Musk Says SpaceX Will Focus on the Moon Over Mars
Last night, SpaceX's head, Elon Musk, announced on Twitter that the company is shifting its focus away from Mars and instead prioritizing the Moon in establishing what was called a 'self-growing city' as part of a far-fetched dream to extend human consciousness.
"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."
Musk's reasoning for the shift was as follows:
"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."
In previous years, he has stated that sending humans to Mars is only a few years away, promising to send people there within a decade back in 2011. The recent statement from Musk also contradicts one of his own from just over a year ago, where he said:
"No, weโre going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction."
Despite calling the Moon a distraction, SpaceX has a contract with NASA to put astronauts on the lunar surface for the Artemis III mission in 2028 using a variant of the Starship launch system. Progress with Starship has been slow despite eleven flight tests since 2023, with the majority of 2025's failing, and no orbital missions to date. Orbital missions are required to test critical systems, like in-space refueling, for the lunar lander variant of Starship.
Meanwhile, SpaceX's sole competitor for sending NASA astronauts to the lunar surface, Blue Origin, has made stable progress on its Blue Moon Mk1 spacecraft, which heads out with justa single launch. Recently sending the first one off for thermal-vacuum testing with the American space agency. Additionally, and likely the real reason for SpaceX's new moon focus, is that Blue Moon Mk1 is being explored as an alternative for Artemis III.
This week we completed direct field acoustic testing on our Blue Moon MK1 lunar lander, a major flightโqualification milestone.
โ Dave Limp (@davill) January 15, 2026
We surrounded the fully integrated lander with a ring of 34โft speaker towers to generate a nearโdiffuse acoustic field, matching the New Glennโฆ pic.twitter.com/ngfSXw0s36
Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mk1 lunar lander during acoustic testing in Florida, via Dave Limp on Twitter.
Elon's overpromised elsewhere before
It's worth keeping in mind that Musk has overpromised technology development milestones at his other companies before. To keep the list short, a few unreached milestones are:
- SpaceX will put people on Mars, continually pushed back throughout the company's history.
- SpaceX offering tourism trips around the Moon by 2018.
- Tesla vehicles will have a 1,000-kilometer range.
- Tesla vehicles will have self-driving next year, said since 2014.
- Tesla robotaxis will be available in 2020, actually began trials in 2025.
- xAI will 'achieve' Artificial General Intelligence in 2025.
A much longer, regularly updated list can be found here.
