Co-founder of Future Ventures and DFJ, supporting passionate founders to forge a better future.
Early VC investor in Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, Commonwealth Fusion.
Looking up to the skies with open eyes!
Went to HQ and set up a Starlink terminal that connected to the satellites orbiting overhead. Simplest out-of-box experience imaginable.
Can't wait to upgrade my broadband later this year!
@elonmusk
@cb_doge
I had lunch with the ceo of Marici on Friday, the non profit that busts child sex trafficking rings.
I asked who is most to blame for this happening.
Without hesitation, he said "Meta."
"We try to work with them, but they are not helping."
Starships are meant to fly...
An incredible launch this morning, with 33 Raptor engines breathing fire, hot staging over the Gulf of Mexico, boost back to the ocean, good upper stage burn, and test of the Pez bay door. Starship engine relight and reentry to splashdown to come.
Amazing
@SpaceX
shots of the 1st test vehicle hop for Starship โ the 1st fully-reusable launch system.
The radical difference in cost is perhaps best understood with flights on Earth: 30 minutes to fly between continents,
at a lower cost than taking an airplane,
in coach class.
1000 drones flying in fluid formation โ the largest assemblage ever at Burning Man. Produced by Drift Robotics, it filled the sky with mesmerizing beauty.
Tesla now holds the mantle of Mooreโs Law.
Just as NVIDIA took leadership from Intel a decade ago.
While the substrate has shifted several times, humanity's capacity to compute has compounded for 122 years as if on rails.
It's surreal. Log scale details:
Filming the BBC series on Elon Muskโ full of original interview material. Episode 1 covers the early years of SpaceX, including the catalytic moment in Moscow when the Russian rocket excecutive spat on Elon. So Elon decided to build his own rockets. Enjoy:
Incredible closeup with telescopic-tracked slo-mo, with the film rig at the end.
Yesterday's flight was also the fastest turnaround of a booster (it carried the astronauts to station) and the first ship-catch of both fairing halves which returned by automated parachute kiting.
Fusion is no longer a science project.
"in seven peer-reviewed papers in a special issue of The Journal of Plasma Physics, researchers laid out the evidence that SPARC would succeed and produce as much as 10 times the energy it consumes."
More from NYT:
Just 5 years ago, Tesla began shipments of the first mass-market EV โ the Model 3.
With a palpable crackle of excitement in the air, we took delivery of VIN 5. We named her Luna and drove on the surface of Mars, a new mapping feature.
Thank you for leading the๐ to the future!
Starships are Meant to Fly
Visiting the "Gateway to Mars" โ the SpaceX Boca Chica manufacturing and launch site. Test Vehicle SN9 is in the high bay next to Stargate. Inside the giant nose cone, with lots of room for passengers.
More of my photos:
Metals from the depths of the sea ๐
Plucked from the vast silt of the Abyssal Plains, this polymetallic nodule is rich in the metals needed for EV batteries and low-carbon energy.
I just joined the Board of The Metals Company to help them harvest the worldโs largest deposits ofโฆ
Table of dreams, at SpaceX today.
My, how big they are! And some nice shadow waffles too. At hypersonic speeds, the upper atmosphere is like molasses, so these fins near the top of the booster effectively guide and stabilize the return flight.
They called it Medicineโs Best Kept Secret โ at UCSF today.
You have probably seen ultrasound images of babies, but if you arrange an array of ultrasound transducers to focus to a point, they can manipulate cells and membranes like a magnifying glass focusing sunlight to aโฆ
Tesla Dojo Supercomputer Tile โ Smart and Beautiful ๐ค ๐
This one tile can do 9 quadrillion floating point calculations per second, optimized for AI training. I saw it up close today.
Each 15kW tile holds a 5x5 array of blocks, each with 12 D1 multi-chip-module stacks,โฆ
My Wedding Band โ Made in Space
I love how it turned out. This 4-billion-year-old meteorite was weaponized by the Nama over 10K years ago, a sneak peek into the iron age. It cooled very slowly, over millions of years, forming a crystalline pattern that cannot be made on Earth.
Imagine new tunnels running under your most congested highway. For urban areas, it would be the cheapest way to add lanes. This becomes true when you start with the inevitable EV-only future, and then chain back to the present.
These would be road tunnels for zero emissions vehicles only โ no toxic fumes is the key. Really, just an underground road, but limited to EVs (from all auto companies). This is not in place of other solutions, eg light rail, but supplemental to them.
SpaceX SN-5 Hop and Powerslide just now.
