ISSRDC 2015 - A Conversation with Elon Musk!!!

**Astronaut Man** (0:02)
A gentleman who we can call Elon, and everybody, at least in this country, I know exactly who you're talking about, but Mr. Elon Musk. He's the CEO, lead designer of SpaceX. Everyone, I think, knows this. SpaceX is an amazing commercial company. It's the first company to launch a commercial rocket into low-Earth orbit with their Falcon 1 launch. Then in 2008, they were one of the winners of a contract to bring services to the International Space Station. They're the first commercial company to birth with the International Space Station bringing supplies. They're also the first commercial company to return a sizable return vehicle with all the components still intact, which is very important to us, back to the surface of the Earth. And so it's an amazing company. It's done a great job and continues to push the boundaries. You'll hear from Elon, but his interest really is not so much in low Earth orbit as it is going beyond low Earth orbit and making sure humanity will continue to live by exploring beyond Earth. Elon has a varied history of things that he's been involved in. This is one of the things that makes it so exciting to have this conversation with him today. He's not one dimensional space guy. He's involved in Tesla Motors, which he is a co-founder and CEO, and also a major player in the design efforts and what they choose to go build and how. Of course, he was a co-founder of PayPal and Zip2. He's deeply involved in a number of other industries as well. And so it's my great honor to welcome Elon Musk to the stage.
Thanks for coming, appreciate it.
Okay. Well, these are great chairs.
You guys, look at those chairs you're in.
Let's see. So Elon, you and I were going to have a little chat this morning. We said it was going to be a fireside chat, so minus the fireside, I guess we're ready. Again, as you heard, I've encouraged folks to ask a few questions along the way, but I have a few questions I thought to get us started. So the first one, which is probably on everybody's mind is perhaps you want to discuss a little bit about the recent loss of the Dragon and the Falcon 9 here on SpaceX 7

**Elon Musk** (2:44)
Sure, well, I mean, I think it's, it's obviously a huge load to SpaceX and, and, or we take these missions incredibly seriously.
The, invest, everyone that can engage in the investigation of SpaceX is very, very focused on that. And in this case, the, the data does seem to be quite difficult to interpret. Like, whatever happened is, is clearly not, not a sort of simple, straightforward thing. So, we want to spend as much time as possible just reviewing the data. Obviously, going over it with NASA and with the FAA and with a number of other customers, and just sort of seeing what feedback everyone has based on their prior experience. To see if we can get to what the, the most likely root cause is. Look at both what we think most likely happened, and then anything that's a close call, and try to address all of those things, and maximize the probability of success for future missions.

**Astronaut Man** (3:58)
Any hints on where you think the problem lies?

**Elon Musk** (4:02)
Well, I know there's media in the audience, so they'll...

**Astronaut Man** (4:05)
Yeah, so you have to be careful.

**Elon Musk** (4:06)
You're right.

**Astronaut Man** (4:08)
I never really learned that, but that is a lesson I'm working on.

**Elon Musk** (4:12)
So, so it's, yeah, I mean, I...
You know, the... I think, I think, I think we'll be able to say something more definitive towards the end of the week. At this point, really, the only thing that's really clear is that there was some kind of overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. But the exact cause and the sequence of events, there's still no clear theory that fits with all the data. So we have to determine if some of the data is a measurement error of some kind, or whether there is actually a theory that matches what appear to be conflicting data points. Okay.

**Astronaut Man** (5:02)
Very good.
I'll just make a comment. The tweets you put out regularly, particularly when events like this happen, are really useful to everybody. We really do appreciate it. You'd be amazed at how many folks quote what you said and how glad they are that you just step right out and at least give some sign about what's going on and that we'll get through it. Things are going well, so we appreciate that.