Astra Nova: The Elon Musk School Now Taking New Students

ASTRA NOVA is an experimental non-profit online school for kind, independent, and daring kids.

Born at SpaceX and small by design— available to students ages 10-14 around the world.

The first article written about Ad Astra declared that it was "the most exclusive school in the world." We had been operating for less than two months with nine students and two full-time teachers. A few years later, The Washington Post said that we "created a secretive ‘laboratory school’ for brilliant kids who love flamethrowers."

The school was exclusive because it was small. It was secretive because it wasn't properly zoned. There were some bright kids at Ad Astra, but kindness and eagerness to learn (and parents that worked at SpaceX) were the only criteria for admission. We had a chemistry lab but not flamethrowers.

The location at a rocket factory and our association with Elon Musk made Ad Astra one-of-a-kind. But beyond the hype and hyperbole, Ad Astra was special because we had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to design a school from first principles. We did not have limitations of any mandated structure or curriculum. Our only directive from Elon was to "make it great."  And from the terror and opportunity of that challenge, Astra Nova was born.

If you go through a school-design thought experiment, it's almost impossible not to end up with something that echoes a traditional school. You can eschew traditional subjects, but one way or another, you end up with some form of math, reading, writing, and science. And if like me, you have the opportunity to hire brilliant colleagues who are experts in their fields, you do so without hesitation. But it's quite easy to fool yourself into believing that you are creating an innovative school that can scale to the world when you've only leveraged your advantages in a limited setting.

Providing a superlative experience and rich learning community for a few dozen families is not trivial, but it falls woefully short of our mission. True success, in my mind, is the extent that we design better learning experiences for students that are not our own. We do this directly by scaling ideas like Conundrums and Synthesis, and we do this indirectly by giving schools around the world some cover to try bold experiments. If Astra Nova does it, perhaps there is a principal or superintendent or politician that will empower educators to design more schools that children love.

At Astra Nova, we make progress by challenging ourselves to be maniacally creative; we design each year anew. And we focus our energy on what really matters to the development of our students: their disposition towards learning and complexity, their ability to work effectively in teams, and their capacity to make ethical decisions. Every class and experience starts with these principles.

So I humbly welcome you to Astra Nova School— a nine-year experiment that has been the challenge and joy of my life. We are a small team of dedicated educators and entrepreneurs who work with around 185 students across our programs. Ad Astra was the school at SpaceX that served 50 students; Astra Nova is the online school that aims to reach millions by sharing the insights from our work. 

Elon Musk's Astra Nova conundrums is teaching students how to think ethically to solve problems in a creative way.

Elon Musk is as close to a celebrity as the tech world has really ever seen. In addition to starting companies like PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, and more, the reported richest man in the world has also been known to mix it up on Twitter (including trying to buy the social media platform), hosted Saturday Night Live, and worked his way into discussions on all manner of fronts. Where he’s not often discussed is in the world of education, though that could be changing. Because Elon Musk has helped start a new school that appears to be in growth mode. It started as Ad Astra but is now known as Astra Nova.

The school began as a small initiative but has grown to now accept applicants from really all over the globe. Let’s take a look at what we know about Astra Nova, how it began, where Elon Musk is involved, and the way it approaches education.

Astra Nova Was Ad Astra

Ad Astra was the first iteration of the school partly founded by Elon Musk. It was thought to be an exclusive school because when it first started it ran out of SpaceX headquarters. As Josh Dahn, the head of the school, says, the initial intent of Ad Astra’s philosophy was to put students at the forefront with first principles. It wasn’t so much exclusive as not that accessible seeing as how the students were children of SpaceX employees. And Dahn mentions that the secretive nature of it as an actual school had more to do with zoning than anything else.

At the core of the original educational practices within Ad Astra, which have carried over to Astra Nova was that students would work in teams to solve problems and wouldn’t necessarily follow traditional schooling methods. This would include experiments, ethical conundrums (which we’ll get to), team building, as well as complex and simple problem-solving. When it first started, the school was mostly children of SpaceX employees, though by 2018 had expanded to about 40 students with some coming from the greater Los Angeles area.

In 2020, Ad Astra became Astra Nova and though it is officially located in Los Angeles, there has been an expansion into online schooling that is making it more accessible to children and students everywhere.

