00:13:51 · Philip Johnston
[00:13:51] S1: Yeah. Pretty much. And we found a trajectory. We had a a physical AI lab in... Out of MIT run this analysis and find a trajectory that allows us to get a spacecraft on a trajectory to Alpha Centauri for about 10 or $15,000,000. So it's gonna... It won't use any technology that doesn't exist today. It's gonna use solar... Hall effect ion thrusters with solar to power it, and we're gonna basically spiral in towards the sun for five years, and then we're gonna fire the thruster at the perihelion at the closest point to the sun for another five years to create these ever expanding ellipses. And then on the last firing, we're just gonna fling off in the direction. It's actually not even anywhere close to where Alpha Centauri is today. Alpha Centauri is moving towards us, and it will intersect on a path in about eighty thousand years. So the hope is that we'll be both the first to leave on this journey to another star and also the last to arrive. Hopefully in fifty years or one hundred years, there'll be better propulsion technology. In a thousand years, we'll have a much better propulsion technology. So I hope stuff starts flying past us. Yeah. And then by the time we arrive in eighty thousand years, maybe for fifteen thousand years, there's already been a colony, even if your propulsion technology was only 20% faster. And so what I hope happens is they sort of applaud our spacecraft across the finish line. Yeah. They capture it, and they put it in a museum or something. And then from there, it'll take sort of five to ten million years to settle the galaxy even with just today's technology. And then from there, it's about a billion years to get to Andromeda, our nearest galaxy. And then from there, to get to the local group of 50 galaxies is about another sort of five billion years. And the purpose for me of doing it is like either all of that happens or it doesn't for some reason. And like, yeah, there's this idea of the the Fermi Paradox, the idea that... The question of why we don't see more intelligence in our galaxy or more obvious evidence of it.
00:15:44 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[00:15:44] S0: You mean aliens? [00:15:46] S1: Yeah. Why why our solar system isn't part of a galactic empire. You know? Yeah. If they... It's pretty quick. Like, ten million years to settle the galaxy is the blink of an eye in galactic time frames. So if there had been intelligent life on any other star, trillion trillion planets in our galaxy, if there'd been intelligent life on any other one in the last ten billion years, galaxy's been around for more than ten billion years, then it would have been five million years to settle the whole galaxy. And so it's really kind of concerning that we don't see more evidence of that. To me, there's two options. Either we're exceptionally rare. Maybe we're the first species or intelligence to get to this level of complexity in the whole galaxy or maybe even in the local 50 cluster of galaxies. Or and and by the way, I'm open to that. I like that idea. Like, maybe we're gonna be the first to settle the galaxy, and that's a great privilege. Or the other alternative is intelligent life doesn't last very long. Maybe there's been intelligent life on many other stars in our galaxy, and for some reason, it doesn't survive very long. So either way, I think we should, like, know about that. And one of the reasons to do this mission is to make people think more about our place in in the galaxy and more about the Fermi Paradox and others. [00:16:52] S0: How did you get into space, and how did you get interested in this? [00:16:55] S1: I mean I've always been interested in space like I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid like anybody.
00:16:55 · Philip Johnston, Molly O'Shea
[00:16:55] S1: I mean I've always been interested in space like I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid like anybody. [00:16:59] S0: But why? Like what exposed you to that? Just... [00:17:02] S1: I guess like sci fi movies when I was a kid like I read the Asimov novels foundation series. Yeah it was there was this there's this phrase that people sometimes say which is like we're too late to explore the earth and we're too early to explore the solar system and the galaxy and I always thought that was really sad like it was exciting to me to be an explorer and the, you know, the the voyages across the globe were kind of exciting to me. And then realizing, okay, we've kind of explored everything now. Everything's done. It was kind of sad. And then yeah recently started thinking okay well maybe we can do our own our own effort. Maybe we can be the first to send a spacecraft to the nearest star and well like what an incredible privilege that would be. [00:17:49] S0: So if you wrote a sentimental note on Starcloud one, what are you gonna put on the spacecraft? [00:17:56] S1: Definitely gonna put the name of my fiance on there. So for the low low price of... Oh, you're gonna start selling logo spots? Wow. We got [00:18:07] S0: an advertising option.
