Original subtitles

If you had to describe Elon to alien, how would you describe him?

Well, I think of Elon as the alien...

Meets your fellow countrymen. No.

I'd say Elon is almost the most human, human.

He could kind of see the way the world was going in a way I just,

I just did not understand.

TESLA LIVE

Elon Musk is the richest man who has ever lived

but says he doesn't own a house.

He's different than a lot of other people.

It truly embodies big thinking and risk taking.

With a few taps from his fingers, Global Markets can crash and soar.

CEO Elon Musk creating chaos with a single tweet.

Bizarre shook confidence.

He is creating a chip that can be put into our brains.

And right now, he's building Rockets that could take a 100 people to Mars.

His power and wealth...

continue to grow.

No one on earth is doing more to change the world.

-Come on over man. -Why would you want to talk to me?

Because you are the dude my friend. You are the dude.

THIS IS ELON MUSK'S STORY

He's done things that no other country can do.

-It's quite magnificent. Yes. -You're mum and greatest champion.

EX-WIVES FAMILY FRIENDS ENEMIES

He's so dangerous. Completely, totally irresponsible.

It's not as much fun being me as you think.

I'm not sure I want to be me.

SHOULD WE CELEBRATE HIS ACHIEVEMENTS?

It seems strange to be handing it all over to private enterprise,

but I guess I'm kind of stuck in the past.

OR BE FRIGHTENED BY HIS POWER?

-Unstable, Reckless. -I'm just being me.

THE ELON MUSK SHOW

We used up all 100 million. And there was big recession.

I had to invest everything.

Why did you want to take the risks in businesses that you've gone in to.

Have to say at times I've wondered.

But like, creating a company is almost like having a child.

So it's like, how do you say your child should not have food?

You have to feed and nurse it, take care of it, even if it ruins you.

Yeah.

There wasn't tough times in the end of 2008.

How did you get through that period of crisis?

-Can we just break for a second. -Of course.

Man, I sure hope it was worth it. Sure hope it was worth it.

2009

In 2009, Elon Musk is a bruised and weary man.

The father of five has invested all of his money in his two companies,

SpaceX making Rockets and Tesla Electric Cars.

Running a company does have its drawbacks.

Friend of mine has good phrase,

it's like eating glass and staring into abyss.

-And you agree with that? -Yeah.

And if you don't eat the glass, you're not going to be successful.

This is Elon.

Tesla narrowly scraped through last year's global financial crisis.

And now Elon has a new car, the Model S,

that he hopes will be the first mass produced electric car in history.

Again, thanks for coming here.

I think it would be pretty exciting what we're about to unveil.

Somebody kick me that flashlight.

I really believe that the sedan is absolute vaporware.

There is no way Tesla has the cash on hand

in order to be able to develop their sedan.

This is first mass manufactured electric car.

This is something that is...

They've got prototype they'll show

and they're gonna start taking deposits,

which I find just an amazing act of God.

It's been a very, very high workload.

And between SpaceX, Tesla and kids that

there's just really not enough time in the day.

So not enough time to sleep and...

It was really awful.

He plowed his money into Tesla and SpaceX.

He was under incredible stress.

I was worried he was going to have heart attack.

I kept thinking, God, I've just got to keep this guy alive.

The honest answer is I'm not looking forward to the party tonight.

All night long I'll be selling cars

for five hours after selling cars for five hours before that.

It won't be fun for me.

It was one of the bad Christmases.

He'd forgotten to get me a Christmas present.

We were in Boulder, Colorado. There's loads and loads of snow.

And we were in bed and he said, I do.

It is not that I don't love you. I do really love you.

It's like, my brain is exploding. I was like, no, I know, it's fine.

And he sort of got up in the middle of the night and disappeared.

I was like, where's, where's he gone? And he came back two hours later,

and he'd gone outside in his t-shirt and shorts barefoot.

And he'd gone and, like, dug through the snow and picked flowers

for, like, he'd walked all over Boulder

and, like, came back with a little bouquet of picked flowers.

