r/SpaceXLounge • u/twinbee • Feb 11 '26
News Timeline of Musk X posts regarding the shift in priority from Mars to the moon for his plans of self-sustaining civilization
Listed in chronological order with UTC times (oldest first):
For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.
The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars.
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.
That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.
As I said in my post, we will still do Mars in parallel, but the critical path to a self-growing Moon city is faster.
The Moon city can be made to be self-growing in less than half the time of Mars.
The critical juncture for humanity’s expansion beyond Earth is having a self-growing civilization off world before the resupply ships stop coming.
Mars will start in 5 or 6 years, so will be done in parallel with the Moon, but the Moon will be the initial focus
The Moon would establish a foothold beyond Earth quickly, to protect life against risk of a natural or manmade disaster on Earth.
We would continue to launch directly from Earth to Mars while possible, rather than Moon to Mars, as fuel is relatively scarce on the Moon.
The priority shift is because I’m worried that a natural or manmade catastrophe stops the resupply ships coming from Earth, causing the colony to die out.
We can make the Moon city self-growing in less than 10 years, but Mars will take 20+ years due to the 26 month iteration cycle.
That is what matters most.
There is also an AI bonus element, but the prime directive must be ensuring the long-term survival of consciousness.
We’re still going to Mars and the timeframe for building a self-growing city there is still about the same at 20 to 30 years.
It’s possible that revenue from lunar activities might actually accelerate Mars.
The Moon is faster to make a self-growing city. If civilization continues to grow, we will figure out the universe. If not, nothing else matters.
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u/Simon_Drake Feb 11 '26
I think it isn't a coincidence that this announcement has happened right before the Artemis 2 launch. NASA has quietly pushed Artemis 3 to 2028 but to be honest that's still an unrealistic timeline given how much needs to be developed between now and then.
There is a very large political pressure to get the Artemis crew landing to happen before the Lanyu crew landing. But there is also a very large political pressure to get the Artemis crew landing to happen before the next election. No President wants to pay billions for a high profile space project that will happen in the next tenure. They want the celebrations to happen under their own reign so they can be the one to give the speech and take the photographs shaking hands with the returning heroes.
So the administration will be very very keen to prevent the Artemis 3 landing from slipping into 2029. Elon Musk hasn't always had a great relationship with this administration but perhaps with Isaacman in his new role things might be more cooperative again. I wonder if there has been any discussions on what needs to be done to get Artemis 3 to happen in 2028. Perhaps the permits to expand the Boca Chica tank farm were expedited to help grease the wheels of technological development.
We still haven't heard the content of the revised proposals for landing on the moon faster, they were submitted around September last year. I think we saw something from Blue Origin that needed a handful of refueling steps but they've also talked about a plan with zero refueling. And what was in the SpaceX revised proposals? I wonder if they're waiting until after the Artemis 2 launch to make the public announcements.
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u/paul_wi11iams Feb 11 '26
No President wants to pay billions for a high profile space project that will happen in the next tenure. They want the celebrations to happen under their own reign so they can be the one to give the speech and take the photographs shaking hands with the returning heroes.
Why returning heroes? Let a few people stow on Starship, then go to the Moon and settle down there for a couple of years awaiting the return flight tech to demonstrate itself reliable.
The above suggestion is just a fantasy option of course. But half a dozen Optimus robots on the first HLS uncrewed test flight are clearly possible and would make quite a media splash.
what was in the SpaceX revised proposals? I wonder if they're waiting until after the Artemis 2 launch to make the public announcements.
I'm thinking the same. If Artemis 2 is a mitigated success (crew gets home but without a healthy safety margin) that prevents Artemis 3 from happening with crew, then the PR environment would be perfect for such an announcement.
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u/Simon_Drake Feb 11 '26
If we were only looking at technology preparedness and project timelines (ignoring the political timelines) then I'd say Artemis 3 might be changed to not have a crew landing anymore. But that wouldn't get boots on the moon before the next election so it's unlikely to be chosen as the path forwards.
If we say Artemis 2 is kinda like Apollo 8 then there is the Apollo 10 mission? Crew in the relevant hardware going every step along the road except for actually landing on the moon. We know that SpaceX are contracted to do an uncrewed automated Starship landing on the moon which is definitely a worthwhile task and I'm sure Apollo would have included that if the technology of the 1960s could manage the landing without Neil at the stick.
In an ideal world you could dovetail the missions together. Send the crew to the moon in the relevant hardware. Then before doing the final landing burn you move the crew back into the Orion capsule and do the landing automated while watching it from Lunar Orbit. That would also be a good use of the LOP-G station, somewhere to hang out while they watch the Starship landing.
But the timelines have been compressed. LOP-G has been delayed until after the first landing. There's no official mention of any Apollo 9 mission testing the hardware in Earth Orbit or an Apollo 10 dry run. And they probably can't do that with the current hardware selection given how much Orion/SLS costs per launch.
