Thread by @thesheetztweetz

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, speaking from the company's HQ at the #TIME100Talks, says she believes in the next 10 years "people will be able to travel into space who are not billionaires" and that "people will be able to travel to Mars."

@SpaceX @elonmusk Shotwell told @patbits: "I remember when I was interviewing with Elon in 2002 and he had such a ambitious goal, it sounded absolutely insane at the time. And now almost 20 years later, it doesn't actually sound that insane - at least not to the insiders, maybe to the public."

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell: "We are not giving up on Earth, when we talk about building capability to move humanity to other planet ... it's actually just giving humanity another shot in case there would be some horrible event on Earth ... a second planet to live."

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell on Starlink: "A low Earth orbiting broadband constellation has never been successful ... Elon is always talking about [how] this business is littered with dead bodies with companies that have not made it."

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell: "The second reason was, once you take people to Mars, they're going to need a capability to communicate. In fact, I think it will be even more critical to have a constellation like Starlink around Mars. And then of course you need to connect the two planets as well."

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell: "Starlink will not be great over cities – you can only put so much capability into a geographic area and cities are well served in general in the United States already by big telecom providers."

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell: Starlink has helped SpaceX "learn our own lessons" when it comes to space debris.

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell: There are "rocket bodies littering the space environment and dead satellites," so "it's quite possible that we could leverage Starship to go to the some of these dead rocket bodies, other people's rockets ... basically go pick up some of this junk in outer space."

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell: "Space tourism is an interesting business area. The market is not there yet and we have never counted on tourism as a market. I do believe that it will be a business."

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell, asked if employees have concerns about Pentagon contracts: "They have expressed some concern about building weapons systems, but we're not doing that. We're providing space transportation capabilities. Even the satellites for missile tracking, we're there to watch."

@SpaceX @elonmusk @patbits Shotwell: "Candidly, I'm team USA, and I think a strong military is the greatest way to be able to peacefully negotiate settlements when inevitably that occurs ... I'm deeply grateful for the U.S. military and for the fact that they want to work with us."