will have to do then um what’s the what’s the lowest net cost yeah and and
[00:31:02] to be clear the the working teams what they do has to be net negative right it’s not a break even it’s not pull out 1 thousand tons and then mid a thousand tons and in fact one of the things we talked about absolutely one of the things we obviously yeah one of the things we talked about be worse than a disease yes how how long do you need to sequester the carbon Forest we had a big debate you want to share what you came up with there what the team came up with just the the the rate of c um sequestering needs to far exceed the rate at which say it is uh potentially dissolving back into the atmosphere um so um you know like if if uh yeah um and so one of the rules is that you have toble to sequester for at least 100 years right so we we set a a Target doesn’t be forever you know a year is not long enough um so
[00:32:01] we said you have to demonstrate that your methodology is going to contain the the CO2 in some fashion for 100 years at least yeah maybe with maybe there’s a small amount that that has last maybe it’s not perfect you know I think we don’t probably don’t want to set it to you know um 100% for 100 years but if it’s like I know 90% for 100 years that’s probably okay mhm you know so it just needs to be something that if we scaled it up would it work yeah that’s the third part that’s the third part Common Sense Tex test really yes and the hardest thing is that the winning team has to prove to our judges that their approach can actually scale to a gigaton level otherwise it’s not going to be useful exactly can’t it can’t be Niche yeah it can’t be inherently Niche and if anybody knows about scaling up I I think yeah you do uh yeah scal scaling is hard yeah yeah I’m I I don’t know what the answer is here really um but I think if if a lot of smart people work on this
[00:33:00] there could be some really Creative Solutions something generally useful for the world in in that regard absolutely um yeah and I think just to be clear like we looking for pragmatic Solutions it doesn’t need to be perfect um you know it’s but it’s got to be something that just fundamentally if we scaled it up would it would it work yeah that’s it so let’s talk about the prizes that are up for grabs um first place is going to be 50 million yeah uh which is significant our Our Hope is that it’s going to attract enough cognitive Surplus out there to focus in on this yeah um 30 million for split between sort of a second third and fourth place prize and one of the things that uh unior Team put forward is maybe it might be split into different categories right different approaches yeah I mean we want to reward people who have done great work yeah uh fun fundamentally I’m I’m open to increasing the price size too over time so if it turns out like hey somebody really really kicked ass and and uh and somehow there’s not a price for them we’ll I’ll add some more to the
[00:34:01] price that’s that’s extraordinary yeah absolutely I want somebody to have like spent like you know massive blood swear and tears have done something useful and then get nothing for it that would be pretty bad yeah so um but I I think also um you know this somebody’s going to probably get a company out of this you know because I think this will be a need long term and you know so uh and and uh so this is kind of like you can also think of it as like you know free Venture money yeah you know non- deluded Venture Capital yeah free free free money for a company yeah and hopefully we’re also creating a massive Marketplace and proving to people that there is there’s a there there here yeah so 50 million uh for the first uh 30 million split among second third and fourth in the next year we’re taking $15 million and distributing a million dollar to the top 15 teams that appear to be making the most progress the most real just giving up people some seed money basically yeah and then uh you’ve set aside 5 million for student teams
[00:35:01] yeah which is really important you want to talk about student teams I know you’re passionate about that yeah yeah we’ve done a lot of student competitions for example with hyperloop um just trying to uh you know spur ideas in advanced Transportation um and it’s really just basically uh an electric car and a vacuum tube to be precise I mean and we we’ had several of them and and um you know the the last H competition they actually I got like I think halfway to the speed of sound uh so yeah it’s pretty impressive and the the thing was you had to get to the fastest speed and then and then stop without crashing yeah um so um that’s pretty it’s kind of exciting to like is this thing going to you know get what speed is going to get up to are they going to slam the brakes on in time or it’s going to hit the crash barrier at the end so it’s pretty fun and and then we kind of got to we I put that on pause and now we’re doing tunneling competitions nice changed that yeah that technology has not changed that much in
