The Sundarban
SpaceX has already shifted point of interest to building a self-growing metropolis on the Moon, as we can doubtlessly gain that in decrease than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years. Elon Musk is talking about building a metropolis on the Moon at a faster tempo. The recount reason is to accumulate heaps of of trillions from AI knowledge centers in set up. Moon sources will increase AI satellites from 100 to 1000 gigawatts per year from earth by ten instances by 2040 after which one hundred instances by 2050. This would perhaps perhaps maybe also accumulate SpaceX, XAi and Tesla thousands of trillions of dollars eacy.
It’s only that you may maybe maybe perhaps think of to shuttle to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month outing time), whereas we can begin to the Moon every 10 days (2 day outing time). This implies we can iterate mighty faster to full a Moon metropolis than a Mars metropolis.
For these unaware, SpaceX has already shifted point of interest to building a self-growing metropolis on the Moon, as we can doubtlessly gain that in decrease than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.
The mission of SpaceX remains the identical: lengthen consciousness and existence as we perceive it to…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2026
Elon distinguished that up to 1 petawatt (PW) per year may maybe maybe perhaps maybe even be launched from the Moon, in contrast to 1 terawatt (TW) per year from Earth—highlighting the Moon’s doable for resource-efficient vitality and field matter output.
Up to 1TW/year will even be launched from Earth and 1PW/year from the Moon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2026
Dwelling-primarily based mostly industries may maybe maybe perhaps maybe also exceed Earth’s tag by harnessing 100,000x extra photo voltaic vitality, using a tiny fraction of the Solar’s output.
Dwelling-primarily based mostly industries will vastly exceed the worth of all of Earth, on condition that you may maybe maybe perhaps harness roughly 100,000 instances extra vitality than Earth and silent be using decrease than a millionth of the Solar’s vitality!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2026
AI generations scaled for set up: AI5/AI6 for low gigawatt (GW)-scale ops, escalating to AI8/Dojo3 for over 100GW/year.
AI5/AI6 will be fine for set up on the low GW/year scale.
AI7/Dojo3 for >10GW/year.
AI8/Dojo3 for >100GW/year.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2026
Lunar ISRU for Silicon, Aluminum, and Comparatively loads of Materials- Utility to Dwelling-Essentially based mostly AI Satellites
Lunar In-Situ Handy resource Utilization (ISRU) offers a pathway to extract key gives care for silicon (Si), aluminum (Al), iron (Fe), titanium (Ti), and oxygen (O₂) from regolith, enabling on-online page manufacturing of satellite ingredients. This would perhaps perhaps maybe also revolutionize constellations care for Starlink by shifting manufacturing to set up, reducing Earth-begin mass, and supporting scalable AI compute infrastructure. Regolith is forty five% O₂ by weight (ride in oxides), 21% Si, with valuable Al (7-18% in highlands anorthite), Fe (5-15%), and designate Ti.
Molten Regolith Electrolysis (MRE)
Heats regolith to 1600-1800°C (by the utilize of photo voltaic concentrators or nuclear power), then applies newest to separate aspects.
Yields
Si (up to 99.999% purity for photo voltaic cells/chips),
Al (pure within alloy 1100 requirements for constructions),
Fe (for electronics/magnetics), and
O₂ (96% recovery).
Blue Origin’s Blue Alchemist demo makes utilize of this for scalable extraction with out chemical compounds, producing Si for photovoltaics and Al/Fe alloys.
Molten Salt Electrolysis (FFC-Cambridge Job)b
Dissolves regolith in salts care for CaCl₂ at 700-950°C. Electrolysis yields Al/Fe/Si alloys (Al-Fe-Si, Fe-Si-Ti).
Terminate to-full O₂ extraction; Al/Si for wiring/insulation. Much less vitality-intensive than MRE but requires Earth-sourced salts initially (Ca from lunar anorthite later).
Server Sky Diagnosis on Making Satellites from Lunar Sources
Server Sky is a proposal to fabricate stout arrays of 7 gram paper-thin photo voltaic-powered computer satellites launched into a 6400 kilometer altitude earth orbit. A server-sat is essentially a 100 micron thick, 6 inch photo voltaic cell, with processor memory and radio chips round the perimeters. Server-sats utilize mild stress for thrust and electrochromic mild shutters for steering. Hundreds of server-sats will be positioned in three-d arrays, about 100 meters on a aspect. An array acts as a stout phased array antenna transmitting thousands of verbal substitute beams simultaneously to ground receivers and to other arrays in set up.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Notion Leader and a favored Science blogger with 1 million readers per thirty days. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive skills and trends including Dwelling, Robotics, Synthetic Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Recognized for identifying cutting edge technologies, he’s in the in the intervening time a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for excessive doable early-stage companies. He’s the Head of Examine for Allocations for deep skills investments and an Angel Investor at Dwelling Angels.
A frequent speaker at companies, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity College speaker and guest at loads of interviews for radio and podcasts. He’s initiate to public speaking and advising engagements.
