7 ms·

Elon Musk: The Man With His Mind in the Future

158 points by guynamedloren 14y ago

hastur 14y ago
direct link to video: http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1064818/events/987074/videos/1908918 http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1064818/events/987074/vid...
- guynamedloren 14y ago
  amazing insight - definitely worth watching from start to finish
- ehsanu1 14y ago
  Anybody know what his 5th mode of transportation is? The description at first made me think of http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda-weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda-weehawken_burrito_t...
  - dojomouse 14y ago
    I don't know - no - but I'd bet a large chunk of change that the HyperLoop is some variant of vacumn tube maglev. Not an idea Musk came up with by any stretch, but he's someone who might actually be able to make it happen which would be very awesome. His patent is going to hit a fair bit of prior art though.
alpine 14y ago
The thing that interests me most about the Elon Musks of this world is our economy's carrying capacity for such talented and ambitious people. Can we support 100 EMs? Would we run out of things to do? Perhaps this is the wrong way to look at things. Maybe all we need (can sustain) is a handful like him and the wealth they create will make all our lives markedly better, without us personally being involved ab initio?
- guynamedloren 14y ago
  > Can we support 100 EMs? Would we run out of things to do? Absolutely. When we run out of things to do, we go to Mars (no sarcasm). I honestly think we can do it. More importantly, Elon Musk thinks we can as well, and he has the means to make it happen.
  - quink 14y ago
    I think I can either smell a personality cult coming up or a reality distortion field. Or it may be both. Can we please leave it up to Elon Musk whether he wants to go to Mars or not, without presupposing the notion? I'm fairly sure he might have something to say about the matter if he really does think we can do it (I feel dirty just typing this). Edit: He has said that he is going to Mars, I know that, and I know the replies to my post here missed this. I'm saying that it's up to him to do it, without fervently believing that he is the second coming of Jesus and will in fact do this. I'm just saying that our reaction to this is not entirely outside the field of personality cult. While knowing that he did say all this, I'm also pretty sure that he will eventually accomplish that goal, and I wish him the best of luck. I'm just not sure that we should see him as the second coming of Jobs, Branson and Jesus combined, which is what this is starting to smell like. Let the man do electric cars really well first (i.e. outside a few thousand people in California owning the Model S) and do SpaceX really well for a while and then we'll talk. Edit 2: The more I get downvoted without an actual reply to my point being offered, the surer I'll be that it's a personality cult that's going on here. At least until I actually see more than one Tesla on the road here or some manned regular spaceflights. Let's keep in mind that it took four attempts for Falcon I to succeed, but the current score of my comment seems to suggest that apparently the attention span here isn't that long. All the best of luck (and at his skill level, luck doesn't have much to do with it any longer) to Elon Musk however, and I 100% support everything he has been doing. Although PayPal.
    - coderdude 14y ago
      >Can we please leave it up to Elon Musk whether he wants to go to Mars or not, without presupposing the notion? He's been pretty open about his plans. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/03/elon-musk-says-ticket-to-mars-will-cost-500000/ http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/03/elon-musk-says-ticket-t... http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/15/elon_musk_wants_spacex_to_help_establish_a_colony_on_mars_.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/15/elon_musk... http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/11/elon_musk_s_mars_colony_plan_excites_jon_stewart_video_.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/11/elon_musk... http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/01/elon-musk-spacex-rocket-mars http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/01/elon-musk-s... http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/04/26/elon-musk-we-can-put-a-man-on-mars-in-10-years/ http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/04/26/elon-musk-we-...