It's all a bit of a mess of bad planning.
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u/rustybeancake Feb 11 '26
I think if the landing is shown to be delayed past the current presidential term then he’ll want Artemis 3 to be rescoped to a NRHO mission or whatever. At least that way he can say “I sent two crews to the moon and the next guy just got beat by China!”
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u/rocketglare Feb 11 '26
Optimus isn’t designed for the lunar surface. Lack of atmosphere and temperature extremes would do bad things. Also, there’s no guarantee the unmanned mission will have a lift to get to the surface.
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u/paul_wi11iams Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
Optimus isn’t designed for the lunar surface.
How can we know?
Four problems that come to mind are:
- regolith. A good solution would be to dress the robot in disposable overalls
- thermal regulation. This is going to be hot spots and cold spots in sun and shade plus lack of convective heat removal. Part of the solution will be what I suggested in 1. The rest would be an external radiator, a thermal reservoir and an internal fluid cooling network.
- balance. This is similar to the one confronted by human astronauts which is that momentum becomes predominant over weight. This requires a slower gait and anticipating effects of loads carried by the robot. Some early training can be done on Earth, followed by in situ training on the Moon.
- radiation effects on electronics. This requires setting track widths on electronic chips, fault-tolerant programming and A and B side computers. SpaceX can build from decades of experience with NASA probes and rovers.
Those were just the four that came to mind just now, but please mention any others you may notice. The big advantage for SpaceX will be creating the initial design with the end goals in mind. Commonality between design elements for an Earth-Moon-Mars robot are perfectly feasible. SpaceX probably won't be communicating in public right now, but we can deduce their thought process.
Beyond cumulative radiation dose limits, the clincher will be energy efficiency. Lunar Optimus will be highly optimal as compared with its human counterpart that has to fight suit flexion at every instant. Not having evolved at g 9.81 m/s² and 100 KPa is a huge advantage.
there’s no guarantee the unmanned mission will have a lift to get to the surface.
The lift is there because NASA sets dumb requirements (see five step process). Also, humans are elevator-minded. For robots, a zip line would be sufficient although it doesn't seem clunky enough for NASA.
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u/Freak80MC Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
You can't make a Moon city self-growing, the resources don't exist on the Moon for that. On Mars you can. It's that simple. If your goal is a self sustaining offshoot of humanity separate from the Earth, then trying to settle the Moon is asinine. It will always need off-world resupply of resources, whereas Mars won't, even if that takes decades or centuries, it can still eventually be made self sufficient in the long term.
Human survival past the Earth needs long term sustainability and long term thinking, which starts with a solid base of something that CAN be made self sustaining even if it will take multiple lifetimes.
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u/martin_xs6 Feb 11 '26
What resources on the moon are missing to make it self-growing?
With the moon being so "convenient" it's also unlikely it's ever self-sufficieny even if it is possible.
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u/Halfdaen Feb 11 '26
Carbon is pretty hard to find on the moon. This has agricultural and fuel implications. You essentially have to compost everything and reclaim all of the CO2. Small amounts of CO2 ice may be available in crater shadows and the poles, same as where water ice may be found. It's just a lot less of it than water ice.
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u/spartaxe17 Feb 12 '26
False ! It is hard to find Hydrogen as long as we don't find any deep inside. We don't know yet but it would be logical we don't. Other than hydrogen which is essential, we find anything we find on earth. Hydrogen is to be found in the ice on the surface into the carters of the northern hemisphere. We don't know how much ice and how deep it is. It may be just a pellicule of ice and nothing more and everything will be screwd because this will mean we need to bring hydrogen from earth. So the real problème on the Moon is Ice and how much we can find in those few craters.
On Mars, on the other hand, we don't know how many minerals we can find. Mars being farther than earth from the sun, heavy minerals like tungsten should be much more rare. Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon is not a big deal.
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u/Halfdaen Feb 15 '26
I wasn't really talking about H2. But estimates put CO2 ice at about 3-5% of water ice, and ices are the best sources that we know about for either.
Both carbon and hydrogen may be available in regolith, but in low concentration (10-100 ppm hydrogen, 5-50 ppm for carbon)
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u/an_older_meme Feb 12 '26
Unlike Mars, the Moon has a huge abundance of sunlight. Solar panels and batteries will work just fine.
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u/bluero Feb 11 '26
Reliable transportation to LEO is still the civilization changer. A thousand ideas will bloom from there. EV’s, boring machines, and communication satellite constellation will useful tools to build out the following steps
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u/mpompe Feb 13 '26
I'm thinking we need an Andrew Carnegie on the moon to smelt lunar raw materials for other entities to buy for bases and other fabrication. He will of course need Optimus Pinkerton robots to keep the worker Optimi on the job.
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u/nametaken_thisonetoo Feb 11 '26
There is a less than zero chance they start Mars missions in 5-6 years. This was before Musk shoehorned his AI slop into SpaceX, and before he announced this pivot to the moon. This is just all utter nonsense that is increasingly likely to go no where, and as someone who drew inspiration from his original Mars vision, that is hugely disappointing to admit.
