Elon Musk’s third appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast may not have spawned any marijuana-fueled memes, but the genius Tesla and SpaceX CEO did reveal intriguing plans for a floating Tesla and his thoughts on alien life forms.
Musk revealed that the long-awaited second-gen Tesla roadster could have a “SpaceX” package that would allow it to hover at a limited altitude above the ground.
“I want it to hover, and I was trying to figure out how to make this thing hover without, you know, killing people,” Musk told Rogan. “Maybe it can hover like a meter above the ground, or something like that. If you plummet it’ll blow out the suspension but you’re not gonna die.”
Whether those lofty levitation goals are fulfilled, Musk did confidently add that there will be “James Bond-style” cold gas thrusters hidden behind the license plate to shave even more time off a sub-two-second zero-to-60 mph time.
“At a minimum, I’m confident we could do a thruster where the license plate flips down, James Bond-style, and there would be a rocket thruster behind it, and that gives you three tons of thrust.”
In typical Rogan fashion, the alien-curious podcaster also asked Musk about his thoughts on extraterrestrial life.
“Do you think they would want us to know or do you think they would just be observing and making sure we don’t blow ourselves up?” Rogan asked.
“I don’t know, man. They are subtle,” Musk replied. “I mean, if they wanted us to know, they could just show up and walk down main street, you know, like, ‘Hey, I’m and alien. Check me out. Oh, here’s my spaceship.’ Just land in the middle of Times Square. We’d be like, ‘Okay, we believe you.'”
When Rogan asked how often he thought about the prospect of an alien encounter, Musk said, “Zero.”
“Zero, even though you’re thinking about interplanetary travel?” Rogan fired back. “You really don’t think about aliens?”
“No, I mean, if they show up, I’m like, ‘great.’ Okay. Now this is new information,” Musk explained.
Another revelation came when the tech mogul also offered insight into The Dictator-inspired design of the SpaceX Starship. Musk claimed he requested the spacecraft’s tip be pointy as a nod to the 2012 comedy.
Brobible points out that Sacha Baron Cohen’s despot says, “Round is not scary, pointy is scary” while discussing the shape of a nuclear missile.
Check out Musk and Rogan’s full three-hour-plus conversation on Spotify.