One powerful Raptor engine, mounted off-center (as it will eventually be part of a central triad), so the thrust vector relative to the center of gravity requires a tilt coming off the pad.
Wow. Thanks for the perspective
@Erdayastronaut
@elonmusk
@SpacePadreIsle
@SpaceX
The sun splashed side of SN8, straining toward the stars.
Up close, parts of it resemble the architecture of Frank Gehry.
Got thrust? SpaceX Super Heavy booster lowering onto the launch pad for its maiden voyage. 29 Raptor engines. 17 million pounds of thrust. For context, thatโs >2x the Saturn V, former heavyweight champ of Apollo. (Awesome photo by
@TheJackBeyer
, posted with permission)
On the eve of the Starship test flight, a reminder of why full reusability is a game changer for access to space... While the industry is following the red line, SpaceX is on a different curve.
Note: a straight line is an exponential on this semi-log graph.
This has never been seen before โ live video of reentry, thanks to the Starlink terminal on Starship! ๐ ๐ก ๐ฐ
As it reenters the atmosphere at high speed, the 18,000 heat tiles on Starship protect it from heat, and the plasma you can see here interrupts radio links to theโฆ
Sheโs breaking up, sheโs breaking up!
Around 1am, Gen saw this incredible spectacle streak across the Cabo sky for over a minute. It is a spacecraft breaking at 17,500 MPH. Various parts break off the bright main mass, and separate from differential drag in the upper atmosphere.
Besting the Best, again
"We have this car, this one program, beating the competition on core technology like a drum. From behind the wheel, everything else feels like a sluggish, sloppy antique. The endgame of petroleum will be a decade of shuddering like washing machines" โ WSJ
Making history never looked so good.
I always knew the first Model S would end up in a museum, and I am happy to say it now resides in the Petersen Museum, along with the other early Teslas I donated to them.
I have compiled some reviews from its 2012 releaseโฆ and they stillโฆ
Flown Dragon Panel from the First Crew Mission
After 63 days in space, it jettisoned to initiate parachute recovery. It is incredibly special to me, carrying Bob & Doug and the SpaceX logo to the ISS โ the rebirth of American spaceflight.
Found at sea โบ
The Starship SN8 Test Vehicle โ Rapid Unscheduled Artwork
Channeling the energy of Frank Gehry architecture & a Flaming Lotus Girls art installation at Burning Man.
The sun-splashed side, straining toward the stars evokes the Jawas of Star Wars, joining me in the treasure hunt.
Now that's an overview! ๐ The new SpaceX Cupola.
The Inspiration4 Crew have one on this training capsule as well. When they launch on Sept 15, there will be three SpaceX Dragons in orbit at the same time, with two perched at station and the third free-flying above the ISS.
It's not everyday that you get to explore rocket engines with Everyday Astronaut. We traced the LOX and H2 lines around my RL 10 like a couple of excited children ๐๐
First developed in 1959, the RL 10 still flies today as the upper stage for ULA rockets:
I had the absolute pleasure of seeing
@FutureJurvetson
โs UNBELIEVABLE Spaceflight collection!!! Some of this stuff I canโt believe I got to see & touch ๐คฏ all of the stories behind every single piece is worthy of a video, I need more time in life ๐ญ Thank you so much Steve!
Connecting directly from your existing cell phone to Starlink ๐ฐ to start next year, for texting and voice calls and email. 2-4Mbps per cell. And think of natural disaster response. All cellular stations can be out on the ground, but Skynet carries on. :)
Made in Space: the A-T-G-C of our DNA ๐๐งฌ โ
A bombshell in Nature today โ All of the base pairs of our biology have now been found in CM2 meteorites, supporting the theory that lifeโs precursors arrived on Earth from abiotic origins past Jupiter. How?
Deepmind's Demis Hassabis at TED tonight
When asked about Microsoft + OpenAI spending $100B to train their next model: "Google will have spent more than that over time. To get to AGI, you need a lot of compute. Google still has the most compute."
"With protein folding, we didโฆ
The long, hard path to reusable rocket boosters: six years ago we witnessed the big-bada-boom of the F9R test vehicle in Texas.
Henry Ford: โFailure is simply the opportunity to begin again."
Elon: โGiven the options, I prefer to learn from success."
โ
๐ฆ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ซ ๐ฆ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ฝ: ๐๐ต๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ญ
๐ ๐ถ๐น๐น๐ฒ๐ป๐ป๐ถ๐๐บ ๐๐ฎ๐น๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป: ๐๐ต๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ญ
๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐๐ต ๐ฆ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ: ๐๐ต๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ญ
When you get serious in space: ๐๐ต๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ญ
May the Forth Be With You for
#StarWarsDay
The Starship ๐gets fully stacked today for its maiden voyage.