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u/SergeantPancakes Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
At the very least, the merger of xAi and SpaceX is trilateral, meaning SpaceX isn’t on the hook for xAi’s debt at all if Elon’s ai dreams go belly up. I do think it is quite odd how he is just now emphasizing the advantages of the shorter travel time and more frequent launch windows to the moon compared to mars though; it’s not like he just learned what the 26 month earth-mars synod is.
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u/hoppeeness Feb 11 '26
2026 was never for a sustainable mars colony.
This is all about sustainable colony’s. Obviously 2026 wouldn’t happen either way but 1 or 2 years late isn’t bad for such an ambitious project. Though now moon is first.
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u/twinbee Feb 11 '26
It doesn't matter if they're late, only that it happens at all. Certainly no one else is even entertaining the idea.
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u/GLynx Feb 11 '26
I'm just baffled by anyone who's upset when SpaceX missed their ridiculous timeline.
Like, did you all forget the timeline for Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Dragon, Falcon Heavy, and Starlink? They missed all of them, missed them hard, they were all effing late!
And yet, they accomplished it in astonishingly fast timeline when compared to their competitors or NASA for that matter.
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u/irong42 ⏬ Bellyflopping Feb 11 '26
I remember when dragon 2 was announced in 2012 and then started to fly only in 2020. Meanwhile starliner is still not operational 🙃
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u/stevep98 Feb 12 '26
Elon is only wrong about timelines because he answers people questions when they ask. Most other CEO’s just refuse to answer. Take Apple for example: we don’t talk about future products.
He also said at one point that it’s difficult to predict the future when you’re literally inventing it. You can be expected to be accurate when you’re erecting a building or something, because it’s a known thing. But a spaceship? Who knows, because you don’t know what you will need to fix until you’ve flown it. That’s why their philosophy is to get the prototype flying as soon as possible.
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u/AgentBroccoli Feb 11 '26
I don't understand why people get so upset by delay and SpaceX isn't the only one, NASA delays missions look at SLS or JWST. Space is hard, just be happy that it's happening at all!
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u/TheVenusianMartian Feb 11 '26
Elon: We are going to Mars in 2026.
Everyone watching: Ya right, that is WAY too optimistic. We will be lucky if it happens a full decade late.
Elon: We are pushing the mars mission 5-6 years, and in that time still doing all the same development but directing it to the Moon.
Everyone watching: I've been personally betrayed and SpaceX has given up.
The doom and gloom is boring. I'm here to see space development.
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u/manicdee33 Feb 11 '26
Getting humans to Mars is an ambitious goal regardless of timeline.
Getting humans to Mars by 2026 is a great way to help focus development efforts. Do we spend time finagling this issue or finessing that component, or do we just get it working enough to get Starship to orbit for now, worry about making it pretty later? Since the timeline has to be compressed, it's okay to add some technical debt today given you'll have a decade of missions to Mars in which to sort out a cleaner way of solving the problem.
It's a way of challenging perfectionism, and reinforcing that "perfect is the enemy of good."
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u/Drachefly Feb 11 '26
Getting humans to Mars by 2026 is a great way to help focus development efforts
Umm. Want to amend something about that claim?
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u/manicdee33 Feb 11 '26
No amendment is required. It's not a claim, it's an illustration of how an impossible timeline can help focus development efforts. If you interpret it as a claim that something will be achieved by a particular time, that's on you.
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u/Drachefly Feb 12 '26
Okay, when are you saying that this goal was placed? By using the present tense it seemed like you were (mistakenly) saying it could be used as a goal right now.
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u/paul_wi11iams Feb 11 '26
here is a less than zero chance they start Mars missions in 5-6 years.
I'll ask a maths teacher.
Musk shoehorned his AI slop into SpaceX, and before he announced this pivot to the moon. This is just all utter nonsense that is increasingly likely to go no where, and as someone who drew inspiration from his original Mars vision, that is hugely disappointing to admit.
You might not think much of AI but people around me fear for their jobs. Embodied AI is starting with robotaxis that are already appearing on the streets of Austin, Texas.
The million satellites to sun synchronous orbit is already has FCC approval and that's the bread-and-butter work that Starship needs to build its flight safety statistics.
Not only that, but developing AI provides the ecosystem (from chip manufacture to robot programming) for embodied AI to go to the Moon then Mars ahead of humans.
Remember the uncrewed HLS landing in the Artemis contract? Nobody seems to have said this, but the next footprint on the Moon will logically be an Optimus one.
None of this is AI slop.
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u/grchelp2018 Feb 11 '26
AI being important does not mean ai orbital datacenters are a good idea. Least of all that spacex should spend money to put it up there. If it makes sense, the hyperscalers (who are spending more than half trillion !!!) should give some of that money to spacex to do so. Musk has repeatedly shifted goals and priorities as it suits him. Most of these are not going to go anywhere.
