Elon Musk just made it clear that the Moon comes first now. In a post on X, he said SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon. The reason? It’s faster.
“We can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years,” Elon wrote, adding that Mars would take over 20. That’s a long time, and Elon says the goal of SpaceX is still to spread life beyond Earth, but doing it through the Moon is just more realistic right now.
Trips to Mars are rare. You can only launch to it when Earth and Mars are lined up, and that happens once every 26 months. Then the trip itself takes six months. The Moon, on the other hand, is right there.
Elon pointed out SpaceX can launch to the Moon every 10 days. It takes just two days to get there. That means they can keep testing, launching, and building a lot quicker. “We can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city,” he said.
Elon links Moon plan to bigger AI and internet strategy
This announcement didn’t come out of nowhere. Just last week, Elon confirmed that SpaceX is acquiring xAI, the company he started to develop the chatbot Grok. That chatbot is already plugged into the X platform, which xAI bought back in March 2025. Now, he’s combining all of it
(AI, rockets, internet satellites, mobile tech, and social media) under one roof.
According to Elon, the xAI acquisition is meant to build “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth.” That includes AI, space-based internet, and what he called “the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform.”
He wants all the tech to work together. He sees this as part of the plan to build working systems on the Moon (bases, factories, and communications) that don’t rely on Earth to survive.
Elon has also said SpaceX still plans to start working on a Mars city in five to seven years, but the Moon now takes top priority. The reason is simple: “The overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster,” he said.
Elon even talked about self-growing bases and automated factories that could build more bases without human help.
Meanwhile, NASA is still doing its own thing. The agency will stream the SpaceX Crew-12 launch to the International Space Station live. That’s planned for no earlier than 6:01 a.m. EST on Wednesday, February 11. Docking is expected the next morning at 10:30 a.m. The launch will happen from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The Crew-12 mission will carry four astronauts: Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway from NASA, Sophie Adenot from ESA, and Andrey Fedyaev from Roscosmos. This will be the 12th crew rotation mission under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the 13th human flight on SpaceX’s Dragon since 2020.
Back in 2020, Elon said he believed humans would reach Mars by 2026. That clearly didn’t happen. Now, he’s aiming closer. Same goal, different path. Moon first. Mars can wait.
