Elon Musk quote: The moon is a distraction -- discuss

[meekGee]

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1875023335891026324

No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction....

Them be fighting words.

Interpretations vary though. Me, I don't even think it necessarily means "we're not going to the moon", it can just as easily mean "we're going to the moon because we're getting paid but it has no meaning for us", but either way:

- It could very well be that the distraction is getting to be more than it is worth.

- Politically, the need to appease the "Moon first" crowd has diminished. With political support, Musk can head to Mars with little headwind.

- Financially, Starlink looks like an endless funding source

- Ironically, NG is due soon, and BO actually WANTS to go to the moon - so why not?  Win-win, as long as the administration doesn't change its mind.

Let the first (manned) landing of this race be by BO and on the moon. Let BO own/lead that entire thrust, and not even burden them with Artemis. But have the ability to focus more on Mars.

Musk never lost his focus. I think he's just reaffirming that.

So does this statement imply an imminent change in the program?

--

EDIT from the FUTURE!!!
The reason I thought this quote is worthy of a thread is "It's exactly when you don't pick your words carefully that you're at your most transparent".


More complete tweet quotes; part of a tweet discussion.

There is a long running debate between the Mars people and the space Habitat people. Zubrin vs O’Neill, Musk vs Bezos. I have thought for some time now it’s essentially futile in the commercial age - because the two camps are no longer competing for a fixed pie of launch and…
[Jan 2]

No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.

Mass to orbit is the key metric, thereafter mass to Mars surface. The former needs to be in the megaton to orbit per year range to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars. [Jan 2]

[zubenelgenubi: edit]

[2megs]

Given Musk's broad and complex involvement with the incoming administration, any discussion about "What space policy does Musk want?" seems like it belongs in the general U.S. Space Policy section for everyone's protection.

[KilroySmith]

I lean towards your second interpretation - the moon will not be a focus for SpaceX, but I doubt that they'll simply withdraw from their Artemis obligations.  The political ramifications from that could be (and likely would be) remarkably negative.

I believe that Musk thinks that Artemis, as currently envisaged, will get cancelled on financial grounds by the incoming administration, eliminating their obligations.  I take his statement to mean that he's not going to fight such a cancellation, and simply rededicate SpaceX to Mars.  I don't know that Musk has the political savvy to avoid having his fingerprints all over the cancellation, but I'm guessing that he believes that it won't matter.

I always assumed that participation in HLS was a fund-raising effort for SpaceX - they got to do a lot of the work that they needed to do anyway on the Government's dime, and work intensely with the best-of-the-best at NASA while doing so.  I think they assumed that it was going to be a relatively minor detour from their main goal, and it's not clear to me at this point that it's been more than that.  Cancelling Artemis now may even be advantageous to them - they've gotten paid for most of the engineering work, will likely get paid for the cancellation, and don't have to spend the next several years focusing their operations team on a lunar landing while they're trying for Mars. 

For BO, it might be a huge boost - an Artemis replacement focused around their strengths and focus could be more successful, especially in the long term.  Perhaps they end up owning the moon, and SpaceX ends up owning Mars..

The next few years were shaping up to be remarkably interesting; this might just make it even more so.

[meekGee]

Given Musk's broad and complex involvement with the incoming administration, any discussion about "What space policy does Musk want?" seems like it belongs in the general U.S. Space Policy section for everyone's protection.

That's a much broader topic. This thread basically boils down to what will musk and Starship do next.

[cohberg]

Most articles and the thesis of this topic ignore the fact that Musk was replying to a comment about selling LOX mined from the moon for Mars transits. Musk's reply was not directly about HLS / Artemis.

Lets look at the actual comment being replied to:

Peter Hague (@peterrhague) - Jan 2, 2025
... 69% of all the mass SpaceX will send to orbit for their Mars missions is liquid oxygen. Lunar regolith is typically about 40% oxygen by mass.

The habitat builders have always struggled to time a market to drive their projects - maybe selling vast quantities of lox[, refined from Lunar regolith,] to SpaceX  [may be] cheaper than they can launch it themselves...

If you add that context, SpaceX's fanatical approach to vertical integration when appropriate and BO's lack of ferociter, being beholden to BO for something as fundamental as your Mars trip fuel doesn't seem like a great idea.

[wannamoonbase]

Ugh, this topic again.

This doesn't have to be an argument of one over the other.

Do both, especially if reuse is going to drive the cost down as much as claimed then doing both will make everything cheaper.

[phantomdj]

I always assumed that participation in HLS was a fund-raising effort for SpaceX - they got to do a lot of the work that they needed to do anyway on the Government's dime, and work intensely with the best-of-the-best at NASA while doing so.  I think they assumed that it was going to be a relatively minor detour from their main goal, and it's not clear to me at this point that it's been more than that.

