Sal KhanSo first of all, I just want to thank Elon for coming-- hungry. You didn't even have dinner. And we didn't even feed you properly.首先我想感谢 Elon 来参加——而且是饿着肚子来的。你连晚饭都没吃，我们也没好好招待你。
Elon MuskNo, sorry to be a bit late. I just came from the Tesla factory in Fremont.不好意思，来晚了一点。我刚从 Fremont 的 Tesla 工厂过来。
Sal KhanYes. Was something wrong?是吗？出什么问题了？
Elon MuskThere's always something.永远都有问题。
Sal KhanDid you have to like--你是不是得去——
Elon MuskAt any given point, there's always something wrong.任何时刻，都永远有某个地方出了问题。
Sal KhanYes.是啊。
Elon MuskBecause there's just too many things going on. So one of the trickiest things about a car is that there's thousands of individual components-- there are thousands of unique components-- and even if one of those things is missing, you can't make cars. So today's fiasco was-- I kid you not-- we were missing a $3 USB cable.因为事情太多了。汽车最棘手的地方在于，它有几千个独立零部件——几千个不同的零件——只要有一个缺失，你就没法造车。今天的闹剧，你不会相信的——就因为缺了一根 $3 的 USB 线。
Sal KhanOK.好吧。
Elon MuskSo we could not complete cars, because--所以我们没法完成车辆装配，因为——
Sal KhanSo the whole line was stopped?整条生产线就这样停下来了？
Elon MuskYeah. So essentially, because it's part of the wiring harness. So you can't put the interior in without this cable. And so we could either make a whole bunch of cars minus the interior, which means that you've got to stack them up in the yard.对。因为这是线束的一部分。没有这根线就没法安装内饰。所以我们要么造一堆没有内饰的车，然后把它们堆在院子里。
Sal KhanThe resale value would be no good.那残值就没了。
Elon MuskWell, it can be done, but if then things go out of sequence, and it's way more inefficient-- you don't have a moving production line. Then you have to send people out to hundreds of cars that are sitting in the storage yard. And so this happens to be a particularly pernicious cable. It's kind of routed under the carpet, in a difficult place. And it's literally $3. And so we basically had to send people throughout the Bay Area to go and buy USB cables.当然也可以这么干，但这样一来生产顺序就乱了，效率极低——流水线就走不下去了。你得派人去仓储区的几百辆车上逐一补装。偏偏这根线走的位置特别难搞，藏在地毯下面，又绕又深。价钱是真的只要 $3。最后我们基本上派人跑遍整个湾区去买 USB 线。
Sal KhanLike, literally, Radio Shack?就是那种，字面意义上的，去 Radio Shack 买？
Elon MuskLike Fry's.去 Fry's 买。
Sal KhanOh, Fry's. That's better.哦，Fry's。那还好一点。
Elon MuskYou're going to have a hard time getting a USB cable right now at Fry's, because we bought every one of them.你现在想在 Fry's 买到 USB 线会很难，因为我们把他们的货全买光了。
Sal KhanThat's good.那还不错。
Elon MuskAnd so we're able to continue production. And I don't want to belabor the anecdote, but essentially the supplier is in China. And we had plan A and plan B. And plan A was like the normal supply chain process. But what the supplier did was instead of sending our parts in their own package, they grouped it together with a bunch of other stuff for other companies and sent that all via some extremely slow boat from China to LA. And when it got to LA, the other stuff didn't pass customs. And so they wouldn't let our stuff through, because--所以生产总算能继续下去了。我不想把这个故事讲得太啰嗦，但大概就是这样：供应商在中国。我们有 A 方案和 B 方案。A 方案是走正常供应链流程。但供应商没有单独给我们打包发货，而是把我们的货和其他公司的东西混在一起，用一艘超级慢的船从中国发到洛杉矶。到了洛杉矶之后，其他东西没过海关，所以我们的货也被一起扣住了，因为——
Sal KhanThey put it like a barrel fruit or something.他们是不是把东西混在一桶水果里或者什么的。
Elon MuskI don't what they put it, but something that customs didn't like. And the paperwork wasn't in order or whatever. So it got stuck there for like a couple weeks. And then we had plan B. So we called and said, look you've got to air freight some of these cables-- cause they're just little cables-- to us. And we talked to their US subsidiary and ordered from the US subsidiary, who then communicated to China. But then because this was another batch of parts, so it was kind of double the order, it exceeded the credit limit that we had. So it bounced off the credit limit, so they didn't ship it.我不知道混了什么，反正海关不让过。文件也不对或者什么的，就这样被卡了好几个星期。然后我们启动 B 方案，打电话说，你们得把这些线空运给我们——就几根小线嘛。我们联系了他们的美国子公司下单，子公司又转给中国那边。但因为这批是另外一个订单，数量差不多是双倍，超过了我们的信用额度，结果被系统自动退回，他们根本就没发货。
Sal KhanFascinating. So someone's losing their job now. This is-- no, I'm kidding. You shouldn't fire anyone.太精彩了。有人要因此丢工作了。这个——不，我开玩笑的。你不应该开除任何人。
Elon MuskI mean, it's pretty farcical. And, anyway, so, it's coming like tonight at 11:00 PM or something.我是说，这整件事挺荒诞的。反正，货今晚大概 11 点能到。
Sal KhanWow. And these things are happening like all the time? This was an unusual circumstance?哇。这种事是一直都在发生吗？还是说这次是特别罕见的情况？
Elon MuskYeah. That's like one example, but there's many things like that.这只是一个例子，类似的事情多得很。
Sal KhanI guess, I mean, that's actually a really good example, because that leads into what I've always been fascinated by a lot of what you're doing. Well, I'll start with, how did you get into this?我觉得这个例子其实挺好的，因为它引出了我一直对你所做的事最着迷的地方。那我就从这里问起——你是怎么走上这条路的？
Elon MuskInto cars?造车这条路？
Sal KhanInto cars. Into taking over NASA. Well, not taking over NASA-- being a contractor for NASA.造车。接管 NASA。好吧，不是接管 NASA——是成为 NASA 的承包商。
Elon MuskJust for the record, we are not taking over NASA.澄清一下，我们没有接管 NASA。
Sal KhanYou're not taking over NASA. They are an independent organization. But you are becoming a major provider of services for NASA. Obviously, kind of internet payments and payments generally. I mean these are three completely different spaces. I think a lot of people would not take someone seriously, if they had a business plan in one of these.你们没有接管 NASA。他们是独立机构。但你们正在成为 NASA 的主要服务提供商。还有互联网支付、支付这个大领域。我是说，这是三个完全不同的方向。我觉得大多数人如果只有其中一个方向的商业计划，都不会被人当回事。
Elon MuskRight. Sorry to eat.对。抱歉，我边吃边说。
Sal KhanOh, yeah, take your time. What was your-- did you always think you were going to be doing this or-- when did it dawn on you that you would try to revolutionize three industries?哦，没关系，慢慢来。你——你一直就知道自己会走这条路吗？还是什么时候突然意识到，自己要去颠覆三个行业？
Elon MuskWell, when I was in college-- I didn't actually expect to do it. So it was not like this is some long-fulfilled expectation. But when I was in college, I thought about what were the areas that would most effect the future of humanity, in my opinion. And the three areas were the internet, sustainable energy, and space exploration, particularly if humanity becomes a multi-planet species. You know, there's kind of like a pretty substantial bifurcation in our future, if we're either out there among stars on multiple planets, or if we're confined to Earth until some obviously eventual extinction. Not that I'm pessimistic about life on Earth. I mean, things are likely to be good. More likely to be good by far than bad.嗯，我在大学的时候，并不是真的预想到会这么做。所以这不是什么由来已久的期望。但那时候我思考过，在我看来，哪些领域会对人类的未来产生最深远的影响。我认为有三个方向：互联网、可持续能源，以及太空探索——尤其是当人类成为多星球物种的那种可能性。你知道，我们的未来其实存在一个相当重大的分叉：要么走出去，分布在多个星球上，要么被困在地球上，直到某个迟早会到来的灭绝事件。这不是说我对地球上的生活悲观，我觉得地球上的事情很可能会好，好的可能性远大于坏的。
Sal KhanYellowstone's due for an explosion every several hundred thousand-- Shandra knows about that. It's been 700,000,Yellowstone 每隔几十万年就要喷发一次——Shandra 对这个很清楚，已经过了 700,000 年了。
Elon MuskRight. Right. Yeah.对，对，是的。
Sal KhanSuper volcano for those of you who don't know. It would envelop, but well--超级火山，对于不了解的朋友来说，那会把整个——嗯，反正就是——
Elon MuskYeah. Exactly. I know exactly what you're talking about. So--对，确实。我完全明白你说的。那么——
Sal KhanWe read the same books. I can tell.我们读的书一样，我看得出来。