[00:36:00] a century No honestly I think we’re we’re going to you know I mean for I don’t know five or seven years I for a long time I was like people asking what opties do you see I said tunneling and they think I was joking but um I think this is the way to solve traffic in um congested cities almost every major city is congested so and and with uh as autonomy uh gets better and better and you have Robo taxis and everything um the robo taxis will be cheaper than a bus or Subway and people will want it and it’ll take you point to point you know even when it’s like raining and snow uh and it’s uh you know so it’s it’s going to be better also I think for you know from a public health standpoint like if there’s another pandemic and you know how do you get around you know it’s like you uh you know it’s just difficult to go in crowded spaces so um then uh anyway so I think tunnels are going to be really important in the future for relieving congestion in um in cities so um you know I I hope others start tunnel telling compan companies um and just improved tunneling technology and um you
[00:37:01] can have like these walk tunnels just going all the way through you know 3D like multiple levels and um we’re the first operational one in Vegas that’s uh it’s going to go into operation I think in a few months uh I know we could sit here and talk about maak monkeys playing pong as well on neuralink that was amazing that was awesome yeah but I’m not going to go there I’m going to focus still on on our on our I played mine pong against the monkey you did did he win yeah no uh well but it hadn’t practiced as much yet so now it might be able to beat me monkeys have very good agility like they got to catch the branch they can swing through the trees and we cannot not very well you know um yeah so uh I think a monkey actually could could play like a fast twitch video game really well that’s great maybe better than a human you can sponsor a team yeah exactly Esports it’s just monkeys Max against the best teams yeah the monkeys actually love playing video games and uh and myy smoothies no it’s just like humans I mean basically humans love snacks and video games and
[00:38:00] soda monkeys you know oh that’s awesome um I just want to hit on there are four categories that teams can can uh put uh their approaches forward uh first is direct air capture pull it out of the air any comment on that uh sure well I mean this you can certainly pull that out there there’s lot there’s lots of ways to get coven out of the air um it could adds over it many different ways yeah Category 2 is oce sort of algae kelp planked in um uh a lot of CO2 in the oceans people don’t realize that M uh Category 3 land um trees I mean uh Mark benof has you know been backing a trillion trees project I mean that where are they going to be planted we’ll find out okay there’s by the way when people say that world Earth is being overpopulated mhm uh not true it’s like look out the window and I know uni had this conversation that you’re more worried about underpopulation of Planet oh yeah
[00:39:00] yeah um Earth is going to face a massive population collapse uh in in a over the next 20 30 years massive yeah um and it’s this this is definitely you know well civilization you know the question of like is civilization going to die with a bang or wimper this would definitely be dying with a wimper yeah we we we need the birth rate is very low it’s it’s been dropping right it used to be 5 six children per family globally it’s like 2.4 Below in the US it’s Bel below replacement levels I mean in most of Europe Russia Japan Korea Singapore um you know uh it’s uh it’s well blow replacement um but I would still say are you I mean when we spoke last about this are you’re still a sort of abundance Optimist that the world is getting better on many levels yeah I I think the the the world is generally getting better um you know I have some concerns about Advanced AI like um you know uh that that’s a risk um if I say like
[00:40:02] existential risks i’ I’d say um super Advanced AI is one um and and probably the second biggest risk after that is population collapse not an asteroid impact no the population collapse the thing about uh demographics in both ways you know what’s going to happen in 20 years cuz you know the birth light rate last year it takes like 20 years for a person to grow up yeah so we we know what the adult population is going to be 20 years from now because we know what kids were born last year um I think it’s we have a SE serious issue with population collapse um that’s far bigger than people realize um and and you know just the the social networks and everything were I mean the the social sport networks were not really set up for a high ratio of retirees to workers somebody so so then well than God robot coming in yeah the robots exactly we’ll need those we’ll need those robots but
[00:41:00] you don’t want to have the the youth effectively enslaved to take care of the elderly you know which is what would kind of happen if if you have an upside down demographic permit all right we’re going to go to uh some questions um let’s uh we have some over here the first one is from Chuck Brady in Austin uh Chuck is uh one of our Innovation board members one of the earliest funders that did the background work in the climate for and so so I found this question super fascinating so he says if the bogey is 10 gigatons per year and the global economic output is $87 trillion at least it has been the last year then at $200 per ton uh to sequester uh uh cost sequestration is 2 trillion or about 2% of the global GDP so it seems like a reasonable drag in overall economy uh if we could stop or reverse climate change the shortcoming right now is we don’t have a scalable way yet to capture and sequester CO2 so that’s the background that seems like a
