Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 12 - Elon Musk's Mars Mission

Episode Date: December 5, 2016

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wants to have a million people living on Mars by 2070 and wants to send the first 100 people to permanently live on Mars by 2024.  Can he make this happen? And would you really want to live on that cold, red, dusty shithole of a planet? Find out on this interplanetary episode of Timesuck!

Mars, fourth planet from the Sun. At the end of the 19th and dawn of the 20th century, it's time to be home to Martians, little green men. Popularized in stories like HD Wells War of the Worlds in 1898, inventor slash mad scientist, Nikola Tesla, one of the four fathers of modern technology, thought Martians were actively communicating with Earth in 1899. By the end of the 20th century, we'd learn that Mars does not have Martians

despite the stubborn beliefs of conspiracy theorists. What it does have is a thin atmosphere susceptible to intense solar wind storms and golfing the entire planet in Red Dust. Unable to retain the sun's heat, temperatures complement to negative 225 degrees Fahrenheit in the brutal Martian winter, There's no water, no living organisms, any kind, not even Matt Damon could grow plants there. The Martian movie reference for those

you wonder how the fuck Matt Damon got to Mars. It's a giant red rock of dust, ancient volcanoes, canyons, caves, and valleys, and short, it's shithole. Like imagine the worst time you've ever been to, like battle mountain of Vada for me. Think about how much I'm a suck to live there. You know, picture the picture of in short, it's sh- hole. Like imagine the worst town you've ever been to, like Battle Mountain Nevada for me. Think about how much I'm gonna suck to live there. You know, picture the worst neighborhood of the worst town you've ever been to, and then imagine a whole city being nothing

with that neighborhood, and then put that in the middle of northern Nevada with nothing but tumbleweeds, high desert, and barbed wire fence for like a hundred miles in the direction, that's Battle Mountain. Mars way worse than that. And yet Elon Musk, another mad scientist, a billionaire who has been described by others and himself as a real life Tony Stark, a living, breathing Iron Man, not only thinks we should

go there, he thinks a lot of us should live there. He's putting his money where his mouth is to get us there as early as 20-22. Find out more about Musk and his mission to Mars, including how much it's going to cost to get a ticket on the first trip in this inner planetary episode of TimeSuck. Alright, special thanks to Ian Young on Facebook for suggesting this time suck topic. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it.

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I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I can do it. I'm not sure if I, I do what I'm gonna talk about for a second about why I just never cared about Mars. Like, you know, I was in the sci-fi, I still like a good sci-fi movie now, but I'm interested like, you know, species and things like that are probably way, way off. Like, yeah, I would love to see a UFO unless it killed all of us, you know, and that would suck.

But even now it would be pretty fucking exciting until we died, you know, that would suck. But even that would be pretty fucking exciting until we died, you know, being in tents way to live. You know, better than just being bored. I don't know, I think. So I am fascinated with UFOs, but Mars, it's just, you know, like once we found out, there's nothing there, I just like, okay, not that interested.

I don't know, but I mean, but I, you might not feel that same way. You probably, a lot of people listening probably don't. I know a lot of people are super into it. Like Elon Musk, you know, he gave a speech detailing his idea to go there at the International Astronautical Congress, which I'm going to be referring to a lot in this episode of Senguadalahara, Mexico this past September 27th. And apparently the crowd was ecstatic. At the New York Times reported the, quote, the mood of the conference was almost as giddy as a rock concert or the launch of a new Apple product

with people lining up for Mr. Mux presentation a couple hours in advance. So, you know, people are into it. I don't get it, but you know, but I wouldn't go to an iPhone unveiling either. I'm just not that kind of person. But I will say better gadgets on my phone does interest me more, gets me more excited than the prospect of, you know, going to Mars. I'll say, hey, why?

Because it fucking sucks. It fucking sucks there. Why doesn't anyone get excited about it? Like to me, making it to Mars isn't really that much cooler as making it back to the moon. Because, you know, like we've already set foot on one giant uninhabitable rock, you know, check, did it. What was the point of making it to another one? Like we don't have any cool planets in our solar system.