Elon MuskAbsolutely. I mean something bad is bound to happen if you give it enough time. And civilization has been around for such a very short period of time that these time scales seem like very long, but on an evolutionary time scale, they're very short. A million years on an evolutionary time scale is really not very much. And Earth's been around for four and a half billion years, so that's a very tiny, tiny amount of time, really. But for us that would be-- can you imagine if human civilization continued at anything remotely like the current pace of technology advancement for a million years? Where would we be? I think we're either extinct or on a lot of planets.绝对是。我是说，如果给足够长的时间，坏事迟早会发生。文明存在的时间其实极其短暂，这些时间尺度在我们看来感觉很长，但在进化的时间尺度上其实很短。一百万年在进化时间尺度上真的不算多。地球已经存在了 45 亿年，所以一百万年真的是极其微小的一段时间。但对我们来说，那意味着——你能想象吗，如果人类文明以任何接近当前技术发展速度的方式再持续一百万年，我们会到哪里？我觉得要么已经灭绝，要么分布在很多个星球上。
Sal KhanYes. We should--是的，我们应该——
Elon MuskThose are the two options.就这两种可能。
Sal KhanBut given that-- I mean, one, that's kind of as epic as one can think about things, literally. How did you make that concrete? How does that turn into SpaceX, Tesla and Paypal?既然如此——我是说，这从字面意义上说就是人能思考到的最宏大的问题了。你是怎么把它变成具体行动的？它是怎么变成 SpaceX、Tesla 和 PayPal 的？
Elon MuskWell, so I thought about these things kind of in the abstract. Not from the expectation that I would actually have careers in those arenas. But, I wanted to be involved in at least one of them. And at first I thought the best bet was going to be electric cars. And so the area that I was studying was advanced capacitors. So essentially capacitors that have an energy density exceeding that of batteries. Because they have a very high power density, but a low energy density. Maybe you have lecture to that effect, I don't know.嗯，我当时是以一种比较抽象的方式思考这些问题的，并不是真的预期自己会在这些领域开创事业。但我想至少参与其中一个方向。起初我觉得最好的切入点是电动车，所以我研究的方向是先进电容器——也就是能量密度超过电池的电容器。电容器功率密度很高，但能量密度很低。你们可能有这方面的课程，我不确定。
Sal KhanOh, yes, no. We should do that. We'll get to it later.哦对，这个我们应该做。我们之后再聊这个。
Elon MuskExactly. So obviously, if you could make a capacitor that had anywhere near the energy density of a battery with this incredibly high power density and this quasi-infinite cycle and calendar life, then you'd have an awesome solution for energy storage and mobile applications. So I was going to try to work on that and try to leverage the equipment that was developed for advanced chip making and photonics to create ultra-precise capacitors at the molecular level.没错。很显然，如果你能制造出一种能量密度接近电池、同时保持超高功率密度、以及几乎无限循环寿命和日历寿命的电容器，那它就是一个绝佳的储能和移动应用解决方案。我当时的思路是利用先进芯片制造和光子学领域已有的设备，在分子层面制造超精密电容器。
Sal KhanAnd this was when you were going to go into grad school? You had a brief stint at Stanford?这是你打算去读研究生的时候？你在 Stanford 待了很短一段时间？
Elon MuskThat's right.是的。
Sal KhanAt a PhD in applied physics?读应用物理的博士？
Elon MuskApplied physics, material science.应用物理和材料科学。
Sal KhanRight. So even then you were thinking of trying to do something in the space?所以那时候你就已经在想要做这个领域的事了？
Elon MuskActually, this was to work on energy storage solutions for electric cars. And I'd actually worked at a company in Silicon Valley called Pinnacle Research, which did advanced capacitors. There were electrolytic capacitors. And they actually were pretty good. They had like the energy density of a lead-acid battery, which for a capacitor, that's a big deal. But they used ruthenium tantalum oxide. And I think at the time, there was maybe like one or two tons of ruthenium mined per year in the world. So it's not a scalable solution. But I thought there could be some solid-state solution, like just using chip-making equipment. That was going to be the basic idea. But it was one of those things where I wasn't sure if success was one of possible outcomes. It's difficult to bound that problem exactly and say, OK--其实那是为了研究电动车的储能解决方案。我实际上在硅谷一家叫 Pinnacle Research 的公司工作过，他们做先进电容器，是电解电容器。效果其实挺不错的，能量密度大概相当于铅酸电池——对电容器来说这已经是很了不起的成就了。但他们用的是钌钽氧化物。我记得当时全世界每年开采的钌大概只有一两吨，所以根本没有规模化的可能。但我觉得应该有某种固态的解决方案，就像用芯片制造设备来做，这是最基本的想法。只是这件事有点难确定——我不确定成功是不是可能的结果之一。这个问题很难准确地界定范围，说好——
Sal KhanSo you're saying, I felt like this was a destined failure is another way to parse that sentence. But anyway, sorry.你是说，另一种解读就是：我感觉这注定要失败。不过，抱歉我打断了。
Elon MuskNo. I didn't think it would fail, but I wasn't sure that success was a possibility.不。我不觉得它会失败，但我也不确定成功是否是一种可能的结果。
Sal KhanOK. Yes.好的，明白了。
Elon MuskAnd generally you want to embark on something-- it's desirable to figure out if success is at least one of the possibilities.通常在着手做一件事之前，你希望先搞清楚——成功至少是可能发生的结果之一，这很重要。
Sal KhanRight, exactly.对，完全同意。
Elon MuskBecause for sure failure is one of the possibilities. But, ideally, you want to try to bracket it and say success is in the envelope of outcomes. And I wasn't quite sure if that was the case. I think success on an academic level would have been quite likely, because you can publish some useless paper-- and most papers are pretty useless--因为失败肯定是可能的结果之一。但理想情况下，你希望能界定清楚，确认成功在可能的结果范围之内。我当时对这一点并不确定。我觉得在学术层面取得成功是很有可能的，因为你总能发表一篇没什么用的论文——大多数论文其实都没什么用——
Sal KhanWe have a few-- don't take offense.我们有几篇——别见怪啊。
Elon MuskI mean, how many PhD papers are actually used by someone ever?我是说，有多少篇博士论文真正被人用到过？
Sal KhanThat's a good point.说得有道理。
Elon MuskPercentagewise it's not good. And so it could have been one of those outcomes where you add some leaves to the tree of knowledge. And that leaf is, nope, it's not possible. And there goes seven years of my life. So that was one path. And I was prepared to do that. But then the internet came along. And it was like, oh, OK, the Internet, I'm pretty sure success is one of the outcomes, and it seemed like I could either do a PhD and watch the Internet happen, or I could participate and help build in some fashion. Like, I was just concerned with the idea of watching it happen. So I decided to put things on hold and start an Internet company. And we worked on internet publishing software, maps and directions, yellow pages, those kind of things. And we had as investors and customers the media companies. So like the New York Times Company, Knight Ridder.从比例上来看，情况不太好。所以可能的结果之一就是你给知识之树添了几片叶子，而这片叶子的内容是：行不通。然后七年青春就这么过去了。那是其中一条路，我也做好了走那条路的准备。但后来互联网出现了，我就想，哦，OK，互联网这件事，成功肯定是可能的结果之一——而且我可以选择读博然后眼看着互联网发展，或者投身其中，以某种方式参与建设。我就是无法接受只是旁观的这种感觉。所以我决定把事情放一放，创办一家互联网公司。我们做互联网发布软件、地图与路线、黄页之类的东西。我们的投资方和客户是媒体公司，比如《纽约时报》公司、Knight Ridder。
Sal KhanAnd this is just at the early stages. I mean this was like--那是在非常早期的阶段，我是说那时候大概是——
Elon Musk'95.'95 年。
Sal Khan'95. So it's really early stages, so it's really out the gate.'95 年。那真的是非常早期，一切才刚刚开始。
Elon MuskYeah. Absolutely. And so then we-- the reason we worked with the media companies was because we needed to have money. There was no advertising money in '95. In fact, the idea of advertising on the internet seemed like a ridiculous idea to people. Obviously, not so ridiculous anymore. But, at the time, it seemed like a very unlikely proposition. And a lot of the media companies weren't even sure that they should be online. Like, what's the point of that?对，绝对是。所以我们之所以跟媒体公司合作，是因为我们需要钱。'95 年的时候互联网上根本没有广告收入，事实上，在互联网上打广告这个概念在当时看起来是个荒唐的想法。当然现在显然一点都不荒唐了。但那时候这个命题看起来极不靠谱。而且很多媒体公司甚至不确定自己要不要上网，就是那种——这有什么意义呢？
Sal KhanAnd did you all think that PayPal was just going to be a simple, little internet way to-- or did you think it was going to turn into the major kind of transaction processing engine that it is right now?你们当时有没有觉得 PayPal 只是互联网上一个小小的——还是你们就预见到它会成为现在这样的大型交易处理引擎？
Elon MuskI didn't expect PayPal's growth rate to be what it was. And that actually created major problems. So we started Paypal on University Avenue. After the first month or so of the website being active, we had 100,000 customers.我没有预料到 PayPal 的增长速度会那么快。而且这实际上带来了很大的麻烦。我们在 University Avenue 创办了 PayPal，网站上线大概一个月后，我们就有了 100,000 个用户。