It's the worldโs first and only fully reusable orbital rocket.
It's 120m (393 ft) tall, like a skyscraper. Breathtaking!
In this new Starbase interview, Elon lists his rules for engineering:
From X to X: Teslaโs Transition
I have been smitten with Tesla for 15 years now and have purchased the safest car ever made for everyone in my family and firm. Over the years, it has been clear how the cars have improved vertically, from one model to the next. But now that I haveโฆ
The scale is awe inspiring looking up.... the future of spaceflight in the making.
Photos: Starship SN9, a matrix of heat tile attach pegs, majordomo of space, reusable metal fuel tank for humans.
I am Grok!
Grok is already sublime. Its creation transcends traditional engineering.
And the Hitchhikers and Guardians of our Galaxy know that humor is the birdsong of human intellect.
Details at and
@ElonMusk
@hiromichimizuno
@elonmusk
Thank you. It has been incredibly rewarding to work with the board and Tesla team as you forge the future โ a better future than anyone else in the industry thought possible.ย Tesla is squarely on the right side of history and making the world a better place for all.
On July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin erected an American flagpole on the moon for the first time. But few are aware that it flew for only 14 hours.
When I obtained the prototype build of the Apollo 11 flag and brought it to Buzz Aldrin, his eyes went wide. He signed it, pointed outโฆ
Stage prep for the 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day. โก๏ธ
Itโs a surreal sight from the stage โ a sea of Teslas, the EV Future.
Each vehicle has a custom program to display the show on their central screens. Livestream starts at 1:30pm PST:
Hello, Future!
My partner Maryanna Saenko and I are excited to launch Future Ventures today with our $200 million venture fund focused on bold moon shots by the mission-driven founders who forge the future.
More:
Welcome to the
The inevitable EV future, as seen in two graphs from today's WSJ:
1) EVs now cost less than gas cars in China and Europe, and should cross over in the U.S. next year.
2) Lithium-ion storage has the best experience-curve slope. Most industries have a logarithmic rate of costโฆ
OMG โ SpaceX just stuck the landing with Starship SN10!!!!
Such an incredible engineering accomplishment, from the Gateway to Mars! When they get this operational, it will cost less than a coach airline ticket to fly around the world, in space.
Watch:
The new CEO of Microsoft AI,
@MustafaSuleyman
, with a $100B budget at TED:
"AI is a new digital species."
"To avoid existential risk, we should avoid:
1) Autonomy
2) Recursive self-improvement
3) Self-replication
We have a good 5 to 10 years before we'll have to confront this."
@PPathole
@elonmusk
The loan and financing round you reference are the same (it was a convertible note to the next round). Elon led the financing in late 2008, in the company's darkest hour. Elon's commitment to do it all himself if need be flipped investor sentiment from fear, and it saved Tesla.
CอขOอขNอขGอขRอขAอขTอขUอขLอขAอขTอขIอขOอขNอขSอข to the SpaceX Starship team!!
Singularly chosen today by NASA for their Human Landing System.
Go NASA, Go Artemis, Go SpaceX, Go, Go, Go!
From a sustainable human presence on the moon, to Mars and beyond!
News:
โWe are putting the actual auto in automobile.โ โ Elon today
I predict that within 10 years, anyone reading this will have shifted their vehicle preference to a single primary variable โ the autonomous software stack.
Everything physical will become a relative commodity. Safetyโฆ
Shooting the Moon ๐ ๐
A magical Falcon Heavy launch tonight of the USSF X-37B spaceplane, as captured in lunar alignment by the talented John Kraus, with 27 engines under thrust, and then, the two side boosters returned to Earth in a beautiful ballet of fiery synchrony.
Each ๐ฐ cluster launch adds 1Tb/sec of bandwidth, with more to come, connecting the next 4 billion people to the global economy.
You can track the sky net in formation; select "All" in the Launch pull-down menu at the top of
More:
The Rocket's Red Glare โ for Veteran's Day.
Congrats to
@SpaceX
on the successful deployment of the next 60 Starlink satellites, on a path to bring the next 4B people online.
Some firsts today: 4th return of a booster, 2nd flight of a fairing, and the heaviest payload so far.
Up in the Swing Arm and Dragon Spacecraft with CREW-1
๐ Launch Rehearsal is GO FLIGHT for Saturday's night launch!
NASA Flight Certification noted 8 million hours of simulation work.
