Eric Ogden

How has your experience launching a software company influenced the way you approach large engineering projects?

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology or you get destroyed by some other company. And so that's the approach that I have. I've been through many company near-death experiences, starting with [software company] Zip2 and then PayPal.

If the Dragon spacecraft doesn't work and if the Model S fails to sell, the companies that make them probably can't survive. Do those previous corporate near-death experiences help you avoid being fearful about the future?

I wouldn't say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I'd like my fear emotion to be less because it's very distracting and fries my nervous system. I have this sort of feeling that something terrible could happen, like all of our flights could fail and Tesla could fail and SpaceX could fail, and that feeling of anxiety has not left me, even though this has been a great year. So I feel fear quite strongly; I just proceed nonetheless.

You've said that you wanted to form a space launch company to help humanity become a multiplanetary species. Why?

One reason is defensive: The probability of human civilization lasting for a long time is much greater if we're on multiple planets. There are many things that could destroy life as we know itnatural disasters as well as man-made stuff. But the inspirational reason gets me more fired up. Establishing a self-sustaining base on Mars would be the most exciting adventure I could imagine for humanity. That's the kind of future that I want us to have and I think a lot of people want us to have, particularly Americans.

Why do you think Americans have this impulse?

America is a distillation of the spirit of human exploration. People came here from other countries, so America is a nation of explorers. I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people. SpaceX is part of restoring that dream.

When would you go to Mars?

If I'm reasonably confident that the company is going to be okay without me, and my kids have more or less grown up, then I think I'd go on the first manned trip. But the first colonizing flights to Mars will be robotic. Spaceships will have to prove they can land and take off okay. Automated miner droids will have to gather raw materials for propellant production on the surface. To form a permanent settlement, we have to be able to send millions of people and millions of tons of cargo. For that to occur, we must have a fully reusable Mars transportation system.

In contrast to other auto and aerospace players, your companies tend to do a lot of component manufacturing. Why?

When I started SpaceX and Tesla, we started off outsourcing almost everything and then over time we insourced more and more. When you use legacy components you inherit the legacy cost-structure limitations. And you also aren't able to make a product that works together well as a system. If you design the pieces to all fit together in the right way, then it will make for a beautiful result, technically and aesthetically.

How confident were you that Tesla could release the Model S this year, and at its price?

I wouldn't say I was superconfident, but I thought that we could do it. I did know we had to make something that was about the same price as a Mercedes, a BMW, or an Audi. But it had to be a better car for the same price.

Tesla gets a lot of grief for taking government money.

Ordinarily I would agree that one should minimize government intervention. But when we have externalities [high CO 2 concentrations in the atmosphere and oceans] and we're unwilling to act upon that in the right waywhich is to increase taxes on that externality and price it into the goods and servicesthen the less attractive option is for the government to support things that address the externality.

I should point out that whether Tesla had received a Department of Energy loan or not, we would still be around. The DOE funding is helpful as an accelerant but not as a fundamental exist-or-not-exist situation. We were bailed in, not bailed out.

So you've said many times that you imagine retiring on Mars.

Yeah. I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don't retire before I go senile, then I'll do more damage than good at that point. But I think it would be great to be born on Earth and die on Mars.





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