Sal KhanReally? That fast. Wow, I didn't realize it was--真的？增长那么快。哇，我没想到会这么——
Elon MuskYeah, it was nutty.对，快得离谱。
Sal KhanAnd how did it start? How did people just even know to use it? I mean, obviously, both buyer and seller have to be involved.那一开始怎么搞起来的？人们是怎么知道要用它的？我是说，买家和卖家两边都得参与才行。
Elon MuskYeah. Well, we started off first by offering people $20 if they opened an account. And $20 if they referred anyone. And then we dropped it to $10. And we dropped it to $5. As the network got bigger and bigger, the value of the network itself exceeded any sort of carrot that we could offer.是的。我们一开始的方式是：开户奖励 $20，推荐一个人再奖励 $20。后来降到 $10，再降到 $5。随着网络越来越大，网络本身的价值就超过了我们能给出的任何激励。
Sal KhanSo much money did you all spend with that kind of $5, $10, $20 incentive to get that critical mass going?你们靠这种 $5、$10、$20 的激励方式建立起关键用户群，总共花了多少钱？
Elon MuskIt was a fair amount. I think it was probably $60 or $70 million.不少。我觉得大概是 $60 到 $70 million 左右。
Sal KhanOh, wow, OK. So it was substantial. OK. So we're not talking peanuts here.哇，好的，那相当可观了。不是小数目。
Elon MuskIt depends on your relative scale. It's a peanut to Google.取决于你的参照系。对 Google 来说就是花生米。
Sal KhanYeah, no, that's right. That's right.是的，没错，没错。
Elon MuskHere's a peanut. I mean, Google's got $50 billion. Apple's got $150 billion, some crazy amount of money. That's just cash.就是一粒花生米。我是说，Google 有 $50 billion，Apple 有 $150 billion，某个疯狂的数字。那只是现金。
Sal KhanYeah. So it's not an outlandish-- I didn't realize that was so core.是的。所以这个数字也没那么夸张——我没意识到这一块是这么核心的。
Elon MuskLike 1% of Google's cash would be $500 million. So, you know, that's 0.1% percent of Google's cash.Google 现金的 1% 就是 $500 million。所以，这个数字大概是 Google 现金的 0.1%。
Sal KhanThat's true. You're right, that's inexpensive. It's nothing.你说得对，那真的很便宜，九牛一毛。
Elon MuskRelative to them, it's pretty inexpensive.相对于他们来说，确实是很便宜的。
Sal KhanThat's right.没错。
Elon MuskAnd then we did a bunch of things to decrease the friction. It's just like bacteria in a Petri dish. So what you want to do is try to have one customer generate like two customers. OK? Or something like that. Maybe three customers, ideally. And then you want that to happen really fast. And you could probably model it just like bacteria growth in a Petri dish. And then it'll just expand very quickly until it hits the side of the Petri dish and then it slows down.然后我们做了一堆事来降低摩擦。这就像培养皿里的细菌。你想要的效果是一个用户带来大约两个用户，或者更好能带来三个。而且你希望这个过程发生得越快越好。你可以用细菌在培养皿里的增长模型来模拟这个过程，它就会快速扩张，直到碰到培养皿的边缘，然后才会减速。
Sal KhanAnd then after Paypal, then I mean-- to some degree, especially us in Silicon Valley, we kind of understand the Internet. We know people. PayPal's obviously of the scale that is noteworthy, but then SpaceX just seems really, you know-- well, one, how did you decide that I'm definitely going to do that? And then like what's the first thing that you do? How do you even go out-- I don't even know how to start trying to make a rocket company.PayPal 之后，我是说——在某种程度上，尤其是我们这些在硅谷的人，多多少少能理解互联网，也认识一些人。PayPal 的规模已经相当值得一提，但 SpaceX 就感觉真的是……好吧，第一，你是怎么决定一定要做这件事的？然后第一步是什么？你怎么迈出第一步的？我甚至不知道怎么开始创办一家火箭公司。
Elon MuskWell, neither did I really. And in fact, the first three launches failed. So it's not as though it was like spot on. It's like, did not hit the bull's eye. But我当时也不知道怎么做，事实上，前三次发射都失败了。所以并不是一开始就打到靶心的。完全没中靶心，但——
Sal KhanBut even getting to the point where you're launching rockets. I don't even how do you get there? One, how did you decide? And then what did you do on day one? Like, who did you call? Did you write a plan? Did you start-- I don't even know.但光是能做到发射火箭这一步，我就不知道是怎么走到那里的。第一，你是怎么决定的？第二，第一天你做了什么？你打电话给谁了？有没有写计划？我真的不知道。
Elon MuskActually, the origin of SpaceX is that I was trying to figure out why we'd not sent any people to Mars. Because the obvious next step after Apollo was to send people to Mars. But what in fact happened was that we sent a few people to the moon and then we didn't send anyone after that to the moon or Mars or anything. But if you'd asked people in 1969, what would 2013 look like, they would have said, there will be a base on the moon. We would have at least sent some people to Mars. And maybe there'd even be a base on Mars. There'd be like orbiting space hotels. And there'd be all this awesome stuff in space. And that's what people expected.SpaceX 的起点是这样的：我当时在琢磨，为什么我们没有把人送上火星。因为 Apollo 之后显而易见的下一步就是把人送上火星。但实际发生的是，我们把几个人送上了月球，然后之后再也没有把任何人送上月球或者火星或者任何地方。但如果你在 1969 年问人们，2013 年会是什么样子，他们会说，月球上会有基地，我们至少已经把一些人送上了火星，甚至可能在火星上也有基地，会有轨道空间酒店，太空里会有各种令人叹为观止的东西。那是人们当时的预期。
Elon MuskAnd if you said, well, actually, the United States in 2013 will not be able to send anyone to orbit. But I'll tell you what will exist is that there'll be this device in your pocket that's like the size of-- smaller than a deck of cards that has access to all the world's information, and you can talk to any one on planet Earth. And even if you're like in some remote village somewhere so long as there's something called the Internet-- they wouldn't know what that means, of course-- then you would be able to communicate with anyone instantly and have access to all of humanity's knowledge. They would have said, like bullshit. There's no way that that's going to be true.如果你告诉他们，其实 2013 年的美国将无法把任何人送入轨道，但是——我告诉你，你的口袋里会有一个设备，比一副扑克牌还小，能访问世界上所有的信息，而且可以和地球上任何人通话。就算你在某个偏远的村子里，只要有一种叫做互联网的东西——他们当然不知道这是什么意思——你就可以即时和任何人通讯，并且获取人类所有的知识。他们肯定会说：扯淡，这根本不可能是真的。
Sal KhanRight. Right.对，对。
Elon MuskAnd yet we all have that. And space is not happening. So I was trying to figure out like what was the deal here. And this was 2001. And it was just a friend of mine asked me, what am I going to do after Paypal. And I said, well, you know, I've always been interested in space, but I don't think there's anything that an individual could do in space, because it's the province of government, and usually a large government. But, I am curious as to when we're going to send some one to Mars. So I went to the NASA website to try to figure out where is the place that tells you that. And I couldn't find that. So I was like, either I'm bad at looking at the website, or they have a terrible website, because surely there must be a date.然而我们每个人都拥有这个东西。而太空探索却没有发生。所以我当时一直在想，这是怎么回事。那是 2001 年。是我的一个朋友问我，PayPal 之后打算做什么。我说，嗯，我一直对太空感兴趣，但我觉得个人在太空领域能做的事情有限，因为那是政府的领域，通常还得是大国政府。但我很好奇，我们什么时候才会把人送上火星。于是我去 NASA 的网站，想找到那个告诉你答案的地方。但我找不到。于是我就想，要么是我不会用这个网站，要么他们的网站烂透了，因为肯定应该有一个日期的。
Sal KhanThat should be a big date.这应该是个大日子啊。
Elon MuskYeah. This should be on the front page. And then I discovered actually that NASA had no plans to send people to Mars, or even really back to the moon. So this was really was disappointing. I thought well, maybe this is a question of national will. Like do we to get people excited about space again? And try to get NASA a bigger budget, and then we would send people to Mars. And so I started researching the area, becoming more familiar with space, reading lots of books. And I came up with this idea to do so-called Mars oasis, which was to send a small greenhouse with seeds in dehydrated gel that upon landing, you hydrate the gel. You have green plants on a red background. The public responses to precedents and superlatives. So it would be the first life on Mars. The furthest that life's ever traveled. And you'd have this money shot of green plants on a red background. So that seemed like it would get people pretty excited.对，这应该放在首页上。后来我才发现，NASA 根本没有把人送上火星的计划，甚至没有重返月球的计划。这真的让我很失望。我就想，也许这是一个关于国家意志的问题——我们需不需要重新激起大家对太空的热情？争取给 NASA 更大的预算，然后把人送上火星？所以我开始研究这个领域，越来越熟悉太空方面的内容，读了很多书。然后我想出了一个叫做「火星绿洲」的方案，就是把一个小型温室送上火星，里面装着浸在脱水凝胶里的种子，着陆后用水激活凝胶，植物就会在火星上发芽生长。在红色的背景下有绿色植物——大众对「第一次」和「最遥远」这种纪录性成就的反应是最强烈的。这将是火星上的第一个生命，生命到达过的最远之处，然后你会得到绿色植物衬托在红色背景上的那张绝佳照片。这感觉肯定能让大家非常兴奋。