I just wanted to show you how much I loved you.

He was very supportive of me having a career.

I had to come back and do St Trinian's 2 and was the first time

we'd been apart and he sent two lorry loads of flowers to set for me.

He'd also found out from production that the name of every woman on set,

he'd sent them flowers, champagne and chocolates.

Then when he came to visit, everyone was like, "Oh, hi."

Talulah can I get a quick picture please?

Talulah sign the card here.

At the premiere he came along, he was holding my umbrella

for me while I was doing signings. No one knew who Elon was.

Talulah.

He was very sweet and lovely and very supportive.

Two years after meeting Talulah,

Elon's divorce from the mother of his five children comes through.

I wanted to get married in UK and Elon said, you know, it's up to you.

I wanted a religious ceremony. Elon went along with it.

We just had a really good fun. I love Fred Astaire.

I introduced Elon to Astaire movies,

and Elon got very into Fred Astaire,

he admired his sort of technical proficiency.

On the morning of the wedding, I got him a top hat and cane as a joke

I said "Is there anything you would like at the wedding?"

That's important to you?

He said, "Yes, I would like there to be hovercraft and eels."

"My hovercraft is full of eels."

So we had hovercraft and eels at our wedding.

After the wedding, we went to Paris on honeymoon

couldn't be a long honeymoon, obviously, because of work.

We managed a couple of days in Paris and some meetings there.

But yeah, it was lovely, really nice.

Elon and Talulah are building a new life together.

But there's a major problem.

Court documents from Elon's divorce

show that for months he's been using emergency loans from friends

to pay for his divorce costs and living expenses.

A year after promising the world's first mass produced all electric car,

Tesla has so far only made a few prototypes.

And has neither the factory or the staff to produce the cars.

Elon decides to gamble.

2010

For the first time in 50 years,

a car company is being floated on the US Stock Exchange.

If the stocks do well, Elon will have the money to ramp up production.

He'll know his fate by the Closing Bell.

Tesla Motors, they're making their debut on the Nasdaq today.

Now, the company has yet to make a profit, even for a single quarter.

This company has yet to make a dime.

It has lost 290 million dollars.

Tesla to sell. You don't want to own the stock.

You don't want to Waste it. You shouldn't rent darn thing.

Elon was pretty stressed out that day.

You could see it on his face that he was under some pressure,

worried about how it's going to come together.

Elon huge day for Tesla, the company going public.

Like many Start-Up companies you lose money.

The company has lost about 260 million dollars

since its inception. You're going public.

You want the public to invest in Tesla.

We were this car company that had no money

that was, you know, making this crazy car in Silicon Valley

and without any automotive experts.

So, everyone was like, they're never going to make it.

What they do? We weren't close to being household name.

There was definite risk.

There's no place to charge this stupid thing right now. You have to.

That's the least of them.

How you begin mass production? You have an electric vehicle.

You're guaranteeing this'll be built

and you can get production ramped up on it

in auto industry, a lot of people are saying not going to happen.

I think people at this point ought to be a little bit more optimistic

about the future of Tesla.

WE'RE IN SIGNIFICANT EXPANSION MODE

I remember the energy kind of in the studio right before

they rang the bell. I mean, it was palpable.

Big losses on Wall Street as we've been reporting.

It's the same for just about any US stock you care to name except one.

It's a result that almost no one saw coming.

The shares go stratospheric,

valuing the company at two point two billion dollars.

TESLA

At the end of the day,

Elon's own stake in the company is worth 650 million dollars.

Tesla has always been the problem child.

I suppose all sort of intensity of, you know, it's us against the world.

We're about to die any second.

We had a lot of bloggers maintaining a Tesla death-watch.

Day by day count of how long before Tesla would die.

Tesla has this cool factor

that a lot of car companies out there just don't have.

Flush with a new cash injection, Elon gets to work.

Well, we have a very big sign.

He buys a factory in Fremont, California, for 42 million dollars.