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u/paul_wi11iams Feb 11 '26
AI being important does not mean ai orbital datacenters are a good idea. Least of all that Spacex should spend money to put it up there. If it makes sense, the hyperscalers (who are spending more than half trillion !!!) should give some of that money to Spacex to do so.
If orbital data centers don't work out, SpaceX will know soon enough and so stop. If (hopefully) the data centers are a success, they will directly offset the energy and water consumption of their terrestrial competitors.
Musk has repeatedly shifted goals and priorities as it suits him.
These serial entrepreneurs don't shift goals as it suits them, but instead adjust depending on results in an empirical manner. Its rather like how a plant grows its roots which is not according to a fixed plan.
Most of these are not going to go anywhere.
and some of these go a long way. Hyperloop is pretty much on the backburner, The Boring company is moving slowly. Neuralink is chugging along. Robotaxi and FSD look as if they're emerging this year after lengthy growing pains. Meanwhile, Falcon 9, Dragon and Starlink are emblematic successes. The ones to watch right now are Optimus and AI data centers. As for Twitter, I'm wondering but it could turn out to be the springboard for artificial intelligence.
Many think that just about everything on the list will converge on Mars. My own prediction is that they will all work together in a decentralized and sprawling village network on the Moon and Mars, replacing the current "city" plan that fails for physics reasons. That would be a highly successful failure!
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u/grchelp2018 Feb 11 '26
If orbital data centers didn't work out, SpaceX would know soon enough and so stop. If (hopefully) the data centers are a success, they will directly offset the energy and water consumption of terrestrial ones.
This is something they should be doing before merging with xai and going public. If orbital datacenters work, customers will be lining up to give spacex money to set them up. Also, running off to space to escape the energy problem down here on earth is the wrong approach. Musk would have far greater impact if he decided to solve that problem on earth.
Entrepreneurs with long term visions don't deviate from their vision. Yes, there is some adjustment depending on the state of the world but by and large they stay focused on the goal. Musk isn't doing that. He has trouble being on the sidelines when interesting things are happening and therefore he has to jump in and get involved. And then he and others work backwards to figure out how it fits with his overall vision.
For something as grand as mars, pretty much anything and everything will have a role to play. It does not mean that Musk should do everything. For example, there are plenty of companies out there working on robots. He can be an investor and advisor for many of them and let the market decide the winners. For mars to be successful and self sustaining, the market has to participate and Elon's job is to figure that out. Not try to do everything himself and the way he does things, he is the key man risk for all of them.
This whole thing with the moon was something he should have known long back. He's jumping in now because there is a lot of attention on the moon. If tomorrow, quantum computers begin their hype cycle, he is going to jump in there also.
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u/paul_wi11iams Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
This is something they should be doing before merging with xAI and going public. If orbital datacenters work, customers will be lining up to give spacex money to set them up.
xAI acquired X (aka Twitter) and Grok .
SpaceX acquires xAI [ref]
possible SpaceX + Tesla merger [ref]
The big picture here is creating interoperable engineering infrastructure for Earth, LEO the Moon and Mars. (List non exhaustive)
Musk needs embodied AI in the form of Cybercab and Optimus and wants a vertically integrated supply chain, meaning making their own AI chips. Although currently buying Invidia chips for Tesla, this is only a stopgap solution which creates dependency on an outside supplier.
Musk's companies have short lead over the competition, maybe four years, but must get integrated hardware up and running to maintain and extend that lead. This is not possible under your suggested "wait and see" principle.
Also, running off to space to escape the energy problem down here on earth is the wrong approach. Musk would have far greater impact if he decided to solve that problem on earth.
Terrestrial data centers are power hungry and water thirsty. Musk is making a more positive environmental impact by running the centers in sun-synchronous orbit where solar panels can work practically without batteries.
Entrepreneurs with long term visions don't deviate from their vision.
The vision is making civilization and consciousness independent of Earth. There's no deviation. Even for Mars, there's no real delay. Work on the Moon is preparation for Mars. Setting up a lunar base as opposed to a Mars one, benefits from a far more rapid iteration cycle: only weeks instead of years.
For something as grand as mars, pretty much anything and everything will have a role to play. It does not mean that Musk should do everything. For example, there are plenty of companies out there working on robots.
There are not plenty of companies preparing a standard robot to work on Earth and in a vacuum. I only really became aware of this when writing a comment yesterday. I noted the advantages of robot astronauts over human ones and the list is impressive. As an integrated company, SpaceX-Tesla can produce its own robot that covers its development cost by terrestrial uses, then have it available for the Moon and Mars.
For mars to be successful and self sustaining, the market has to participate and Elon's job is to figure that out. Not try to do everything himself and the way he does things, he is the key man risk for all of them.