Elon MuskSo I started getting into this. And trying to figure out, OK, well can I afford to build a spacecraft? Because I had some money as a result of PayPal, but it had to fit within that budget. And I figured we had to do two missions, because if we only did one and it failed, then it might have like the opposite effect.然后我就开始深入研究这件事，想搞清楚，我能不能负担得起建造一艘飞船的费用？因为我从 PayPal 得到了一些钱，但必须在预算范围内。我觉得得做两次任务，因为如果只做一次万一失败了，可能会产生反效果。
Sal KhanBut you were willing to bet the farm, so to speak, on this?但你愿意把全部身家都押上去？
Elon MuskYeah. Well, I figured I was willing to spend half the money that I got from PayPal with no expectation of return. Because I thought this was just something that was pretty important and yeah, it seemed like I could spend half the money I made on PayPal on this, and if that got NASA a bigger budget and resulted in us going to Mars, that would be a pretty good outcome.对，是的。我当时觉得我愿意把从 PayPal 得到的钱花一半进去，而且不期待任何回报。因为我觉得这件事挺重要的，看起来我可以把我从 PayPal 赚到的一半钱用在这上面，如果这能让 NASA 获得更大的预算，最终让我们去火星，那会是一个相当不错的结果。
Sal KhanAnd when your friends or your family came up to you and said, look there's nations that can't do this. You're a guy, I mean you have some resources, what did you say or do or think?当你的朋友或家人来找你说，你看，连国家都做不到这件事，你一个人，虽然有一些资源，但——你当时是怎么回应、怎么做、或者怎么想的？
Elon MuskWell, so I had a lot of friends of mine try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, because they thought it was crazy. And one friend of mine made me watch a video of rockets blowing up. And there were just lots of people that thought it was a really crazy idea. And there was some people that had tried to start rocket companies, not succeeded. And they tried to talk me out of it. But the thing is that-- their premise for talking me out of it was, well, we think you're going to lose the money that you invest. I was like, well, that was my expectation anyway, so I don't really mind if I lose-- you I mean, I mind, but I mean it's not like I was trying to figure out the rank-ordered best way to invest money and on that basis chose space. It's not like that's-- I thought, wow--嗯，我有很多朋友都试图劝我别创办火箭公司，因为他们觉得这很疯狂。有个朋友专门给我放了一段火箭爆炸的视频。很多人都觉得这是个非常疯狂的想法。也有些人曾经试图创办火箭公司但没有成功，他们也来劝我放弃。但关键在于——他们劝我放弃的理由是：我们觉得你投进去的钱会打水漂。我就说，这本来就是我的预期，所以我不介意损失——我是说，我当然介意，但我不是在用这钱去找最优投资回报率，然后选出了太空这个选项。不是那么回事——我不是在想，哇——
Sal KhanYou weren't looking at like money-market bonds, AAA bonds, rocket company. You weren't like--你不是在比较货币市场债券、AAA 债券、火箭公司，然后——
Elon MuskI could do real estate. I could invest in shoe making. Anything. And, whoa, space is the highest ROI. That is not what-- it wasn't the premise. I just thought that it was important that humanity expand beyond Earth, and we weren't doing that, so maybe there was something I could do to spur that on. And then I was able to compress the costs of the spacecraft and everything down to a relatively manageable number. And I got stuck on the rocket. The US rockets were way too expensive. I ended up going to Russia-- I flew to Russia three times to negotiate a purchase of an ICBM. I tried to buy two of the biggest ICBMs in the Russian fleet in 2001 and 2002. And I actually negotiated a price.我可以做房地产，可以投资制鞋业，什么都行。然后——哇，太空的 ROI 最高。根本不是这个逻辑。我只是觉得人类向地球以外扩张这件事很重要，而我们却没在做，也许我能做点什么来推动它。然后我把飞船的成本压缩到了一个相对可以承受的数字。但我在火箭上卡住了。美国的火箭太贵了。我最后去了俄罗斯——我先后三次飞去俄罗斯，谈判购买一枚 ICBM。我在 2001 年和 2002 年试图购买俄罗斯舰队中最大的两枚 ICBM，而且我实际上谈好了一个价格。
Sal KhanI'll just let that statement stand. I'm not even going to-- Well, actually, I have to-- like who did you call?我就让这句话就这么放着。我甚至不想评论——好吧，其实我得问一下——你是打电话给谁的？
Elon MuskYou open the yellow pages. Go to ICBMs. Oh!打开黄页，找到 ICBM 那一栏。哦！
Sal KhanHow does this-- I don't want to get too much in to it but I'm curious about this one particular thing. You decide at some point you need to buy an ICBM?这件事是怎么——我不想深聊太多，但我对这一点特别好奇。你在某个时刻决定自己需要买一枚 ICBM？
Elon MuskYeah. Well, actually at first I tried to buy just a normal launch program that they use to launch satellites, but those are too expensive.对。其实一开始我是想购买他们用来发射卫星的普通运载火箭，但那些太贵了。
Sal KhanI see. I see.我明白了，明白了。
Elon MuskThe Boeing Delta II would have cost $65 million each, so two would have been $130 million. And then I was like, woah, OK, that breaks my budget right there. And I tried to negotiate with them. And that was not-- I did not make progress.Boeing Delta II 每枚要 $65 million，两枚就是 $130 million。然后我就想，哇，好吧，这直接超出我的预算了。我试着跟他们谈判，但没有任何进展。
Sal KhanHow much does an ICBM go for? I'm curious what's the market rate for one of those?一枚 ICBM 的市场价是多少？我很好奇行情。
Elon MuskWell--嗯——
Sal KhanThis is right after the fall, it might have gone up.那正好是解体之后不久，价格可能涨了。
Elon MuskYeah, it's gone up a lot since then. But in 2001, it would've been about $10 million each. So two would have been $20 million. And then I thought I could get the rest of the mission down to also around $10 million per, so we'd have a dual mission with like two identical launches, two identical spacecraft for roughly $40 million. And so I thought, OK, I can do that.对，现在已经涨了很多了。但在 2001 年，大概是每枚 $10 million 左右。两枚就是 $20 million。然后我觉得任务的其余部分每次也能控制在 $10 million 左右，这样两次相同的发射、两艘相同的飞船加起来大概是 $40 million。我就想，OK，这个我能搞定。
Sal KhanBut you must have had some like rocket scientists advising you at this point? This sounds like you were serious. I mean you were--但你当时肯定有火箭科学家在给你提建议？这听起来像是你在认真做这件事——
Elon MuskYeah. I engaged a bunch of consultants and started to get familiar with the space industry. But then after the third trip to Russia, I came to realize that I was actually wrong about my first premise, that there was a lack of will. In fact, I think that there's a tremendous amount of will in the United States for space exploration. Because the United States is essentially a nation of explorers. I mean, it's a distillation of the human spirit of exploration. So of course it was quite silly of me to think that people lacked motivation. But what people don't want to think is that, OK, sending people to Mars is going to be so expensive that they'll have to give up health care or something. They're not going to do that. So it's got to be that going to Mars is not going to cause some meaningful drop in their standard of living. So if it's like maybe a quarter of a percent or half a percent of GDP-- something like that is palatable.对，我请了一批顾问，开始深入了解航天工业。但在第三次去俄罗斯之后，我意识到自己的第一个前提其实是错的——我一直以为是缺乏意志力的问题。事实上，我认为美国对太空探索有着极其强烈的意愿。因为美国从本质上来说就是一个探索者的国度，是人类探索精神的提炼与结晶。所以认为人们缺乏动力，这个想法真的相当愚蠢。但人们不愿意去想的是：好，送人去火星的花费会大到让他们不得不放弃医疗保健，他们是不会答应的。所以关键在于，去火星不能对他们的生活水平造成任何实质性的下降。如果大概是 GDP 的四分之一到半个百分点——那还是可以接受的。
