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Artist’s illustration of an electromagnetic mass driver launching a payload from the surface of the moon.
(Image credit: General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems)
Last week, SpaceX founder Elon Musk advised workers at the newly acquired company xAI that he wants to place up a factory on the moon to make artificial intelligence (AI) satellites. And he called for a colossal catapult on the lunar surface to poke them into space.
“My estimate is that, within two to three years, the lowest-cost way to generate AI compute will be in space,” Elon Musk wrote in a Feb. 2 update that announced SpaceX‘s acquisition of xAI.
Since xAI was fashioned suitable 30 months ago, the small and talented team has made remarkable progress.The future has by no means appeared extra thrilling! pic.twitter.com/QZ73H2mpBjFebruary 11, 2026
Moon cargo
“Thanks to advancements like in-space propellant transfer,” Musk wrote in the Feb. 2 update, “Starship shall be capable of landing massive amounts of cargo on the moon. Once there, it will be possible to establish a permanent presence for scientific and manufacturing pursuits.”
Factories on the moon can take advantage of lunar sources to manufacture satellites and deploy them into space, Musk added.
“By using an electromagnetic mass driver and lunar manufacturing,” he wrote, “it is far feasible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year [terawatts per year] of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the sun’s power.”
In the Seventies, Gerard O’Neill proposed consume of an electromagnetic rail gun to lob payloads from Earth’s moon. (Image credit: Space Experiences Institute)Mass drivers
Musk is rarely always the first person to indicate the consume of mass drivers — which are basically railguns — on the moon. He’s following in the footsteps of space visionary Gerard O’Neill, who floated the idea back in 1974.
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“Mass drivers” based on a coilgun earn can be adapted to accelerate a non-magnetic object. One application O’Neill proposed for mass drivers: toss baseball-sized chunks of ore mined from the surface of the moon into space. Once in space, the ore may very successfully be archaic as raw material for constructing space colonies and solar vitality satellites.
O’Neill worked on mass drivers at the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how (MIT), along with colleague Henry Kolm and a staff of pupil volunteers to construct their first mass driver prototype.
Backed by grants from the Space Experiences Institute, later prototypes improved on the concept, exhibiting that a mass driver only 520 feet (160 meters) long may enhance material off the lunar surface.
Kolm, O’Neil, and the pupil researchers demonstrated a laboratory design that they believed may scale to an operational lunar mass driver several kilometers long to bring 600,000 tons per year to one of the Earth-moon Lagrange facets.
Superior alternative
Robert Peterkin of General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems bolstered the promise of lunar-based mass drivers extra lately. In 2023, he filed a yarn to the Air Force Place of business of Scientific Research (AFOSR) titled “Lunar Electromagnetic Launch for Resource Exploitation to Enhance National Security and Economic Growth.”
“A fashionable electromagnetic launcher is a superior choice, because it can use abundant solar energy as a prime energy source instead of importing chemical rocket fuel from Earth,” Peterkin told Space.com.
“The U.S. government may detached fund an evolution of the existing electromagnetic aircraft launch design, now operating reliably on the U.S. Navy’s Gerald R. Ford nuclear aircraft carrier, to achieve increased pace, at lower mass, for reliable lunar launch,” said Peterkin.
Space artist Pat Rawlings’ vision of a lunar catapult, printed by the Lunar & Planetary Institute in 1985. (Image credit: LPI)Lunar ecosystem
“Undoubtedly, the first spiral of a development cycle for a lunar ecosystem will rely on supply of machinery, structures and supporting systems from the Earth,” Peterkin wrote in his AFOSR yarn.
“A SpaceX Starship with the ability to deliver 100 metric tons to the lunar surface will be a true enabler,” he added. “SpaceX and NASA are growing plans to establish a lunar base of operations, and we recommend that this base be selected to allow for a reliable and enabling lunar electromagnetic launch system.”
Underscored in the 30-page doc is that the moon is wealthy in valuable sources, together with silicon, titanium, aluminum and iron. The prospect of tapping into lunar water also looms large.
“A not-too-distant future lunar economy will make use of these lunar resources to resupply, repair and refuel spacecraft in lunar orbit at lower cost than delivering terrestrial resources from Earth’s deep gravitational well,” Peterkin wrote in the yarn.
Leonard David is an award-a success space journalist who has been reporting on space activities for extra than 50 years. Currently writing as Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist among his other initiatives, Leonard has authored a large selection of books on space exploration, Mars missions and extra, with his latest being “Moon Rush: The New Space Race” printed in 2019 by National Geographic. He also wrote “Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet” released in 2016 by National Geographic. Leonard has served as a correspondent for SpaceNews, Scientific American and Aerospace America for the AIAA. He has acquired many awards, together with the first Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History in 2015 at the AAS Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium. You can regain out Leonard’s latest challenge at his web position and on Twitter.
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