The Astra Nova Education And Conundrums

As we said, Astra Nova doesn’t adhere to a traditional schooling process and, in many ways, is the exact opposite of what you would find in a brick-and-mortar public school. The curriculum is centered around what they call conundrums because of how critical thinking and problem-solving are core elements of effective learning. 

In connection with the Astra Nova School, the conundrums video series was designed through partnerships with Artrake and ClassDojo. They are easily found for free on YouTube, and present plenty of lessons for independent students or teachers who wish to incorporate them into classrooms. Within each video, an issue is presented, but instead of laying out a simple task like many word problems, ethical concerns also come into play. Students are supposed to examine each situation and come to their own conclusion without judgment or the belief that one answer is better than another.  

Although these Astra Nova conundrums each present different scenarios with multiple solutions, they are based on real-world issues from a simplistic viewpoint. From determining who should get paid more when discovering treasure: The Researcher, The Translator, or The Treasure Hunter, to the more recent Closing Conundrum: Which addresses the issue of an aged-school being restored, demolished, or repurposed. Instead of offering word problems with specific answers, these conundrums encourage students to accept that not every answer is going to be the “correct” one and that sometimes all answers have the potential to be a solution — especially in social settings.

This new approach to teaching ethics is considered eccentric to some, but others are intrigued by the method. While most school curriculum delivers single answers, which are beneficial in specific fields, many students are lacking in a broader understanding of different viewpoints. Despite numerous attempts to make the education system more “inclusive” and “equitable,” modern ethics approaches have led to further division because they focus on identity politics, rather than different thought processes. By introducing puzzles that present various ethical approaches, the Astra Nova conundrums afford students the opportunity to stop obsessing over heritage and looks, in an effort to seek out the fairest answers.

While still not widely adopted as a classroom standard, these videos have been viewed millions of times and introduced to students around the world. Because the Astra Nova conundrums play like fun little cartoons it may be difficult to measure how exactly they have already affected students, and if progress rates have been tied to these lessons. Regardless, parents and teachers are constantly seeking more tools to engage children in their learning process. 

The videos themselves were unveiled as early as 2018 but uploaded to the school’s YouTube page just last year. Each Astra Nova conundrum has multiple comments and appeals to viewers of various ages. While these little ethics problems may have been developed for children, it seems as if they also appeal to adults and may be teaching older generations a few lessons as well. As more videos are released and the school itself expands, the impact of the unorthodox lessons holds the potential to veer education in a new direction.  

Who Can Go To Astra Nova?

Though Ad Astra and Astra Nova started with mostly just Elon Musk’s kids and some other SpaceX brood as attendees, there are now options for others to come on board. Astra Nova is currently taking applications for the 2022-23 school year with the age ranges between 10 and 14 years old. This would be around 5th to 8th grade. 

The Astra Nova application process has a few different steps but is a rolling admissions schedule. The next one ends in January 2023. To start, prospective applicants are asked to respond to one of the conundrums listed on the website. The Lake conundrum above isn’t one of them. Applicants must respond to the “Arctic Conundrum”, “Art Conundrum” or the “Moonshot Conundrum”. The response should be done in video form and it’s recommended each be about one to three minutes long.

There is also a parent letter needed for Astra Nova with more information about the child and the expectations for education. It seems, that in many ways, Astra Nova is doing away with a lot of formality here, saying that the parent letter should be more like a short email than anything else and to not worry about grammar or spelling.

Astra Nova is a bit different from its predecessor. The school moved operations fully online this past academic year. There are about 50 full-time students and 125 who attend part time, occasionally from around the world. About half are homeschooled; others attend regular public or private schools when they’re not in class at Astra Nova. The admissions process looks for students for whom Astra Nova “would be substantially more enlivening than their current school or educational situation,” Dahn says. The Astra Nova approach isn’t for everyone, and indeed, it’s not meant to be.

How Much Does This Elon Musk School Cost?

Though Elon Musk is a billionaire many times over, Astra Nova still costs money to attend. And it isn’t cheap. The current running rate for a year’s tuition to the school is $32,500. While that doesn’t push up against the most elite private schools and academies, it’s of course much more than the “free” public school in town. That being said, the instruction here is almost certainly as good if not better than just about any other school out there. And in terms of innovative practices, it would likely be tough to find a school doing it better. 

And Astra Nova has said that there are financial aid options as well which are offered during the application process. And even the $55 application fee is waived for families earning less than $75,000 per year. So the initial price tag shouldn’t necessarily discourage families right off the bat.