It has the capacity to mass produce the Model S,

but Elon needs someone to help sell his electric dreams

to petrol obsessed America.

George Blankenship, GEORGE.

Blankenship, BLANKENSHIP.

He chooses the man Steve Jobs trusted

to launch the Apple Stores across the globe.

I retired from Apple, and I started getting these emails.

"George, Elon Musk would like to speak to you. Give me a call."

Delete. I mean, I assumed this was junk mail.

Elon got on the phone and we started chatting.

"Want to come work for the company" I've retired,

I need to spend time with my wife, kids and stuff.

He said, come on, come out to L.A.,

met with Elon, and I thought he was special.

He asked me, you know, if you were going to bring Tesla EVs to market.

I said I'd do it just like Apple.

There's education thing we had to go through at Apple

and there's going to be education thing we'll have to do with EV

is how much it costs to charge and how do I charge it?

And there's all these questions out there.

The Roadster was proof of concept,

but the Model S was the first car that was really meant for people

to drive like a regular car.

We talked to people about the car to show it to them,

and they'd say, "How do I get one of these?"

With straight face, we would look them in the eye, we would say,

Well, give me 5,000 dollars today

and I'll give you a car in a couple of years.

They go "what?" We'd go "You give me a 5,000 dollar

deposit today, we'll send you car in a couple of years."

And they'd go "You're kidding." No, no.

We'll give you a reservation number.

And unless you want one of the first 1000.

If you want one of first 1000,

you give me 40,000 dollars today

I'll send you car in a couple of years.

And people did it.

Elon has sold his customers a vision of the future.

-It looks really amazing in the pictures. -Green, fast. Sleek.

Completely away from gas.

I decided you got to put your money where your mouth is and support it.

Under George W bush.

The American government had also bought into Elon's future plans.

In late 2008, Nasa granted Elon's rocket company Space X,

a one point six billion dollar contract to take over the duties

of the retiring space shuttle.

It was incredible.

And then Obama got elected.

It was a sort of amazing moment in history.

And so we, we sat on the stage for his inauguration.

Thing I do remember is Elon hadn't appropriately packed,

and it started snowing and he had to borrow the driver's coat and hat

because otherwise he would have frozen to death.

I was like, shall I just pack for you when we go on trips?

He was, okay. Good idea.

Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Preserve, protect and defend Constitution of the U.S.

-So help you God. -So help me God.

Congratulations, Mr. President.

Today I'd like to talk about the next chapter in the story,

not just to continue on the same path we want to leap into the future.

Bottom line is, nobody is more committed

to manned spaceflight than I am.

But we've got to do it in a smart way.

Governments are just really bad at cost efficiency.

They tend to do things expensively and inefficiently.

People in Washington, driven less by vision than by politics,

have neglected NASA's mission in space exploration in 21st century.

-Do you consider yourself a visionary? -I suppose.

I suppose I would be a visionary, yeah.

I think the reality of being president is that you're

like the captain of a very huge ship and have a small rudder.

You know, I'm generally a fan of like minimal government interference.

Like the government should be kind of the referee but not the player.

And there shouldn't be too many referees.

Are there some pitfalls and some risks?

It seems like you're creating intellectual material

wouldn't be good, maybe in wrong hands.

As far as being able to go send something up into space

is there resistance from government?

No, government is US government is our primary customer.

Nasa, they took a risk. We were a small company, very unproven.

They're like, I don't know, 300 people maybe.

We went from like launching a small rocket

to working on the transportation system

to the International Space Station.

Jumping into this huge responsibility was a major step.

You know, suddenly in the big league.

With the retirement of the last ever space shuttle,

the US Government is now reliant on SpaceX

to make good its promise to resupply the international space station.

The young start-up has to upscale fast.

I jokingly describe myself as the Pied Piper of super nerds.

My role is essentially to go find people a 1000 times smarter than me.

Get them excited about solving a really hard problem.

One of the ways we explained what SpaceX culture was,

and this was in order to be honest with people.