They're just, they're shitty. They're just fucking shitty uninhabitable balls of gas and rock. Who gives a shit? A lot of people, I don't understand it. You know, like, what, what do you want, go there. Yeah. I mean, like, what, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why I don't understand it. You know, like, what do you want to go there? Yeah. I mean, like, why do you just want to go there just to be on another planet

but have nothing cool like once you get there? To me, that's like a traveling to, I don't know, like a cool country. A cool country for me would be cool to go to like Brazil. But what wouldn't be cool is to go to like Brazil and then just eat at a subway restaurant, a subway sandwich shop and in the airport and Rio de Janeiro and then be like, ah Brazil, check, let's go home. It's like no, you just travel a long way to see something that sucks here and there. I don't if I can want to go subway down the street. Why would I want to go

here and there. I don't if I can want to go subway down the street. Why would I want to go across across the galaxy to one? That's like if I want to see Red Rock and a place that humans weren't supposed to live, I would just go to Northern Arizona, wander around, out around Sedona or something, be like, ah, I get it. But even that's way cooler because because there's, you know, there's plants, a few of them at least, and some animals. I don't know, and then there's this whole thing like Elon Musk, and I'm gonna get into it. I'm not gonna just be shitting on this thing. It's probably the worst way to structure an episode. I'm just gonna shit all over the topic,

and tell you how much it sucks, and then we're gonna get into it. No, once we get into it, the plan is cool. It's interesting, it's fascinating. I don't know if, I mean, I would wanna be a part of it, but it is interesting. But Elon Musk, he wants to get like a colony on Mars, which I'm gonna explain how he thinks we're gonna do that.

But he wants to, you know, have people living up there in this dome, essentially. And at first, it'd only be like a hundred people in like little domes, or one dome. He didn't get exactly into the exact dome structure, but these glass domes, but it's like, no, why? Like, that wouldn't be fun. Here's how it would go.

Like the first columnist to Mars. First day, you and everyone else on the spaceship, you've been traveling for months through space, you're just happy to not be dead and to have different scenery than a spaceship. You're just happy to not be dead and to have different scenery than a spaceship. You're just happy to not be dead when you get to Mars. And then for the next few days, you'll be excited that you're like, you know, seeing like new sunrises, new sunsets, just that feeling of like you're for you,

of like holy shit, we're doing something no one has ever done. We're living, we're someone who's never lived, we're walking around on a soil that no one has ever walked around on before. Like, oh, this is the mystery. Oh my God. What could have happened here over the millennia?

But then after a while, you're just like, yeah, it's the fucking, it's the same. This is the same shit that I've been seeing for a while. It's really not that scenic. Like I can't go out in any of it. You can't walk around outside of your bubble unless you got a spacesuit on. And then what's the point, even that? It's not like you're gonna go for a hike on Mars

and round a bend and see a bunch of beautiful native women bathing in some waterfall and some new fucking deer that just are so just delicious and they just you don't even have to hunt them. They just like they just walk over and just die in front of you and then you can use their hosts for flint to make to make a fire to cook. I don't know. There's not nothing cool.

You're just gonna walk around the band you're like, ah, okay. There's more there's more red dirt. That's fucking cool. Like no matter how you could literally walk around the whole planet and see nothing but red dirt. That's like, imagine if like a whole planet was like a county gravel quarry. That's all you fucking saw was gravel.

You would fucking hate gravel. Gravel's not exciting to start with. And if all you ever saw, you'd hate it. And, okay, so there's that. And you're in this dome. You're in this dome and you're with the same shitheads that you just traveled with on a spaceship. Even I love my wife.

But unlike a four hour car ride, you know, I'm ready to have a little break, you know, sometimes. You know what, in the long, I mean, we travel actually pretty well together, but there is a point I will reach where I'm like, God, I don't want to, I don't want to be sitting right next to you for a little while. I want to break. I don't want to, I want to just have my own thoughts, not have been interrupted by your thoughts. And that's somebody I love. Now, imagine, you're not going to love the people you just happen to get stuck on a fucking spaceship with to go to Mars. It's gonna be mostly strangers. There's gonna be at least a few of them who just like anywhere else on Earth, you know,

you get enough people to the others a few or if you're me, most of them that you can't fucking stand. And now you're stuck in a little glass dome with them day after day, you know, how many times can you have this conversation about like, man, it's so fucking cool that we're here, man, we did it. It's like, yeah, I know. You fucking, you said that to a hundred days in a row. It sounds like hell.