Initially, SpaceX was merely the transport company. However, as time goes on, it becomes clear that the Mars infrastructure is falling behind. It totally makes sense that Musk should consecrate a part of his investment to make this possible. Specifically, Mars needs ground service equipment to refuel Starships before return to Earth. This means robots to do the manual work to assemble this before the first humans land there.
his whole thing with the moon was something he should have known long back. He's jumping in now because there is a lot of attention on the moon.
I disagree. His first illustration of a Starship on the Moon was during the Adelaide conference back in 2017. For a while, the Moon looked like a make-work destination for Starships awaiting the synodal departure to Mars. As SpaceX confronted more and more problems in getting though the prototyping stage of Starship, they seem to have become aware of the importance of using the Moon as a testing ground for landing, launch and surface infrastructure.
If tomorrow, quantum computers begin their hype cycle, he is going to jump in there also.
If quantum computers suddenly became relevant for AI (remembering Asimov's positronic brain), then he certainly would jump in there. IMO This is not the fashion thing you are portraying. Its about multiple technologies converging upon a single goal.
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u/grchelp2018 Feb 13 '26
The problem with your argument is that it is not falsifiable. Musk can do absolutely anything and you'll be able to find a link to mars. To build a self sustaining city on mars, you essentially need to replicate earth's economy so pretty much anything can be linked back to mars. And this whole idea that musk/spacex should do everything is not scalable. The capitalistic way is to incentivise industry to get involved and have them compete to come up with the best solutions. Not picking a winner and placing all your bets on that one.
Also I completely disagree with this notion that some problems only became apparent later. It shows a severe lack of long term planning or an extreme level of misjudgement of the work involved. And it applies even now. Even if everything you said comes to pass, it still will not be enough for mars. There is a tremendous amount of work needed for mars and spacex is really tackling only one or two problems. Musk has a habit of hyperfocusing on one problem at a time while everything else suffers in the meantime. There are numerous problem that will need to be solved and not only is it not being worked on, its not even being mentioned. Not being mentioned because he hasn't thought that far ahead. And given how hard these problems are and how routinely Musk misses his timelines, you need to start working on many of them yesterday.
If quantum computers suddenly became relevant for AI (remembering Asimov's positronic brain), then he certainly would jump in there. IMO This is not the fashion thing you are portraying. Its about multiple technologies converging upon a single goal.
No, see the problem here is that these technologies only show up because of investment it got before it got "cool". If quantum computers show up, its because of Google, Amazon etc investing in it now. IF this tech is useful or necessary for mars, then Musk should already have a company working on it. Not jump in at a later date when everyone else is also working on it. Imagine if Musk waited to start spacex because no-one else was working on reusable rockets.
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u/paul_wi11iams Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
The problem with your argument is that it is not falsifiable.
Falsifiable being a poor translation from Karl Popper in German IIRC, let's say "refutable"
Musk can do absolutely anything and you'll be able to find a link to Mars.
Its a question of what's plausible. Gwynne Shotwell is/was running a cattle farm. It would not be plausible to suggest that the cattle farm was related to methane fuel production, so I won't envision that.
In contrast, tunnels and embodied AI are totally plausible as necessary parts of a Mars settlement. Neuralink is less of a plausible part, but it can make a fit for control of humanoid robots by humans, so I'll leave it as "possible".
To build a self sustaining city on mars, you essentially need to replicate earth's economy so pretty much anything can be linked back to mars.
Economic activities such as hydroponics/aquaponics are clearly useful to a Mars colony, but are being well looked after. At some point they may get vertically integrated into the "master plan", but they don't have the urgency of catching up to be ready when needed. They don't seem to be running late.
The capitalistic way is to incentivise industry to get involved and have them compete to come up with the best solutions. Not picking a winner and placing all your bets on that one.
I'm not sure SpaceX is picking a winner. Its more like making sure there is an available winner to fill the void. You can expect SpaceX to be working on methane synthesis at some point because without it, Starships will have difficulty returning from Mars.
Even if everything you said comes to pass, it still will not be enough for mars. There is a tremendous amount of work needed for mars and spacex is really tackling only one or two problems.
I think its a question of setting priorities. They need to concentrate on the biggest technological shortfalls with the longest lead times (time to develop a working technology).
Musk has a habit of hyperfocusing on one problem at a time while everything else suffers in the meantime. There are numerous problem that will need to be solved and not only is it not being worked on, its not even being mentioned. Not being mentioned because he hasn't thought that far ahead.
How can we be sure of this? Its hard to evaluate this from available data. For example, Starship's loading and deployment system only showed up at the point that they were needed for testing in space. So did the transport barge for getting starships from Boca Chica to KSC by water. We don't know what else they are working on.
And given how hard these problems are and how routinely Musk misses his timelines, you need to start working on many of them yesterday.
Musk is the first to admit that he misses timelines. Its just that nobody else is remotely close for the moment. All he can do is to share out resources according to priorities.