SpaceX, special forces we take on missions

that others deem impossible.

This will be the hardest thing you will ever do in your life.

It is the kind of personality that wants to be a Navy SEAL.

The engineering equivalent of that.

It will be bruising and punishing and uncomfortable every day.

Growth is rarely comfortable.

If you are comfortable. You are probably not growing.

To work for Elon is to be comfortable in a constant state of discomfort.

He has 10,000 times more what the average person has streaming

through their brain any given time.

Our ability to think about and analyze a problem

is nothing compared to how his brain works.

MR.MUSK

Elon aspires to be like the greatest engineer in the history of the world.

He does have the cognitive horsepower of the geniuses

that we have seen come before us.

-But he's not Einstein, is he? -I think he is smarter than Einstein.

But then there's another company

that's focused on cancer, kind of more of a near term thing.

I think that'll be key things to solving a lot of diseases

which is to just basically write a program

that destroys the disease and then dis-code.

-It's just code. -Yeah, its just software.

As well as rockets and cars. Elon's interests are growing.

Elon starts tweeting about his interests in artificial intelligence,

something he refers to as summoning the demon.

We're building progressively greater intelligence

and the percentage of intelligence that is not human is increasing.

Eventually we will represent very small percentage of intelligence.

2012

It's launch day.

Ten years after SpaceX was founded,

the company is operating on the world stage.

Perfect launch must lead to a precise deployment of the dragon capsule,

which will then dock autonomously with the international space station.

I was the launch chief engineer.

My job was to make sure everything goes right.

T minus one minute. The flight computers in control the vehicle.

A rocket is a risky product.

You just got to keep your nerves and you got to.

You got to basically do your job and then trust.

Trust your data and trust your tests. Trust your work.

T minus 30 seconds.

We're going to launch our Dragon spaceship on a Falcon nine rocket.

Dragon will maneuver to the space station,

figure out the position and orientation,

and go through series of steps where it gets closer and closer

to the space station and eventually docks.

There's lot that could go wrong. I mean, really lot.

I cannot emphasize that enough. This mission may not succeed.

Five, four, three, two, one, zero.

Falcon 9 has cleared the tower.

You have to remember, rocket is like essentially a miracle.

Eighty thousand custom components. One wire, one millimeter off.

Anything off by the smallest margin. And you are done.

The launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket

as NASA turns to the private sector

to resupply the international space station.

Only four governments in the world, have the capability of doing

what SpaceX is attempting to accomplish.

It seems strange to be handing it all over to private enterprise,

but I guess I'm kind of stuck in the past?

For a rocket mission. Everything is over in 10 minutes.

You see the satellite being deployed and you can head to the party.

Not true for Dragon.

A rendezvous is one of the trickiest maneuvers in space

to bring together two spacecraft going five miles a second.

Initiating the capture of the Dragon. Standing by.

Copy. Confirm.

When Dragon docks with a space station.

First it gets grappled by the arm.

Then it gets moved over to a berthing port.

And then that port has to be actually fitting

whatever we have on the Dragon side.

And you never have chance to actually check that.

Hardware is on the space station.

First time you do this is when you do the first mission

and you just hope this all works at the end of the day.

Official Hatch opening time for Space X Dragon spacecraft.

4:53 p.m central time.

We also got a little dessert, just like you said.

Got a little ice cream.

THE PRESEIDENT JUST CALLED TO SAY CONGRATS.

CALLER ID WAS BLOCKED, I THOUGHT IT'S TELEMARKETER

I have big hand for friends at NASA

who helped make this happen, guys.

The mission is a complete success,

but some established aerospace figures aren't happy.

SpaceX's lack of experience bothers some NASA's legends

like Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan.

Welcome, Mr. Neil Armstrong as commander of Apollo 11.

NASA HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT PROGRAMS

Turn the button on.

-It's turned on. How about that? -That's good.

With regard to President Obama's 2010 plan,

I have yet to find a person in NASA,

the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies,

industry or academia

that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement.