It sounds like hell. You know, I don't know. So that's, I mean, that's just my thoughts. Because to me, it's like a cool trip to Mars would be like, you know, total recall. Like if I can go up there and have some kind of quado moments, you know, a little dude, the pops out of the guy's chest on total recall just.

Open your mind. Okay, okay, mind open, quado. Open your mind. Now that would be cool, but that's not what it is. That's not what it is, but Elon Musk thinks very differently than I do. So let's get into what he is all about. That's what we're listing for this one. He's a 45-year-old billionaire founder of SpaceX, Rocket Company, amongst many other things,

and he's wanted to go to Mars since he was a boy, and he has a plan. He's been spending tens of millions of dollars a year developing this technology for what he calls an interplanetary transport system. He's already developed this Raptor rocket engine, which there's a lot of specs on here, like the engine's nozzles about 14 feet in diameter. The final version will generate three million newtons

of force with a chamber pressure three times that of the Merlin engines that currently propels space X's Falcon 9 rocket I think the Merlin engines a NASA uses for their own space shuttles Production Raptor goal is a specific impulse of 382 seconds and a thrust of three metric tons at 300 bar I don't know he wrote that on Twitter. I don't fuck half that shit means Do not know 382 seconds with a 150 area ratio vacuum. What? Okay, anyway, anyway, I don't know.

If you're, if you know good for you, if you know what any of that meant, if you're literally a rocket scientist. But I guess the point of all that and the reason people are excited nerds are into this is Because it's gonna be super powerful. I guess it's the point of all that's like way more powerful than the engines I guess I shouldn't say it's going to be it already is more powerful than like NASA's current Rocket ship engines and the rocket he's working on to get to Mars is gonna have 42 of these fuckers in it

So it's like a V8 engine times a billion or something. I don't know. And in the spaceship, attached to the rocket is gonna have nine more raptors. And all this is gonna be four feet long. It's gonna be like the biggest rocket ever. And that's the thing he thinks is gonna take a storm. So he's working on that now. He's working on the rocket to get the shuttle up above Earth's atmosphere and then it's gonna get like refueled by some other kind of refueling system that floats around and then the nine more Raptor engines are gonna shoot it

over to Mars and it's gonna take like 80 days to get there. And that's, and it can only launch every once every two years because that's when Earth and Mars are the closest with their rotations. And this guy, you're gonna learn a lot about him coming up here, but he's not, you know, he's a billionaire smart entrepreneur, dude, and he does have history. He didn't just like, it's not like he made his money and shoes, you know, it's not like Phil Knight's like, fuck it, I'm going to space

now. And all of a sudden he just starts talking some crazy shit and people listen to him because he's rich. No, he has a background, this company has been around for a while, it's a company he founded, this SpaceX, and you know, he's already like gotten NASA contracts, contracts with other nation's governments to put satellites into orbit, to bring cargo to the International Space Station. He has a track record with doing cool shit in space. Okay, now he thinks this at this big speech he gave

in Guadalajara, he thinks the rock is gonna end up cost him about 10 billion to develop. He thinks it'd be really, raised early is 2022. And this shuttle, he's designing to take 100 passengers at a time, trips planned every 26 months. And eventually, he didn't say how much

to take us to cost initially, but eventually, you know, they're gonna be affordable comparatively at $100,000 to $200,000 per ticket. So, you know, I'm guessing some guessing the initial tickets are pretty kind of expensive. I mean, that's, that's pretty expensive. But, you know, maybe someday, if you have a hundred thousand dollars, you've been saving up to get yourself to Mars to live in a bubble. And we'll fucking get out of here then. We don't, we don't want you.

But no, whatever, that's what you want to do. Um, any things to establish is self-sustaining Mars civilization, because that's the end goal for this. The end goal for this for him is he wants a self-sustaining civilization. So like Earth could be fucking blown up. We still got people on Mars and they're gonna be creating new colonies.

