9 Feb (Reuters) – Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX has shifted its focus to building a “self-sustainable city” on the Moon, which could be achieved in less than 10 years.
SpaceX still intends to begin Musk’s long-standing project of building a city on Mars within five to seven years, he wrote on his social media platform X, “but the main priority is to secure the future of civilization, and the Moon is faster.”
Musk’s comments echo a Wall Street Journal report on Friday, which said that SpaceX had told investors that it would prioritize going to the Moon and would attempt a trip to Mars later, with the goal of an unmanned lunar landing in March 2027.
Opportunity with security!
This marks a shift in Musk’s long-standing focus on Mars as SpaceX’s primary destination. Just last year, he said the company intended to launch an unmanned mission to Mars by the end of 2026.
“No, let’s go straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction,” he said in January last year, in response to a post on X.
Musk has a long history of setting ambitious timelines for projects like electric vehicles and autonomous driving technology, which have repeatedly failed to materialize on time.
The US faces intense competition from China to take humans back to the Moon this decade. Humans have not visited the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Less than a week ago, Musk announced that SpaceX had acquired the artificial intelligence company he also leads, xAI, in a deal that values the rocket and satellite company at $1 trillion and the artificial intelligence company at $250 billion.
Proponents of the measure see this as a way for SpaceX to bolster its plans for space data centers, which Musk considers more energy efficient than terrestrial facilities, as demand for computing power increases with the development of AI.
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(Reporting by Abu Sultan and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Additional writing by David Jeans; Additional reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal)
