SpaceX Prioritizes Lunar 'Self-Growing City' Over Mars Project, Musk Says
6 148"Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX has shifted its focus to building a 'self-growing city' on the moon," reports Reuters, "which could be achieved in less than 10 years." SpaceX still intends to start on Musk's long-held ambition of a city on Mars within five to seven years, he wrote on his X social media platform, "but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster."
Musk's comments echo a Wall Street Journal report on Friday, stating that SpaceX has told investors it would prioritize going to the moon and attempt a trip to Mars at a later time, targeting March 2027 for an uncrewed lunar landing. As recently as last year, Musk said that he aimed to send an uncrewed mission to Mars by the end of 2026.
6 comments
Nazi lunar base. (Score: 5, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward ( None ) on Monday February 09, 2026 @03:38AM (#65977116)
Thankfully one already exists on the far side of the moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Make that 50 years or longer (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Dishevel ( 1105119 ) on Monday February 09, 2026 @10:31AM (#65977646)
Snake oil? Paypal set a standard. (Sucks now) Tesla changed how people thought about electric cars, SpaceX revolutionized space travel and reduced costs an incredible amount. Starlink is pumping internet connectivity to the entire world at affordable rates. His, "Snake Oil" has done more good for the world than your entire family tree ever will.
Re: Make that 50 years or longer (Score: 5, Insightful)
by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Monday February 09, 2026 @10:44AM (#65977670)
I don't see you being a billionaire.. And most of his projects are actually moneymaking. Cybertruck isn't a fail, but it aldo isn't a grand success. That's the problem with Musk haters, they keep saying the same crap over and over, not even looking into if what they say is actually true. Musk is a dreamer, he has visions and wants to pursue those dreams, and yeah, he is a lot of times too optimistic, but in the end his drive gets the companies there. And he might not officially be an engineer (as he hasn't the papers), he actually is involved in many of the engineering tasks and ideas, he's not just a salesman.
Re:Make that 50 years or longer (Score: 5, Informative)
by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday February 09, 2026 @04:19AM (#65977172)
Musk has been making bad predictions for decades now. Boots on Mars in 10 years, about 15 years ago now. Full self driving in 6 months, a decade ago. Starship was supposed to be flying regular missions by now, the new Roadster should have been delivered years ago (with booster rockets, according to Elon).
Idiocrat (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Monday February 09, 2026 @03:54AM (#65977142)
It wouldn't work for "securing the future of civilization," even if they were able to overcome the mountain of difficult and expensive engineering challenges.
Any sort of calamity that put human life on Earth in peril would mean the lunar colony would stop receiving support from Earth and would die off long before the last holdouts Earthside.
There's an incredibly long list of things they'd need shipped up to survive, none of which are needed on Earth. Because on Earth you can survive by primitive means if necessary.
Re:Idiocrat (Score: 5, Informative)
by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday February 09, 2026 @11:11AM (#65977740)
Iron, oxygen and water are not hard things to acquire at the moon's poles. It's like you were trying to make a list of the things that are easiest to acquire on the moon.
Your biggest problems will be the extreme paucity of both nitrogen and carbon, things essential en masse for all life. Beyond that, chlorine and fluorine are also very rare, zinc is about 2 orders of magnitude less common than on Earth (also lead, bismuth, thallium and cadmium), etc. Also, beyond general abundances, is the lack of many of the sort of enrichment processes that create rich mining deposits on Earth. At best you'll get some of the volcanic enrichment processes (incompatible elements in pegmatites), but not much beyond that, and even then you're going to deal with lots of overburden. And hard rock mining and processing on the moon will be far more difficult than on Earth.
But iron, water, and oxygen are basically the easiest things you could get on the moon. Respectively, half a percent of regolith is (magnetic) iron dust; water, while rare globally, is seemingly abundant in polar craters; and oxygen can not only be made from water, but over 40% of the mass of lunar regolith itself is oxygen, which can be freed via a variety of (albeit energy-intensive) processes.
(Even "getting the minerals" isn't really the big challenge anyway in gaining full independence from Earth. It's the mind-bogglingly immense length of production chains needed to fully sustain even a minimized-set of required technologies ("consumables", both feedstocks and maintenance), and all of the transport along the way. You can whittle down how much you need to import per-capita by orders of magnitude, but getting rid of all of it is a big ask)