I support the encouragement of newcomers

toward their goal of lower cost access to space.

But having cut my teeth in rockets more than 50 years ago.

I am not confident.

Now is the time for wiser heads in Congress

of the United States to prevail.

Now is time to overrule

this administration's pledge to mediocrity.

Folks who propose such a limited architecture

do not yet know what they don't know.

There are people who say about you you don't know what you don't know.

How can anyone know what they don't know?

When critics say you can't do this

your answer to them is... -We've done it.

Neil, Jim Lovell and I have come to a unanimous conclusion

that this is, in fact, a blueprint for a mission to nowhere.

You know, there are American heroes who don't like this idea.

And I wonder what you think of that.

I was very sad to see that because those guys are, yeah.

Those guys are heroes of mine. So, it's really tough.

I wish they would come and visit

and see the hard work that we're doing here.

And I think that would change their mind.

They inspired you to do this, didn't they?

Yes.

And to see them casting stones in your direction.

60 MINUTES OVERTIME

It's difficult.

He's has a kind of innocence to him.

What I mean by that is that he feels with incredible purity,

the emotion he is feeling at the time, whatever that emotion is.

He feels things very, very deeply.

So, I've heard it said that he's cold and emotionless

and that could not be further from the truth.

He is the most emotional person I know.

One of the things I remember really early on is we were,

we'd gone to the cinema

and we were watching some comedy and Elon found the film so funny

that he literally fell on the floor and was like rolling around,

holding his tummy, laughing,

everyone was looking at us

what the hell is going on there?

I was, "Come on, get up off the floor."

But he was just enraptured by what was on the screen.

And he was feeling it. And he feels things.

And, if he feels anger, you know it,

it's there, you know, anything.

He it's, it goes deep.

He told me all about his childhood growing up.

I think his childhood shapes him in a lot of ways.

I think he knows what it's like to be bottom of the pack,

to be hurt by people that you should be able to trust.

And obviously, I think that leaves scars.

-You grew up in South Africa? -Yeah.

I left when I was 17 by myself.

I had backpack of clothes, suitcase of books. And that's it.

-Did you have a happy childhood? -No, it was terrible.

-Are you serious? -Yes.

Why was it terrible?

1969

I had this one guy who would want to see me

and I had nothing else to do. Then I would see him.

But he was very insulting to people

and rude and I didn't really like him that much. But then.

Otherwise, I just sat at home, you know?

After a couple of years. My brother banned him from seeing me.

For two years I didn't see him.

I graduated and went to live in Cape Town and he came to visit me.

Just turned up with an engagement ring and I said, I'll never wear it.

And he went back, told my family I'd agreed to marry him,

which surprised my family

because they didn't know I was seeing him and I wasn't.

And then I just got this telegram from my parents. Congratulations.

The wedding arrangements are made.

The invites are out, and 800 people are coming.

I called him. "What do you mean, I'm marrying you?"

And he said, I will change when we get married

then I'll be kinder and nicer,

I'm just aggressive because you won't marry me.

So, I did believe him

and then fell pregnant on honeymoon.

Then the abuse started right away,

beating me up if I didn't do as I was told.

I came back from honeymoon, bruised and pregnant,

and then I didn't want my family to know.

So, then you just put up with it because you have no choice.

Elon while he was a little boy.

He grew up in a very violent home.

For example, when I always had to drive the car

and he would be punching me and Elon would be between the seats

hitting his father to stop him punching me.

When he would be at home and punching me.

Kimbal and Tosca would be crying in corner

because they were babies. Elon was five. Kimbal four. Tosca three.

Elon would be hitting his dad at the back of his legs

and then when he was eight, we left.

My father has serious issues.

Okay, well, so you didn't have a happy childhood.

His father Errol denies all the allegations of domestic abuse.

After two years, Elon said he wanted to go and live with his father.

And that made me very sad, very sad

because I didn't see why he would wanted to do that.

