Elon Musk sat down with the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department to talk SpaceX, Mars, electric aircrafts and Tesla at the MIT Centennial Symposium.
Highlights:
- Long term ambition of SpaceX is to build rocket technology that would help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars.
- SpaceX will continue to advance rocket technology with the goal of building reusable rockets versus traditional single-use rockets.
- Musk discusses the interesting challenge of power generation on Mars which can come in the form of a nuclear reactor or solar generation.
- Musk emphasizes the importance of having a self-sustaining colony on Mars in order to create a back-up/redundancy of humanity by having multi-planetary life.
- Musk believes that electric aircraft transportation is very possible and can benefit from a streamlined design using something similar to a Gimbal fan for propulsion.
- 200 Gigafactories needed to replace the number of gas burning vehicles worldwide.
- Tesla Supercharger network expansion is the primary goal, followed by retrofitting select Superchargers with solar panels and batteries for energy storage.
- Musk talks Hyperloop design with one MIT student.
- Musk believe that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a threat to humanity in the future if not careful. In Musk’s own words, AI is “our biggest existential threat.”
Source: MIT.edu
Audio length: 1:23 hr
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