[00:42:00] reasonable estimate so here’s this first question uh should competing teams prioritize scalability over cost and what lessons from Tesla and SpaceX have you learned uh to help teams thinking about uh the design of their Solutions well I think it’s not unless the cost is Affordable it’s not scalable I mean I thought the the prior math was was pretty sensible there um you know we could we could afford something perhaps which is is um 1 or 2% of GDP but it would be extremely painful if it was 20% of GDP yeah um we’ start having to cut into healthare and and and all sorts of you know social care programs um and if it’s 200% of GDP it’s not happening at all Chuck uh has a second question I also thought was really important he says uh while we want the lowest cost uh that will do a gigaton per year uh or more uh inevitably they’re going to be tradeoffs between cost and scalability uh no actually I think um something’s not scalable unless the cost is uh is
[00:43:03] low yeah so uh or at least if the cost at scale is low um yeah I mean I mean guess cost and scale you could say like I could plant a tree yeah sure uh okay um yeah yeah but we just need to solve the problem and and and so both uh cost and scalability need to be addressed um it’s like is it going to be remove enough carbon to matter and can we afford it as a civilization yeah those are the two things that that matter yeah um and then just obviously making sure that in in sequestering the C and we’re not uh at the same time creating uh some new environmental issue um so I mean that’s an important point right that we’re not creating a new environmental issue at the same time that we are yeah yeah or maybe it is but it can only be basically the Cure has got to be much better than the disease yeah obviously yeah um so like you know you take take take some medication some maybe there’s like
[00:44:00] slight side effects but but you generally want the medication to be much better than the um so it just got to make sense like we can see a path to this um to working at scale and solving a problem yeah it has to have some chance of that pesh gani from Los Angeles uh one of our vision Circle members says uh who do you think should be paying for the cost of carbon captures it government oil industry attacks across everyone do you have a sense about that well generally the market systems work very well when prices are accurate and the problem we have right now is that we’re not correctly pricing the cost per ton of CO2 in the atmosphere in oceans so um and there are various attempts to try to get get at this with the subsidies and whatnot but but really the market system will work work well if the market systems work well if there’s not a pricing error um and we have a pricing error in that we are not paying for this externality it’s in classic economics it’s just an unpriced externality in the
[00:45:02] we’re we’re not paying for our Gage removal uh so then cage Falls up you know so um and so the the logical thing to do and I think the you know vast majority of economists would agree is to uh put a tax on carbon um and then you can find ways with to with tax rebates and whatnot to make sure it’s not an aggressive tax that it does not unfairly um you know negatively disproportionately negatively affect uh people on low incomes uh with with uh tax rebates and stuff so I think that’s the way that that that’s the thing that systemically I think is important uh to address it um if you correctly price something the market system works yeah prices are just information we have the wrong information Julio from Dublin says uh do you expect the Technologies coming out of this competition to have any use on on Mars for example and PS thank you for what you’re doing for Humanity uh yeah I think so interesting thing on Mars is um that uh Mars is a primarily
[00:46:03] CO2 atmosphere uh though it also has some uh nitrogen and carbon and other Trace elements um nitrogen and argon I should say in addition to primarily CO2 um so uh in order to produce propellant on Mars uh we would we would take the CO2 from the atmosphere combine that with water ice um Mar has a of ice under the dust it’s amazing that we didn’t that 20 years ago that wasn’t known I mean we’re discovering it every place now yeah yeah m is just is basically covered in ice um it’s just got dust too so you know it’s hard to see the ice under the dust but uh there there’s I I believe um if if you warmed Ms up you’d have an ocean with an average dep depth I think of almost a mile or something like that on the northern part of the of the planet it’s like something like 40% of the planet would have an ocean potentially up to a mile mile deep or something like that extraordinary like
[00:47:00] like a big it wouldn’t be like just a little lake or something like that so um so so you take uh the Water Ice H2O and you combine that with the CO2 in the atmosphere uh you use something like theia process where you run it over a renum catalyst and uh you get um the um basically methane yeah get methane get CH4 uh and O2 oxygen um and that’s um that’s actually why we designed the Starship to use uh methane oxygen is because we can actually create that ref yeah in fact literally by pulling the CO2 out of the atmosphere combining with water and then uh and then using that as propellent and so uh actually by its very nature Mars has to have a sustainable um sustainable energy sustainable rocket propellant let’s go to uh India uh Rohan Kumar from Mumbai said is why don’t you simply implement the available Technologies on a larger scale like which Technologies yeah tree
