American billionaire Elon Musk has become known for his ambition to take humanity to a higher level of civilization and colonize nearby celestial bodies. He has said the conviction emerged after he sold his shares in PayPal, the company he founded with Reid Hoffman.

In 2001, at the Mars Society, he argued for expanding to Mars in case humanity on Earth dies out. Surrounded by like-minded dreamers, he began planning the Martian Oasis, a system of space greenhouses that could be built remotely on the red planet.

Musk’s early collaborator was Michael Griffin, then head of the investment firm In-Q-Tel. The company receives grants from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which it redistributes to firms developing cutting-edge technology for intelligence agencies.

Griffin later became administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 2002, he and Musk explored traveling to Russia to buy decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would be converted to carry the proposed oasis to Mars.

That plan never materialised, prompting Musk to found SpaceX. What began as a quasi-garage start-up is now valued at nearly $1.75tn, with reusable rockets, its own artificial intelligence division xAI and plans for Terafab custom chip factories.

Although the South African-born Musk once dismissed lunar missions as a distraction, he shifted SpaceX’s short-term focus to the Moon in early February.

Rather than treating the Moon as a stopover en route to Mars, he outlined plans to build factories producing humanoid Optimus robots and Starlink-type satellites. These would support further expansion to other planets. The key resource would be regolith, lunar dust rich in silicon and other minerals.

Musk has drawn inspiration from the concept of a self-replicating probe known as a von Neumann spacecraft. The idea, proposed by mathematician John von Neumann, envisages machines that copy themselves on newly reached celestial bodies.

Elon’s Friend

One of Musk’s close associates, Jared Isaacman, has also entered the picture. The entrepreneur, who flew twice into space aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon missions, became NASA administrator on his second attempt and brought ideas for lunar colonization to the agency.

NASA’s program is called Artemis. The name follows the earlier Apollo program and references Greek mythology, in which Apollo rules the Sun while his twin sister Artemis rules the Moon.

Under a program launched by Donald Trump in 2017, NASA has planned a series of missions aimed at establishing a permanent base on the lunar surface. Speaking before contractors and members of Congress on 24 March, Isaacman said the agency is working on a three-phase scenario beginning in 2028.

The first phase would expand rovers and life-support systems. The second would create a semi-habitable structure for astronauts. The third would convert the complex into a permanent settlement supporting future missions to Mars under a new program.

At the same time, NASA intends to send a nuclear-powered rocket to Mars by the end of 2028, further aligning the agency’s plans with Musk’s long-term vision. To meet that timeline, NASA would organize two missions per year, according to Isaacman.

NASA has also opened a tender for rocket deliveries for Artemis missions III through V, considering both SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, developed by Jeff Bezos’s company. Lunar development increasingly resembles a partnership between government agencies and private billionaires.

For now, however, Musk stands out in proposing factories and self-expanding cities on the lunar surface. The broader push toward a lunar economy is reinforced by his other companies, including Tesla and the Boring Company.

Preparations For Colonization

Tesla’s electric vehicles could theoretically operate on the Moon, while the Boring Company specialises in tunnel construction. Musk has suggested that transport routes between habitats and factories would run underground, making such technology potentially relevant.

While Tesla is known for making electric cars that work without oxygen in the atmosphere and are therefore theoretically suitable for moving around on the Moon, Boring – which does not mean "boring" but "drilling" – is dedicated to digging tunnels. In Musk’s vision, transport between accommodation units and factories would have to run below the surface, precisely what the company is designed for.

Boring has several terrestrial successes to its credit, notably the Cybertunnel in Austin, Texas, part of the Gigafactory complex, and the widely publicized Hyperloop system, which moves vehicles through vacuum tubes and has been categorized as "successfully tested" since 2022.

NASA has not yet advanced that far in its plans. However, in describing the Artemis logo, the agency acknowledges an ambition to expand beyond the Moon. NASA says the Artemis program will send astronauts on progressively more ambitious missions to explore the Moon while preparing for future missions to Mars.

Artemis III, planned for 2027, would test landing systems from SpaceX and Blue Origin. The fourth mission would aim for the first human landing on the Moon in 56 years, since the end of the Apollo program.

While NASA is focused on that objective, Musk sees a crewed presence on the Moon as only one part of a broader strategy. His proposed Terafab facilities would produce 80% of D3-series chips designed to operate without active cooling.

Cooling would instead be passive, reflecting the average temperature of space of about 2.7 kelvin, or roughly −270C. The D3 chips would be used in Starlink satellites and space-based modules.

Musk’s plans also include space-based data centres, which would reduce both cooling and power constraints. The Terafab concept implies computing capacity of one terawatt, while total electricity consumption in the US is about 0.47 terawatts. A single Musk factory and its output could therefore overwhelm existing transmission capacity.

Despite different emphases, Musk’s ideas and NASA’s plans converge on one point. Astronauts are to use the Moon as a stepping stone on the way beyond, specifically to Mars. The red arc in the Artemis logo symbolizes “our journey to Mars”.

On the public-sector side, however, the vision is constrained by funding realities. According to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposal, NASA would lose $5.6bn in fiscal year 2027, which ends 1 October 2027, a 23% reduction.

The proposal mirrors last year’s plan, which drew criticism from both opposition lawmakers and NASA scientists. Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the nonprofit Planetary Society, said that “there are cuts in programs focused on the outer solar system, astrophysics, heliophysics – all the areas that contribute to and enable the human part of the program”.

The Science Mission Directorate would lose $3.9bn under the OMB proposal, which must be approved by the US Congress, or about 47% of its current budget. Despite ambitious rhetoric, the administration has not outlined major new funding for large-scale lunar industrialisation.