Musk wants to build a 'self-growing city' on the Moon in 10 years
The world’s richest man has shifted his sights from Mars.
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Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of The View from Space.
🛰️ Elon Musk, the man who said he would take humanity to Mars (among other things), is now looking closer to home. The Times reports that the SpaceX founder now aims to build a ‘self-growing city’ on the Moon:
‘The founder of the SpaceX company said in 2018 that humans must create a “self-sustaining base on Mars” in case an apocalyptic war broke out on our own planet. He told the SXSW festival eight years ago that the red planet was “far enough away from Earth that it’s more likely to survive than a moon base”.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has now reset his plans, looking not at Mars, which sits 140 million miles from Earth on average, but at the moon, about a quarter of a million miles away.
He posted on X that SpaceX has “shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than ten years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years”.
He added: “The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars.”
The billionaire said that he had not entirely abandoned his hopes of creating a Martian settlement, explaining: “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.’
🛰️ MoneyWeek has made the commercial boom in space its cover story for this month. Companies in the sector ‘now find themselves in the midst of a gold rush, with everyone from defence agencies to some of the largest private firms in the world beating at their door’:
‘The main reason for the boom in the private space industry is that it is now easier to get into space due to the rise of private firms that make frequent flights using reusable technology and at lower cost, says Heather Pringle, former commander of the US Air Force Research Laboratory, and current CEO of Space Foundation.
“No fewer than three major companies – SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab – have established their own capabilities to launch, deliver payloads, have their launch vehicles re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, be recovered and be reused to launch again.”
The existence of reusable rockets in particular has been a “game changer” for the industry in terms of cost savings, says Pringle. “What the US space shuttle used to carry for $30,000 per pound in weight (or more) can now be put into low Earth orbit for $3,000 a pound (if not less).”
The development of cheap, reusable rockets has also had a “dramatic impact” in terms of launch speed and frequency. In 2024, a rocket was launched somewhere in the world every 34 hours. That rate was up to every 27 hours in 2025. These trends show no signs of slowing down, says Pringle. Indeed, they will accelerate in the years ahead.’
🇨🇳 Universe Today explores China’s ‘space philosophy’ following the government’s release of its fifteenth five-year plan:
‘Perhaps the most culturally significant part of the announcement is the country’s plans for Tiangong Kaiwu, its space mining project. Named after a foundational 17th century Ming Dynasty Encyclopedia, and roughly translated as “The Exploitation of the Works for Nature,” this project is focused on mining water ice from resources in space.
Most western space mining firms are concentrating on bringing back rare materials, such as platinum and palladium, to Earth as part of their space mining efforts. China, on the other hand, sees the potential for harvesting water, both as a source of biological necessity, but also as a way to split it into rocket fuel. The current plan is focused on feasibility studies, with the next 5 years focused on tech demos of things like robot drills and in-orbit processing, with the intention to scale up to full industrial mining at some point in the not-too-distant future.’
🪖 In Foreign Policy, Azriel Bermant questions the idea that missile defence systems really are purely defensive:
‘As the United States deploys anti-missile batteries to the Middle East as part of its force buildup in the region, the idea that these systems are a purely defensive means to shield against attacks—and thereby deter an adversary from attacking in the first place—is looking increasingly unconvincing.
‘Instead, the current round of conflict in the Middle East suggests the opposite: A reliable anti-missile shield could just as well create an incentive for escalation. If policymakers believe that their state is secure behind the shield, they may calculate that their own offensive military actions carry significantly lower risk.’
😕 A year in, Trump’s golden dome is ‘struggling to take shape’, reports POLITICO:
‘President Donald Trump promised the country a stunning missile defense shield that the military would build in record speed.
One year and billions of dollars later, his “Golden Dome” dream is no closer to reality.
The Pentagon hasn’t started rolling out the vast network of sensors and interceptors because — partly due to the project’s complexity — the White House has yet to release the billions Congress appropriated to build the architecture. And that means the defense industry hasn’t been able to start working in earnest, according to two industry insiders and two former defense officials.
“The whole thing is at risk,” a former senior Pentagon official said.
The people warned that Trump’s desire to create such a Herculean feat in three years has been further hampered by inconsistent communication to industry. And they noted some of the technological and logistical hurdles facing the program are likely insurmountable.
Space-based interceptors, for example, are a centerpiece of Trump’s original plan. The complex equipment is intended to destroy missiles just a few minutes after launch, but that narrow time frame is very difficult to hit. And even if the U.S. could build a reliable launch detection and interceptor network, ground-based missiles are much cheaper to manufacture. So an adversary could flood the skies with relatively low-cost missiles and easily overwhelm them.’
📉 In Monocle, Alexis Self describes Europe as beginning ‘a century of humiliation’:
‘While European countries have woken up to the need to wield more military influence in a volatile world, they still appear sheepish about flexing their economic muscle. Such blinkeredness is reflected in the bloc’s inability to see through structural weaknesses in order to rekindle its economic dynamism. As European living standards and GDP per capita continue to decline, a new co-ordinated industrial policy is needed in order to, for example, increase labour market flexibility across the continent. …
The continent should also take better advantage of its trustworthiness to form deeper bonds with those countries still committed to a rules-based order. In a world of sharks, in which a deal is worth no more than the paper it is written on, a commitment to process need not be a disadvantage. We recently saw with the signing of the massive EU-India trade deal that rising powers, who have staked their futures on better integration into the global economic system, are looking for dependable partners. China has recognised this and is busy selling itself as a squeaky-clean follower of trade rules but its opaque political and economic structure means that it can never be fully trusted when it comes to doing business.’
📱 TechRound considers the significance of NASA’s decision to let astronauts take smartphones into space:
‘But there’s more happening here than just fun visuals or a publicity moment.
What NASA is actually doing reflects a broader shift in how space agencies are thinking about cost, technology and what tools are considered good enough for real missions.
Starting with the Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station and extending to the Artemis II lunar flyby mission, NASA will allow astronauts to bring modern smartphones – both iPhone and Android devices to allow the biggest feud of the digital age to extend into space – on missions previously reserved for highly specialised hardware.
According to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, this decision gives crews better tools for capturing moments and sharing them with the world, but it also represents a qualified shift in how consumer technology can be incorporated into spaceflight systems.’
🛰️ In SpaceNews, Jeff Foust explores the emerging market for ‘mini-constellations’:
‘During a panel at the SmallSat Symposium here Feb. 10, executives from several smallsat manufacturers described demand for “mini-constellations” of dozens to a few hundred satellites for governments and companies that do not want to rely exclusively on megaconstellations such as Starlink.
“There’s definitely a market in large constellations, and a couple of companies are working hard to achieve that, but there’s a lot of value also in what we call mini-constellations with five, 10 or 20 satellites,” said Jan Smolders, chief commercial officer at Space Inventor, a Danish small-satellite manufacturer.
Those constellations could provide specialized services for customers that are not available from existing systems or that could be delivered more effectively through customized designs. “That’s something that we see and are working on,” he said.
Rusty Thomas, chief executive of Endurosat USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Bulgarian small-satellite manufacturer EnduroSat, said he expects interest from companies and governments that may not want to rely on another company’s large constellation for critical communications or other services.’
🚀 And Ariane 64, Europe’s most powerful rocket, is preparing for blast-off: