Musk Says SpaceX to Build Self-Growing City on Moon Before Mars

SpaceX has announced a strategic shift in its long-term space exploration roadmap, placing priority on building a self-sustaining, self-growing city on the Moon before pursuing its ambitious plans for Mars. Elon Musk stated that developing a lunar city could be achieved in under a decade, making it a more immediate and practical milestone in humanity’s expansion into space.

Key Highlights

• SpaceX shifts focus to building a self-growing Moon city, accelerating sustainable lunar human settlement efforts.
• Frequent lunar launch windows make Moon colonization more achievable than immediate Mars missions, says Musk.

According to Musk, the Moon offers significant logistical advantages. Launch windows to the Moon are available every few days, compared to Mars, which aligns for travel only once every 26 months. This frequent accessibility allows faster technological iteration, testing, and construction cycles, accelerating progress toward a permanent human settlement.

While Mars remains a core objective for SpaceX, the company now sees the Moon as a critical stepping stone for securing humanity’s long-term survival. Musk noted that work on a Martian city could begin within the next five to seven years, but current efforts will concentrate on establishing sustainable lunar infrastructure.

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The proposed Moon city is envisioned as a self-growing ecosystem capable of supporting long-term human habitation, including life-support systems, energy generation, construction technologies, and closed-loop resource utilization. These advancements are expected to lay the groundwork for future deep-space missions.

This shift underscores SpaceX’s evolving strategy — prioritizing achievable near-term milestones while continuing to pursue its broader vision of making humanity a multi-planetary species.