He wants us to be like this, you know, you get everybody living on Mars and you get that shit figured out, how to live on one plan that doesn't have the atmosphere that we need and Figure out how to like get rockets going there and send them to other planets and yeah, then the human race now We're living in fucking Star Trek land. That's his goal. He clearly watched a lot of Star Trek as a kid And he got a lot of money and he's like, let's make it real Check this out. Here's the best part of his plan to me,

a best slash worst part. The first humans who journey to Mars must be, quote, prepared to die. He says, quote, I think the first journeys to Mars will be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There's just a way around it. I like his honesty.

He was like, yeah, it's gonna cost a lot of money to get a ticket and you're probably gonna fuck and blow up in space. But, you know, we gotta test you, we gotta get the guinea pigs tests going before we can really figure it out for real. He doesn't think this is gonna deter people though. He just says, quote, it will be an incredible adventure.

I think it will be the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine. Like needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future and be inspired and want to live. Okay, I kind of, I get that, I like that, I get that. I am excited about the future though, like here on earth. My excitement doesn't come from needing to leave earth. I wish that people who wanted to leave earth would just get out.

So I could have less, like, annoying people surrounding me here. That's my thing. So here's how he's going to do it. Here's the four phases of colonization. Even though I still don't want to go, this is a pretty fucking cool plan. Phase one, unmanned scouting missions beginning this early is 2018. I mean, that is pretty cool. It's right around the corner.

He'll send spacecraft. He's calling red dragons to Mars to basically figure out how to successfully land there without wrecking the spacecraft. So down the road, they can send spacecrafts there and back. They don't want to just send something out. They can make it there, kind of like the fucking rover thing. But then it can't get back. And that's something that hasn't been done.

He needs to figure out how to land our Mars and then figure out how to balance back off Mars to get back to Earth. And each of these rockets, these initial test rockets, he's going to send to Mars are going to have a few tons of payload, stuff like water hunting robots. Is it one of the things he says? Machines to figure out how to create methane, rocket fuel,

using carbon dioxide and other elements already existing in the Martian atmosphere. That's pretty about good smart. It's way beyond my intelligence. I mean, he's going to try and figure out how, see if on a small scale in phase one, he can figure out how to use existing elements to create the fuel needed to send rockets back. Which, if you can't figure that out, then you can never get a rocket back.

Because you're, well, I guess unless you could figure out how to get enough fuel around trip, but that doesn't say, I don't think based on the little, very little I know about rocket technology, that's not an option. So you just need so much to get it up into fucking space. I love how I've read like a few hours worth the rocket. And I'm like, you know, you can't do it. I love how I've read like a few hours worth the rocket. I'm like, you know, you can't do it. Cause you know, you got, there's a lot of fuel you guys.

There's a lot of like, there's a lot of gallons, okay? You just, you can't, you can't just don't ask me about it. Cause my knowledge is very, very thin and I will shut down. But anyway, he wants, and he wants to have like a regular trips, starting in 2018, one rocket leaves to Mars, let's start preparing the next launch. Let's start getting the next rocket ready. He called it like train to leave in a station.

He wants like on the clockwork, on a schedule, rocket, rocket, rocket, each carrying a couple of tons of stuff up into Mars. And then we get to phase two. Once he's figured out how to, oh, how the chemical process to create rocket fuel using resources available on Mars, like once you can make that happen,

then he wants to send all the pieces of a full scale fuel factory to the red planet. So once they start sending people, these people can like, you know, put all the shit together and then make the fuel in this factory, and then, you know, and then head back. It's pretty smart, okay, so now you can have a factory on there. Phase three then is the first crude mission.

So okay, so phase two was just like getting this big cargo of the stuff needed to make the fuel factory. Phase three is you send the people, and it's 100 at the time. So you send 100 people with the tools to complete the fuel factory, that's the first group, and set up their bio-doms. He says the inhabitants will live in,

quote, giant glass domes, and quote, use mining robots to expand their homes. So I guess, you can't, there's only so much glass dome. You can't expand your home outward too far, but you know, you can go down and live in a Mars cave. You know, that sounds fun. You know, if you're a doomsday prep or you're like, yeah, fuck yeah, this sounds awesome. Okay, so, and you know, and there's, you know, there's a couple of little, little problems people have to solve initially with that. Once they set up what he's calling Mars-based alpha,

the first home and the first humans there, then he's just got to figure out how to breathe consistently up there, grow food, recycle water, not break your glass domes, all those little details. The water one, I think that's a big hurdle, because you can't just recycle liquids, there's not gonna be a pure process to get like all your liquid back every time you take a piss.

