♪♪ this week, elon musk wants to be known as tech know king. reaction from eric burger who has written a book about early days at spacex, 3d printing and it brings new opportunities for gadget makers. that's this week on press here. good morning, everyone. i have a printer here in my home office. my first guest has a home office in his printer. oakland based mighty homes

prints out buildings using a giant 3d printer t. process is sped up on video here. it usually takes 24 hours. by the time they're done and other materials are added like floors and lights, you get something a lot looks like this. they can be home offices or yoga studios or a small home for the mother-in-law, but they're called accessory dwelling unit. sam ruben joins us know. what problem does this solve? wood and nails have put up houses for a good couple centuries right now. what problem are you solving? >> yeah, what we're doing is we're addressing the fact that we don't have enough labor to build all the housing we need. here in california, we need 2 1/2 million new units just to be on par with the rest of the country in terms of per capita housing. probably about 3 1/2 million to close the housing affordability gap. with covid, we're seeing high

rent, ownership costs, and it's not just an affordable housing issues. we're looking also at the missing middle. your firefighters, teachers, people who serve our communities, but more and more can't afford to live in our communities. >> is that where the bottleneck is? california's biggest problem is we're not building houses fast enough. the way i hear it, it's sort of a government wanting to slow down sprawl or the amount of homes being built. >> it's obviously -- it's a very complicated issue. when you talk about governments, you have to talk about the state government which is pushing to create more and more housing and removing local control in a lot of cases. that's one of the big points of contention, you have the local communities who want to maintain the control around what their housing looks like while also needing to meet their regional housing needs allocations which are particularly high for this most recent round. >> we started by talking about these adus. but you recently announced that you're going to build an entire

community of 3d printed houses. >> yeah. we're really excited. the world's first zero-net energy 3d printed community. and it takes advantage of benefits at what we're doing at our company. we're producing homes for 40% less. we're able to do it with practically zero waste, eliminating the three to five pounds per square foot that goes to landfill in a traditional build. we're excited about not only increasing the productivity, but also doing so in a way that is sustainable. because, obviously, construction is about 11% of all emissions globally, building energy use is another 20%. as we solve the housing crisis and get the units out here, we're doing so in a way that doesn't further exacerbate the impacts on climate. >> is it plastic material? how do you know -- we were

talking about wood but also brick or stone. we've established that, you know, houses made of those materials can last hundreds upon hundreds of years. you wouldn't have data on how long the stuff you're using lasts because it's new. >> what we've developed is effectively a synthetic stone and it doesn't have the same issues you have with more traditional synthetic stone materials. we do accelerated aging tests. we do a lot of work with one of the world's oldest and most respected third party certifying agencies. we're testing our material extensively to demonstrate full compliance with the building code. we've been doing accelerated tests showing material performs well out past 70 year's. we're excited about its durability long term. that's one of the things we're continuing to do while we've units in the field. we're continuing to check in with our customers there. all the testing we've done indicates it will perform quite well over time. >> as far as the edus go, the

ones that are already in place, i was looking at the prices, these are not necessarily inexpensive. i think i saw when it was 300 square feet and it was more than $150,000. and that's, by the way, you already own the property. that doesn't include the property. there are a lot of homes in america that cost about $150,000. >> so one of the things we have to realize is things in california have high cost in construction. and you also have to realize is that price that you're talking about, 150-plus for a 350 square foot studio, that isn't all in person. that doesn't just including the unit, and the unit comes fully finished. you have a fully finished kitchen and bathroom, cook top, microwave. it's move-in ready. >> communities have come around on this adu, this mother-in-law unit idea. a lot of cities have resisted it for a long time and realized,

no, this is just something that needs to be done. >> a lot of cities still would like to resist it. that's one of the changes that's been happening at the state level since 2017 is that the state of california has passed a series of bills that have basically required communities to allow adus, as long as they meet minimum standards. >> 150 k for an adu, i'm going to guess you're going to see an acceleration in demand even after people stay at home. not necessarily everyone is going to spend $150,000 on a home office. >> these are not targeted to be home offices. we're looking at -- the real goal is to be rentals and create more housing stock. a lot of them provide an income opportunity. that helps offset it. and then also with the really low mortgage rates right now, the cost of getting that funding for that isn't as bad as it would normally but. but we're seeing people who are using them for multigenerational

living as well as just -- they need more space. a variety of use cases there. >> sam ruben is the chief sustainability officer at mighty buildings. thanks for being with us this morning. we'll be right back. california, did you know our homes share power? but when we try to stay cool in a heat wave our supply is pushed to the limit. but you have the power to keep us up and running! “i do?” yup, we all do! with flex alerts. they notify us when to shift our energy use if our power supply is stretched. so from pre-cooling our homes, to using less energy from 4-9pm, together, let's flex our power to save our power. sign up for flex alerts today.