Elon MuskAnyways, so I thought, OK, it's not really going to maybe matter that much if I do this mission, because what really matters is having a way. So I was wrong-- I thought there wasn't enough will, but there actually was plenty of will, if people thought there was a way. So then I said, OK, well, I need to work on the way. How hard is it really to make a rocket? Historically, all rockets have been expensive, so therefore, in the future, all rockets will be expensive. But actually that's not true. If you say, what is a rocket made of. And say, OK, it's made of aluminum, titanium, copper, carbon fiber, if you want to go that direction. And you can break down and say, what is the raw material cost of all these components. And if you have them stacked on the floor and could wave a magic wand so that the cost of rearranging the atoms was zero, then what would the cost of the rocket be. And I was like, wow, OK, it's really small. It's like 2% of what a rocket costs. So clearly it would be in how the atoms are arranged. So you've got to figure out OK, how can we get the atoms in the right shape much more efficiently.总之，我当时想，好，做这次任务可能并没有那么重要，因为真正重要的是有一条可行的路。所以我错了——我以为缺乏意志，但实际上只要人们觉得有路可走，意志力是足够的。于是我就说，好，我得去研究这条路。造一枚火箭到底有多难？历史上所有火箭都很贵，所以将来火箭也会很贵。但这其实不是真的。如果你问，一枚火箭是什么做的——好，它是铝、钛、铜、碳纤维做的，如果你想走那个方向的话。然后你可以分析，所有这些材料的原材料成本加起来是多少。如果你把它们堆在地板上，然后挥动一根魔法棒，让重新排列这些原子的成本变为零，那这枚火箭的成本是多少。我算了一下，哇，数字真的很小。大概只是一枚火箭实际成本的 2%。所以问题显然出在原子的排列方式上。所以你得想办法，怎么能更高效地把原子排列成正确的形状。
Elon MuskAnd so I had a series of meetings on Saturdays with people some of whom were still working at the big aerospace companies, just to try to figure out is there some catch here that I'm not appreciating. And I couldn't figure it out. There doesn't seem to be any catch. So I started SpaceX.于是我每周六都会召集一批人开会，其中一些人还在大型航空航天公司工作，就是想搞清楚这里面有没有什么我没想到的陷阱。结果我想不出来，好像也没什么陷阱。于是我就创办了 SpaceX。
Sal KhanAnd you ended up-- you had some failures, but obviously some huge successes. What was the cost that you were able to build this rocket for relative to what they were being built for before?最终——你经历了一些失败，但显然也取得了巨大的成功。你造出这枚火箭的成本，和以前的造价相比，是什么水平？
Elon MuskSo let's see. For the Falcon 1, which is the first rocket we built. And the first three flights did not make it. In fact, we got progressively further. But like the first rocket came in and landed maybe a couple hundred yards away from the launch site, and tiny fragments. So, yeah, anyway, that rocket ended up costing around $6 million compared to other rockets in that class, which were about $25 million.我们来算算。Falcon 1 是我们造的第一枚火箭，前三次飞行都没成功。其实我们一次比一次飞得更远，但第一枚火箭大概就落在了距发射台几百码的地方，炸成碎片。不管怎样，那枚火箭的造价大约是 $6 million，而同级别其他火箭大约是 $25 million。
Sal KhanWow. So significant?哇，差距显著？
Elon MuskYeah, like a quarter. But there's an even better step beyond that which is to make rockets reusable. Right now that is around what our comparison price is-- excluding the refurbished ICBMs. So, if you say building a rocket from new, how does the SpaceX rocket compare to a rocket from Boeing or Lockheed? It's about a quarter of the price. However, if we make it reusable, then it can be two orders of magnitude cheaper.对，大约四分之一的价格。但还有一个更好的方向，就是让火箭可以重复使用。目前我们的对比价格就在这个水平——排除翻新 ICBM 不算。如果只说从零开始新造一枚火箭，SpaceX 的火箭和 Boeing 或 Lockheed 的火箭相比，大约是四分之一的价格。但如果我们让火箭可重复使用，那成本可以便宜两个数量级。
Sal KhanTwo orders of magnitude cheaper. A 100th of the price?两个数量级便宜。就是百分之一的价格？
Elon MuskThat's right. For you.没错，就是这样。
Sal KhanOnly today. Memorial day sale. And I've seen some-- you all are doing these vertical landings, like literally out of like the 1950s Sci-Fi movies. And that's what you're talking about?只限今天。纪念日大促销。我看过一些——你们在做垂直着陆，就像 1950 年代科幻电影里的那种。你说的就是这个？
Elon MuskYeah. Essentially, the rocket needs to come back and land at the launch site, and then reload propellant and take off again. Like an airplane in its reusability.对。本质上就是火箭需要返回并降落在发射场，然后重新加注推进剂，再次起飞。就像飞机的可复用性一样。
Sal KhanHow far do you think we are from that? When do you think-- your best guess, when we'll actually see that happening?你觉得我们离实现还有多远？你最乐观的估计，什么时候能真正看到这件事发生？
Elon MuskWell, I'm hopeful we can do it next year.嗯，我希望明年就能做到。
Sal KhanOh, OK. Yeah. That's-- we've got some ambitious stuff at Khan Academy for the next year, too. So we can compare. We're redesigning the site.哦，好的。Khan Academy 明年也有一些雄心勃勃的计划。我们可以比一比。我们在重新设计网站。
Elon MuskRight. We've been working on it for a long time. I should say, SpaceX has been around for 11 years, and thus far we have not recovered any rockets. We recovered the spacecraft from orbit. So that was great. But none of our attempts to recover the rocket stages have been successful. The rocket stages have always blown up essentially on reentry. Now, we think we've figured out why that was the case. And it's a tricky thing, because Earth's gravity is really quite strong. And with an advanced rocket, you can do maybe 2% to 3% of your lift-off mass to orbit, typically. And then reusability subtracts 2% to 3%. So then you've got like nothing to orbit or negative. And that's obviously not helpful.对，我们已经在这上面努力了很长时间了。应该说，SpaceX 成立至今已经 11 年了，到目前为止我们还没有回收过任何一枚火箭。我们从轨道上回收了飞船，那很棒。但我们所有回收火箭级的尝试都没有成功。火箭级在再入大气层的时候总是爆炸。现在我们觉得已经搞清楚是什么原因了。这件事有点棘手，因为地球的重力真的很强。一枚先进火箭，送入轨道的有效载荷通常只有起飞重量的 2% 到 3%。而可复用性会让这个数字再减掉 2% 到 3%。那你送到轨道的东西就等于零甚至是负的，这显然没什么用。
Elon MuskAnd so the trick is to try to shift that from say 2%, 3% in an expendable configuration to make the rocket mass efficiency, engine efficiency, and so forth, so much better that it moves to maybe around 3.5% to 4% in expendable configuration. And then try to get clever about the reusability elements and try to drop that to around the 1.5% to 2% level. So you have a net payload to orbit of about 2%.所以关键在于，把这个比例从一次性配置下的 2%、3% 推高，通过提升火箭质量效率、发动机效率等方面，让它在一次性配置下达到大约 3.5% 到 4%。然后在可复用性设计上做到足够精巧，把这部分损耗控制在大约 1.5% 到 2%。这样送到轨道的净有效载荷就大约是 2%。
Sal KhanBut you're doing it at one, two orders of magnitude cheaper.但成本便宜了一到两个数量级。
Elon MuskYeah. Absolutely, because our Falcon 9 rocket cost about $60 million. But the propellant cost-- which is mostly oxygen-- it's two-thirds oxygen, one-third fuel-- is only about $200,000.对，完全正确。因为我们的 Falcon 9 火箭造价大约 $60 million，但推进剂的成本——主要是液氧，三分之二是液氧，三分之一是燃料——只有大约 $200,000。
Sal KhanWow.哇。
Elon MuskAnd it's much like a 747. It costs about as much to refuel our rocket as it does to refuel a 747 within-- well, pretty close, essentially.这跟一架 747 差不多。给我们的火箭加一次燃料的费用，和给一架 747 加一次油的费用，大约在同一个量级——嗯，非常接近，基本上就是这样。
Sal KhanSo assuming you all are successful, and you all have proven yourself to be successful on these audacious things in the past, I mean, what happens? I mean that seems like it's-- what happens in the next 5, 10 years in the space industry, if you all are successful there? I mean do we get to Mars? Do we have kind of market forces, commercialization of space starting to happen?那假设你们成功了——你们过去在这些大胆的事情上也确实证明了自己——那接下来会发生什么？如果你们在这方面成功了，未来 5 到 10 年太空行业会是什么样子？我们能去火星吗？市场力量和太空商业化会开始发生吗？
Elon MuskYeah. Let's see. Well, the first step is that we need to earn enough money to keep going as a company. So we have to make sure that we're launching satellites. Commercial satellites like broadcast communications, mapping, government satellites that do scientific missions. Earth-based or space-based missions. GPS satellites. That kind of thing. And then also servicing the space station. Transferring cargo to and from the space station, which we've done a few times. And then taking people to and from the space station. So we've got to service the sort of Earth-based needs to launch satellites and that pays the bills. But in doing that keep improving the technology to a point where we can make full reusability work. And we have sufficient scale and sophistication to be able to take people to Mars.是的，我们来看看。第一步是我们需要赚足够的钱来维持公司运转。所以我们必须确保持续发射卫星——商业卫星，比如广播通信、地图测绘，以及政府做科学任务用的卫星，无论是地球观测还是深空任务，还有 GPS 卫星之类的。以及为空间站服务，向空间站来回运送货物，这我们已经做过几次了，之后还会运送人员往返空间站。所以我们必须服务这些地球轨道层面的需求——发射卫星来维持运营。但在做这些的同时，不断改进技术，直到我们能让完全可复用性真正实现，并且达到足够大的规模和成熟度，能够把人送上火星。
