Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1609 - Elon Musk
Uploaded: 2021-02-11T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1609 - Elon Musk' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1609 - Elon Musk' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-02-11. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1609 - Elon Musk

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
No, that's the Sacha Baron Cohen movie?
Yeah.
I never saw that one.
Well, there's a scene where he's, they show him the new missile they've
developed,
but it has kind of a round head, and he says, you need to make it more pointy
to his engineers.
Actually, that's what I also said, it's the same thing.
You know, Starship, we need to make it more pointy.
Did you say that?
Mm-hmm.
Because of the movie?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Hold on.
I just have that main camera on.
Okay.
Okay.
You literally told them to make the Starship more pointy because of the movie,
The Dictator.
Yep.
And they know it, too.
It's not like they're unaware of it.
Everyone thought it would be funny if we made the rocket more pointy, so we did.
Did it have any effect on the aerodynamics?
No.
Nothing.
No, we can make it way blunter and be fine.
But is it better to be pointier?
Like, if it wasn't for the movie?
It's arguably slightly worse.
But more fun for you.
Yeah, it looks cooler.
Well, okay.
It does look cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How long do you think it'll be before?
Are you good, Jamie?
What's that?
My head's maybe?
Yeah, exactly.
You good?
How long?
My head is sticking out.
Is that where it's?
It's right on the edge of the top.
It's all good.
Oh, is that supposed to be?
Okay.
You're good.
All right.
How long do you think it's going to be before you have regular flights with
that, where you
can take off and land, like an airplane, where it'll be very consistent?
With that extra pointy rocket?
Yeah, with your extra pointy rocket.
Do you mean Earth-to-Earth transport?
Or to Earth-to-Earth or anywhere?
Just any kind of.
Yeah.
People.
Any time where you could just do it with people and have it land all the time?
I think we're probably two years away.
Two years away.
Yeah.
That's really nice.
Two years is pretty cool.
Two years for people.
We'll have a lot of flights between them then.
That's crazy.
That's 2023 is not that far away.
That'll be there before you know it.
Yeah.
Wow.
2023.
Time flies.
How many times have you had explosions with those things?
When you're on a rocket.
I don't know, like quite a few, six, maybe five or six.
What are those like?
What is it like when you watch it explode?
When it's supposed to land and it just.
This is a test program.
We expect it to explode.
Of course.
It's weird if it doesn't explode, frankly.
Really?
Yeah.
Because we're trying to develop advanced rockets at a high speed.
And if you want to get payload to orbit, you have to run things close to the
edge.
And the whole rocket is evolving.
The engines, the structure, the avionics, the software, the ground systems are
all evolving simultaneously.
So, and the whole production system, which is actually harder than the rocket
design by far.
So, the rocket and engine and avionics production system is, and the launch
system is a thousand percent harder than the initial design.
Like, at least.
Really?
Yeah.
So, when.
Same with cars.
It's like 10,000 percent.
It's easy to do a car prototype.
It's hard to do production.
So, when you're looking and you're scaling towards the future and you're
looking at mistakes or corrections, improvements, and all these different
things, that's how you come up with this figure of approximately two years.
If current trends continue, if we, you know, if you plot the points on the
curve of progress, then we should be doing regular orbital flights with a high
probability of safe landing in two years.
So, we're getting to orbit this year.
Our goal is to get to orbit this year.
Hmm.
So, and I'm not sure people totally understand, like, Starship is the largest
flying object ever made.
This thing will be about over 5,000 tons of weight on liftoff.
It's going to go straight up with 5,000 tons.
Whoa.
This is much heavier than any aircraft by far.
There's no aircraft even comes close to this weight.
And it's going straight up.
The aircraft can't go straight up.
So, it's like the – it's got more than twice – it will have more than twice
the thrust of a Saturn V.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
It's like a big rocket.
Why does it need that much thrust?
Oh, we're trying to –
Because you want to go to Mars?
Or is this like –
We're trying to make life multi-planetary, you know, extend life beyond Earth.
And in order to do that, you have to have high tonnage to Mars.
And that means you need a big rocket and you've got to fly a lot.
So, the reason why it has twice the thrust of the Saturn V is to plan for these
interstellar trips.
Interplanetary.
Or the interplanetary trips.
So, when you're doing this and you're developing these systems thinking about
regular trips to other planets.
But you're not just trying to get into orbit right now.
You're trying to get into orbit with something that eventually could scale up.
Yeah, we know how to get to orbit.
We've done that a lot.
So, the really hard thing is we need to have a fully and rapidly reusable
rocket where all elements of the rocket are reused.
And they're reused quickly like an aircraft.
And this has never been done.
This is the holy grail of rocketry is to have a fully reusable rocket.
Then you need to go one step further.
It needs to be fully and rapidly reusable.
You know, it's like...
Like a plane.
Yeah, yeah.
Like a plane lands, you, you know, refuel it and take off again.
How do you have time?
I never understand you in regards to the way you run multiple businesses
simultaneously.
I would think that something like this would require so much concentration.
It would require...
Yeah.
I would think this would be your whole being, trying to figure out how to work
this.
Yeah, well, I do work a lot.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
And I probably just, for the reason I was late, as I was literally coming from,
you know, some critical meetings, just doing...
Normally, I'd be meeting until I work until like one or two in the morning.
Every night?
Not, I mean, Saturday and Sunday, usually not, but sometimes.