His father had the Encyclopedia Britannica.

I couldn't afford books.

He'd read everything in the library in Durban,

so he had the opportunity to actually read the whole encyclopaedias.

I could call him any time and ask him any subject, anything in the world.

I know you were bullied at school, had difficult...

I was beaten to death. If you call that bullied.

He was shy and awkward at school. Elon didn't have many friends.

Pupils at Elon's school saw him as strange,

and he was systematically bullied for years.

A gang beat up his best friend,

making him agree never to hang around with Elon.

On one occasion, Elon was pushed down a flight of stairs

and beaten violently,

leaving him in a hospital for weeks.

It's no surprise then that as an adult,

he's a fighter determined to succeed and prove everyone wrong.

All right. It is now time. It is the moment we've been waiting for.

For a long time.

Time to deliver Model S.

Delivery of model S.

We decided that we should make an event of this.

I was sort of M.C. I got the opportunity to be the MC

and I came out and I sort of fired up the crowd.

There are a lot of people who said this day would never come

we did it!

The person who is going to drive us to have best car in the solar system.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elon Musk.

What the Model S is fundamentally about is that an electric car

can, in fact be the best car in the world.

Time to start delivering Model S.

Let's give Jeff his car keys.

Thank you.

Let him go!

The pr drive for the Model S is up and running,

but manufacturing is slow,

the cars need to be rolling off production line in their 1000s.

-So far, tesla has made 10. -One, two, three, TESLA!

The hype is bolstered by the Model S becoming the first ever electric car

to win the industry's prestigious car of the year award.

Despite the chasm between hype and economic reality,

Elon makes a bold claim to investors.

Just a couple of questions. The first one is,

how confident are you that you are moving in the right direction there?

I really feel that that Tesla has turned a corner.

We're very confident of achieving a small profit in the first quarter.

Elon tweeted Tesla will be profitable in Q1 2013.

Shall we talk about this?

In the first quarter, we expect to produce and deliver almost 5000 cars.

We had to deliver 4750 cars.

In Q2 of 2012, we delivered 12 cars.

People will view this as a turning point in time

when an electric car company became a truly viable company.

I think that's how this period will be looked at in in the future.

He asked us to do the impossible, but he modelled that himself.

So, how are you going to tell the hardest working man in the world

like, no, I can't get that done?

-Elon, good to see you. -Good to see you.

-We're ready to walk over to factory. -Walk over there.

Do you think you go quickly?

The faster we can accelerate the advance the better will be.

But as you well know, it's a fine line between growing

and meeting demand and making sure that

you don't stumble along the way.

I have no doubt that we will stumble, we have stumbled

no doubt we will stumble in the future.

But yeah,

but we want to go as fast as we can

without falling totally flat on our face.

It was tough. I mean, four hours of sleep a night,

my wife left and went to Florida.

You know, she left around the 15th of February.

She said, I can't watch you anymore. It was the toughest month.

He assumed that we weren't doing enough fast enough

to deliver enough cars in Q1 of 2013.

Too little, too late. He kept saying too little, too late.

There were moments when he would definitely get upset.

You've heard of him firing people?

Yes. All of that happened, when Elon was behaving badly

I would kind of liken it to a toddler.

That was having a tantrum about something or upset about something.

My desk is in factory. It's there. I can show you where it is.

He wants to take us by his desk.

He moved his desk over to near my desk

so that he could watch what was going on every single day.

I think it's important for a leader to be at the front line.

My biggest challenge is ramping up production.

What's that about? Being in the factory

and understanding where issues are.

And so, I went the very opposite of being up in an ivory tower.

I want to be in the middle of the battle.

And and so that means putting my desk in the middle of the factory

so that's where it is.

It's a noticeably clean desk with the exception of the award.

Yeah, I mean, it's got...

I guess it's got the Persians award my sunglasses and coffee.

Yeah, this is my, it's my desk.

I think failure is bad. I don't think it's good.

But if something's important enough, then you do it.