ABS 14y ago
anyone can point me to something explaining "The Hyperloop"? not much luck after a few searches
- hobin 14y ago
  At first I thought he meant something similar to Tesla's idea of building a ring around the earth and the blowing away the pillars. Yet I can't seem to find anything about his 'hyperloop' of sorts.
- rsaarelm 14y ago
  I was wondering the same. For whatever reason, the first thing I thought of when I read that was something like those proposed vacuum tube train things (eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain).
  - marvin 14y ago
    Would it be possible to have a tunnel like that and somehow fill it with air instead, then accelerate the air to something like 2x the speed of sound outside? That was my first association when he said "there are other ways to store energy than batteries". Then you arrange the whole thing in a loop. You could have some sort of carriage that just gets carried along by the airflow. Anyway - the part about electric VTOL aircraft got me really excited. I've been annoyed that no one has tried to do VTOL aircraft with fans yet. If it could be made electric too (I'm assuming on-board generators or fuel cells here), that would turn a lot of things on its head.
    - xd 14y ago
      I was thinking along these lines .. but instead of moving the air, remove it from one side of the train, and then allow atmospheric pressure to force it through the tunnel.
    - __alexs 14y ago
      > I've been annoyed that no one has tried to do VTOL aircraft with fans yet The F-35B uses a fan and vectored thrust. It's not quite VTOL though. (Also all helicopters.)
raganesh 14y ago
True visionary. Lucky for the rest of us, he has the determination & financial muscle to make his visions a reality.
- melling 14y ago
  Everytime someone says this on HN, I've gotta give my obligatory "why are we doing more as a 'group'?" Sure, it's great that one person has lots of money and some vision, but why aren't more people pooling their resources, both time and money, to accomplish more? Ok, I'll keep it short this time. Back to surfing HN. Enjoy.
  - Shivetya 14y ago
    Because most people are lazy. There I said it. It is far easier to let your government step in and make you do it, or more importantly make someone else do it for you. Face it, outside of the truly poor, people will spend money on non essentials all the while some essentials go unpaid. I know professionals who do not put money away for retirement, do not go to the dentist, do not go to the doctor, do not, do not, do not. Get the idea? I love the complain of many, they don't have the time or money. Seems to me most have the money but their priorities are to smart phones, expensive cable plans, cars, or other frivolous expenses. So why should we expect people to pool their resources when they cannot effectively use what they have? The world needs visionaries, fortunately every once in a while one comes along who has the wherewithal to act on his dreams.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - eloisius 14y ago
    You're question isn't quite clear to me. I think I have an answer, but what exactly are you asking?
  - techdmn 14y ago
    Not to completely disagree with your sentiment, but I think there is a large difference between having the resources to execute your own vision as opposed to having to partner with a large group of people and find a common vision. Especially when you start getting down to details. Grand plans are a lot less alluring when you don't get to be the boss. Not that we should let that be an excuse. :)
confluence 14y ago
I've been following Musk since before it was cool (hacker hipsters unite) and I deeply respect everything he's done - he's one of my personal heroes. But, I am seeing the beginnings of a personality cult by some on HN which I thoroughly dislike and I have seen before with the rise of Steve Jobs and Apple. I just want to state - let's not start feeling that Musk, and Musk alone did these things. This has been the work of thousands of people over many years (not all at SpaceX/Tesla) with critical aid provided by the much maligned and mocked US government. Musk is great - but let's not make it too personal. Let's celebrate the fact that such a situation can exist in such dark times (depending on your viewpoint :D). For more details see here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4134729 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4134729
- melling 14y ago