Sal KhanWow. So you think this is going to be a reality? What's your best guess of when we're going to have someone on Mars?哇。那你觉得这真的会成为现实？你最好的猜测，什么时候能有人登上火星？
Elon MuskI think probably about 12 years.我觉得大概 12 年左右。
Sal KhanThat's nothing. And you think it'll be a round trip? It won't just be some type of permanent colony on Mars?那不是很遥远。你觉得会是来回的吗？还是说只是某种在火星上的永久殖民地？
Elon MuskI think it's probably a round trip. It's not for sure.我觉得应该是来回的，但不是百分之百确定。
Sal KhanI could talk about this for-- people know, I'm--我可以聊这个聊到——大家都知道，我——
Elon MuskAspirational it'd be a round trip.从愿景上说，应该是来回的。
Sal KhanThis is mind blowing. And then on Tesla. I mean Tesla's obviously, from my vantage, it's a huge success. What do you think in that industry-- well, one, I'll ask kind of the same question. What did you think-- this is something that GM and Toyota and these massive multi-billion dollar organizations have been trying. What gave you the confidence to pursue it? And now that it seems to be a huge success, where do you think this industry's going to be the next 5, 10 years?这真的令人震惊。然后是 Tesla。我是说，从我的角度来看，Tesla 显然是巨大的成功。你觉得在这个行业——好，我先问同样的问题。通用、丰田这些多十亿级规模的巨头都在尝试，是什么让你有信心去做这件事？现在它看起来确实是个巨大的成功，你觉得这个行业未来 5 到 10 年会走向哪里？
Elon MuskYes. So with Tesla, the goal is try to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. I think it would happen anyway, just out of necessity. But because we have an un-priced externality in the cost of gasoline. We weren't pricing in the environmental effects of CO2 in the oceans and atmosphere. That's causing the normal market forces to not function properly. And so the goal of Tesla is to try to act as a catalyst to accelerate those sort of normal forces. The normal sort of market reaction that would occur. We're trying to have a catalytic effect on that. And try to make it happen, I don't know, maybe 10 years sooner than it would otherwise occur. That's the goal of Tesla. So that's the reason we're making electric cars and not any other kind of car. And we also supply powertrains to Toyota and to Mercedes and maybe to other car companies in the future to accelerate their production of electric vehicles. So that's the goal there. And so far, it's working out pretty well.是的。Tesla 的目标是加速可持续交通的到来。我认为这件事迟早会发生，只是出于必然性。但因为汽油成本里有一个没有被定价进去的外部性——我们没有把 CO2 对海洋和大气的环境影响纳入价格体系——导致正常的市场力量无法正常发挥作用。所以 Tesla 的目标是扮演催化剂，去加速那种本来就应该发生的正常力量——那种正常的市场反应。我们是在试图对此产生催化效应，让它也许比原来早 10 年发生，这是 Tesla 的目标。所以这就是为什么我们造电动车而不是其他类型的车。我们还向 Toyota 和 Mercedes 提供动力总成，也许未来会向其他车企提供，以加速它们的电动汽车生产。这是我们的目标。到目前为止，进展相当不错。
Sal KhanI mean, I just saw a news report earlier today that you all sold more Model S's than-- you all are leading that segment of the industry. The Mercedes S class, the BMW 7 Series, or the Lexus LS400, or whatever it is.我今天早些时候看到一篇新闻报道，说你们的 Model S 销量超过了——你们在那个细分市场是领先的。Mercedes S class、BMW 7 Series、Lexus LS400 之类的。
Elon MuskYeah, actually, that seems to be the case. I didn't realize they sold so few cars in that segment. Because we don't sell that many cars. We sell 5,000 a quarter, or 12,000--对，好像确实是这样。我当时都没意识到那个细分市场的总销量这么少。因为我们卖的车并不多，每个季度大概 5,000 辆，或者说一年 12,000——
Sal KhanWell, out here they seem like you know every--嗯，在这边感觉随处都能看到——
Elon MuskWell, this is our home team. So it's-- we better sell a lot in the Bay Area. Because otherwise we're like--这是我们的主场嘛，所以——我们最好在湾区卖很多，不然我们就——
Sal KhanAnd, well, I mean, similar thing. How did you start? What gave you the confidence? And do you see yourselves as kind of a major automotive, mainstream brand in 5,10 years, all the way down to competing with the Honda Accords and Civics?嗯，我想问类似的问题。你是怎么起步的，是什么给了你信心？你认为你们未来 5 到 10 年会成为一个大众主流品牌，一路打到和 Honda Accord 和 Civic 竞争的级别吗？
Elon MuskI mean, yeah. Our goal-- it's not to become a big brand or to compete with Honda Civics, rather to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And so we're just going to keep making more and more electric cars and driving the price point down until the industry is very firmly electric. Like maybe half of all cars made are electric or something like that. Which is not to say that we expect to make half of all cars. We want to just have that catalytic effect until at least that occurs. And I think the point at which we're approaching half of all new cars made are electric, then I think I would consider that to be the victory condition. And so the faster we can bring that day, the better.嗯，是的。我们的目标——不是成为一个大品牌，也不是和 Honda Civic 竞争，而是推动电动汽车的发展事业。所以我们会不断造越来越多的电动车，不断把价格往下压，直到整个行业变成毫无疑问的电动化。比如说，所有新车里有一半是电动的或者类似的比例。这不是说我们要造其中一半的车，我们只是想发挥那种催化效应，直到至少达到那个程度。我觉得当我们接近所有新车的一半都是电动车的那一天，我会认为那就是胜利的条件达成了。所以越快实现那一天越好。
Sal KhanWhen would be your guess when that happens?你估计那天什么时候会来？
Elon MuskWell, I made a bet with someone about three years ago that it would be sooner than 20 years. So it's 17 years from now. But that's conservative. I think it's probably maybe 13 or 14 years.嗯，我大约三年前和某人打了个赌，说会在 20 年内发生。所以是从现在起 17 年后。但那其实是保守估计，我觉得大概是 13 到 14 年。
Sal KhanWow. Right when we're going to Mars.哇。正好是我们去火星的时候。
Elon MuskRight.对。
Sal KhanIt'll be exciting times.那将是令人兴奋的时代。
Elon MuskTrue. Exactly. I was just thinking about that. It was like, oh, those time frames are kind of coincident. The nature of new technology adoption is it tends to follow an S-curve. So what usually happens is people under-predict it in the beginning, because people tend to extrapolate in a straight line. And then they'll over-predict it at the midpoint, because there's late adopters. And then it'll actually take longer than people think at the mid-point, but much shorter than people think at the beginning. But I'm pretty excited about how things are going. And, in fact, I think that the pace of technology improvement in electric energy storage is really moving faster than anyone thinks.确实，完全同意。我刚也在想这个，哦，这两个时间节点居然差不多重合了。新技术的普及规律通常遵循 S 曲线。通常的情况是，早期人们低估它，因为人们倾向于线性外推。到了中段，人们又会高估它，因为还有晚期采用者。所以实际上会比中间节点时人们预测的慢，但比起步时人们预测的又快得多。不过我对当前的进展相当兴奋。事实上，我认为电能储存的技术改进速度，比任何人预想的都要快得多。
Sal KhanWow. I got one more-- how are we doing on time? Where's Ester? Oh, 9 o'clock. So how much time do you have? I want to make sure we don't go over.哇。我还有最后——我们时间还够吗？Ester 在哪？哦，9 点了。你还有多少时间？我想确保我们不超时。
Elon MuskWell, I guess maybe another 15 minutes.嗯，我觉得还有大概 15 分钟。
Sal KhanOK. So I'll finish with one last question and then we'll open it up. What advice do you have for us at Khan Academy?好。那我最后问一个问题，然后我们开放提问。你对我们 Khan Academy 有什么建议？
Elon MuskI don't know. You guys seem to be doing really great. So I was wondering if you had advice for me.我不知道，你们好像做得相当好。所以我倒想问问你有没有什么建议给我。
Sal KhanOh, no, well.哦，不，好吧——
Elon MuskYeah. It seems like you're doing an amazing job of-- really super leveraged. I mean, obviously, a small team, and you're having a dramatic effect--是的，你们做的事情令人叹为观止——真的是超级高杠杆。我是说，这么小的团队，产生了如此巨大的影响——
Sal KhanYeah, half these people don't even work here. There just like-- so it's like it's even--对，这里一半的人甚至根本不在这里工作，他们只是……所以这就更——
Elon MuskRight. So it's, I think very impressive thing you're doing to spread knowledge and understanding throughout the world.对。我觉得你们在做的事情真的非常了不起——把知识和理解传播到全世界。
Sal KhanThe universe soon, if you hold up your end of the bargain.很快就会传播到整个宇宙，前提是你能履行你的承诺。