00:18:07 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[00:18:07] S0: an advertising option. [00:18:09] S1: Yeah. There you go. People can go to permeaxplorer.com/donate and people can put whatever message they want on there. But what would I put on there? I'm excited to put lots of information like records of what earth is like and we're gonna have some interest we'll have some scientific payloads on there we'll have the golden record which is one of the artworks that they put on one of the probes going out of the solar system. But then we'll also have a solicitation period for various artistic payloads, various artworks that people can put on there. So we're actually drawing ideas from various places. Cool ish scientific pilot. Did you ever see this fruit fly that Google or there was a startup they cut they slice the brain yeah of fruit Yeah. So we'll put a digital copy of that, like the... Of this fruit fly thing and, like... [00:19:01] S0: Whoever finds this is gonna be like, humans are tiny. [00:19:04] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was living like, how the hell [00:19:07] S0: did they [00:19:07] S1: do this? Yeah. Yeah. [00:19:10] S0: That's awesome. Alright. So I do have to address this because every time... We've done plenty of hot takes now. We did one at the New York Stock Exchange. We did one in Paris at the Raise AI Summit. So I have to ask you now, what is your hottest take?
00:19:10 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[00:19:10] S0: That's awesome. Alright. So I do have to address this because every time... We've done plenty of hot takes now. We did one at the New York Stock Exchange. We did one in Paris at the Raise AI Summit. So I have to ask you now, what is your hottest take? [00:19:26] S1: Every time I do a hot take with you, I get in trouble. Because usually, last time we did it, I said you should buy SpaceX stock and then Elon retweeted it. But you were right. Was a 100% right. Okay. And then what was my hottest take? Let's stick on the theme. So Elon posted that they're going be worth $100,000,000,000,000 in ten years. I think they might be worth more than $100,000,000,000,000 in [00:19:53] S0: You 10 do. Yes. If all goes to plan and there's no world war, believe SpaceX you will be worth more than a $100,000,000,000,000? [00:20:01] S1: Correct. [00:20:02] S0: Okay. Well, that'll be good for business. [00:20:06] S1: Yeah, exactly. [00:20:07] S0: What would make that up though? So break that down. How do you think about it? [00:20:12] S1: Actually, mostly a good chunk of it will come from the fact that Tesla's Optimus will be up and running. And so once you have Optimus is building Optimus factories, then you have this incredible exponential and so for all of manufacturing, rate of growth will increase a lot once optimus is producing optimuses. It's a bit like what's happening now with the recursive self improvement but for the physical world. [00:20:41] S0: Do you think Tesla will merge with SpaceX, which will help with that?
00:20:41 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[00:20:41] S0: Do you think Tesla will merge with SpaceX, which will help with that? [00:20:45] S1: This isn't a hard take. This is just a fact. SpaceX is going to buy Tesla, and they have to wait until the unlocks of the stock because if they do, then everyone's gonna say the price wasn't fair. So at the moment, yeah, the... At the moment, it's... You're not gonna see too many announcements, but I think there's a Roadster announcement tonight. But beyond that, I don't think you're gonna see any announcements about Optimus for the next year. And then once they once they do the merger, then we'll hear a lot more. [00:21:14] S0: I know this will come out after the Roadster announcement, but what's your prediction? [00:21:20] S1: What I've heard is they have these cold gas thrusters from Star... From one... From, like, the spacecraft that they've... So you have a compressor that's compressing air essentially, and then that's being fired out the back, which means... Which gives you like absurd acceleration and cornering and everything else. And also, think... I think there's... I think... [00:21:41] S0: Lift? [00:21:42] S1: Lift. Yeah. Usually think you can get lift on these things. [00:21:45] S0: Oh my gosh. [00:21:46] S1: What do what do you what do you think? [00:21:47] S0: I just... I kind of thought it might be an eVTOL. [00:21:52] S1: That would be wild, but I don't think it is. [00:21:55] S0: You don't think it is? [00:21:56] S1: We would know by now if it's an eVTOL. [00:21:58] S0: Think you could just skip the whole car thing and just go to eVTOL, call it a roadster.