So eventually you're gonna have to figure out how to create water out of the atmosphere. But I guess if they can create fuel, then maybe they can create water too. I don't know, I'm assuming so. I'm assuming he hasn't overlooked that. Like, oh shit, that's right, we need water, fuck, never mind. But yeah, food, hopefully that like oh shit. That's right. We need water fucking never mind

But yeah food Hopefully that do a little better than Matt Damon and then phase four is Colonizing Mars and check it out according to an article in popular mechanics a space colony needs at least 10,000 people to create enough genetic variation to to avoid the negative effects of inbreeding and basically become Mars Tucky You know we don't need, you know, any three-tiddy total recall mutants and you know as much as I like him, you know, we probably don't want anybody, you know, looking like a Quedo. He's creepy looking little dude if you haven't seen them move him by the way. Open your mind. He's real wet and slippery looking. Open and he lives in his symbiotic twins belly. Open your mind.

Yeah, now, okay. So we don't want that. We don't want that. So you need at least 10,000 people. And he envisions getting it to a million people. That's his goal. That is the end goal of this project. He wants to get a million people living on Mars.

He thinks she can do that by the 2000s, 60s. And he's envisioning quote, iron foundries to pizza joints like everything, a self-sustaining city up there. I also think he's gonna need to come up with something better than a glass dome for a million people to live under. Yeah, you'd hate to get a million people living up there. It's all going great and then you got one asshole with a sling shot and a moon rock and he brings

your entire fucking civilization down. So I wonder if to read all this like is this possible? This is all everything I've just talked about is from his speech. Guadalajara, but what are like NASA experts, other space experts thinking? And basically the general consensus is that they say that it's not impossible what he's saying. I mean, they don't have everything, all the details is figured out, but these are people who work in theoretical math

and who are inventing things. And so just because something's impossible now, doesn't mean that's gonna be impossible tomorrow. And so on that note, they're like, yeah, this could probably happen. The big problem they have though is the timeline. They don't think it's gonna happen anywhere nearly as quickly as he do.

They think this is a couple hundred years off. It's the general consensus. He thinks it's within our lifetimes. So why is this so important to this guy, to Elon Musk? He stated that the loftier goal for SpaceX is to send people to Mars to make humanity a multi-planetary species in order to ensure survival in case some clamby like an asteroid strike

you know, it falls Earth. And so, you know, and he doesn't think it's gonna stop at Mars. Basically what he wants is once we can get to self-sustaining colony going to Mars, we figured out how to colonize another planet, why not keep bouncing out to other planets just in perpetuity. All right, so, so that's, there you go.

That's what he does. So now, if you're like me, and you didn't really know much about Elon Musk before hearing about this space project, other than maybe like he's, you know, something to do with Tesla, I'm thinking who the fuck is this guy? Elon Musk before hearing about this space project, other than maybe like he's, you know, something to do with Tesla, I'm thinking, who the fuck is this guy?

And where did you get the money to even entertain some plan like this? And this is the most interesting part of the episode to me. And we're gonna delve into exactly who Elon Musk is with a time suck timeline. Shrap on those boots soldier. We're marching down a time, some time line. Elon Reeve Musk is born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. His mom is Canadian born May Musk, an incredibly successful dietician who began modeling in the 60s and is still super hot.

Still a cover model today. I'm not fucking kidding, she's 68 years old and legitimately sexy. She appeared nude on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011, signed with IMG, the top modeling agency in the world last year, 2015. So solid jeans on mom side, very intelligent, very innovative, very attractive, may met his dad, Errol Musk, while going to high school in South Africa.

And his dad was a very successful Electro-mechanical engineer when he was growing up, and a due to attractive enough to marry a model. So, you know, pretty solid brains, pretty solid looks on both sides, combined with a home life of great nutrition with his mom's interest in being a dietician, and the technological knowledge from his dad.