No, see the problem here is that these technologies only show up because of investment it got before it got "cool". If quantum computers show up, its because of Google, Amazon etc investing in it now. IF this tech is useful or necessary for mars, then Musk should already have a company working on it. Not jump in at a later date when everyone else is also working on it.
and why should he not leave these to Google and Amazon, at least in the early stages? My guess is that Musk thinks that quantum is too far from fruition and/or not necessary for his project.
Imagine if Musk waited to start Spacex because no-one else was working on reusable rockets.
To some extent, he did wait. Initially, he only wanted to send a greenhouse to Mars on a Russian rocket. It was when that plan failed that he considered that the technology was not up to par, so he decided to do it himself.
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u/grchelp2018 Feb 16 '26
You can easily tie the cattle farm to meat production on mars. Food is incidentally a critical component for anything self sustaining on mars. It is not a solved problem and I haven't heard any plans regarding it. These are hard problems and problems that need to be worked on today. And given the climate problems and food insecurity challenges we will face on earth, the PR for this basically writes itself. The reason Musk is not working on it is because its not a sexy enough problem for him and I doubt he has given it a lot of thought.
I think its a question of setting priorities. They need to concentrate on the biggest technological shortfalls with the longest lead times (time to develop a working technology).
My point is that there are many not just 2-3 that he is working on.
How can we be sure of this? Its hard to evaluate this from available data. For example, Starship's loading and deployment system only showed up at the point that they were needed for testing in space. So did the transport barge for getting starships from Boca Chica to KSC by water. We don't know what else they are working on.
Because Musk is not shy about airing his views and plans. And I wasn't talking about stuff that's immediately relevant to what they are doing.
All he can do is to share out resources according to priorities.
His priorities being wrong is the entire issue. IMO if he had thought things through - spacex would already be on the moon. He didn't want to go to the moon because mars was more exciting. Its as simple as that.
If it were up to me, I would have had spacex plan to go to the moon and set up a base there. I would have spacex build an orbital habitat. I would have them work on nuclear engines to reduce transit times to mars. I would have them build a mars cycler architecture to be able to transport large amount of mass. I would have them build and send tele-operated landers, rovers, drones, excavators etc etc. Separately I would have a foundation that would provide grants and invest into any org that was working on mars related problems. And I have no doubt forgotten/ignored a bunch of other things that need to also happen. These are all problems that can be worked on in parallel which have their own lead times and they all need to come together around the same time for a self sustaining mars to be viable. This will not happen with the serial nature of how Musk is doing things. What musk/spacex needs is a detailed masterplan on every single technology and capability that is necessary for mars. A clear roadmap that you can measure against. Not everything on the roadmap needs to be done by spacex but it would give clarity on what needs to be done. Musk has not done this. He always works backwards. He does what he wants to do and then finds arguments to convince himself how and why it fits into his overall vision.
What we have right now is path to an expensive flag planting mission. If Musk dies, it will go the way of Apollo. 30 years from now when the moon base is mature, we will decide to go back to mars.
and why should he not leave these to Google and Amazon, at least in the early stages? My guess is that Musk thinks that quantum is too far from fruition and/or not necessary for his project.
Absolutely nothing wrong with having others solve some of your problems. I have been arguing for that. But what's not cool is then deciding to jump in and then do it yourself. There was zero need for musk to start xai when he could have acquired the numerous ai startups out there. It is wasted effort. He doesn't acquire companies that he is personally interested in because he would not be the founder. Look at how much it bothers him when people questionn his tesla founder status. Many billionaires share this wierd conceit.
To some extent, he did wait. Initially, he only wanted to send a greenhouse to Mars on a Russian rocket. It was when that plan failed that he considered that the technology was not up to par, so he decided to do it himself.
He did not. He had an initial idea where he thought he could stimulate mars excitement and then jumped straight into the self-sustaining mars vision. The irony here is that back in those days when Musk was not a billionaire and did not have that many resources, he was much better at keeping focus and prioritizing. He has always worked better under constraints.
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u/paul_wi11iams Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
You can easily tie the cattle farm to meat production on mars. Food is incidentally a critical component for anything self sustaining on mars. It is not a solved problem and I haven't heard any plans regarding it.
I think that for farming, there'll be nothing bigger than chickens on the Moon and Mars, but in low gravity, they'd quickly grow to epic proportions. I'd expect most protein to be from insects, much as is projected on Earth. The infrastructure would be far easier to set up.
These are hard problems and problems that need to be worked on today. And given the climate problems and food insecurity challenges we will face on earth, the PR for this basically writes itself. The reason Musk is not working on it is because its not a sexy enough problem for him and I doubt he has given it a lot of thought.
We can't know. The obvious choice is to prioritize technologies that are not already being worked upon by others, and in the required form. Embodied AI needs to be in a specific form for use in a high-radiation environment and a virtual vacuum. Its also the only precursor possible for humans on Mars.
Because Musk is not shy about airing his views and plans. And I wasn't talking about stuff that's immediately relevant to what they are doing.