Bingo! One could even say Starlink was a detour or a means to an end while also being a fundraising effort for Elon's main mission of SpaceX going to Mars.

I would add that going to the moon is also a good testbed for finding the unknown unknowns for a trip to Mars and should not be sold short. Everyone knows most of major issues on a 6 month trip to Mars like radiation mitigation, bone loss issues, even being able to walk without artificial gravity after 6 months and there are others. Many of these can be worked out using the moon and if an problem occurs it's only 3 days away. The moon helps the main mission of going to Mars.

[Norm38]

My take is that they could use the Moon as a proving ground for some Mars bound ship hardware, but if Artimis is cancelled there may be very little reason to design lunar specific hardware versions, such as an HLS variant.  The physical environment is too different.

Gravity, landing dynamics, day/night cycle, atmosphere wind/dust, thermal, radiation, they're all different.  What exactly does a Starship sitting on Luna for a month tell us about a Starship sitting on Mars?
Is there anywhere on Luna where the surface condition (soil, rock, dust depth) is similar enough to a Mars landing site that it makes sense to land a Mars variant to see what damage occurs to the engines and if it can take off again?  That would be a test worth doing.

Another thought, SpaceX will have a limited flight rate for Starship and tankers.  If SpaceX needs those tanker flights to fuel a Starship to Mars to test EDL, then using those tankers for a Moon mission is a distraction.  Of course there's the 2 year window, so maybe the Moon is a useful destination in the off year.

If they want to test life support and crew accommodations for zero-g cruise, then I'd offer "Dear Luna" cruise packages for paying customers.  Fly a dozen of those.  Use Dragon for crew as needed.  Eventually launch and land crew on Starship.

[DanClemmensen]

I always assumed that participation in HLS was a fund-raising effort for SpaceX - they got to do a lot of the work that they needed to do anyway on the Government's dime, and work intensely with the best-of-the-best at NASA while doing so.  I think they assumed that it was going to be a relatively minor detour from their main goal, and it's not clear to me at this point that it's been more than that.  Cancelling Artemis now may even be advantageous to them - they've gotten paid for most of the engineering work, will likely get paid for the cancellation, and don't have to spend the next several years focusing their operations team on a lunar landing while they're trying for Mars. 

NASA published the HLS RFA in 2018, well before SpaceX knew it would be able to count on Starlink to be profitable. NASA was a critically-important customer. I think SpaceX worked to find a profitable way to bid on HLS because their valued customer needed them to do it. In the event, the SpaceX bid was the only one that met the HLS requirements and was within NASA's budget for HLS. This was mostly because of luck: HLS was a relatively minor increment on a system that SpaceX was already designing. If SpaceX had declined to bid, NASA would have had no viable plan for Artemis except to slip even further. Basically, Starship HLS saved Artemis.

[Eric Hedman]

I always assumed that participation in HLS was a fund-raising effort for SpaceX - they got to do a lot of the work that they needed to do anyway on the Government's dime, and work intensely with the best-of-the-best at NASA while doing so.  I think they assumed that it was going to be a relatively minor detour from their main goal, and it's not clear to me at this point that it's been more than that.

Bingo! One could even say Starlink was a detour or a means to an end while also being a fundraising effort for Elon's main mission of SpaceX going to Mars.

I would add that going to the moon is also a good testbed for finding the unknown unknowns for a trip to Mars and should not be sold short. Everyone knows most of major issues on a 6 month trip to Mars like radiation mitigation, bone loss issues, even being able to walk without artificial gravity after 6 months and there are others. Many of these can be worked out using the moon and if an problem occurs it's only 3 days away. The moon helps the main mission of going to Mars.

When I look at how the ISS is wearing out with a number of problems starting with air leaks and issues with durability of water recycling equipment, I think there are a lot of technical issues to be worked out for a habitat on Mars.  Working these issues out on the Moon only three days away is a lot more practical than on Mars.  I don't know of anyone putting in the massive effort to work out the issues anyone wanting to stay a while on Mars will have with durable infrastructure.

[DanClemmensen]

Another thought, SpaceX will have a limited flight rate for Starship and tankers.  If SpaceX needs those tanker flights to fuel a Starship to Mars to test EDL, then using those tankers for a Moon mission is a distraction.  Of course there's the 2 year window, so maybe the Moon is a useful destination in the off year.

SpaceX is spending large amounts of time, money, and effort on full and rapid reuse. If they have a limited flight rate in 2027, then something is very wrong and Mars is off the table anyway. A single tower with a single booster should be able to support one HLS launch per day while also supporting one Mars launch a day and one or two Starlink launches. This looks ridiculous now. 136 F9 recoveries in a year looked ridiculous in 2018.

