Elon Musk's 2016 Mars Speech: A Speech and a Vision

SpaceX rocket ready to launch

I've intended for a while to write about Elon Musk's speech at the 67th International Astronautical Congress that was held in Guadalajara last year. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has founded several high-tech companies, including SpaceX and Tesla. In this speech, Musk talked about the technical aspects of the mission to Mars. A long-time science fiction fan – as am I – Musk took a Mars mission beyond fiction and beyond Hollywood into something that he made sound like a practical engineering goal.  No, Musk doesn't have great vocal delivery. That's fine, at least for him. As Herbert Wichelns pointed out many years ago, a good speech is not about beauty; it is about effect.

Since too many people have been so excited to talk about everything that Musk did wrong, let us talk instead about what made his speech succeed.

First, Musk began right off by stating his point: "And what I really want to try to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible, make it seem as though it's something that we can do in our lifetimes — and that you can go, and is there really a way that anyone can go if they wanted to? I think that's really the important thing." Too many inexperienced speakers wait until the speech is half over – or worse – before they tell the audience what their thesis is. You cannot convince people unless they know what you are trying to prove. Even though Musk's point must have struck many people as outlandish, he stated it right up front. Musk's unhesitating statement of vision made his speech exciting.

Second, he spoke without notes. He was obviously well-prepared, but he did not use a script or a Teleprompter. He was just one man standing on a big, lonely stage in front of a huge crowd, talking to the crowd. When you speak without notes, your speech will probably be imperfect, but you can gain audience rapport.

Third, Musk got his audience excited. He made the dangerous trip to Mars sound like a party: "It would be quite fun because you have gravity, which is about 37% that of Earth, so you'd be able to lift heavy things and bound around and have a lot of fun."

Fourth, he talked about practical issues, for example, he talked about the need to do orbital refilling: "Without refilling in orbit, you would have a half-order of magnitude impact, roughly, on the cost. By half of magnitude — I think the audience mostly knows — but what that means is, each order of magnitude is a factor of 10. So not refilling in orbit would mean a 500%, roughly, increase in the cost per ticket." That kind of detailed, practical thinking made Musk's vision seem a little more practical or, at least, a little less impractical.

Finally, it is long overdue for a famous person to give a speech that tells about a vision. We are living in an era in which politicians speak carefully-parsed messages targeted to sections of the electorate. Salespeople address precisely-targeted markets, totally ignoring the big picture. Those methods work – politicians using those methods win elections and business people using those methods make money. But they miss the big picture. They make it too easy to drift away from our vision. A world  without a positive vision is going nowhere.

Are any of Musk's ideas practical? How would I know? I would never have thought that a long-range electric car or a private space company would be practical, and yet Musk built both. To accomplish big things, people need to get excited. Musk did a terrific job of getting astronautical people excited. His dramatic speech reached the general public. Tickets to Mars, anyone?

Stay tuned — I plan to write about his 2017 follow-up speech soon.

Image: NASA