- Andrey Vadimovich, thank you for being with us today. Please tell us how the idea to meet with Elon Musk came about? Did you first have a telephone conversation and correspondence?
- Everything is correct, it was.
On May 30, 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, the launch of the first manned spacecraft, Crew Dragon, took place.
Naturally, our family is interested in everything related to space, so we watched the launch from start to finish.
Fantastic broadcast.
There was great admiration for the project as a whole, and for Elon Musk himself, as a leader.
My wife offered to convey congratulations to him, and at first I brushed aside - imagine how many people around the world then wanted to congratulate the head of SpaceX.
In the end, we still decided to try to contact Musk through NASA - we have good connections with them, we know many there.
NASA reacted rather skeptically to our venture and advised us not to count on anything - and a few days later they suddenly called back and said that Elon Musk had received our letter and expressed a desire to talk with us personally, by phone.
- That is, your first conversation with Elon Musk took place a year before your visit to SpaceX?
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Yes, a year ago, on July 10, we were assigned a call for the evening time, and in Los Angeles, it seems, at 11 in the morning.
It was Friday, that is, Musk was in the midst of the working day, and his schedule, as far as we know, has time slots divided by five minutes, he is such a busy person.
Before the start of the conversation, we asked his secretary how much we had planned for the conversation - it turned out to be 20 minutes.
Simply fantastic.
Exactly at the appointed time - a second per second!
- the bell rings, and the voice: “Hi!
Ilon Mask is speaking ".
We talked for 20 minutes, it was a very calm, pleasant, sincere conversation.
Elon is a fantastic conversationalist.
He asks questions, gives an opportunity to answer, listens to the answer.
Laughs a lot.
Naturally, we invited him to visit Moscow, and he, in turn, invited us to visit SpaceX.
The pandemic and the related restrictions, of course, made their own adjustments to these plans, there was no flight, and so on.
But we were in touch all this time, one might say.
Then there was some lull, plus I had a big congress planned in California, and we asked if it was possible to combine this working trip with a visit to SpaceX at the invitation of Elon.
We were given confirmation.
- How did you get to the USA, did it go without any problems?
-
At first it was not clear whether there will be a meeting in Jacksonville (Texas), where Starbase is located, from where the launches are held;
or it will be Los Angeles, where, in fact, the headquarters of SpaceX is located.
Literally a couple of days before the meeting, we were informed that it would still be Los Angeles.
My son Pavel, who lives in London, quickly rushed to the plane, flew to Los Angeles with various funny adventures.
And in the evening we ended up at SpaceX.
It was necessary to get to the corporation itself by car, we had to rent it, and we took, of course, the only car in which it was appropriate to come to SpaceX - Tesla.
- When you watched the launch of Crew Dragon, could you imagine that in just a year you will see with your own eyes where this ship was created?
- It seems to me that this is unrealistic.
To be honest, even after the meeting took place, I did not really believe that it really happened.
In addition, we were greeted there in a completely royal manner.
When my son and I drove up, several guards let us in in turn, and everyone greeted us with joy, saying that everyone in the company knew about our visit, they knew who we were.
Then we were given a full-fledged tour of all the shops, we saw the assembly of the engine, the assembly of the Crew Dragon manned vehicle.
Moreover, the assembly of the latter, for example, takes place under sterile conditions inside a huge - the size of two or three volleyball courts - glass cube.
On the territory of the assembly shops, we were, of course, not allowed to take photographs, this is completely normal.
- What were your very first impressions of your meeting with Elon Musk? Probably seeing him, shaking his hand - it all seemed surreal?
- Of course, it was very pleasant.
I can’t say that it looked downright surreal.
We had already talked with him by phone and knew that he was an absolutely contact, normal person, calm in communication.
He turned out to be the same in personal communication.
No arrogance, no arrogance.
- We know that you have agreed that the topics that you discussed at SpaceX will remain there. But could you lift the veil of secrecy a little? Did you speak Russian? Musk also understands a little in Russian.
- No, Elon knows a few words in Russian, but we spoke, of course, in English.
My son and I told Musk that he is very similar to Sergei Pavlovich Korolev - in his approach to space flights, to spaceships, to design, to the organization of the whole process.
And in terms of scale, it, of course, very much resembles Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.
I think Sergei Pavlovich would be glad to have such an heir as Elon Musk.
- Musk himself has repeatedly said that he admires both your grandfather and the Soviet space program in general. Did he ask you about your grandfather, maybe you told him any stories?
- He knows the history of Russian cosmonautics very well.
Actually, we decided to congratulate him, knowing that he repeatedly mentioned the name of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev in his interviews and books.
He always said that the corporation's achievements would not be so powerful if it did not stand on the shoulders of the titans.
And he includes Sergei Korolev among these titans.
One of the halls of the SpaceX corporation, by the way, is named after him.
There is the Tsiolkovsky hall, the Gagarin hall, and the Korolev hall.