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what to do with elon musk, a few days ago, he notified u.s. government regulators that he wants to be referred to as the techno king of tesla. for real. tesla filed official title changes with the securities and exchange commission. "the washington post" uncovered data shows workers contracted covid even after he ordered them back to work after local health officials who warned it would be dangerous for them to return to work. meantime, musk's company continues to launch small satellites into orbit while perfecting its new star ship spacecraft that may someday take humans to mars. eric berger got to know musk and his company as part of his book now on bookstore shelves. eric is a reporter, he joins us from houston. i was in carmel yesterday, saw

your book on the shelf. i was very excited that i was going to have you on the show. i want to mostly talk about rockets, of course, what do you make of this techno king thing? he wants to be known as techno king. >> musk is nothing if not a character, i think. he was having a bit of a lark. since he filed paperwork, he's serious. he wants to get credit for being chief engineer of the company. his title is not the founder of spacex, chief engineer of spacex. >> which is interesting because the guy did not study rocket science in college. he came into rockets not knowing a lot of rocket science. >> you're right. he had a physics degree among his other undergraduate degrees and decided that he would read a lot of textbooks and everything he could basically find, and over the years, he has plenty of knowledge in working through

lots of issues. >> one of the most astounding things, you would think i was most impressed by the launch of falcon heavy or the private astronauts to the iss, was the first time he sent a dragon cargo capsule up to the iss. he teaches himself about rocket business and sends a capsule to the space station. >> no private company had built a spacecraft that came back from space before and did it with a brand-new rocket, not only proving out the falcon 9 but putting dragon on it. that was a historic milestone in their evolution. >> your book title includes the phrase the desperate early days. explain to me why. >> well, there's no two reasons. they faced, you know, both a cash crunch and a time crunch as they were going along and the company was founded in 2002 and they had failed launches.

they were building a simple rocket called the falcon one to get to orbit. and they failed in 2006. and, again, 2007. and then again in 2008. this was the summer of 2008. they had the hardware for just one more rocket left. they were out of the funding. this was during the great recession of 2008 was starting to deepen and they couldn't raise private capital. it was a couple dozen engineers on a tropical island piecing together this last rocket. if they hadn't made it, of course, the company wouldn't exist today. >> it's important to remember back as we look at all the things that they're successful with, with falcon heavy, the star link, even putting the car into space, that it was extremely touch and go. >> without a doubt. they could have failed multiple times. it was literally no one had done this before, built a privately built rocket like this and, you

know, they were going to launch from california, they ran into a bunch of red tape there. they had to find another launch site. they built this launch site in a few months from scratch and they went through all of these difficult failures, they were learning the process, yeah, they could have died on multiple occasions. >> i can recall getting, you know -- he would get pushback from congress as well, i can remember him testifying before congress. a lot of people thought in congress that leaving rockets to ula and boeing was the way to go. >> you can understand some of these skepticism of handing over the u.s. launch industry to the techno king. but the fact of the matter was, you know, a lot of people in congress were trying to protect the interest of boeing and lockheed and spacex was coming along and trying to disrupt that and trying to toss the apples

off the cart, if you will. and they were succeeding with the falcon 9. as they went along doing these things, like trying to reuse rockets, congress was not supportive by and large. >> well, one of the reasons that they were able to succeed, spacex was, was because of the commercial -- was the commercial orbital ship to which president trump took a lot of credit during that launch of the first private astronauts. but, in fact, it was long before president trump. >> yeah, there's no question spacex got a lot of help from nasa along the way. they got their first grant back in 2006. and then in 2008 they got a commercial resupply services. that was an operational contract to deliver cargo to the space station. you can look back and that started under the bush administration. the obama administration was supportive of commercial space and they spurred the development of the program you referenced