  I can't find the quote, but Steve Jobs said something about all great human accomplishments being the result of teams. I think most of realize there are large teams of people working behind all these great visions. However, it's not like tens of thousands of people spontaneously get together without the visionary and solved these problems on their own. It does happen occasionally (e.g. Linux), but, in general, the visionary is very critical.
  - enraged_camel 14y ago
    Exactly. The visionary is the catalyst that brings everyone together and makes the accomplishment possible in the first place. This is why personality cults (in this context) are appropriate, in my opinion. Without Jobs, we would not have Apple today. Without Musk, we would not have Paypal, Tesla, or SpaceX. The thing with visionaries that sets them apart from other people is that they are one of a kind. Whereas the vast majority of their team consists of people that, for the most part, are expendable. You can always find more engineers or product people or salesmen. You cannot find more Jobs or Musks.
- schiffern 14y ago
  In the Jobs interview that Mossberg just released, Jobs said something along the lines of, "People need a symbol to latch onto, which is me." We may not like that people behave this way, but I take it as a mark of intelligence when someone can accept an unpleasant yet immutable fact rather than fighting it or sweeping it under the rug. Whether the population of HN is such that our collective behavior is immutable could be the subject of endless debate, of course.
akandiah 14y ago
Elon Musk actually stated his idea for an electric jet in his cameo appearance on Iron Man 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuG2AVFB-g0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuG2AVFB-g0 Musk was also the inspiration behind the characterisation of Robert Downey Jr in the Iron Man films.
- tocomment 14y ago
  How does an electric jet work? I couldn't find a wikipedia page. I always figured it needed some kind of fuel to explode.
  - jdavid 14y ago
    well you need the expansion of air, but maybe there is another way using magnetism or electrostatic or something, but maybe he is just referring to how the props are mechanically turned.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      You don't need to expand the air, just shove it out the back of the plane. Right now, one of the most powerful and efficient ways we have to do that is by burning fuel and causing massive thermal expansion in a nozzle that directs most of it backwards.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    My guess (which I repeat is just a guess) is that it doesn't store any fuel at all (excepting some amount for emergencies) but relies on beamed power from the ground. A fully-fueled 747 weighs something like 5x an empty 747 so you might get some real efficiencies from not having any at all. Plus, this would give all those solar and windfarms in (literal) flyover country a nice place to sell their power without running lines. You can launch with a sled or some crazy version of an extension cord.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      My guess (which I repeat is just a guess) is that it doesn't store any fuel at all (excepting some amount for emergencies) but relies on beamed power from the ground. A fully-fueled 747 weighs something like 5x an empty 747 so you might get some real efficiencies from not having any at all. That would be frickin amazing. For cargo flights, especially. Something like that could reduce the cost of air freight by a huge factor.
danieldrehmer 14y ago
He has finally satisfied part of my curiosity about how his electric vtol jet would work
- tocomment 14y ago
  Do explain
m67ski 14y ago
I love Elon, he is amazing, but I'd rather motivate other wealthy people to be creatively ambitious and altruistic, rather than deify an individual personality. He is a great human being, no doubt. But some of Elon's friends are not great people. And I hope he no longer hangs out with them socially (other billionaires).
firefox 14y ago
Musk is one of the greatest entrepreneurs alive, tackling some of the largest and most difficult problems. If starting one company is hard enough, he's disrupting three industries that have managed to stay alive without significant innovation for decades. Musk FTW.
lectrick 14y ago
I challenge anyone here to take their futuristic ideas and try to execute on them given whatever financial resources are available.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

