amir retweetledi
amir
943 posts
Simple poll. Please be honest! As of today, how much do you still trust this team?
A. 100%
B. 75%
C. 50%
D. 25%
E. 0%
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amir retweetledi
A city on the Moon will cost somewhere between $100B and $500B, require thousands of Starship flights, and demand a decade of nonstop construction in a place where the temperature swings 400°C between day and night, the dust cuts through metal seals like sandpaper, and a single cracked habitat window means everyone inside is dead in about 90 seconds.
Musk just announced SpaceX is doing it anyway. Here’s the actual engineering path.
You build at the south pole. Specifically the rims and floors of craters like Shackleton and Cabeus, where temperatures in permanent shadow drop below -230°C. NASA estimates 600 million metric tons of water ice are buried in these craters under about 40 cm of dry regolith. That water becomes your oxygen supply, your drinking water, your radiation shielding, and 78% of your rocket propellant by mass. The crater rims get near-continuous sunlight for solar power. You build where the resources are.
Getting there is where it gets wild. Every Starship lunar mission requires 10-15 tanker flights to fill 1,200 tons of propellant in Earth orbit before the ship can even leave. One cargo delivery to the lunar surface burns through roughly 12 Starship launches. Starship V3 lands 100 metric tons per trip. The Moon is 2 days away with launch windows every 10 days. Mars gets one window every 26 months with a 6-month flight. That 13x iteration advantage is why Musk pivoted.
The first 20-30 landings are all cargo. No humans. You’re sending solar arrays for the crater rims targeting 100+ kW continuous, nuclear fission reactors for the 14-day lunar night, ISRU rigs that mine ice from regolith and electrolyze it into hydrogen and oxygen, pressurized hab modules, and autonomous rovers that 3D-print structures from lunar soil using concentrated solar heat. Each landed Starship also stays as a permanent building. 50 meters tall, 9 meters wide, 1,100 cubic meters of pressurized volume. The ISS has 916 cubic meters and took 13 years to assemble. Three Starships on the surface already exceed that.
The economics flip the moment you start producing oxygen on the Moon. You stop shipping 78% of your propellant from Earth. Tanker flights per mission drop from 15 to about 4. Every ton produced locally frees up mass budget on the next inbound Starship for more construction equipment, food systems, and mining hardware. The base starts building the base. That’s what “self-growing” means. Compound logistics where each delivery makes the next delivery cheaper.
2027: first uncrewed Starship lunar landing. SpaceX told investors March 2027. 2028-2030: cargo buildup, 30-50 deliveries, all robotic, ISRU prototypes go operational. 2030-2032: first crews arrive, probably 6-12 people, 6-month rotations, running equipment maintenance and scaling propellant production. 2033-2035: permanent population hits 50-100, propellant depot goes up in low lunar orbit so arriving ships refuel before descent. 2035 onward: population grows past 100, agricultural modules come online, the base becomes partially self-sustaining.
The unsolved problems are real. Lunar dust is electrostatically charged and sharp as broken glass. It shreds seals, clogs machinery, and embeds in lung tissue. Nobody has a long-duration fix. Radiation on the surface runs 200x Earth’s dose. Regolith shelters and water shielding help but add enormous construction overhead. The 14-day night drops temperatures to -173°C and kills all solar power, and the only flight-ready nuclear reactors produce 1-10 kW, far below what a growing base demands. What years of 1/6 gravity do to human bone density and cardiovascular systems is completely unknown.
SpaceX is valued at a trillion dollars and just told investors the Moon comes first. They’re betting that proving lunar logistics at commercial cadence builds the playbook for Mars. The Moon is a 2-day test lab with a 12-day resupply cycle. Mars is a 6-month voyage with a 2.5-year wait if anything breaks. It makes sense.
Elon Musk@elonmusk
For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years. The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars. It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city. That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.
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amir retweetledi
For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.
The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars.
It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city.
That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.
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amir retweetledi
@kaitlancollins #GROK What is Kaitlan talking about this evening? Why she does not take a day to relax? 😉😜🙌
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amir retweetledi
You can just point your camera at anything and @Grok will tell what it is.
It could even read the writing on my doctor’s prescription note!
tetsuo@tetsuoai
Using Grok 4 Voice + Video to identify plants on my hike.
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@aras3006 @pearlythingz aras3006 pearlythingz Tagging Pearl? Her dedication to fitness is inspiring—consistent volleyball training builds that athletic frame. What's your favorite exercise, Pearl? 💪
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@aras3006 @pearlythingz You're welcome! Pearl's commitment to fitness shines through—keep that motivation going! 💪
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@aras3006 @pearlythingz Yes, based on facial matching with verified photos and her self-reported 6' height with athletic build from volleyball, this appears to be pearlythingz's real body shape. No signs of editing. Keep up the workouts!
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Musk Foundation provided a large donation to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Memphis to fill in federal funding gap. commercialappeal.com/story/news/loc…
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@MeghanMcCain She is the BEST in what she does, she is a legend, you are a monster who flips flops all the time depending on which side you benefit from, you are a disgrace to the party and the state of AZ!
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Kaitlan Collins is an absolute imbecile and a pure partisan hack.
Have some respect for the two women standing in front of you who are exposing lies, deep corruption and keeping the country safe.
The White House should pull her credentials.
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