Elon Musk wants to build a city on the moon to save civilisation

While most Americans were transfixed by this year’s Super Bowl proceedings on Sunday night, Elon Musk took to X to proclaim that SpaceX would focus on building out a base on the moon before sending humans to Mars.

And Musk was careful to couch his announcement in a way that didn’t make it sound like a surprise.

“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,” Musk wrote in his post.

On the face of it, Musk’s comment appeared to upend SpaceX’s original mission: to create a self-sustaining human settlement on the Red Planet. It also appears to delay an uncrewed mission to Mars that Musk said the company would conduct this year with SpaceX’s new gargantuan Starship rocket, designed to carry cargo and eventually people to deep space.

But the truth is that there was virtually no way that SpaceX would get to Mars this year, certainly with Starship. While Musk made the claim just a year ago, it was always an extremely unrealistic deadline — even for a man who’s built his reputation and considerable wealth around setting moonshot expectations.

Some of the reasoning is purely planetary. As Musk wrote in his post, Earth and Mars only align once every two years, meaning there was only a narrow window when the company could launch Starship this year to reach the Red Planet. But the giant rocket remains under development, with its path to becoming operational marred by unplanned explosions both in flight and on the ground.

Musk has been signalling since the fall that the moon would become more of a focus for the company, especially as SpaceX turns to the CEO’s latest grand vision: building out massive data centres in space to do complex computing for artificial intelligence, funded by the largest-ever initial public offering.

Musk has hinted at a future where SpaceX could launch data centre satellites from the moon’s surface, and he began talking about plans to build a lunar base — dubbed Moon Base Alpha.

Even before the data centre discussion got into full swing, the moon was already part of SpaceX’s overall agenda. Starting in 2021, the company has held a contract with NASA, now valued at as much as $US4 billion, to land astronauts on the moon’s surface with the help of Starship for the agency’s Artemis program.

Still, the Red Planet isn’t entirely off the agenda, and Musk said that SpaceX “will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years,” according to his post. “But the overriding priority is securing the future of civilisation and the Moon is faster.”

Even so, Musk’s comments are an about-face from proclamations he made back in January 2025, when he called the moon a “distraction.”

That statement came right after Donald Trump was reelected US President, and the two men began collaborating closely. Trump had even mentioned sending humans to Mars during some of his early speeches. Since then, however, Musk and the president have lived through a tumultuous relationship, including a public falling out, before reconciling again.

SpaceX rival Blue Origin has also signalled that it’s putting a greater emphasis on its lunar ambitions. The company announced recently that it would be pausing its iconic space tourism flights to space in order to focus on building out a lunar lander for NASA.

Blue Origin holds its own lander contract with the space agency worth $US3.4 billion ($4.8 billion), and the company has the opportunity to potentially beat SpaceX to the moon if it can develop its hardware more quickly.

SpaceX still has significant work to do before the company sends any humans to the either the moon or Mars. SpaceX must perfect numerous new technologies for Starship – notably the rocket’s ability to refuel while in space – before it can travel to distant worlds.

So for Musk and SpaceX, the moon may be a faster place to reach, but it’s still far away.

Bloomberg

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