158 points by guynamedloren 14y ago

direct link to video: http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1064818/events/987074/videos/1908918 http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1064818/events/987074/vid...

guynamedloren 14y ago
amazing insight - definitely worth watching from start to finish
ehsanu1 14y ago
Anybody know what his 5th mode of transportation is? The description at first made me think of http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda-weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda-weehawken_burrito_t...
- dojomouse 14y ago
  I don't know - no - but I'd bet a large chunk of change that the HyperLoop is some variant of vacumn tube maglev. Not an idea Musk came up with by any stretch, but he's someone who might actually be able to make it happen which would be very awesome. His patent is going to hit a fair bit of prior art though.

alpine 14y ago

The thing that interests me most about the Elon Musks of this world is our economy's carrying capacity for such talented and ambitious people. Can we support 100 EMs? Would we run out of things to do? Perhaps this is the wrong way to look at things. Maybe all we need (can sustain) is a handful like him and the wealth they create will make all our lives markedly better, without us personally being involved ab initio?

guynamedloren 14y ago
> Can we support 100 EMs? Would we run out of things to do? Absolutely. When we run out of things to do, we go to Mars (no sarcasm). I honestly think we can do it. More importantly, Elon Musk thinks we can as well, and he has the means to make it happen.
- quink 14y ago
  I think I can either smell a personality cult coming up or a reality distortion field. Or it may be both. Can we please leave it up to Elon Musk whether he wants to go to Mars or not, without presupposing the notion? I'm fairly sure he might have something to say about the matter if he really does think we can do it (I feel dirty just typing this). Edit: He has said that he is going to Mars, I know that, and I know the replies to my post here missed this. I'm saying that it's up to him to do it, without fervently believing that he is the second coming of Jesus and will in fact do this. I'm just saying that our reaction to this is not entirely outside the field of personality cult. While knowing that he did say all this, I'm also pretty sure that he will eventually accomplish that goal, and I wish him the best of luck. I'm just not sure that we should see him as the second coming of Jobs, Branson and Jesus combined, which is what this is starting to smell like. Let the man do electric cars really well first (i.e. outside a few thousand people in California owning the Model S) and do SpaceX really well for a while and then we'll talk. Edit 2: The more I get downvoted without an actual reply to my point being offered, the surer I'll be that it's a personality cult that's going on here. At least until I actually see more than one Tesla on the road here or some manned regular spaceflights. Let's keep in mind that it took four attempts for Falcon I to succeed, but the current score of my comment seems to suggest that apparently the attention span here isn't that long. All the best of luck (and at his skill level, luck doesn't have much to do with it any longer) to Elon Musk however, and I 100% support everything he has been doing. Although PayPal.
  - coderdude 14y ago
    >Can we please leave it up to Elon Musk whether he wants to go to Mars or not, without presupposing the notion? He's been pretty open about his plans. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/03/elon-musk-says-ticket-to-mars-will-cost-500000/ http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/03/elon-musk-says-ticket-t... http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/15/elon_musk_wants_spacex_to_help_establish_a_colony_on_mars_.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/15/elon_musk... http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/11/elon_musk_s_mars_colony_plan_excites_jon_stewart_video_.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/11/elon_musk... http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/01/elon-musk-spacex-rocket-mars http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/01/elon-musk-s... http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/04/26/elon-musk-we-can-put-a-man-on-mars-in-10-years/ http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/04/26/elon-musk-we-...

ABS 14y ago

anyone can point me to something explaining "The Hyperloop"? not much luck after a few searches

hobin 14y ago
At first I thought he meant something similar to Tesla's idea of building a ring around the earth and the blowing away the pillars. Yet I can't seem to find anything about his 'hyperloop' of sorts.
rsaarelm 14y ago
I was wondering the same. For whatever reason, the first thing I thought of when I read that was something like those proposed vacuum tube train things (eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain).
- marvin 14y ago
  Would it be possible to have a tunnel like that and somehow fill it with air instead, then accelerate the air to something like 2x the speed of sound outside? That was my first association when he said "there are other ways to store energy than batteries". Then you arrange the whole thing in a loop. You could have some sort of carriage that just gets carried along by the airflow. Anyway - the part about electric VTOL aircraft got me really excited. I've been annoyed that no one has tried to do VTOL aircraft with fans yet. If it could be made electric too (I'm assuming on-board generators or fuel cells here), that would turn a lot of things on its head.
  - xd 14y ago
    I was thinking along these lines .. but instead of moving the air, remove it from one side of the train, and then allow atmospheric pressure to force it through the tunnel.
  - __alexs 14y ago
    > I've been annoyed that no one has tried to do VTOL aircraft with fans yet The F-35B uses a fan and vectored thrust. It's not quite VTOL though. (Also all helicopters.)

raganesh 14y ago

True visionary. Lucky for the rest of us, he has the determination & financial muscle to make his visions a reality.

melling 14y ago
Everytime someone says this on HN, I've gotta give my obligatory "why are we doing more as a 'group'?" Sure, it's great that one person has lots of money and some vision, but why aren't more people pooling their resources, both time and money, to accomplish more? Ok, I'll keep it short this time. Back to surfing HN. Enjoy.
- Shivetya 14y ago
  Because most people are lazy. There I said it. It is far easier to let your government step in and make you do it, or more importantly make someone else do it for you. Face it, outside of the truly poor, people will spend money on non essentials all the while some essentials go unpaid. I know professionals who do not put money away for retirement, do not go to the dentist, do not go to the doctor, do not, do not, do not. Get the idea? I love the complain of many, they don't have the time or money. Seems to me most have the money but their priorities are to smart phones, expensive cable plans, cars, or other frivolous expenses. So why should we expect people to pool their resources when they cannot effectively use what they have? The world needs visionaries, fortunately every once in a while one comes along who has the wherewithal to act on his dreams.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- eloisius 14y ago
  You're question isn't quite clear to me. I think I have an answer, but what exactly are you asking?
- techdmn 14y ago
  Not to completely disagree with your sentiment, but I think there is a large difference between having the resources to execute your own vision as opposed to having to partner with a large group of people and find a common vision. Especially when you start getting down to details. Grand plans are a lot less alluring when you don't get to be the boss. Not that we should let that be an excuse. :)