[00:48:03] planting uh I in I I think there should be more trees uh I I think the I would say that there currently does not exist technologies that can scale to the gigaton level at a reasonable cost and that’s the underlying purpose of this competition is to uh to either either demonstrate existing Technologies can and teams can use whatever Technologies they want or to really innovate and come up with new approaches it’s like yeah yeah well the thing is that uh generally if if trees can grow somewhere they gen you usually do grow they they you know they like unless some they’re generally yeah there’s no one there pulling them out other than humans in the Amazon yeah I mean the Amazon is quite a thick quite a big big big thick jungle I’ve flown up the amazon many times and that is one hell of a jungle um in fact that like you would fly for long periods of time and see nothing no
[00:49:01] lights no fires no nothing um just darkness and then eventually like fly over Brazilia the capital and like out of nowhere there’s a bunch of Lights um but but there’s just there’s you know in order to have a big increase in uh in in tree biomass would H we would have to irate uh and um you know and pro um provide you know like like basically fertilizer and um we have to cultivate make it h hospitable for the trees to grow yes and then you say okay well what’s the energy cost of the of the fertilizer and the getting the fresh water there and um you know just making it habitable for trees it’s it’s it’s you got to factor in the you know the energy cost of the fertilizer and and the energy cost of the water and all that so it’s like okay what’s the actual net cin result it’s it’s not as good as people might think it’s again I’m not saying I’m anti- tree I’m Pro tree but but it would just be very difficult to to blanket the Sahara with trees yeah
[00:50:01] so let’s this is an important one here uh as teams are coming together uh so Grant in Washington DC says uh what is elon’s and Peter’s process of building a strong team and ultimately I think the quality of your team is everything uh yeah sure absolutely how you get things done how do you I mean when you start a new company like like neuralink or boring uh how do you recruit that first core Team new lincol Bing are very small companies I should be emphasize like these are um tiny compared to SpaceX and Tesla which is sure well well well over 90% of what I do is just SpaceX and Tesla um so um your new link and Waring company are each just a few hundred people um but how do you but these teams are 80,000 people that’s incredible dude yeah so it’s tells B uh SpaceX is like over 8,000 people so but how do you recruit that your initial team to work on something is it do you put out word
[00:51:00] do you uh do you know somebody typically do you build around somebody else do you pull from your existing companies well it varies I mean um my my I mean the first company way back in the day zip to um what I did was um I just wrote software you know so I didn’t have any money so I came out to what up to I came to go do grad studies at Stanford um I had $100,000 in like student debt and one computer um and I was going to actually work on um Advanced capacitors for used in electric vehicles I remember that you’re saying that way way back in the day yeah um so and i’ spent a couple Summers working on that before in in silon Valley before um going to Stanford and then that that summer I was like well you know the internet’s going to be something that really changes the the it’s going to be one of the biggest impacts on on Humanity you know it’s like Humanity uh communication will go from being like osmosis to humanity having a Nova System
[00:52:02] where you could access any part of Humanity’s Knowledge from from anywhere from any connection anywhere you could be in the middle of the Amazon jungle and have access to all of Humanity’s information more than if somebody was living in the library Congress so I was like well I I want to be part of creating that and so I just started writing software I’ve been writing software for a long time but um I actually wrote the first uh maps and directions on the internet the first White Pages first Yellow Pages um by myself um and then you know we’ve hired a few interns uh then my brother joined another friend of mine Greg Curry he’s passed away and um and then we got some Venture funding um I thought it was crazy that these guys were going to give us like they gave us like $3 million and I was like this is insane it’s just us and some interns uh and and they’re giving us $3 million this was crazy be mad so I think what I’m hearing you say is is if you know the the first most critical part of the team is you as the as the founder