which launched humans and that mission that took place last year happened under president trump's watch. it's interesting, you've seen over the years the white house typically whether it's republican or democrat, has been pretty supportive of commercial space and spacex in particular, congress, much less so. nasa has cautioned built into its dna. it's accomplished amazing things and recently with mars. but it's often seen as plotting and slow and spacex is sort of cutting-edge and scrappy. then again, spacex hasn't killed anybody yet. it takes one dead astronaut for nasa to say, hold on, we need to stop and make sure we know what we're doing. and i'm not for a second that saying that spacex engineers aren't incredible professional, but losing an astronaut is a way of sobering up an organization. >> that's a risk going forward. they're going to launch probably five human missions within the

next 12 months. and that is taking on a lot of risk. nasa and spacex have had an interesting relationship. nasa's culture is risk-averse, plodding, and spacex is, going as fast as they can, moving forward and taking more risks. and so the two cultures i think there's been some clash, but i think it's been good because spacex has helped nasa move along and nasa has helped upstart spacex, find weaknesses in their systems and address those before you get to human flights. >> i want to circle back to what we started with and that is this techno king thing. there's been concern expressed by some in congress, musk would smoke pot in a video podcast. he's made strange allegations on twitter and claims. at the same time, he has made huge strides forward with electric cars and with private space travel. can you reconcile those two

narratives for me, the same person? >> you know, i think musk is on one hand this sort of titan of business who has founded two great companies. on the other hand, he's kind of this, you know, awkward nerd who is finding himself in this world of congressional landscape, competing with other industries and i think he uses twitter at times to blow off steam and to have fun and release some of the tension that involves running two large companies and being one of the richest people in the world and sort of all this celebrity. he's a complicated person, right? you got to take the good with the bad. if you're going to change the world, you're going to have to break some eggs along the way. >> eric berger, we appreciate you being with us this morning. press here will be right back. day, we're all getting a little bit better. back. back.

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then one morning the giant heard some lovely music. through a little hole in the wall, the children had crept in. and the giant's heart melted... and they found the giant...all covered with blossoms. ♪♪ welcome back to "press: here," i was counting the number of things in my home that use wi-fi, not just the computers and the phones and the tablets, but the xbox and the security cameras, the thing that run it is solar panels which i don't know quite what that does. and the thermostat. some people have wi-fi-enabled refrigerators and toasters. all of these gadgets and inventions benefit from the fact

that wi-fi is largely unregulated. anyone can invent a thing and that thing can access the internet. which brings us to 5g. you know it as a superfast cell phone service. you may already have a 5g phone. part of the 5g spectrum is going to get the wi-fi treatment. it too will be open to inventors and gadget makers to do whatever. we have founder of a 5g chip company edge q. thanks for joining us. i think most consumers are fairly unimpressed or confused by 5g because i can stream a netflix movie to my phone now. i don't really need it to stream any faster. but it could be the thing that attach to 5g that could be kind of amazing, right? >> yeah. scott, nice to be here. thank you for having me. yeah. so 5g is a lot more than just

connecting cell phones. 4g does a pretty good job of it, actually. so 5g, you know, the evolutionary part of it is to connect phones, but then the revolutionary part of 5g is to connect things, like you said, connecting things at the home, but more interestingly, connecting things in, like, a factory or a campus environment, a workplace, where you may have lots and lots of equipment, think of cameras, think of robots that are in a logistics factory or building cars. these things that -- robot arms that do welding and things like that. so those things being connected, you know, and they have some interesting characteristics that only 5g can solve. and that's where the interesting part of 5g is. and that world is just starting to take off with automation that's going on. and so i think that you'll find

in the next five, six years, there's going to be a massive amount of automation that's going to come to a lot of these centuries -- industries. 5g is really much more about that than just connecting cell phones. >> when we look behind the scenes of a factory or a television station or whatnot, there are huge bundles of wires and cable running through the walls and the ceilings and et cetera. so the factories of the future, you have to power the robot or the whatnot, the assembly line with electricity, but all of those wires and cables could someday be replaced by wireless signals ping-ponging back and forth. >> absolutely. much like your laptops. if you think back, you used to have, you know, docking station and wires coming into the docking station. nowadays, the batteries are fist indicated. they go on for a day. and there's no wire, cables, nothing. very similar to that, robots

with a battery that would last for a while and that would take care of the power portion. when it comes to communications, there's no need to have these tethered cables anymore and 5g can really take care of that. >> and the inventor who is going to invent the next who knows what, does not need permission from verizon and at&t, right? >> yes. 5g has many aspects to it, one of them is the unlicensed aspect, it's also called nru, a technical word. basically unlicensed portion of 5g where it would operate on the frequency of wi-fi, especially in which case you don't have to go buy spectrum from the government. so that's -- that is an aspect of 5g that is exciting and interesting. some people think that will be the next big thing. as you said, it opens up -- for