How much do you sleep?
About six hours.
Oh, that's pretty good.
Yeah, it's not that crazy.
For you, that's, I mean, for someone who does as much as you, that's actually,
that's impressive that you can squeeze that in.
Yeah.
I've tried sleeping less, but then total productivity decreases.
Yeah.
So you feel like six is the number where it's...
Six, six, six, six is, I can, that, I don't find myself wanting more sleep than
six.
So when, like with the Saturn V and the space shuttles and all these other
rockets, they would have these parts that would, they would get the ship up
into space, but they would descend down to earth and crash into the ocean.
Yeah.
And they would never use them again.
That's right.
How do you avoid that?
Like, what is the difference between the way these things are structured?
Like, the whole thing goes together?
And then it lands together?
Well, we're on the wrong planet for a single stage to orbit.
Right.
I think one thing to appreciate is, like, space, getting to space is easy,
getting to orbit is hard.
So you only need maybe one or two percent of the energy to get to space, to
where the atmosphere is thin, compared to what you need to get to orbit.
And if you get to orbit, now you've got to burn off all that energy, and you're
coming in like a meteor.
So you need a powerful heat shield.
So it's, like, super difficult to get to orbit at all.
And then if you get to orbit at all, then making those, the stages reusable
means they've got to come back intact.
And then the upper stage is especially difficult because it's got so much
energy.
All the energy you put into it, you have to take out.
So it's, you know, you're literally coming in like a flaming meteor.
And most things would just melt or vaporize.
So, like, if you as a human try to come in from orbit, you'd just be pink mist.
Yeah.
That's a funny way to put it.
Yeah.
Now, the space shuttle, they had tiles, right?
That was the way they avoided the heat.
They had these heat shield tiles.
What do you use with the SpaceX rockets?
Yeah, we have a more advanced version of the shuttle tile, but you've got to
use some kind of ceramic, essentially.
It's, you know, usually some form of silicon oxide, aluminum oxide, some carbon
perhaps thrown in there.
And is it like a one-piece?
Or is it in tiles the way?
It's in tiles, yeah.
We have hexagonal tiles.
You can see with each Starship, we've actually increased the size of the heat
shield.
So, it's tough because the tiles are kind of like, I don't know, that's not
quite the right analogy, but they're kind of like dinner plates.
Like, they're brittle and their coefficient of thermal expansion is different
from metal.
So, metal will expand and contract differently from the tiles.
And the tiles also get super hot, while metal can be super cold because it's
got cryogenic fluid behind it.
So, you've got this differential expansion and contraction, which makes the
gaps in the tiles expand and contract.
But if the gaps get too big, then you get kind of the hot gas, sort of the
plasma gets in down, down, get plasma in the crack, and it's not as bad.
And then you're going to melt the metal behind it.
So, but if they're too close, then they bang together and they crack.
So, you've got to get it just right, where they're, the gap's just right, and
then they can, the way that they're attached to the body, they can move around
a little bit.
So, there has to be some sort of room to move.
It can't be one large piece of ceramic that you fit over the front.
Yeah, it's, you can't really make a, such a giant piece of ceramic, because you've
got, you've got to, well, I guess you'd have like a super gigantic oven.
But, but you, you really need, you need expansion joints, expansion contraction
joints.
So, it'd be very, quite difficult to do a single piece tile.
Think of it like tiles for your, for a roof or something like that.
You know, like, why don't we just make one tile for a roof?
It's like, yeah, it's not going to work.
Now, these things have multiple stages.
How many stages in these, the rocket boosters, when, when things are taking off?
How many?
Starship has two stages.
So, it's a, that's, that's the minimum number that you could do on a planet, on
a planet like Earth.
The gravity, Earth's gravity is quite strong.
And, and the, we have a thick atmosphere and strong gravity.
So, whereas, like, if you took off from Mars, it would be, it's, it's like
relatively easy.
Mars is around just under 40% of Earth's gravity.
The moon is about a sixth.
And, uh, getting to lunar orbit from the surface of the moon is easy.
Um, like the, when, during Apollo, the lunar lander, uh, just the top half of
the lunar lander was able to take off and get to lunar orbit.
But to get to Earth orbit, you need the giant rocket.
Hmm.
It's, it's very non-linear.
So, what happens to the first, when, when you take off and it separates into
stages, how does the, the first stage get reused?
Well, have you seen how the Falcon 9 stages work, where they come back and land?
No.
You haven't seen it?
No.
Wow.
Um, yeah, I mean.
Jamie's gonna pull it up.
So, does it come down with parachutes?
Does it, like, how does it, uh, how does it land?
No, it, it lands, uh, propulsively with the thrusters.
So, that.
With the engines.
Really?
Yeah.
So, it's, it's just designed to take off.
Here it is.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
So, that is the bottom of the rocket that launches it straight up and then
afterwards it comes down and lands like that.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
And then the top piece can then land separately.
Yes.
Well, in the case of Falcon 9, the upper stage burns up on re-entry.
Um, Falcon 9 has, uh, there's the, the fairing, the top, the, where the
satellites are contained in the top.
And that the fairing halves, uh, once it gets to space where the atmosphere is
thin, it's a little long way from orbit, uh, but it's in space.
So, you no longer need the, the satellite doesn't need to be protected by the
nose cone, the fairing.
And so, that, i