Elon Musk on why the Moon might come before Mars: “You don’t necessarily have to go through the Moon to get to Mars. But I think we can build a self-growing city on the Moon faster than we can on Mars” The Moon has major advantages for scaling AI in space: Because it has no atmosphere and only one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, you can use a mass driver (railgun) to literally shoot AI data centers into deep space - no rockets required You can also manufacture solar panels and radiators directly from Moon materials. This could allow scaling to over 1,000 terawatts per year of AI compute - compared to roughly 1 terawatt per year if launching everything from Earth Mars remains the ultimate goal - a whole planet with Earth-like gravity and a thin atmosphere that could one day be warmed up to have oceans and walkable surfaces without spacesuits But the Moon could be the faster stepping stone to build massive infrastructure in space