A little less than 15 years ago, a young and enthusiastic entrepreneur came to the Jay Leno’s Garage show with an electric sportscar that managed to impress the legendary American comedian and TV show host. While many doubted that young entrepreneur back then for wasting his money on a seemingly stupid idea, he went on to completely change the landscape of the automotive industry. That person was none other than Elon Musk! Over the last decade and a half, Musk has made multiple appearances at Leno’s car-themed show to talk about his latest and greatest innovations. Recently, the two reunited yet again for another episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, this time around to talk about a much bigger vehicle – the gargantuan Starship.
Leno visited SpaceX’s Starbase spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, where he got a tour of the facility by the world’s richest man, himself. While the full episode featuring Musk’s interview will premiere on CNBC on September 21, a 10-minute-long preview was posted by CNBC Prime on its official YouTube channel.
In the video, both the gentlemen can be seen sporting their respective signature attires; Leno in his blue denim and Musk in all black clothes. Interestingly, the t-shirt worn by the SpaceX founder features a graphic that reads: “Occupy Mar”. After a brief introduction to Musk and his previous appearances on the show, the video directly jumps to the part of the interview where Musk talks about why it’s important for humans to become an interplanetary species. In typical fashion, Musk talks passionately about his vision and his plans to colonize Mars.
Musk goes on to talk about SpaceX’s innovative approach of building fully and rapidly reusable rockets which is very important for not only making space travel cheaper but a crucial requirement if mankind wants to colonize Mars. Leno even comments on the plain but unique look of Musk’s rockets that are made of stainless steel, which makes them look like the legendary Silver Bullet RVs by Airstream. In fact, we can see a few of those shiny camper vans parked right next to the gigantic rockets. Leno evens gets amazed by the sheer size of the Starship, admitting that it’s far larger than what it appears in videos and photos. Musk tells him that it’s the biggest rocket ever created and its payload area has more volume than the Boeing 747.
In the final part of the video, Musk explains that his immediate goal is to build one rocket every month and subsequently ramp it up to the point where the company will be producing one rocket every three days. He even does a little math showing that it will take at least 1000 Starship rockets to colonize Mars, which will carry 1 million people to the red planet over the period of two decades. He says that many human beings will be needed to establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars and transform humankind into a multi-planetary species. We can’t wait to see the whole episode where Musk might reveal some more tasty information.