Even though the risk of failure is high.

If somebody wants to start a company,

is they should bear in mind that the most likely outcome is,

is that it's not going to work,

as they should only do it if they feel that there,

they are really compelled to do it, you know.

There were a number of times I witnessed

Elon sleeping in the factory,

showing people how important it is to be focussed on,

on finding a solution because if Elon Musk can take the time to sleep there

and be there 24 hours a day. Everyone else should make the time.

Factories ramping up, you know, and they're building cars,

but it's going to be close. Could they build enough?

We're halfway through the quarter and we weren't making it.

We were not making it. I'm really emotional, it hurts.

This was really a tough time.

And we started bringing in people from Europe,

bringing people from all over to help deliver cars.

The IT Team was washing cars.

Other departments marketing was driving them

to the other end of parking lot and...

I started an email trail to Elon every night telling him,

here's how many we've sold, how many have delivered

and how many we have deposits on and here's where we stand.

And it didn't look good. It did not look good.

He would I would send it to him at 11:30 and he respond back at 11:35.

And it just didn't look good. And he let me know.

Then on the Tuesday, the last week of the quarter,

I sent him one and I remember it

as if it was yesterday and said, this looks promising.

And it was Saturday at three o'clock.

We delivered the 4,750th car. Three o'clock.

We made 11 million dollars that quarter. Put us over the hump.

Starting from 20 dollars to 90 dollars,

and Tesla became a viable company.

I stood up on the desk like this, called everybody around, and I said.

You guys have no idea how impactful it is.

What you just did, you can't understand it.

Well, what you just did is monumental.

Not just for Tesla, but for what we're going to do for mankind.

You should all feel extraordinary sense of accomplishment.

We were a real company on March 31st, 2013.

2014

Nineteen years after starting his first company.

Elon Musk now has a net worth of 11 billion dollars.

Tesla is starting to become a household name

with mass market appeal.

And SpaceX has cornered the lucrative market in launching

commercial satellites into orbit.

But despite all these achievements,

Elon Musk has always dreamt of one ultimate goal.

If you look at things on an historical timescale.

The multibillion-year history of earth itself.

You can point to about half a dozen major steps on the evolution of life,

single celled life, life moving from the oceans to land,

mammals, consciousness. Those are sort of like the big ones.

On that scale would fit the extension of life to multiple planets.

But a critical element is making reusable orbital craft.

In any mode of transport if you had a reusable vehicle

or expendable vehicle, it would be a night and day difference.

How many people would have driven here if the car was single use?

Yeah. We've got this weird situation in space

where vehicles can only be used once.

If you want a return journey you have to tow one behind you.

So the huge breakthrough that SpaceX aspires to achieve.

This is a very difficult thing,

is to make a fully reusable orbital launch vehicle.

Space X is fundamentally a vehicle to make a thriving future

for humanity in space possible.

You cannot do that with 200 million dollar rockets.

That is the equivalent of buying a yacht,

sailing it from here to France, and then essentially setting it on fire.

That makes no sense.

After each supply trip to the international space station

SpaceX attempt to land their rockets safely so they can be used again.

You're one of the CEOs of SpaceX and I'm incredibly excited.

You're the CEO? Well, I'm sorry.

Your goal is to try to land the Falcon rocket on a barge at sea

so you can reuse a ship? -If it's got engines, it's a ship.

We have a footage of this is the last attempt,

I think, to land rocket after it successfully delivered a payload.

Here it goes. Come on, baby. You can do it.

It broke a leg on landing.

It broke more than that.

We're looking at data, need to analyze what happened.

It's certainly it needs more work and the next couple of missions.

So far,

many of SpaceX's attempts to land the Falcon rocket have failed.

Lift off on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

On the next trip to the space station, there's a bigger problem.

We have important payload on board.

We have a docking adaptor for the space station.

We had a space spacesuit on there.

And food and water and oxygen, all the things that the astronauts need.

Their survival depends on you.

Vehicle on course, on track.

