Musk wants to build a city on the Moon in 10 years. Why not on Mars anymore?

Photo: Mario Tama / Getty Images

A city on the Moon that can be created in less than 10 years — this is exactly the plan Elon Musk recently presented, writes the BBC.

The head of X, Tesla, and SpaceX — and also the richest person in the world — wrote in a post on X, viewed over 40 million times, that SpaceX has shifted its focus from building a city on Mars to creating a city on the Moon.

But why did Musk change his mind? And what is known about this city on the Moon?

Moon instead of Mars

As of now, there is no formal, detailed plan with blueprints for this city. Instead, there is a vision that Musk shared on his X platform.

He described the creation of a permanent human settlement that will gradually expand by utilizing lunar resources and more frequent rocket launches to the Moon.

In his post, Musk stated that this could be achieved "in less than 10 years, whereas Mars will take more than 20 years."

"SpaceX's mission remains unchanged: to extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars," Musk noted.

He explained that travel to Mars is only possible when "the planets align every 26 months (the journey takes six months)."

Instead, according to him, "we can launch rockets to the Moon every 10 days (the journey takes two days)."

"This means we can refine technologies much faster to complete building a city on the Moon than on Mars," Musk believes.

He wrote that SpaceX continues to pursue its long-standing ambition to create a city on Mars, and "will start doing so in about five to seven years," but the main priority is "to secure the future of civilization, and the Moon offers the opportunity to do that faster."

Musk's supporters quickly began creating sketches of the future city on the Moon, some using his artificial intelligence tool Grok for this purpose.

His words echo a Wall Street Journal article published this month, which stated that SpaceX informed investors of its intention to prioritize lunar missions and postpone travel to Mars. An uncrewed lunar landing is also planned for March 2027.

This shift contrasts with Musk's long-standing focus on Mars as the company's primary goal. Just last year, he stated that SpaceX planned to send an uncrewed mission to Mars by the end of 2026.

"No, we're going straight to Mars. Not the Moon," Musk said last January in response to a post on X.

He is known for setting ambitious deadlines for projects, such as electric vehicles and autonomous driving, which have repeatedly failed to be met on schedule.

How can this be done?

Dr. Songwook Lim, Senior Lecturer in Space Exploration and Instrumentation at the University of Surrey in the UK, calls SpaceX's plan "ambitious" but not "science fiction."

"The core idea – to use lunar soil to produce oxygen, water, and building materials – is based on industrial processes already applied on Earth. Theoretically, it's possible," he told the BBC.

However, according to Lim, the main question is whether these systems can reliably operate in the challenging lunar conditions: extreme temperatures, fine dust, low gravity, and limited power supply.

"They still need to be properly tested on the lunar surface," he added.

He noted that state space agencies operate "cautiously" because they depend on government funding and political cycles. SpaceX, he said, "operates differently."

"If their new rocket works as planned, they will be able to deliver equipment to the Moon more frequently and cheaply, which will accelerate progress," he said.

Dr. Ugur Guven, Director of the Center for Aerospace and Energy Research at GD Goenka University in India, believes that the Moon has a key advantage over Mars: quick supply and the possibility of prompt assistance.

"If something goes wrong, a new mission can be quickly dispatched," he said, noting that a journey from Earth usually takes "two to three days."

Despite this, Lim warns that "a truly self-sufficient city on the Moon" is a distant prospect.

"Growing food without nutrient supply from Earth and creating a closed-loop recycling system are much more challenging tasks. This will likely take decades," he believes.

Павялічыць

Photo: Mindaugas Kulbis / AP

Professor Clive Neal from the University of Notre Dame agrees.

"Until we conduct full-scale resource exploration to prove that they can be economically extracted, we don't know exactly where to build such a city," he says.

Lim considers it realistic that a small lunar base could start producing oxygen and possibly extracting water within the next 10 years.

"That would be a huge breakthrough," the researcher says.

Jeffrey Hoffman, a former NASA astronaut, believes that supplying a lunar base is already possible if SpaceX and Blue Origin — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's space company — create landers.

"But Mars is still too complex a next step," says Hoffman.

At the same time, he notes that the experience of creating lunar settlements can help with Mars in the future.

Guven agrees and adds that the Moon can become a "staging ground" for further space exploration.

Growing Competition

Musk's statements come amid competition between the US and China to return humans to the Moon this decade. The last time humans were there was in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission.

Musk also recently announced that SpaceX acquired his artificial intelligence company xAI. The deal valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion.

This could support his plan to place data centers in space to handle large volumes of artificial intelligence computations.

Musk is optimizing his businesses ahead of a potential SpaceX IPO, which could raise up to $50 billion.

Last month, he announced plans to create a million data centers in space to meet the ever-growing demand for computing power.

However, some experts are skeptical and note that in the vacuum of space, there is no air for cooling GPUs, which are critically important for AI.

Last Monday, Musk stated that NASA would account for less than 5% of SpaceX's revenue this year. SpaceX is a key contractor in the Artemis program and is responsible for landing astronauts on the Moon.

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