Behind the hardware that is supposed to carry astronauts back to the Moon stands a founder who has once again redrawn the map. On a Sunday in early February, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX had “shifted focus” from putting humans on Mars to building a “self-growing city on the Moon,” something he called achievable in less than 10 years. For the people who build and fly Starship, the human side of this news is a change of destination, not of vehicle.
The reasoning, posted on X, was orbital mechanics. “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)”, Musk wrote, arguing that a lunar city could be iterated into existence far faster. He was blunt about the ranking: “the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.” The mission, he added, is unchanged: “extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars,”
The record shows this is not the first redraw. As recently as January 2025 he insisted “No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.” In 2016 he laid out a vision of a self-sustaining Martian city for at least a million settlers, a first crewed landing penciled in for 2024. Speaking from Berlin in 2020, he said he was “highly confident” of landing people by 2026, adding “If we get lucky, maybe four years,”. And in March 2025 he wrote that uncrewed Starships would go first, with human landings “as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely,”
What this means for NASA is money riding on that hardware. SpaceX holds a nearly $3 billion contract to build the Artemis lunar lander, and TIME reported in February that the vehicle, Starship, was still in early development and had not reached orbit. The agency’s Artemis II flyby, four astronauts around the Moon, is slated for this year, the first crewed deep-space flight in more than 50 years, with Artemis III to follow using it as a pathfinder. Washington has leaned in: Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary who briefly ran NASA, said in October 2025 that “They push their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China,” and vowed “I’m going to open up the contract. I’m going to let other space companies compete with SpaceX.” Blue Origin has paused its celebrity tourism flights to chase the same contracts, and Jeff Bezos answered the moon-city post with a picture of a tortoise, motto “gradatim ferociter,” step by step ferociously, against Musk’s “fail fast.”
Behind the breakthrough, for the people counting on it, is a simpler wager: one rocket, two destinations, and a founder who keeps swapping the order. The Moon is next. Mars, as ever, is the horizon.
Sources
- NASA updates lander plans for Moon landings, finally solves long-festering Orion issue – Ars Technica
- Elon Musk Postpones Mars Plans in Favor of Building “Moon City”
