I wrote this while watching Salman Khan having a conversation with Elon Musk, this is what stood out to me. Thought I’d just publish it anyway.

• There’s always something wrong. Too many things going on. Thousands of unique components.
• Service provider for NASA.
• Internet, Sustainable Energy, Space Exploration.
• Some eventual extinction event. “We read the same books” lol. Civilizations have been around for a very short time, on an evolutionary time scale. Million years is not much. 4.5 billion years. If we continued at this pace- either extinct or on many planets.
• How do you make it concrete? Thought about it abstract, not expecting to have careers. Wanted to be involved in some scale. Best bet: Electric cars. Studying capacitors.
• How do you leverage equipment- ultra precise capacitor. Brief stint at Stanford. PhD in applied physics. Energy storage solutions.
• “Wasn’t sure if success was one of the possible outcomes.” Wasn’t sure that I would fail, just wasnt sure that success was a possibility. Success in the envelope of outcomes. At an academic level- publish some useless paper. Add some leaves to the tree of knowledge.
• Success on the internet more likely. Do a PhD and watch the internet happen, or participate. Don’t just watch it happen.
• Publishing software, yellow pages, media companies… early stages. ’95. Really early stages. Khan looks so attentive.
• There was no advertising money in ’95. The idea of advertising seemed ridiculous at the time- unlikely proposition. Media companies weren’t even sure that they should be online.
• Didn’t expect PayPal to grow at the rate it did- caused problems. 100,000 customers almost in a month? Nutty. Offered people 20 if they had an account, and 20 if they referred anyone. Then 10, then 5. Then eventually the network value itself exceeded anything we could offer.
• Spent about 60 or 70 million dollars. Peanuts? Depends on your relative scale. Peanuts to Google, to Apple. They’ve got 500 billion, 0.1% to them.
• Bacteria in a petri dish. Try to have one customer generate 2 customers, 3, ideally. You want it to happen really fast. Model it like bacteria growth, expand until it hits the sides of the petri dish.
• First 3 launches failed. Did not hit the bullseye. “But how do you even get to the point of launching rockets? Who did you call? Did you write a plan?”
• Origin: Figure out why we’re not sending any people to Mars. Obvious next step after Apollo. Didn’t send anybody after that. In 1969? Base on the Moon, at least sent some people to Mars. Space hotels. That’s what people expected. Nobody will be sent to orbit smaller than a deck of cards.
• Terrible website- this should be on the front page, when they send people to Mars. Disappointment. Matter of national will. Get people excited about Space again. Research, get familiar. Mars Oasis.
• Small greenhouse, dehydrate a gel, plants… first life on Mars, green plants on red background, furthest LIFE has ever been (as far as we know).
• 2 Missions. If only one, and it failed, opposite effect.
• Willing to spend half the PayPal money with no expectation of return, because it’s pretty important. Get NASA a bigger budget, get us to Mars.
• Nations can’t do this. How do you?
• US rockets way too expensive. Bought Russian ICBMs. Who did you call? Launch satellites- too expensive. Boing Delta 2 costs 65 million each, 2 is 130, breaks my budget.
• ICBM market rate- how much does it go for? 10 million dollars each, 2 is 20.
• No lack of will; tremendous amount of will. US is a nation of explorers. Silly of me to think people lack motivation. People don’t want to give up healthcare to go to Mars. Going to Mars cannot cause some meaningful drop in SoL.
• There is a will if people thought there’s a way. Historically, rockets expensive, so rockets will always be expensive? Not true. Raw materials cheap. Is there some catch i’m missing?
• Falcon 1- 6 million dollars TO THE GROUND. (But usually 25 million.)
• Step beyond that- making rockets reusable. Excluding refurbished ICBMs. Quarter from Boeing/Lockheed. 2 orders of magnitude cheaper- 100 times cheaper.
• what happens if you’re successful? market forces, commercialization of space?
• we need to earn enough money to keep going. we need to launch commercial satellites- broadcast, mapping, communications, GPS, taking people to and from space station- service the Earth-based needs to pay the bills
• 12 years, round trip.
• Tesla- accelerate the advent of accessible transport. Act as a catalyst. Accelerate market reaction. Make it happen 10 years sooner than it would otherwise occur. Accelerate their production of electric vehicles.
• education -> downloading data algorithm into your brain. it shouldn’t be a huge tour. you’re making it way better. the more you can gamify the process of learning. i don’t need to encourage my kids to play video games, it’s like crack.
• enthusiasm must be conveyed to a student. why are you learning this stuff? what are you going to use it for?
• puzzled as to why they’re there. if you can explain the why of things then that makes a difference. understand purpose. make it entertaining.
• batman- chris nolan- pretty awesome, sfx, actors, sound, engaging. perform it by local talent troupe. recreate the dark knight in home costumes. that would suck. that’s education.
• audacious goals, no mention of profit. reinvigorating industry. not being focused on short term? you need money to stop the company from dying. companies are not that fun. periods of fun. periods where its awful.
• Work on the problems the company NEEDS you to work on, not the problems you WANT to work on. Eating grass part. How the fuck do I get more customers? Very small % of effort is on the big picture.
• WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT NEED TO HAPPEN?