And I had my head down. I was launch chief engineer.

I was looking at the data and I look at the video data.

At 137 seconds. Suddenly the rocket disappears.

I look up, and the rocket is gone.

And I was thinking, where did it go?

And then we see these, these metal pieces raining down.

And it was clear it exploded or fell apart in flight.

Caught by surprise while on a break, Elon speaks to the press.

Elon, can you talk for a second?

What are your thoughts on--

Sorry, I can't like to comment anything.

Our goal is to have the most reliable rocket ever,

because this is gonna be launching astronauts in couple of years.

So, it needs to be super, super reliable.

-All right. -Thank you.

The failure of the 9th rocket launch is a setback for SpaceX,

but more damaging for Elon are the stories around tesla.

Madre!

Bad news for Tesla motors. It's target of federal investigation

why two of company's Model S vehicles have caught fire this year.

A small number of tesla car fires has a large effect on a company

trying to appeal to a global marketplace.

My kids'll be in the car. Friends'll be in the car.

You guys will be in the car. We care about making sure

this is the safest vehicle in the world.

Driver hit a concrete wall.

Nobody was hurt. But what is getting hurt are Tesla shares.

They've shed about 12 percent since yesterday,

dragging Tesla's market cap down by about three billion dollars.

Elon goes on the offensive to defend tesla.

Three fires in these Tesla vehicles

with the most recent one in the past week.

The headlines are extremely misleading.

In fact, if fire risk is your concern,

you would have great difficulty being in any better car

than the Model S.

-I don't know. -Not true. That's common misperceptions.

How do you turn around image of an electric car?

Our three non-injurious fires got more national headlines

than a quarter million deadly gasoline car fires.

That's mad. What the heck is going on?

Are you quite thin skinned about this stuff?

Well...

I really care about Tesla and about the Model S and everything,

so it's hard to be dispassionate about that.

You know, it's a lot of blood, sweat and tears from a lot of people.

Frustrated the bad press won't go away.

Elon repeatedly takes to twitter.

GERMAN GOVT REVIEWS TESLA MODEL S FIRES.

MODEL S CONSUMER REPORTS CUSTOMER SATISFACTION 99/100

With five minutes of research, you can get to the truth very quickly.

Six months after the Falcon 9 explosion,

Elon is desperate for a good news story.

Today SpaceX are trying to safely land its reusable rocket.

A historic first step towards the mission to Mars.

So far we only tried to land on the ships. And then here we go.

It's the first launch after this major anomaly

where we lose payload on the way to space station.

That's first launch that tries to land on land.

Count on we had like certain issues

where we needed to make decisions if this was good or not.

I wanted Elon to decide. And, and he was thinking

and I just I know he was thinking, and we'll come to a result.

I just want to remind him, you got one minute left.

As calmly as possible.

We see it to the landing burn and then we hear this boom.

And the boom coincides with the rocket disappearing.

So we looked at screen again and there's the rocket.

It was incredible. That was one of the best days of my life.

I was truly thankful for seeing first hand

that humanity can do impossible things

and they are only impossible until somebody pulls them off.

Elon is never satisfied, but that is what makes him who he is.

I think he's an incredible gift to the world.

He is arguably the best leader on the face of the planet.

I would take the bad with the good.

Because of you mess with recipe you might mess with the magic.

His brain is fundamentally more efficient.

There are times where like, I might think I disagree,

but he's like, probably thought it through in a way

that I haven't thought about it. If he asked me to jump

I'm gonna ask him how high.

NEXT TIME

And this is just the beginning, they're going to Mars.

Oh, no!

Got a new tweet from Elon Musk.

I am selling almost all physical possessions, will own no house.

I think when Elon Tweets, he just goes

with what's in his mind at the moment.

Some I understand and some I don't.

And he's described his father as emotionally abusive.

My father has serious issues.

My name is Errol Graham Musk. I'm, Elon's father.

TRANSLATOR CREDIT Iyuno-SDI Group