Elon Musk reveals plans for self-growing city on the moon within a decade

Elon Musk revealed that his rocket-launch firm SpaceX is now focused on building a “self-growing city” of humans on the moon – backing away from his plans to launch a civilization on Mars.The world’s richest man said the shift comes down to timing, claiming that human society could be established within just a decade on the moon, but it would take twice as long to pull off the same fabulous feat on the red planet.“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon,” Musk said in a Sunday post on X, which he owns.“It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time).This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city.”Musk said the Mars mission will begin in five or six years and will be undertaken alongside the moon project, but the moon will take precedence, since the “overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.”It’s a noteworthy pivot for Musk, who has appeared eager to bring human life to Mars and even mocked other space firms for focusing on the moon at all.He’s also notorious for making bold predictions that don’t quite pan out, repeatedly promising to put a person on Mars within the short term, only to keep pushing back the date.Last year, Musk said SpaceX was planning to land its first uncrewed Starship – the largest-ever space vehicle – on Mars as soon as late 2026.He’s repeated grandiose-sounding goals for Tesla’s humanoid robots and fully autonomous vehicles, too.Musk’s announcement comes a week after SpaceX agreed to acquire his artificial intelligence firm xAI – merging two of his companies into the most valuable private firm in the world with a combined valuation of $1.25 trillion, according to Bloomberg.SpaceX boasts massive rocket-launch contracts with the government and offers the Starlink sa...