On Monday November 14th, Elon Musk appeared on a screen to address business leaders in Bali on the sidelines of the G20 summit. As reported by Agence France Press, Musk offered a vision for the future that includes aliens, deep tunnels and rocket tourism. He was sitting in the dark, wearing a traditional Indonesian batik shirt and surrounded by candles. ”We had a power outage three minutes before this call. That’s why I’m totally in the dark,” he told Indonesian tycoon and moderator Anindya Bakrie.
Musk was asked why he did not travel to the tropical island of Indonesia and joked that his “workload has increased quite a bit recently” following his acquisition of Twitter. He said little about the social media company but gave some ideas such as building tunnels dug underground to combat traffic congestion, rocket travel around the world in less than an hour, and discovering alien life in space.
I think it would open up the world if someone could travel anywhere on the planet in less than an hour.
Elon Musk
“Maybe we’ll find alien civilizations or discover civilizations that existed millions of years ago. I think it would be incredibly interesting to go out there and explore the galaxy,” he said.
The founder of Tesla talked about the benefits of tunnels over flying cars to combat traffic jams, claiming that cars would fall on his head and be bad for privacy. “Electric vehicles and tunnels are absolutely an answer to the worst possible congestion in any city, because they can go as many layers as you want until the congestion is resolved,” he explained.
In addition to his vision for Indonesia’s future as a developing nation, the conversation focused largely on his quirky and bold ideas for the future of the Earth.
Jakarta invited Musk to use Indonesia as a launch site for his SpaceX rocket, pointing to the benefits of a location near the equator, but the entrepreneur said he wants to find platforms around the world that would allow people to travel “to the other side of the world” at 20 times the speed of sound.
Despite all the bold ideas for the future, the social networking entrepreneur couldn’t hide his amusement at the fact that he himself is being subject to the challenges faced by society as a whole. “I’m sitting here in the dark surrounded by candles.”