confluence 14y ago

I've been following Musk since before it was cool (hacker hipsters unite) and I deeply respect everything he's done - he's one of my personal heroes. But, I am seeing the beginnings of a personality cult by some on HN which I thoroughly dislike and I have seen before with the rise of Steve Jobs and Apple. I just want to state - let's not start feeling that Musk, and Musk alone did these things. This has been the work of thousands of people over many years (not all at SpaceX/Tesla) with critical aid provided by the much maligned and mocked US government. Musk is great - but let's not make it too personal. Let's celebrate the fact that such a situation can exist in such dark times (depending on your viewpoint :D). For more details see here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4134729 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4134729

melling 14y ago
I can't find the quote, but Steve Jobs said something about all great human accomplishments being the result of teams. I think most of realize there are large teams of people working behind all these great visions. However, it's not like tens of thousands of people spontaneously get together without the visionary and solved these problems on their own. It does happen occasionally (e.g. Linux), but, in general, the visionary is very critical.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  Exactly. The visionary is the catalyst that brings everyone together and makes the accomplishment possible in the first place. This is why personality cults (in this context) are appropriate, in my opinion. Without Jobs, we would not have Apple today. Without Musk, we would not have Paypal, Tesla, or SpaceX. The thing with visionaries that sets them apart from other people is that they are one of a kind. Whereas the vast majority of their team consists of people that, for the most part, are expendable. You can always find more engineers or product people or salesmen. You cannot find more Jobs or Musks.
schiffern 14y ago
In the Jobs interview that Mossberg just released, Jobs said something along the lines of, "People need a symbol to latch onto, which is me." We may not like that people behave this way, but I take it as a mark of intelligence when someone can accept an unpleasant yet immutable fact rather than fighting it or sweeping it under the rug. Whether the population of HN is such that our collective behavior is immutable could be the subject of endless debate, of course.

akandiah 14y ago

Elon Musk actually stated his idea for an electric jet in his cameo appearance on Iron Man 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuG2AVFB-g0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuG2AVFB-g0 Musk was also the inspiration behind the characterisation of Robert Downey Jr in the Iron Man films.

tocomment 14y ago
How does an electric jet work? I couldn't find a wikipedia page. I always figured it needed some kind of fuel to explode.
- jdavid 14y ago
  well you need the expansion of air, but maybe there is another way using magnetism or electrostatic or something, but maybe he is just referring to how the props are mechanically turned.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    You don't need to expand the air, just shove it out the back of the plane. Right now, one of the most powerful and efficient ways we have to do that is by burning fuel and causing massive thermal expansion in a nozzle that directs most of it backwards.
- danielweber 14y ago
  My guess (which I repeat is just a guess) is that it doesn't store any fuel at all (excepting some amount for emergencies) but relies on beamed power from the ground. A fully-fueled 747 weighs something like 5x an empty 747 so you might get some real efficiencies from not having any at all. Plus, this would give all those solar and windfarms in (literal) flyover country a nice place to sell their power without running lines. You can launch with a sled or some crazy version of an extension cord.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    My guess (which I repeat is just a guess) is that it doesn't store any fuel at all (excepting some amount for emergencies) but relies on beamed power from the ground. A fully-fueled 747 weighs something like 5x an empty 747 so you might get some real efficiencies from not having any at all. That would be frickin amazing. For cargo flights, especially. Something like that could reduce the cost of air freight by a huge factor.

danieldrehmer 14y ago

He has finally satisfied part of my curiosity about how his electric vtol jet would work

tocomment 14y ago
Do explain

m67ski 14y ago

I love Elon, he is amazing, but I'd rather motivate other wealthy people to be creatively ambitious and altruistic, rather than deify an individual personality. He is a great human being, no doubt. But some of Elon's friends are not great people. And I hope he no longer hangs out with them socially (other billionaires).

firefox 14y ago

Musk is one of the greatest entrepreneurs alive, tackling some of the largest and most difficult problems. If starting one company is hard enough, he's disrupting three industries that have managed to stay alive without significant innovation for decades. Musk FTW.

lectrick 14y ago

I challenge anyone here to take their futuristic ideas and try to execute on them given whatever financial resources are available.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]