Moon Now Eclipses Mars In Musk’s Ambitions
In a classic startup move, Space X is pivoting…from Mars to the moon. Elon Musk said this week that his company has refocused on “building a self-growing city on the Moon,” which he claimed could be achieved within a decade. Meanwhile, a Mars colony might be more than 20 years away, he said.
The longtime Mars colonization aspirant appears to be ditching his previous goal of sending an unmanned rocket to the red planet by 2027, a voyage that can only be launched every 26 months due to planetary alignment cycles.
Coming back to Earth
Space X’s moonshot might be more in line with Uncle Sam’s extraterrestrial ambitions:
- Musk’s company has a $2.9 billion contract with NASA to land astronauts on the moon with a version of its jumbo Starship rocket. The mission has been postponed to 2028 at the earliest because of tech challenges.
- SpaceX is in a space race with Jeff Bezos’ startup Blue Origin, which is pivoting from stunts like launching Katy Perry into space to building a competing lunar lander for NASA.
What’s up there? The moon has abundant sunshine and industrial resources, which theoretically can make it a manufacturing hub and launchpad for missions further into space. Musk recently said that he was merging SpaceX and xAI to eventually establish lunar factories that produce solar-powered orbital AI data centers.—SK
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