Elon Musk announces that SpaceX will focus on building a city on the moon as quickly as possible
Conceptual project of a hotel on the moon recently presented by the start-up GRU Space (illustrative image), PHOTO: JLPPA / Bestimage / Profimedia Images
Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX has shifted its priority to building a “self-growing city” on the moon, one that he says could be achieved in less than 10 years, Reuters reports.
In a message published on his social network “X”, the 54-year-old billionaire wrote that SpaceX, his aerospace company, still plans to start implementing its old ambition to build a city on Mars in the next 5-7 years, “but the absolute priority is to secure the future of civilization, and the Moon is faster.”
Musk's comments come after The Wall Street Journal published an article on Friday that said SpaceX told investors it would prioritize missions to the moon and attempt a trip to Mars at a later date, targeting March 2027 for an unmanned landing.
His news comes after he also claimed last year that SpaceX aims to send an unmanned mission to Mars by the end of 2026.
Musk decided to have SpaceX buy his AI company
The United States is facing intense competition from China in the race to return humans to the moon this decade. Humans have not visited the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Last week, Musk announced that SpaceX had acquired xAI, the artificial intelligence company he founded in 2023, in a deal that values the rocket and satellite company at $1 trillion (1 trillion) and the AI company at $250 billion.
Some analysts have described the deal as a way for SpaceX to bolster its plans to launch data centers in space — which Musk sees as more energy efficient than ground-based facilities — amid accelerating demand for computing power as artificial intelligence advances.
SpaceX hopes its plans to go public later this year will raise as much as $50 billion, which would be the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history.
Change of direction at Tesla, too, to reflect the billionaire's new ambitions
On Sunday, Musk redeployed SpaceX's first Super Bowl ad promoting the Starlink Wi-Fi service.
As Musk refocuses SpaceX's ambitions, he's also pushing Tesla in a new direction.
After virtually building the global electric vehicle market, Tesla now plans to spend $20 billion this year as part of an effort to pivot to self-driving and building robots.
To speed up that transition, Musk said last month that Tesla would halt production of two car models at its California plant to make way for Optimus humanoid robots.