So that's how you get started creating a real-life Tony Stark. But not everything was easy. 1980 at the age of nine is parents divorced and he lives mainly with his dad and takes up an interest in computers and programming on his Commodore Vic 20. A computer that would make a nine-year-old today immediately lose interest to computers. A few computer gigs out there. This thing had five kilobytes of RAM, five kilobytes of RAM,

which makes it slightly less powerful than a dollar store solar calculator. So that's what he started with. So in 1984 though, with his limited technology, he early and personal computers. He creates a code for a space invaders type game he wrote called Blastar at the age of 12. So, and he published the code for it

in a magazine called PC and Office Technology. You can actually find it online. If you just Google Elon Musk Blastar, you can find it, I played it as one of those games. It's kind of like, again, like space invaders where like space your space bar shoots the little laser blast at the little alien going from side to side up top And you can use your left-right keys to move to the sides

You know, I mean very rudimentary, but this is early on in game programming and the kid was 12th So you know, we know he's he's got an interest in computers and not a normal kid now your typical kid He's also quiet bit of a loner very small child one of the smallest kids in school and he was a fucking nerd, which was not cool in South Africa in the 80s. And apparently, he got his ass beat a lot at school. He was bullied really horribly, I guess. Like one example that comes up in several articles, excuse me, is one time these bullies threw him down a flight of stairs and beat him unconscious. Excuse me. Dang it. Living up in the inland northwest right now in the air is dry. Is shit up here. I've never used so much lotion in my life.

I'm in court laying now. So, okay, okay. So, yeah, one time he's bullied, he's bullied through down a flight of stairs and beat him unconscious. So then 1990 he he graduates from Pretoria boy Boys high school and not surprisingly, he gets the fuck out of South Africa. You know, he hasn't had a good time there last couple of years And also because he would have been required at that time as a white male to serve for two years and the military

Had he stayed and you know, I imagine Barrick's life would have been similar to high school for little Elon So he uses his family ties on his mom's side in Canada and roles in Queens University in Ontario. Two years later, 1992, the age of 21 decides he wants to try college in the States and roles in the University of Pennsylvania where he'll get a batches of degree in both economics and physics. And he has some fun too. Like, you know, he's coming into his own socially and he's coming into his own socially, and he's coming into his own entrepreneurial, entrepreneurially, where he and a fellow student rent a 10 bedroom flat house converted into an unofficial nightclub. That's fucking bad ass to me. I can't house smart. Everybody made a great deal of money doing that. So he clearly knows how to think outside the box. 1995, 24 year old Musk

begins a doctorate program across the country and applied physics and material science at Stanford, drops out after just two days to join the Silicon Valley Tech Boom. Because you know, mid 90s, the shit is about to pop. And this one, his life gets extremely interesting and fucking amazing to me. He didn't just drop out and start scrambling to come up with some tech idea.

He drops out and starts his first company, Zip2, an online city guide. So it makes sense. He knows well travel, dude. You know, he sees a need for fellow travelers. He lands contracts with the New York Times and Chicago Tribune to add online content to their sites. It's enough money to get himself a little office, headquarters, as in like a office, but it's barely paying the bills.

He has to live in this office, sleep on the futon, showers at the local YMCA. That takes him balls, man. Fucking level when people do stuff like this, he really goes out on a limb. And eventually he gets enough funding to help the company grow, but he has to make this trade off that he wasn't happy about in order to get this investment capital. He gives up majority control of the company. He started, ends up with only a 7% share. You know, it looks like that might not work out well for him. But then in 1999, compact computers, I used to have a compact

before they were bought out by HP. These guys buy out little zip to for 307 million, one of the biggest buyouts at that time in Silicon Valley, biggest cash buyouts. And that little 7% share turns into being $22 million. No more fucking futon. He's a 28 year old millionaire and he's just getting started. So his new sale has given him some cash A and the upper echelon of Silicon Valley investors, plus you know, some some mula and he immediately dumps $10 million of that MULA and get some backing to get even more money to start his next project and keep control of it, it's called x.com.

