Elon Musk Has Swapped out a Mars Colony for a City on the Moon

No one has threatened to leave planet Earth more than Elon Musk. In August 2025, Elon appeared on the VideoFromSpace webcast, where he explained the purpose of Starship, a launch vehicle developed by his company SpaceX. "We want to be a multi-planet species to extend consciousness beyond Earth." Elon believes this will increase the probability of survival for humans and will inspire people.

Elon goes on to say that space travel gives people a "reason to get up in the morning and be excited about the future." According to the multi-billionaire, life can't just be about "solving one tragic problem after another." The webcast was filmed at SpaceX Starbase, which is located in Texas. This is where SpaceX's headquarters are and is presumably where Elon will work on his latest project: a city on the moon. Here's what we know so far.

In a post to X (formerly Twitter), the company he owns, Elon revealed that SpaceX has "shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon." You might be asking yourself: From what did Elon and SpaceX shift focus? Well, from inhabiting Mars, of course. "It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six-month trip time)," he wrote, "whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (two-day trip time)."

This is not the first time Elon has waxed poetic about the Moon. Back in July 2019, he told TIME that "Apollo 11 was one of the most inspiring things in all of human history." He went on to say that without that mission, SpaceX wouldn't exist. "I kept expecting that we would continue beyond Apollo 11, that we would have a base on the moon," said Elon. "And that by 2019, probably would be sending people to the moons of Jupiter."

Elon decided to build his own "rocket company" because he was frustrated with the lack of budget and technology available for NASA. He was concerned Mars would go the way of the Moon, meaning another "flags-and-footprints outcome." He was aiming for a base and self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the Moon. So far, neither has happened.

Before Elon was interested in putting a city on the Moon, he was very interested in colonizing Mars. On the SpaceX website, the logic behind choosing Mars is really based on location, location, location. The red planet is one of Earth's closest habitable neighbors, and it "still has decent sunlight."

When Elon founded SpaceX in 2002, it was solely for the purpose of going to Mars. Eventually, he realized that to do that, he had to focus on reusable rockets. While speaking at SXSW in 2018, Elon was asked about a timeline. He didn't give a straightforward answer but circled back to the construction of rocket ships, saying one was being built that would be able to make short up and down trips by mid-2019. We are still waiting for this.