Musk gives up on colonizing Mars to focus on something more technically feasible

Last January, Elon Musk called going back to the Moon instead of flying directly to Mars a "distraction." Faced with the reality of a Mars mission that he just recently promised will begin in 2026, however, Musk has now put the Moon back into play.

A city on Mars can't be ready in the next 20 years, he opined, so SpaceX will help build a base on the Moon instead, and that's exactly the goal Musk will be taming his space exploration ambitions with now.

The complete U-turn on the SpaceX colonization program, which only existed on paper anyway since the Starship 3 rocket hasn't even done its maiden flight, comes hot on the heels of an expected IPO, which Musk counts on to finance the money pit that is his xAI endeavor.

Musk recently merged SpaceX with xAI citing some yet unrealized synergies like orbital data centers, which consolidated his ownership stake and attached the fortune of his money-losing AI undertaking to his only growing company that is underpinned by Starlink revenue and NASA contracts.

One such contract is the second manned US mission to the Moon that NASA awarded SpaceX $4 billion for, and that might explain the sudden change of space exploration focus to something much closer to Earth than Mars. Just a few months back, Elon Musk was claiming that SpaceX would be able to launch the maiden Starship 3 voyage to Mars in 2026, as suitable conditions for such a mission only come once every two years or so, so he didn't want to wait until 2028.

The Starship 3 rocket, however, may not be ready on time for sending the first test cargo to Mars in 2026. Even if the mission were feasible, it would've cost SpaceX a lot of its own money, too, so Elon may have deduced that such a vast expenditure with doubtful ROI won't sit well with investors and he needs the IPO money.

Musk says that SpaceX may still try and start the Mars project in "5 to 7 years," but knowing how easily he overpromises and then moves the goalposts, some sort of a basic Moon base sounds like a much more attainable goal than colonizing Mars with Optimus robots.