Elon MuskIt's actually kind of funny. If you think, what is education? Like you're basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain. And it's actually amazingly bad in conventional education. Because like it shouldn't be like this huge chore. So you're making it way, way better. But I think a lot of things that I would say, you've probably heard 100 times. And, in fact, are if not doing. The more you can game-ify the process of learning, the better. For my kids, I do not have to encourage them to play video games. I have to like pry them from their hands, like crack.这事其实挺有意思的。你想想，教育到底是什么？本质上就是往你的大脑里下载数据和算法。而传统教育在这方面做得出奇地糟糕——它不应该是一件苦差事。所以你们正在让它变得好得多，好很多。不过我想说的很多话，你大概已经听过一百遍了，而且实际上你们也正在这么做。学习过程越能游戏化，效果就越好。我的孩子玩电子游戏根本不需要我鼓励，我得把游戏从他们手里硬生生抢走——就像戒毒一样。
Sal KhanYes.是的。
Elon MuskIt's like, drop that crack needle.就像，快把那根毒针放下。
Sal KhanYou have that problem at your house, too. The crack is addictive.你家里也有这个问题啊。这东西太上瘾了。
Elon MuskSo to the degree that you can make somehow learning like a game, then it's better. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of education is very vaudevillian. You've got someone standing up there kind of lecturing at people. And they've done the same lecture 20 years in a row, and they're not very excited about it. And that lack of enthusiasm is conveyed to the students. They're not very excited about it. They don't know why they're there. Like why are we letting this stuff. We don't even know why. In fact, I think a lot of things that people learn that probably there's no point in learning them. Because they never use them in the future.所以，你能把学习搞得像游戏一样，就越好。不幸的是，很多教育都非常老套——就是有个人站在那里对着一群人讲课。同一堂课讲了二十年，自己都不怎么兴奋了。这种没热情的状态会传染给学生，学生也不兴奋，甚至不知道自己为什么在那儿。就是，我们为什么要学这些东西？根本不知道为什么。事实上，我认为很多人学的东西根本没必要学，因为他们以后永远用不上。
Sal KhanBecause who's going to launch a rocket into space? I mean, that's just like-- exactly, that never happens.因为谁会去把火箭发射到太空呢？就是——对，这种事永远不会发生嘛。
Elon MuskWell, you have to say-- people don't stand back and say, well, why are we teaching people these things. And we should tell them, probably, why we're teaching these things. Because a lot of kids are probably just in school, probably puzzled as to why they're there. I think if you can explain the why of things, then that makes a huge difference to people's motivation. Then they understand purpose. So I think that's pretty important. And just make it entertaining. But I think just in general conventional education should be massively overhauled. And I'm sure you pretty much agree with that.关键是要——人们从来不退一步问，我们为什么要教这些东西。我们应该告诉学生，为什么要教这些。因为很多孩子坐在学校里，大概都在困惑自己为什么在这儿。我觉得，如果你能解释清楚事情背后的"为什么"，那对人的动力会有巨大的影响。他们就能理解目的所在。所以我认为这很重要。还有就是让学习变得有趣。总体来说，我认为传统教育需要彻底大改革。我相信你对此基本上也是认同的。
Elon MuskI mean the analogy I sometimes use is, have you seen like Batman, the Chris Nolan movie, the recent one. And it's pretty freaking awesome. And you've got incredible special effects, great script, multiple takes, amazing actors, and great sound, and it's very engaging. But if you were to instead say, OK-- even if you had the same script, so at least it's same script. And you said, OK, now that script, instead of having movies, we're going to have that script performed by the local town troop. OK, and so in every small town in America, if movies didn't exist, they'd have to recreate The Dark Knight. With like home-sewn costumes and like jumping across the stage. And not really getting their lines quite right. And not really looking like the people in the movie. And no special effects. And I mean that would suck. It would be terrible.我有时打一个比方——你看过 Batman 吗，Chris Nolan 拍的，最近那部。那片子真的他妈太厉害了。超牛的特效、精彩的剧本、多条拍摄、顶级演员、出色的音效，非常带劲。但如果你反过来说，好，就算用同样的剧本——至少剧本是一样的。然后说，好，这个剧本，既然没有电影，我们就让小镇剧团来排演《蝙蝠侠：黑暗骑士》。在美国每一个小镇，如果没有电影，他们都得重新演一遍《黑暗骑士》——穿着自家缝的戏服，在舞台上跳来跳去，台词背不太准，长得也不像电影里那些人，没有特效。那这就太烂了。会很可怕。
Sal KhanThat's right. Very--没错。非常——
Elon MuskThat's education.那就是现在的教育。
Sal KhanSo with that-- and I apologize to all of you guys for hogging up all of the time, because, obviously, I could talk for hours about this stuff. But we do have time, probably 5 or 10 minutes for a handful of questions. If none of you all have any, I have about nine more. But, yes.所以——我得向大家道歉，把时间都占着了，显然我可以聊这些话题聊几个小时。但我们大概还有 5 到 10 分钟，可以提几个问题。如果大家没有问题，我还有大概九个问题可以问。好，请说。
OtherSo I noticed-- I picked up two kind of themes from what you were discussing. One was somewhat audacious goals. And the other was I don't think I heard you use the word profit in anything that you spoke about. You seem to be-- each thing is pointed at like re-invigorating an industry or bringing back space missions. How much of your success do you attribute to having really audacious goals or versus just not being focused on the short term, money coming in, or I don't know, investors?我注意到——我从你的讲述里听出了两个主题。一个是相当宏大的目标；另一个是，我好像全程没听你提过"利润"这个词。你好像更关注于——每件事都指向重新激活某个行业，或者重启太空探索。你有多少成功是归因于拥有真正宏大的目标？或者说，是归因于不专注于短期盈利，不在乎钱进来不进来，或者不在乎投资人？
Elon MuskUnfortunately, one does have to be focused on the short time and money coming in when creating a company, because otherwise the company will die. So I think that a lot of times people think like creating company is going to be fun. I would say it's really not that fun. I mean there are periods of fun. And there are periods where it's just awful. And, particularly, if you're the CEO of the company, you actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There's no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you're only spending your time on things that are going wrong. And there are things that are going wrong that other people can't take care of. So you have like the worst-- you have a filter for the crappiest problems in the company. The most pernicious and painful problem.不幸的是，创建公司的时候，你确实必须关注短期和资金流入，否则公司会死掉。所以我觉得，很多人以为创业会很好玩，我只能说，其实真不怎么好玩。当然有一些好玩的时候，但也有一些时候就是很难熬。特别是如果你是公司的 CEO，你实际上承接的是公司里所有最糟糕问题的精华。那些进展顺利的事情不需要你花时间。所以你只在那些出了问题的事情上花时间。而且是那些别人处理不了的问题。所以你就像是——你是公司里最烂问题的过滤器。最顽固、最让人痛苦的问题。
Elon MuskSo I think you have to feel quite compelled to do it. And have a fairly high pain threshold. There's a friend of mine who says, starting a company is like staring into the abyss and eating glass. And there's some truth to that. The staring into the abyss part is that you're going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company. Because most start ups fail. It's like 90% percent-- it could be 99% of start ups fail. So that's the staring into the abyss part. You're constantly saying, OK, if I don't get this right, the company will die, which can be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you've got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on and not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you really wish you weren't working on. And so that's the eating glass part. And that goes on for a long time.所以我觉得你得真的很有使命感才能坚持下去，而且要有相当高的痛阈。我有个朋友说，创业就像凝视深渊、嚼碎玻璃。这话有一定道理。凝视深渊那部分是指，你会不断面临公司灭亡的威胁——因为大多数初创公司都会失败，大概 90%——也许是 99% 的初创公司都失败了。所以那就是凝视深渊的部分：你总在说，好，如果我这件事搞不定，公司就完了，这会让人压力很大。嚼碎玻璃那部分是指，你得去处理公司需要你处理的问题，而不是你自己想处理的问题。所以你最终会去啃一些你真心希望自己不用碰的问题。那就是嚼玻璃的部分。而且这会持续很长时间。
OtherSo how do you keep your focus on the big picture when you're constantly faced with, we could be out of business in a month?那你是怎么在不断面对"我们可能一个月后就倒闭了"这种压力的时候，还能保持对大局的关注的？
Elon MuskWell, it's just a very small percentage of mental energy is on the big picture. Like you know where you're generally heading for and the actual path is going to be some sort of zigzaggy thing in that direction. You're trying not to deviate too far from the path that you want to be on, but you're going to have to do that to some degree.嗯，其实只有很少一部分精力是放在大局上的。你大致知道自己要往哪儿走，实际的路径会是一条朝那个方向蜿蜒前进的曲线。你努力不偏离太远，但有时候你不得不这样。
