Through X, Elon Musk reported that SpaceXhis aerospace manufacturing company, accelerated his project to form a city in the surface lunar.
The billionaire businessman explained that this involved a postponement of their plans to Marte, where, likewise, he plans to build a habitable place.
The reasons behind this decision have to do with technical issues, but also competition with another industry magnate.
Civilization on the Moon!: Elon Musk’s ambitious project
On Sunday night February 8, When society—especially American society—was focused on the Super Bowl, Elon Musk used X to make a revolutionary announcement.
«For those who don’t know, SpaceX has already shifted its focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, since we could potentially achieve this in less than 10 years, while on Mars it would take more than 20 years,» he wrote.
In the post, which surprised everyone, he added that «SpaceX’s mission remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars»and once again highlighted why he postponed his project on Mars.
«It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (a six-month journey), while we can travel to the Moon every 10 days (a two-day journey). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a lunar city than a Martian city.»
Despite this, the owner of SpaceX maintained that his company «will also strive to build a city on Mars«, but that «it will begin to do so in about 5 to 7 years», since «the main priority is to ensure the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.»
In fact, he explained that «the Moon will become the launching pad for the colonization of Mars.»
Later, Musk shared a video from a user, whose caption said «Moon 2024», and a kind of city is seen, with robots, humans and Tesla cars circulating. «Civilization on the Moon!»Elon wrote.
Although the businessman did not give details of how he will carry out his plan, he did retweet a post from another user, which explained that the idea is convert a Starship, that is, one of SpaceX’s spacecraft, into a lunar base.
This type of spacecraft has the greatest cargo capacity in the world, and is also completely reusable.
Furthermore, as Musk announced, the robots Tesla Optimus They could do most of the construction work, with minimal human intervention.
Likewise, the billionaire clarified that knowing the Moon will be within everyone’s reach. «SpaceX will build a system that will allow anyone to travel to the Moon,» he said in X.
Beyond technical reasons: why Musk changed his plans
Musk made the announcement less than a year before the deadline he gave himself to launch his first fleet of five spacecraft to Mars.
At that time, Elon was convinced of his plans for the Martian surface and refused to project on the Moon. «No, we’ll go straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.»”, he replied in early 2025 to a space analyst who asked him if he was not thinking about establishing his company first on the natural satellite.
Weeks later, Donald Trump assumed Musk’s dream during the inaugural speech of his second term, for which the American president promised to «send astronauts to plant the stars and stripes [en referencia a la bandera de EE UU] on the planet Mars.”
However, to date, SpaceX has not carried out any tests to achieve its goal, and this is why Elon seems to have understood that will not be able to fulfill it by the next opening of the window for visits to Marswhich will be at the end of this year.
In addition to this reason, it is no coincidence that the tycoon’s announcement was made just a few days after Jeff Bezoswho with Blue Origin competes in the industry, will report the suspension of his company’s trips to space, and the reallocation of its resources to the development of infrastructure for the conquest of the Moon.
Blue Origin was hired by NASA to participate in its Artemis projectwho plans to return to the Moon. Specifically, Bezos’ company is in charge of developing the landing system that would transport the astronauts to the satellite, in the mission Artemis V.
For Artemis 3, which aims to be the plan by which humans set foot on the lunar surface again, The US agency already hired SpaceX years agoentrusting him with the same thing as Blue.
However, the work of Musk’s company is so delayed that NASA has begun to consider the idea of reopen Artemis 3 contract to other suppliers, including, of course, Bezos’ company.