You probably haven't heard x.com, you probably haven't heard x.com, it was a, you know, this online again, you know, kind of money, transfer company, changed its name to a name you've heard of, fucking PayPal. The guy started PayPal. 2002, 31 year old Elon Musk PayPal has gone public.

In February and then later that year is quickly bought out by eBay for 1.5 billion. Elon personally nets 165 mil in the deal. And he's fucking, he's not sitting around and just counting his money. In between the IPO and February and the buyout later in the year, he's already started a new company SpaceX, the one that's developing rockets to go to Mars. But he only got $165 million. And earlier I did call him a billionaire. You might be wondering, well, how did he get there? How did he get $2 billion? Or more?

How did he get to several billion? He landed a gigantic rocket in satellite contracts with NASA and the Malaysian government for starters. But here's where the real money, like $165 million, isn't real. But here's where the crazy money comes in. 2004, Musk bought into a new company. You probably heard of Tesla Motors, become his chairman of his board of directors.

And then in 2008, when there was a big economic downturn, he maneuvered some things and to be able to become its CEO, a majority shareholder. And then in January 29th, 2016, as of that date, Elon reportedly owned 22% of Tesla, equating to 28.9 million shares. At the date of this recording, Thursday, December 1st, those shares are $185.60 a share. That means right now, today, as I'm saying this, the dude has $5.3 billion fucking dollars worth of Tesla stock alone.

Jesus, it's a lot of money. That made me wonder like how much money do you have overall? According to Google today, $11.2 billion. $1 billion, he's in his early 40s. Woo, yeah. So incidentally, while doing all this, Musk also found time to have six sons with his first wife. That's right, six.

His first wife in college sweetheart from his time in Canada, Justin Wilson. And he's also been married two more times to the same woman actress, Taloo Lurayli, British actress, divorced in her again just a few weeks ago. She's kind of popped up in a variety of things like inception and Westworld, but in smaller parts. So you might recognize her face, you might not.

I had not when I looked her up. So that's him, that's him, man. Good job, soldier. You've made it back, barely. All right, well now you know what Musk wants to do with Mars and how to get the money to do so. Interesting shit, I think, right? Interesting shit.

So let's have the highlights one more time before we go with some top five takeaways. Top five takeaways. Top five takeaway. Top five takeaway number one. By the 2006, he just 50 years from now must believe a million people could be living on Mars thanks to SpaceX technology and his bold colonization plant. And if you recall, for my episode on artificial intelligence, they will probably have an additional million sex robots in tow living with them.

I'm just gonna say that right now. I'm predicting that. Number two, Martian colony will be the one and only cool thing on Mars. It's fucking galactic version of Battle Mountain Nevada. There's nothing but Red Rock and Dust as far as I can see and has an average temperature of negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit. So have fun with that. Number three, the first passengers to Mars must be, quote,

prepared to die. The risk of fatality will be high. So, you know, best case scenario for the first 100 Mars Voyagers is to live in a little glass dome and build a refueling station so people can get the fuck off of Mars, which you'll probably want to do by the time you have a build. Worst case is to blow up in space.

Number four, Elon Musk is worth $11.2 billion. Think about that number a second. 11.2 billion, he could lose $11 billion. And still have more money than 99% of humanity. And number five, Elon's mother, May Musk, is 68 years old and sexiest fuck, which I find even more fascinating than traveling to a dead planet. Time suck, tough, five take away.

Alright, thanks for listening everybody to Time Suck. I'm loving you, Time Suckers. I love the feedback. I'm seeing online. Love all the reviews on iTunes, man. It makes my heart feel good. And if you're not already doing so Please follow me on Instagram or Facebook at Dan Cummins comedy

You can go to Dan Cummins.tv for tour dates. I'm gonna be posting a bunch of 2017 ones in the next few weeks and Check out time suck comedy time suck pod comedy time suck podcast.com for pictures to go along with certain these episodes and it's just a fun little site I'm enjoying and you know Follow follow Quaid's advice as well and open your goddamn mind Talk to you next Monday everybody Open your mind. Open your mind. Talk to you next Monday, everybody. Open your mind. Talk to you next Monday, everybody.

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