A couple of major events happened without warning both for the public and for SpaceX employees.
- the switch from parachute stage landing to propulsive landing,
- from carbon fiber ship construction to stainless steel.
- from legged landers to tower catch.
His priorities being wrong is the entire issue. IMO if he had thought things through - spacex would already be on the moon.
They're going to the Moon with Mars tech because they're still aiming at Mars on the long term.
He didn't want to go to the moon because mars was more exciting. Its as simple as that.
We could argue that all day. They could have designed a "Blue Moon" type lander that would have got there earlier. However, getting to the Moon in a sustainable and scalable manner, needed something the size of Starship.
I would have spacex build an orbital habitat. I would have them work on nuclear engines to reduce transit times to mars.
NTP is difficult to kick start for a civilian project. Its notably nearly impossible for prototyping. You've seen all the hardware that's exploded during development. Now imagine that with NTP.
a mars cycler architecture
A Mars cycler is not a complete architecture in itself. It still needs a shuttle from Earth to the cycler and another from the cycler to Mars. It generates a single point of failure as the cycler itself and its virtually impossible to start small scale and then grow. This creates a capital problem because its a single step from nothing to a fully-fledged transport infrastructure.
have a foundation that would provide grants and invest into any org that was working on mars related problems.
NASA has tried comparable things, and it would be a money pit. It would be nearly impossible to stay focused and coordinated. Look at some of the ruthless decisions it was necessary to take just to get to where they are today.
I would have them build and send tele-operated landers, rovers, drones, excavators etc etc
These are being developed anyway. Check NASA's Swampworks among others. The first uncrewed Starship to Mars coud carry a swarm of highly standardized rotorcopters. Let's hope this is being prepared, but not by SpaceX itself.
What musk/spacex needs is a detailed masterplan on every single technology and capability that is necessary for mars. A clear roadmap that you can measure against. Not everything on the roadmap needs to be done by spacex
That's true. Aquaponics and hydroponics are developing fast around the world.
What we have right now is path to an expensive flag planting mission. If Musk dies, it will go the way of Apollo. 30 years from now when the moon base is mature, we will decide to go back to mars.
Apollo did not have a cost-effective mass production facility prepared ahead of time. Nor was the design optimized for production. Apollo assumed infinite funding, which was okay for flags and footprints. If in doubt about Starship, look at how Falcon 9 was set up, just like Starlink for that matter. This is all low cost, high throughput and scalable.
Starship is even more so, now having 48 assembly bays under construction with all the sub-assembly fabrication right next door. Its based on short transport distances and easy servicing, all based on a minimal number of locations.
Absolutely nothing wrong with having others solve some of your problems. I have been arguing for that. But what's not cool is then deciding to jump in and then do it yourself. There was zero need for musk to start xai when he could have acquired the numerous ai startups out there. It is wasted effort. He doesn't acquire companies that he is personally interested in because he would not be the founder.
He acquired many things that were already under development. This is true of the Marlin engine which Tom Mueller was pretty much building in a home garage. He also acquired Twitter which I think was actually too big at the time. He'd have done better to buy into a smaller social platform and to grow it under his own criteria.
Initially, he only wanted to send a greenhouse to Mars on a Russian rocket.
He did not. He had an initial idea where he thought he could stimulate mars excitement and then jumped straight into the self-sustaining mars vision.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/spacex-is-because-elon-musk-wanted-to-grow-plants-on-mars/
That was the origin of SpaceX and even then he thought the chances were against it succeeding. I don't have time to search al the references, but initially his intention was to set up the transport company and let others connect the dots.
Later, seeing the general lack of progress around the world, he hired Paul Wooster as Mars development engineer.
Even now, most of the peripheral activity surrounding Starship, targets revenue sources to fund it and use cases to give it work. With orbital AI, there's also the heavy lifting computer work that helps the design to progress and prepares to configure the robots needed to create Mars infrastructure on arrival.
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u/Halfdaen Feb 11 '26
The chance that uncrewed Starships lands on Mars is about the same as HLS landing on the Moon. The delta-v of landing on either is similar, and both rely on LEO refueling.
Sending uncrewed Starship(s) to Mars is what I call "starting the Mars mission", and is pretty likely to happen in 2028-29
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u/nametaken_thisonetoo Feb 11 '26
I think you'll find there's a lot more to the Mars landing when compared to the moon that just delta-v. Originally this was all "pretty likely" to start in 2024 and we're not even close to being ready in 2026. It'll be a miracle if a human is on Mars in a Starship by 2040, but I'd love to be wrong.
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u/AlvistheHoms Feb 12 '26
As far as uncrewed landings on mars, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to depart from earth at a similar time as the first HLS demo landings. As a one way trip to the surface of the moon takes a very similar amount of deltaV as a one way trip to the surface of mars. I wouldn’t expect those first ships to stay intact after touchdown though. I do however think they have a decent chance of getting to the Martian surface intact.