"We need the doors that open like this"
โ bringing ๐๐ช๐ญ๐ช๐ค๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐ฆ๐บ to the Cape ๐
My heart breaks for the women and girls of Afghanistan.
Here are some photos from Kabul before the virulent theocracy, from one generation ago (1950's-70's). I wonder if they could imagine what was to come.
What a SpaceX day! ๐
The latest quarterly market share for launch just published. SpaceX carried 83% of the world's tonnage to orbit โ 246x all other U.S. launch providers combined. China had seven different launch providers succeed in Q4, and North Korea joined the list.
Captainโs log for the Starship enterprise
โSteel is the best design decision I have ever madeโ
The fleet will launch 1000x more than all of Earth capacity combined. "You need that to build a city on Mars. So, itโs gotta be done.โ
Elonโs slides & more:
Giant Emoji in the Sky
NASA's huge SLS rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center this morning.
Rocket photographer John Kraus captured the moment of solid booster separation, with the core stage continuing on its way to the moon.
Go Artemis, twin sister of Apollo, go, go, go!
๐๐ก๐ ๐ฌ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ๐๐ ๐จ๐ ๐๐๐ข๐ฅ ๐๐ซ๐ฆ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐ง๐ โ๐ฌ ๐ง๐ข๐ ๐ก๐ญ๐ฆ๐๐ซ๐๐ฌ
On July 21, 1969, two butterfly valves opened in Eagle's Valve Package Assembly (as seen here in my test unit), feeding propellant into the ascent stage engine, and Apollo 11 lifted off the moon. Neilโฆ
You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming?
(๐๐พ๐ป๐บ๐ ๐บ๐๐ผ๐พ๐ฝ ๐ฒ๐๐บ๐ผ๐พ๐ท ๐๐๐๐๐๐)
And so it begins... This is what 60 broadband data satellites look like, stacked for launch, many more than people thought were possible on one Falcon 9. The next 4 billion will come online and connect to the global economy more quickly than most forecasts have assumed.
This could be important.
ARK Invest just released a long-term perspective on five mutually-catalytic technology sectors (colored in the graph) that could lead to unprecedented economic growth in the next 6 years โ becoming a staggering 60% of total global market value!
Lookingโฆ
A glorious launch of the largest rocket today from Starbase, starting at minute 38:30
with all 33 engines firing, for 2x the thrust of the Apollo Saturn V
And successful Starship hot-staging overhead with the booster burn back
and then, excitement guaranteed!
Bravo Team SpaceX!
CONGRATS to SpaceX on the deployment just now of 60 broadband data satellites, delivering 1TB of bandwidth from above. Many more to come. Connecting the next 4B people to the global economy. New sat design, deployment, Krypton thrusters and more. Been waiting for this day!
With a Neuralink implant from brain to computer, โour goal is that you could type better than a person with working hands. Ot restore vision even if you were born blind.โ โ
@ElonMusk
1st Estonian flag to fly in space ๐๐ช๐ช
275 days in orbit, thx to SpaceX. Estonia is my homeland, so it's special to me. Several flags flew on Apollo, but Estonia was occupied by the evil empire then. Like Ukraine today... and that's the next flag I plan to fly. ๐บ๐ฆSlava Ukraini!
@SciGuySpace
Last time I saw 60 Minutes trash SpaceX, Neil Armstrong wrote a strongly worded letter to 60 Minutes saying that he was taken out of context in that criticism. The program editor agreed: "Armstrong wrote us to say we had not been complete in our description of his testimony. He'sโฆ
Having spent a fair bit of time with
@SamHarrisOrg
, from philosophy to atheism to AI, I must say, they did a good job here.
GPT-3 cost ~$15 million to train with an 8-yr common crawl of the Internet (60%), Reddit-sourced text (22%), a corpus of books (15%) and Wikipedia (3%).
@balajis
Love this post. Consumer hardware is the worst VC investment sector by far. 99.9% of all consumer startups are long term failures (20 years later). True: โThe better you are, the better you understand how much better Elon is. Everyone in tech understands the sport weโreโฆ
Early Believers in a Bright EV Future ๐
The first Tesla employee signatures & the first customers at the Tesla launch party, July 2006. Silent, zero-emissions prototype cars circled in a ring around us. I was smitten.
I became a customer before I could become an investor.
Magical mystery tour at the SpaceX factory today. Commander Isaacson brought this watch with him for 3 days orbiting in the Dragon capsule. +New starship hoodie and Starlink node. Glass front shows the Hohmann transfer orbit from Earth to Mars, so everyone remembers the mission.