a lot of people to innovate without actually purchasing this expensive spectrum. >> and i think that's what we saw in wi-fi, right? the obvious use of wi-fi which we now take for granted is that, oh, look, i can walk around the house with my laptop. i'm not connected to the ethernet cable. all of a sudden, the nests of this world and the -- arlo and whatnot said, hold on, if we can send a wireless signal that fast, we can do something amazing that has nothing to do with a computer. >> every time you make it easier for people to use, and that's when the price curves are brought down, so price points are brought down. that happens with wi-fi. wi-fi is everything. everything is connected to wi-fi. i expect to see 5g do the same thing. right now, still considered an expensive technology. and as this thing gets into the

unlicensed arena and if into the private factories, things like that, we will see the prices go down for it, in which case, anybody can afford it, and lots of interesting hobbyists will take place and i think interesting gadgets will come out of that too. >> so let's circle back to what 5g brings as far as these devices go. because as a factory manager, i would say, whoa, wi-fi seems to work just fine. i'll use wi-fi. in the case of a robot, i don't necessarily need high speed data. am i saving power? am i getting better range? what is 5g giving me? >> it's a little bit of everything. one thing to think about when it comes to 5g, it's very reliable, reliable in terms of communications. if i -- i'm talking on the phone most likely that call will be just fine as long as i have a signal for it.

wi-fi, the signal seems to be good but it never goes through. it's a more reliable technology but there's another aspect to 5g that is very unique to 5g that wasn't true in 4g. it is designed for these applications and the way it was done is that there's an aspect of security and there's an aspect of latency. particularly latency and reliability are very, very important in factories. for example, think of a drone or a robot, it has to make local decisions very fast, but also it has a controller or something that it has to talk to. so the communication has to be fast. it has to be within a millisecond. and those kinds of decisions have to be made and it has to be made reliably. you can't have noise or if there's noise you can't have, like, lost packets, things like that. what 5g allows is this superlow latency and high reliable communications and that really is one of the cornerstones of

5g. >> finally, let's talk about chips in general. you make chips. you're silicon valley based. i assume your fabric is overseas? >> that's correct. we're based out of california right here and we just like everyone else, we are overseas -- >> we're seeing these shortages in chips, speaking generally about the industry and also specifically with you, first of all, are you seeing a shortage in chips? are you able to get chips when you need them? >> yeah. we're in the early stage of the company. the amount of chips we need are not massive. so we're not seeing the same level of shortage. but in general, there's a supply chain constraint that have kind of taken place and president biden was talking about that a few weeks ago. but i believe this will get settled within 2021 itself and the world will go back to normal

supply chain again. >> let's hope the world goes back to normal in all kinds -- >> in many ways. >> we have the ceo and founder of edge q. thank you for being with us this morning. "press: here" will be back. boost and cricket charge you more for unlimited 5g. metro doesn't. introducing the big 5g upgrade. just twenty-five bucks a month gets you unlimited 5g and a free 5g smartphone. that's half the price... ...for one line of unlimited 5g smartphone data ...plus a free samsung galaxy 5g when you switch and trade-in.

all with the power of the t-mobile 5g network. rule your day with 5g. only at metro by t-mobile. ♪♪ that's our show for this week. as we leave you, a reminder we have a sister podcast called sand hill road. you can find that wherever you get your podcasts. thanks to my guests and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. [ sfx: bzzz bzzz bzzz ] [ sfx: ping ping beep beep bloop bloop ] [ sfx: honk ] [ sfx: pop pop pop pop ] [ sfx: pop ping bloop pop ping bloop ] the day can wait.

enter the golden state with real california dairy. damian trujillo: hello and welcome to "comunidad del valle." i am damian trujillo, and today, more opportunities that benefit children on your "comunidad del valle." ♪♪♪ alex padilla: congratulations, damian, on 25 years of hosting "comunidad del valle." not bad for a kid from greenfield with big dreams. your show has helped inform and inspire the greater bay area community by sharing the many vibrant stories of latino leaders, advocates, and families. i'm proud to be a regular guest, due for my next appearance. congratulations again and i wish you many more years of success.