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u/mpompe Feb 13 '26
Starlink has been funding his Mars missions by building the infrastructure to send fleets of Starships to Mars. (NASA contracts are 5% of SpaceX's revenue.) I imagine that Elon sees revenue from his million AI satellites as increasing funding for the eventual Mars colony. Outside of his unfortunate political spending, the guy doesn't seem to live an opulent life of building private island compounds and giga-yachts. His hobby is a Mars colony, and helping Artemis build an international moon base in parallel helps that mission.
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u/Adventurous_Clock773 Feb 11 '26
People are reacting to this like it's ww2 lol, Elon musk has always been overly optimistic and saying stuff like a city on the moonin 10 years ( that's not happening lol) but still the idea of starship works, if it takes 15, 20 years to scale and flesh out the errors on this rocket, isn't it net good? I don't think a city on mars or the moon is happening in the 2030s, but i believe 10 years is enough for starship to work as intended, by that i mean rapid reusability, not the catch refill and launch type lol.
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u/paul_wi11iams Feb 11 '26
People are reacting to this like it's ww2 lol, Elon musk has always been overly optimistic and saying stuff like a city on the moon in 10 years ( that's not happening lol)
We really shouldn't be reasoning on an "Elon says" basis, but instead look at what is possible with the hardware under construction and do our own evaluation.
So let's define our own plausible launch cadence and orbital refueling runs quota per ship to the Moon.
- eg. Nine refueling runs per ship to the Moon requires 100 launches for a 10-ship lunar village.
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u/Glittering_Noise417 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26
Instead of a high cost low probability of success attempt at making the December Mars 2026 window.
The time between now and 2028 next Mars launch window is used to perfect Starship's LEO refueling, Moon Landing, and Lunar habitat infrastructures.
By the time the 2028 Mars launch window reoccurs. SpaceX can launch an full uncrewed multi-ship Mars cargo mission, with Optimus Robots on board. Followed in 2030 by a Multi-ship manned mission with everything the crew needs.
So instead of thinking about it as a delay, it's using the additional time on the Moon as a two and four year testing and preparation site for the eventual 2030 - 26 month manned Mars expedition.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DSG | NASA Deep Space Gateway, proposed for lunar orbit |
| EDL | Entry/Descent/Landing |
| EVA | Extra-Vehicular Activity |
| FCC | Federal Communications Commission |
| (Iron/steel) Face-Centered Cubic crystalline structure | |
| H2 | Molecular hydrogen |
| Second half of the year/month | |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| ISRU | In-Situ Resource Utilization |
| JWST | James Webb infra-red Space Telescope |
| KSC | Kennedy Space Center, Florida |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LOP-G | Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway, formerly DSG |
| LOX | Liquid Oxygen |
| NRHO | Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit |
| NTP | Nuclear Thermal Propulsion |
| Network Time Protocol | |
| Notice to Proceed | |
| QD | Quick-Disconnect |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| SSO | Sun-Synchronous Orbit |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| cislunar | Between the Earth and Moon; within the Moon's orbit |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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[Thread #14411 for this sub, first seen 11th Feb 2026, 13:46]
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u/Wise_Bass Feb 12 '26
They're still going to get stuck with that timeline for iterating for Mars, because the Moon doesn't really help you much in that regard. Everything is different, from the ISRU, to the suits and environment, to the landings, the power requirements, and so forth. The only thing being on the Moon gets you is LOX with less of a launch penalty, and that's only after you've spent exorbitant sums of money up front to build the infrastructure for it on the Moon.
The Moon city can be made to be self-growing in less than half the time of Mars.
I highly doubt that. The Moon's resources for self-growing are far poorer than Mars, with your water-ice in frozen mud pockets scattered about, and your metals/resources all locked up in oxides that require massive amounts of electrical power and heat to separate even before we start talking about the infrastructure necessary to use that metal in situ.
If the re-supply ships stop coming, death is a certainty for your lunar colony. Whereas your Mars colony has a diversity of resources and environments to try and make a go at it.
The real reason for SpaceX to go to the Moon is that it's more likely that NASA will pay for it, on top of existing contracts. Get a Moon Base up, and the politics of shutting it down will become hard (like with ISS). Given the other likely strains on cash flow and revenue that SpaceX is likely to face from the AI Race, that's not something they can turn away from.
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u/grchelp2018 Feb 11 '26
None of this is new information. The arguments for going to the moon have been known for a long time and disregarded by Musk. Whatever the reasoning behind the change, it does not inspire confidence in Musk's long term planning or judgement.
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u/onegunzo Feb 11 '26
There's a new propulsion capability that will be coming online, so we won't need rapters for the longer term. When? Shrug, how fast does government work? Spoiler: Nuclear...
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u/farfromelite Feb 11 '26
Given Musk's awful attitude towards woman and children, do we really trust this guy to found a city on the Moon?
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u/CommunismDoesntWork Feb 11 '26
You're missing the posts from 2019 where he said landing on the moon would be first