Elon Musk Talks About the Future with Stephen Colbert

 Elon Musk  

Although Elon Musk may have dashed Stephen Colbert's dreams of a jet-pack, the serial entrepreneur and technology creator had plenty more to excite the host and audience when he appeared on the Colbert Report last night.

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk appeared on The Colbert Report last night, where he discussed some of his recent business and technical triumphs including Solar City and the Hyperloop concept (partial interview above). "At what point do you tip over from visionary to super -villain?" joked host Stephen Colbert. The segment also touched on some of Musk’s concepts for the future, and also on what Colbert himself wants to see in terms of the advancement of technology.

Musk articulated why it’s so important that SpaceX develop re-usable rockets that can take-off, land and then be re-fueled and launch again.  "You could imagine today that if we had aircraft or cars that were single use, they would be too expensive, so no one would use it," explained Musk. They also discussed the problems that have resulted from the mounting tensions between Russia and the U.S., and how Russia’s refusal to continue sending astronauts to the International Space Station could benefit Musk’s space ferry service.

Musk and Colbert enjoy the view of a Dragon rocket test flight.

Musk showed that he thinks the future of earth-based flight might be electric. He talked about how aircraft should have vertical take-off and landing, for instance, which would be more efficient in terms of space.

"If we're all in a ship together and there's some holes in the ship, and we're bailing water out, and we have a great design for a bucket, even if we're bailing out way better than everybody else, we should probably share the bucket design."

When asked about why he opened up all of Tesla's patents, Musk responded.

If we're all in a ship together and there's some holes in the ship, and we're bailing water out, and we have a great design for a bucket, even if we're bailing out way better than everybody else, we should probably share the bucket design.

Musk turned the tables and asked Colbert what he’d like to see in the future. "What are you going to blow my mind with?" asked Colbert.

"Well, what do you wish there was?" responded Musk.

Colbert’s main request, was to get rid of all the cables and create an interface better than a keyboard and mouse. "Ya, we'll do it!" responded Musk.  Recall that Musk has worked on an Iron Man styled interface already, using the Leap Motion Controller.

The full interview is available at Hulu.

Musk (born June 28,1971) is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors and Space Exploration Technologies. He is chairman/CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and chairman of SolarCity.

More about Musk

Musk was born and grew up in South Africa, the son of a South African engineer and a Canadian-born mother who has worked as a New York City dietitian and modeled for fun. His father inspired his love of technology and Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software, a space game called Blaster.

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He emigrated to Canada in June 1989 at age 17. He left Canada in 1992 after getting a scholarship to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed on another year to finish a second bachelor's degree in physics. Musk then considered three areas he wanted to get into that were "important problems," as he said later. "One was the Internet, one was clean energy, and one was space.

In 1995, Musk moved to California to enroll in a graduate program in high energy physics at Stanford, in which he stayed exactly two days before dropping out to start Zip2, which provided online content publishing software for news organizations. In 1999, Compaq's AltaVista division acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash and US$34 million in stock options.

In March 2002, Musk co-founded X.com, a financial services and email payments company. One year later, X.com acquired Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.

In June 2002, Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of which he is currently the CEO and CTO. SpaceX develops rockets and spacecrafts for missions to Earth orbit and beyond. Musk served as chief engineer for Falcon 1, the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit, as well as falcon 9 and the Dragon spacecraft. In 2008 SpaceX won a NASA contract to replace the cargo transport function of the space shuttle with Falcon 9 and Dragon. NASA decided in 2010 to also entrust the commercial sector with astronaut transport.

In addition to his business activities in entrepreneurial space, Musk is the principal owner and Chairman of the Board of Tesla Motors, which builds a high-end luxury electric vehicle. He is also the primary investor and Chairman of the Board of SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services startup company. The underlying motivation for funding both companies is to help combat global warming.

By 33rd Square

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