[00:53:00] and the passionate individuals useful things um for SpaceX it was just literally like okay we we we we should become multi you know multiplan species and um but these are like long answers so but but I think in general if you want to recruit people uh that are you know really talented and driven you have to say you have to State what the what’s the mission what’s the problem we’re trying to solve and and uh and and just be clearly willing to you know pour a lot of blood swe and tears into it um and have a convincing argument for why it matters um you know there’s you know say like there’s three three major things for um you know in terms of motivation uh it’s like first of all somebody’s got to look forward to coming to work in the morning like if they’re like are they enjoying the the work itself intrinsically um that’s very important um and uh the right work environment can really make make a big difference there I think the ideally is that they also
[00:54:00] feel like that their rewards will receive um Fair financial compensation like that they that you know the that the financial rewards are are are are good and fair uh and then third for the really for the best people in the world they’ll want to know are they is what they’re doing going to matter yeah like so uh if they spend 10 years doing this it will it make a difference to the world or you know will people notice will it matter you know leas uh from San Diego says the X prise just awarded 20 million in prize money related to carbon removal uh can you explain what the differen is between that and the musk foundation’s xprize uh we had a $20 million uh energy coia prize for pulling CO2 out of the Smoke Stack of a natural gas and coal plant and turning it into a product more profitable in the cost of extraction and we just uh the two teams that won that were creating uh concrete and uh and they’re up in scaling so it’s a you know now it’s instead of just out
[00:55:00] of the the plants right now and thank you to Wyoming uh for their support there um it’s now can we pull it out on a global a global level okay Nandan from India says can a 17-year-old register uh given that I have the resources and ideas uh yeah I think so sure I I think there’s no age limit right there’s no age limit where in fact student teams are going to be important um oie from London says technology is a piece of the climate change solution but how do you change behavior and habits what do you think about that I think changing people’s behavior and habits is tough um or basically if you’re trying to convince people to make life more miserable for themselves this is a a hard argument to win yeah um so with with Tesla when we created Tesla we’re like okay look we we got to make a car that’s exciting and and fun and and looks good uh and then people don’t have to if you’re trying to convince people to that in order to say say the environment you have to wear a hair shirt and make life visitable and your
[00:56:00] food’s going to be terrible it’s that’s this is a uphill battle okay so it tells you like we’re just going to make electric cars that are better than gasoline cars faster lower cost per they look beautiful they’re faster and they have also you know cool advanced technology they’re more fun um and you don’t have to go to gas stations which are nasty um and so you know but you got to solve long-distance problem with roggers um so I think it is actually you know uh going to be be way more palatable to people if if if it’s uh if whatever solution is is removing carbon does not make their quality of life worse one last question here from uh from Godfrey in New York um I know Godfrey he is got ALS and uh he is loving his fully self-driving Model S okay well it’s not fully S I know but but getting there it’s getting there there and uh and so he’s I mean for people who are disabled it’s extraordinary technology it’s coming and he’s a he’s a brilliant uh brilliant
[00:57:01] human being he says hi Elon big fan of your work massively and eternally grateful to you for being a powerful source of inspiration to me can you please share uh who and what inspires you and drives you to be so insanely productive uh at a superhuman level um well I don’t know I think I I was uh I was always kind of like a crazy kid I suppose um I was just very curious about the world and um how do we come to be here what’s the meaning of life and all that and uh um I always had a really intense desire to understand things and learn yeah I mean I had sort of an existential crisis I guess when I was 11 or 12 or something trying to figure out what it’s all about you know and uh ultimately came came to the conclusion that um we don’t really know the answer but uh but if we increase the scope and scale of civilization then we uh we have a much better chance of understanding the
[00:58:00] meaning of life and why why we’re here or even what are the right questions to ask so therefore we should strive to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness to better understand the questions to ask about the answer that is the universe well on behalf of uh the human race on behal of everybody watching Elon thank you for all that you do I I know you you worked 247 and driven by Passion so thanks yeah um just uh grateful for what you’ve done and thank you for supporting and and launching this uh this x prise it’s meaningful beyond belief and hopefully now it’s everybody else’s turn to try and and dig in and form teams yeah I hope you all have a good time and and you know some some productive stuff comes out of it that’ be great yeah that would be awesome Elon all right thanks pleasure thank [Music] you [Music]