Elon MuskBut I don't want to diminish the-- I think the profit motive is a good one, if the rules of an industry are properly set up. So there's nothing fundamentally wrong with profit. In fact, profit just means that people are paying you more for whatever you're doing than you're spending to create it. That's a good thing. And if that's not the case, then you'll be out of business. And rightfully so. Because you're not adding enough value. Now there are cases, of course, where people will do bad things in order to achieve profit, but that's actually quite unusual. Because usually the rules are set up mostly correctly. Like not completely, but mostly correctly.但我也不想贬低利润动机——我认为利润动机是好的，前提是一个行业的规则设置得当。利润本身没有什么根本性的错误。事实上，利润就是说人们为你做的东西付的钱比你创造它花的钱多，这是好事。如果不是这样，你就会倒闭，而且是活该倒闭，因为你没有创造足够的价值。当然也有人为了追求利润做坏事的情况，但其实相当少见，因为通常规则的设定大致上是合理的——不是完全合理，但大致合理。
Sal KhanI think we have time for one more question. Joel.我们还有时间再问一个问题。Joel。
JoelYeah, I have an important one.好，我有个重要的问题。
Sal KhanOK, very good. Yes, please.好，很好。请说。
JoelOK, so few months ago, you teased Hyperloop, and we haven't heard anything since. So, first of all, a few of us engineers were talking about it, and I think we have a few ideas, if you need help. But, if you feel comfortable, maybe you could tell us a little bit more.好的，几个月前你提到了 Hyperloop，但之后就没有下文了。首先，我们几个工程师一直在讨论这件事，我们有一些想法，如果你需要帮忙的话。但如果你方便的话，能不能多透露一点？
Elon MuskI was reading about the California high-speed rail, and it was quite depressing. Because California taxpayers are going to be on the hook to build the most expensive high-speed rail per mile in the world-- and the slowest. Those are not the superlatives you want. And, it's like, damn, we're in California, we make super high-tech stuff. Why are we going to be spending-- now the estimates are around $100 billion-- for something that will take two hours to go from LA to San Francisco? I'm like, OK, well, I can get on a plane and do that in 45 minutes. It doesn't make much sense. And isn't there some better way to do it than that.我在看关于加州高铁的报道，感觉相当沮丧。因为加州纳税人将要为建造全世界每英里造价最贵的高铁买单——而且还是最慢的。这可不是你想要的两个"之最"。就是，妈的，我们在加州，我们造的是顶尖高科技产品，为什么要花——现在估算大约是 $100 billion——造一个从洛杉矶到旧金山要两个小时的东西？我就想，行，我坐飞机 45 分钟就到了。这根本说不通。难道就没有更好的方案吗？
Elon MuskSo if you just say, OK, well what would you ideally want in a transportation system? You'd say, OK, well you'd want something that relative to existing modes of transportation is faster-- let's say twice as fast-- costs half as much per ticket, can't crash, is immune to weather, and is-- you can make the whole thing like self-powering with like solar panels or something like that. That would be pretty--所以如果你就问，好，一个理想的交通系统应该是什么样的？你会说，好，相比现有的交通方式，它要更快——比如快两倍——票价要便宜一半，不会发生事故，不受天气影响，而且整个系统可以自给自足供电，比如用太阳能板之类的。那会相当——
Sal KhanThat would be great, yes.那太棒了，对。
Elon Musk--a good outcome. And so what would do that? And what's the fastest way short of inventing teleportation that you could do something like that? And some of the elements of that solution are fairly obvious, and some of them are not so obvious. And then the details-- the devil's in the details of actually making something like that work. But I came to the conclusion that there is something like that that could work. And would be practical.——很棒的结果。那什么样的方案能做到这些？在不发明瞬间传送的前提下，最快能实现这些的方式是什么？这个解决方案有些要素是相当显而易见的，有些则不那么明显。然后细节——魔鬼藏在细节里，真正让这东西运转起来是很复杂的。但我得出的结论是，确实有类似这样的东西是可行的，而且是实际可操作的。
Sal KhanIs this around the evacuated tubes? The vacuum tubes? Like the old bank--这跟那种真空管道有关吗？抽真空管道？就像以前银行用的那种——
Elon MuskIt's something like that.类似那样的东西。
Sal KhanBut you haven't been more public with what this is?但你还没有更公开地说明这到底是什么？
Elon MuskNo. Although I did say that once Tesla was profitable that I would talk more about it. But, we haven't done our earnings call yet. So I think I'll probably do it after the earnings call. And the thing is I'm kind of strung out on things that I'm already doing. So adding another thing-- it's like doesn't-- it's a lot没有。不过我确实说过，等 Tesla 盈利之后我会多说一些。但我们还没做财报电话会议。所以我想大概财报电话之后我会说。问题是我现在已经被手头的事情压得透不过气来了。再加一件事——就是，感觉不太对劲，已经很多了。
Sal KhanLearning the guitar. You could pick up all sorts of things.学吉他嘛。你可以顺便学点别的。
Elon MuskRight. I tried learning the violin. That's, by the way, a hard thing to learn.对。我试过学小提琴。顺带一提，那东西真的很难学。
Sal KhanYeah. Launching rockets, electric cars, revolutionizing transportation. Yeah, it's easy.是啊。发射火箭、造电动车、颠覆交通运输。是的，这些都很简单。
Elon MuskI cannot play the violin at all. Very horrible. If you think about the future, you want a future that's better than the past, and so if we had something like the Hyperloop, I think that would be like cool. You'd look forward to the day that was working. And if something like that, even if it was only in one place-- from LA to San Francisco, or New York to DC or something like that-- then it would be cool enough that it would be like a tourist attraction. It would be like a ride or something. So even if some of the initial assumptions didn't work out, the economics didn't work out quite as one expected, it would be cool enough that like, I want to journey to that place just to ride on that thing. That would be pretty cool.我小提琴完全不会拉。惨不忍睹。你想想未来，你希望未来比过去更好，所以如果有 Hyperloop 这样的东西，我觉得那会很酷。你会期待它真正运转的那一天。如果有这样的东西，哪怕只有一条线——从洛杉矶到旧金山，或者纽约到华盛顿之类的——那就已经酷到会成为一个旅游景点了。就像是一个游乐项目。所以就算初始的一些假设没有如预期那样成立，经济模型没有完全按预想运作，它也足够酷，会让人觉得，我就是想去那个地方坐一坐那个东西。那就很了不起了。
Elon MuskAnd so that's I think how-- if you come with a new technology, it should feel like that. You should really-- if you told it to an objective person, would they look forward to the day that that thing became available. And it would be pretty exciting to do something like that. Or an aircraft. Like I thought it was really disappointing when the Concorde was taking out of commission, and there was no supersonic transport available. And of course the 787 has had some issues. But the thing is, the 787 even in the best case scenario is only a slightly better version of the 777. And it's like, OK, not that exciting.所以我觉得——一项新技术带来的应该是这种感觉。如果你把它描述给一个客观的人，他们会不会期待那样的东西出现的那一天。做这样的事情会相当令人兴奋。或者说飞机也是一样。比如 Concorde 退役、再也没有超音速客机可用的时候，我真的觉得很失望。当然 787 也出过一些问题。而且问题在于，787 在最好的情况下也只是比 777 稍微好一点的版本。就是，行吧，没那么激动人心。
Sal KhanSo this is something that you are working on?所以这是你正在推进的项目？
Elon MuskI wouldn't say working on it.我不能说是在做。
Sal KhanAnd one day in the not-too-far future-- or there's some plans or consultants involved or something?那将来某个不太遥远的时候——或者说有什么计划或顾问参与其中之类的？
OtherYou called Russia.你给俄罗斯打电话了。
Sal KhanYou made some phone calls to Russia.你给俄罗斯打了几个电话。
Elon MuskNo, every now and then, it's percolating away. I'm not actually thinking about it. But then they'll be some new element of that I'll think of. Oh, this would make it better.没有，就是偶尔会在脑子里转一转。我不是真的在想它，但偶尔会想到新的元素。哦，这样可以让它更好。
Sal KhanFascinating. Well, I think I'm speaking for everyone. This is like the most epic possible conversation one could have over about the course of an hour. And I think all of us would love to chat with you for hours on end, but thank you so much. I know you have a lot of free time, so it probably wasn't that big of a deal for you to come here. But, it was a huge honor. And I think it's inspired all of us to go out and change the world and the universe.太精彩了。我想我代表所有人说，这是有史以来在一小时内能发生的最史诗级的对话。我相信在座所有人都想和你聊上好几个小时，非常感谢。我知道你很有空，所以来这里对你来说大概不是什么大事——开玩笑的，这是莫大的荣幸。我想这激励了我们所有人去改变世界，改变宇宙。
Elon MuskCool. All right.好，行。
Sal KhanThank you very much.非常感谢。