And after our telephone conversation with Elon, he sent us a sign from this hall as a gift.
So yes - he knows history very well, and he did not need to elicit something from us about Sergei Pavlovich.
A lot has been written about grandfather, almost every day of his life is illuminated in one way or another.
But it's very nice that Elon is good at history.
- Back to your tour of SpaceX. What made the biggest impression on you, what surprised you?
- I really liked all this hi-tech.
There are several engineers working near each engine, there is a large monitor, 40 inches, and on it there is a translucent circuit of the engine.
If an employee, say, is currently working with a branch pipe, he clicks on the computer - and the monitor displays, against the background of a translucent engine, the entire branch pipe, with all its complex movement.
The specialist tightens all this, looks, checks against the drawings.
There, every tiny step is documented, and you need to tick off that it has been completed.
The employee photographs the result of his work and proceeds to the next pipe.
I also really liked that all this is practically in a single space.
That is, everyone sees the result of their work, and sees what is happening around.
Imagine: a huge hangar larger than a football field.
The engines, the launch vehicle and the descent vehicle are assembled inside it.
There is a zone where they work on engines that work in a vacuum.
There is a zone in which they are working on engines running on Earth.
There is a large glass cube in the center where the Crew Dragon devices are being worked on.
All people are in super-sterile suits, there is positive air pressure, like in an operating room.
And next to it, for example, is a glass wall, behind which there are four or five floors of engineers' offices.
And they also see this whole room.
- And what, in your opinion, are the differences between SpaceX and the same workshops in Roskosmos, for example?
- There are no significant differences.
It's just that, historically, it happened in our country, it grew out of old buildings, where in one workshop one thing happens, in another - another.
And at SpaceX, this is grouped into one giant open space.
They were being built in a new location, on the edge of Los Angeles.
It was far from the most beautiful area - only later, with the advent of SpaceX, it all turned into a very beautiful, advanced and prestigious area.
- Have you seen Starship in this workshop? Or at the base?
- No, Starship is going to Starbase, I haven't seen it.
More precisely, assembled - no, I have not seen it.
He would not fit anywhere, he is absolutely huge in size.
But I saw part of the Starship head fairing in the assembly shop.
- During the conversation with you, Elon recalled his visit to Russia 20 years ago? In one of his interviews, he - perhaps half-jokingly - said that he had tried several times to buy ballistic missiles from Russia in order to fly into space.
- Yes, we discussed this topic.
And it was absolutely not half-joking.
He did fly to Russia and wanted to buy a decommissioned ballistic missile.
He always talks about it very funny.
Like, imagine, a 30-year-old guy from America flew to Russia, where the Soviet Union was only recently, and says: listen, sell me a rocket.
Well, you can take off nuclear weapons, but give me the missile, please.
He answered: what are you, boy, crazy?
And on this the whole story, in fact, ended.
He flew like this once, the second.
And these refusals, in a sense, became the impetus for him to start developing his own engines and his own launch vehicles.
Therefore, to some extent, the officials, who then completely refused to cooperate with him, helped the development of his space program.
- You mentioned that Elon Musk is somewhat similar to Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. What do they have in common?
- This is a huge sense of purpose, immersion in work, workaholism.
And, by the way, the attitude towards design.
At SpaceX, for example, I noticed that even the details of their ships are located inside the building as design elements.
And what do Ilona Mask and Sergei Pavlovich Korolev have in common - they both believe that only a beautiful product can fly into space.
And only a beautiful design item has the right to be on a spaceship.
- Sergei Pavlovich, in the later part of his career, also worked on a flight to Mars. If he was alive, what project do you think he and Elon Musk could work on together? Over the colonization of Mars?
- I think yes.
At a certain stage in the development of astronautics, hopes for the possibility of colonization were pinned on Venus.
But then it became clear - even after several descent vehicles were dispatched - that there was no chance of that, there was an extremely aggressive atmosphere.
But on Mars, since it is capable of retaining water in some form, colonization is indeed possible.
I think that Elon Musk and Sergei Pavlovich would have a point of convergence just in the field of flights to Mars.
- How is your life now connected with space and space technologies? What role does space play in your life. And in your son's life?
- Space, of course, plays a very important role in our life.
Many astronauts come and trust us with their health.
I operated on Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov.
This is not a state secret, he himself told about it, with his characteristic fantastic humor.
And other astronauts come to us, and we try to help.
But, as for life outside the clinic, then, naturally, to some extent, I consider it my duty to promote the memory of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.
Because he really is one of those people who really, really deserves it.
- After your visit to SpaceX, Dmitry Rogozin invited Elon Musk to Moscow for a cup of tea, and a short conversation took place between them on social networks. If Musk does fly to Moscow, do you think you will meet with him again?
- To be honest, I just saw a couple of words on this topic, not even phrases, but words on Twitter.
Whether this can be called communication, I do not know.
But if positive news expands cooperation in the world, then I am personally very happy.
For the full interview, see the RTD website.