Elon Musk’s latest promises: Moon cities and space catapults

When most CEOs talk about scaling up, they mean hiring more people or leasing bigger offices. Elon Musk envisions building a factory on the moon. At a recent xAI meeting, Musk outlined plans for lunar AI satellite manufacturing, complete with a giant electromagnetic mass driver to catapult the finished products into orbit. "You have to go to the moon," he told employees, according to The New York Times.

This lunar pivot marks a significant shift from Musk's Mars obsession. Over the weekend, he posted that SpaceX has "already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon," predicting it could happen within a decade while Mars remains "20-plus years" away.

The mass driver concept isn't entirely fantastical. These electromagnetic launchers have existed in serious space engineering discussions for decades, and the moon's thin atmosphere and lower gravity make them more feasible than on Earth.

But Musk's vision extends far beyond a simple assembly line. He's describing an entire industrial civilization, complete with mining, manufacturing, and repair capabilities, all 238,000 miles from the nearest hardware store.