[pjm1]

Getting involved in Artemis must surely have been a conscious decision, based on a number of competing factors coming out as "net positive":
1. Funding source
2. Positive overlap with other activities (two-for-one)
3. Access to external (e.g. NASA) experts with an independent perspective
and then the cons / potential cons:
4. Control (including potential scope shift as potential problems grew arms and legs)
5. Operational bandwidth, especially for key team personnel

As the economic landscape for SpaceX has changed (largely Starlink), #1 must have shifted.  As the technical challenges evolve - for both HLS and Mars-bound Starships - then #2 will have moved around a bit.  #3 is probably more of a point-in-time benefit and I can well imagine that has been depleted.

Linked to #2 is that greater knowledge that SpaceX will now have in terms of its own "long pole" problems, such as heatshield etc.  How that moves (possibly increases) the cons of 4 and 5 remain to be seen.

Does this mean the previously logical decision to go for Artemis would now be assessed as a "don't bother"?  I guess only SpaceX knows that.

And, as mentioned, it is a leap to take that single comment as a "we're not doing HLS" versus a more generic "mining moon fuel is not on our critical path".

[AC in NC]

Most articles and the thesis of this topic ignore the fact that Musk was replying to a comment about selling LOX mined from the moon for Mars transits. Musk's reply was not directly about HLS / Artemis.

This is the answer.  Musk is saying that they aren't going to complicate Mars by getting LOX from the moon

[meekGee]

Most articles and the thesis of this topic ignore the fact that Musk was replying to a comment about selling LOX mined from the moon for Mars transits. Musk's reply was not directly about HLS / Artemis.

Lets look at the actual comment being replied to:

Peter Hague (@peterrhague) - Jan 2, 2025
... 69% of all the mass SpaceX will send to orbit for their Mars missions is liquid oxygen. Lunar regolith is typically about 40% oxygen by mass.

The habitat builders have always struggled to time a market to drive their projects - maybe selling vast quantities of lox[, refined from Lunar regolith,] to SpaceX  [may be] cheaper than they can launch it themselves...

If you add that context, SpaceX's fanatical approach to vertical integration when appropriate and BO's lack of ferociter, being beholden to BO for something as fundamental as your Mars trip fuel doesn't seem like a great idea.

The OP by Peter Hague is not about LOx.  And the words as said, they're potent.  You can't be the key provider of Artemis III and then say that the moon is a distraction - and expect no weight to be given to that statement.

[meekGee]

Ugh, this topic again.

This doesn't have to be an argument of one over the other.

Do both, especially if reuse is going to drive the cost down as much as claimed then doing both will make everything cheaper.

You could do both, but the question is what Musk intends to do.

I don't want to get into "what's the right thing to do" but rather "what's happening with Starship this coming year"

[InterestedEngineer]

It requires far less LOX to get to Mars than to get to the moon, so I'm not sure there's any economic sense in mining LOX on the moon.

I don't see how humans are getting to Mars in 2028 without NASA involved, and there's not a program started yet for it.

At a wild guess this is a prelude to taking all that moon focus of NASA and turning it to Mars.

[Cabbage123]

Most articles and the thesis of this topic ignore the fact that Musk was replying to a comment about selling LOX mined from the moon for Mars transits. Musk's reply was not directly about HLS / Artemis.

This is the answer.  Musk is saying that they aren't going to complicate Mars by getting LOX from the moon

I just had a look at the actual thread and, yes, this is clearly what Elon was talking about.

Albeit with Twitter brevity, he is clearly dismissing the idea that SpaceX would be interested in loading LOX on, or near, the Moon, and instead would go straight to Mars.

Although Peter Hague might believe that he has stumbled on a terribly clever business idea, could having to travel to the Moon to refuel even come close to making sense for a Earth-Mars trip with the current architecture?

[joek]

This is the answer.  Musk is saying that they aren't going to complicate Mars by getting LOX from the moon

Agree, but would rephrase as Musk saying they aren't going to be dependent on lunar LOX (Artemis, or whatever) for their Mars ambitions.

The OP by Peter Hague is not about LOx.  And the words as said, they're potent.  You can't be the key provider of Artemis III and then say that the moon is a distraction - and expect no weight to be given to that statement.

Nominally agree. Musk could and should have been more precise and tactful in his response. Specifically, Artemis is a distraction and has little-nothing to do with SpaceX's Mars ambitions at this time. They are very different.

[meekGee]

...
Does this mean the previously logical decision to go for Artemis would now be assessed as a "don't bother"?  I guess only SpaceX knows that.
...

That right there. Plus, has the landscape changed enough to reverse the previously made decision?

--

I agree with others that his statement in and of itself if not an indication.  But it is also not a statement by someone who's personally invested in the project.

[InterestedEngineer]

Nominally agree. Musk could and should have been more precise and tactful in his response.

Ha, when has Musk ever done that?