Elon Musk says college is ‘for fun,’ addresses Starlink criticism

Despite having a BS in economics and a BA in physics, Elon Musk doesn’t think going to college is a very good way to learn things. 

During a fireside chat at the Satellite 2020 conference Monday, Musk shared his view that “you don’t need college to learn stuff.”

A person in the audience pointed out that at SpaceX, many of the job listings required a bachelor’s degree and preferred a master’s degree. 

“Everything is available, basically for free. You can learn everything for free,” Musk said. “Colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores.”

In Dec. 2019, Musk tweeted that you don’t need a college degree to work at the company. 

And back in 2014, Musk said something similar, even going so far as saying that a high school degree isn’t required for working at Tesla, either. 

Besides the comments on college, which came near the end of the interview, Musk shared some interesting tidbits about SpaceX and its global satellite internet network Starlink.

When asked what are the biggest challenges we face for expanding human presence in space, Musk said the most important thing is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket. “It needs to be reasonably big or your payload to non-payload ratio will be whack. Without that, we are nowhere,” he said. 

Musk also described what a typical user experience for a Starlink user would be. Someone using Starlink internet, he said, can expect “very low latency, under 20 milliseconds,” and a “good experience” in which you could “watch hi-def films, play video games and do all the things they wanna do, without noticing speed.”

Musk did say that Starlink won’t work well in “high-density situations,” giving Los Angeles as an example of a place where Starlink won’t have many customers.

As far as installing the necessary hardware goes, from a user’s point of view, Musk says Starlink will be a “simple experience, with two instructions: plug in, point to sky.”

Musk also addressed the concerns about Starlink satellites polluting the sky. 

“I am confident that we will not cause any impact whatsoever in astronomical discoveries. Zero. That’s my prediction. We’ll take corrective action if it’s above zero. (…) When the satellites are first launched, they’re tumbling a little bit, so they’re gonna blink, because they haven’t stabilized, and they’re raising their orbit, so they’re lower than you’d expect, and they’re naturally gonna reflect in ways that is not the case when they’re on orbit. But now that the satellites are on orbit, I’d be impressed if someone can actually tell me where all of them are.”

Musk also said he’s not thinking at all about splitting Starlink and SpaceX splitting into two separate companies, explaining that the first order of business is making Starlink work without going bankrupt.