Originally published on Medium on July 19, 2017. Read the original here.

Elon Musk did a fireside chat and Q&A today at the International Space Station R&D Conference in Washington, D.C.

I was lucky to be in the room and close enough to take the photo below. It was a treat to hear Elon riffing on a wide range of topics, from space technology to A.I. and education.

Here are some of my favorite quotes (paraphrased) from the session today:

On reusing rocket parts at SpaceX: “if a pile of cash is falling down from the sky, do you try and catch it? I say you do.”

On Los Angeles: “It's traffic hell. It just depends which level of hell you're in each day.”

On space awareness: “if we want to get the public really fired up about space, we need to put a manned base on the moon.”

On the first explorers to Mars: “it's risky, dangerous, uncomfortable… and you might die. You have to still want to go.”

On childhood learning: “Don't teach a class on wrenches. Teach someone to take apart an engine and show them how to use a wrench in the process.”

On interdisciplinary careers: “at SpaceX, we're thinking semi-jokingly of putting a job description on our website for: Urban Planner (Mars).”

On brain/machine interfaces and Neuralink: “we aren't going to be able to beat A.I. So, as the saying goes: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.”