#spacex

#spacex

Southern Californians out on Saturday night for Valentine's Day took a break from staring longingly into each other's eyes to gaze at something else: a SpaceX rocket blazing across the early evening Southland sky. SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The rocket carried 24 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit, according to the company.

Elon Musk announced on X that SpaceX is shifting its sights to building a "self-growing city" on the moon within 10 years, marking a dramatic shift from his long-standing Mars focus. While Mars missions remain planned for five to seven years out, Musk said the moon takes priority for "securing the future of civilization." 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.

Elon Musk took to X to proclaim that SpaceX would focus on building out a base on the moon before sending humans to Mars. And Musk was careful to couch his announcement in a way that didn't make it sound like a surprise. 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, Musk wrote in his post.

"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," Musk wrote, in part.

True innovation lives where deep technical insight meets ignored, convention-bound assumptions. There's a kind of arbitrage in innovation that's easy to miss because it doesn't look like arbitrage at all. It lives in the gap between what physics allows and what institutions assume is possible. The reason it persists is that exploiting it requires developing genuine expertise in domains where most have neither the background nor the patience.