Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Elon Musk Featured on 60 Minutes

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
I watched this live. I thought it was pretty good. He got very emotional when they mentioned the astronauts testifying against him. They must have been some of his biggest role models and it must have crushed him.
 
I watched this live. I thought it was pretty good. He got very emotional when they mentioned the astronauts testifying against him. They must have been some of his biggest role models and it must have crushed him.

Yah, I agree. That's the most emotion I've seen out of him. More than when he had to increase prices on the roadster customers in "Revenge of the electric Car".

That's one of the things that I admire most about him. He fights for what he believes in. He's all in with money, emotion, everything.
 
It was pretty moving. Agreed on this description of the man.
Quite emotional and he did a good job holding composure. His looking away, swallowing, those little tricks you do to try to relax a throat that's tightening up with emotion...you could tell having his heroes testify against private space companies really hurt him. It made it all the more clear how much this means to him personally. That kind of passion is inspiring.
 
Very inspiring interview. I consider SpaceX to be a greater accomplishment than Tesla, but both achievements are important to move humanity into the future. His employee called him the modern day Howard Hughes and that is a great description. Hopefully, he doesn't have the sad ending that HH did. There is a lot of money to be made in space and Elon has the vision to get there. Buying a Tesla will be my small way to promote Elon and his projects.
 
Last edited:
Very inspiring.

Goes to show that even American heroes can be cranky old men afraid of change at times :).

Yeah. For everything they did and for the bravery they showed, it still wouldn't have been possible without the engineering talent that was at NASA and now at Space X. I think Space X is doing a great service by bringing interest back about space at a time when funding for NASA is shrinking.
 
[FYI - post also here: SpaceX]

I've seen some of the testimony by those former NASA astronauts and at least one former NASA administrator. I didn't construe what they had to say to be a direct attack on SpaceX, as 60 minutes characterized it, but more as stern criticism of the Obama administration and the new NASA budget with the cancellation Constellation program.

Coupled with the end of the Shuttle program, for them it signals the US choosing to give up American leadership in space exploration. Perhaps similar to how the US gave up leadership in particle physics with the cancellation of the SSC.
 
Was a great segment. As they showed Space X joining the US, China and Russia as only the fourth entity ever to launch into space and then recover a spacecraft I turn to my wife and said, that's why I am pretty sure this guy can build a electric car :)

Then they missed out the European Space Agency and the Japanese - so they are at least the 6th, but not to take anything away from SpaceX.


Yeah. For everything they did and for the bravery they showed, it still wouldn't have been possible without the engineering talent that was at NASA and now at Space X. I think Space X is doing a great service by bringing interest back about space at a time when funding for NASA is shrinking.

At the time it was also at the likes of Boeing and Martin, so the concept of private companies building the hardware and doing mission design isn't really a new one.
 
Then they missed out the European Space Agency and the Japanese - so they are at least the 6th, but not to take anything away from SpaceX.

The show said "launch, orbit and recover the spacecraft", or something like that. I'm not aware of ESA or Japan recovering something from orbit, and a quick search couldn't find anything, but I'd be happy to be corrected.
 
The show said "launch, orbit and recover the spacecraft", or something like that. I'm not aware of ESA or Japan recovering something from orbit, and a quick search couldn't find anything, but I'd be happy to be corrected.

Seems like Japan has done some fairly "advanced" things with rockets...

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
...Small body exploration: Hayabusa mission
Hayabusa
On May 9, 2003, Hayabusa (meaning, Peregrine FALCON), was launched from an M-V rocket. The goal of this mission is to collect samples from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa. The craft was scheduled to rendezvous in November 2005, and return to Earth with samples from the asteroid by July 2007. It was confirmed that the spacecraft successfully landed on the asteroid on November 20, 2005, after some initial confusion regarding the incoming data. On November 26, 2005, Hayabusa succeeded in making a soft contact, but whether it gathered the samples or not is unknown. Hayabusa returned to Earth on June 13, 2010...