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"  &amp;quot;We need to be a multiplanetary species,&amp;quot;\u2014that&amp;#039;s the ambitious way Elon Musk begins his talks. And it&amp;#039;s the kind of attitude that won Musk the 2012 PM Breakthrough Leadership Award. Today he came by PM&amp;#039;s home base to talk about his twin ventures, SpaceX and Tesla Motors. In May, his company SpaceX successfully launched a 227-foot tall rocket from Cape Canaveral and berthed its Dragon capsule with the International Space Station. Testing beforehand was extensive. &amp;quot;Something terrible could happen to the Space Station, people inside could be hurt, so we ran a million simulations, so did NASA.&amp;quot; In the end the historic docking went off with only a small hitch. The onboard computer wasn&amp;#039;t sure the lock was secure, so Musk and the SpaceX team on the ground ran diagnostics and fixed the glitch. How would the Dragon capsules translate to manned space flight? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s an autonomous vehicle,&amp;quot; Musk says. &amp;quot;It pauses at intervals to ask permission to continue, but it&amp;#039;s doing everything itself.&amp;quot; If the Dragon were adapted to carry astronauts, little would need to change, other than the increased payload and an added emergency escape system with higher safety margins.  He&amp;#039;s also planned upgrades to the landing system. Version 1, which is on the Dragon capsules now, uses parachutes to achieve a water landing. Version 1.5, which he hopes to achieve by next year, would use parachutes to bring down the Dragon for a soft touchdown on land. Version 2 will use the escape thrusters to decelerate towards the earth, like a moon landing.  While SpaceX gets plenty of publicity for its attempt to take over the mission of carrying NASA astronauts, Musk was quick to emphasize the company&amp;#039;s business beyond those governments contracts. Of the 46 missions SpaceX has contracted, only 12 are for NASA. The rest are commercial. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think people realize that,&amp;quot; Musk says.  However, he says, SpaceX isn&amp;#039;t just in it to make money on those contracts. Ultimately, Musk envisions a self-sustaining civilization on Mars\u2014thus his remark about becoming an interplanetary species. That way, in case the worst happens and Earth is obliterated or used up, &amp;quot;the light of consciousness is not extinguished.&amp;quot; But his vision requires tens of thousands or even millions of people on the red planet. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;d need really big rockets launching a lot,&amp;quot; he says Musk&amp;#039;s other big current venture, Tesla Motors, isn&amp;#039;t quite making money yet. But Musk said today that its newest vehicle, the Model S sedan, will be making money within a month or so. PM already awarded the first model of Tesla, the Roadster, a Breakthrough award. Musk brought a Model S sedan and one of the new Model X SUV prototypes to the awards today. Why did he start Tesla? &amp;quot;People were operating under the illusion that an electric car needs to be aesthetically challenged, low performance, low range, but these things don&amp;#039;t have to be true,&amp;quot; Musk says. When people still didn&amp;#039;t believe him, he went ahead and did it himself. &amp;quot;So we decided to just make a car\u2014that&amp;#039;s harder to ignore.&amp;quot; Musk&amp;#039;s newest innovation on the car front is the supercharger\u2014he wants to build a nationwide network of ultra-fast chargers. The supercharger is free when you buy a Model S. &amp;quot;You can charge your car with the same level of convenience as putting gas in it. Charge for an hour, drive for 6 hours,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;The tagline is: Drive anywhere for free on pure sunlight forever.&amp;quot; One thing we learned today: While Musk loves electric cars and spaceflight, there&amp;#039;s one thing he hates: space solar power. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;d have to convert photon to electron to photon back to electron. What&amp;#039;s the conversion rate?&amp;quot; he says, getting riled up for the first time during his talk. &amp;quot;Stab that bloody thing in the heart!&amp;quot;  He doesn&amp;#039;t react well to bad ideas. Hey, everyone&amp;#039;s got a pet peeve. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a8101/elon-musk-on-spacex-tesla-and-why-space-solar-power-must-die-13386162/?src=rss>