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Elon Musk says he’s postponing his Mars project to focus on establishing a colony on the Moon, and the scepticism was visible from space – 17 ‘Sure, Jan’ responses

Poke Reporter. Updated February 9th, 2026

Elon Musk – so-called genius – has made his name based on predctions of what he can achieve through his companies, SpaceX and Tesla.

Here are some of those predictions.

2011 – He’d have a man on Mars within 10 years.

2016 – Teslas will be full autonomous by 2017.

2017 – The second-generation Tesla Roadster will be in production soon.

2017 – There will be a million self-driving Tesla Robotaxis by 2020.

2025 – Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) breakthrough before the end of the year.

2025 – 10,000 humanoid robots equipped with AGI will be out in the world doing tasks for people by the end of the year.

You’ll have noticed that his success rate with all that remains at zero, yet this year has already seen him predict that his Optimus robots will be better surgeons than any human within three years, and he has advised people not to bother going to medical school.

Sure, Jan.

At the weekend, he announced his plan to ‘temporarily’ shelve the Mars mission for a moonshot – literally.

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.

If anyone believes, firstly, that Musk is driven by the desire to secure the future of civilisation, and secondly, that he will be in any position to establish a colony on the Moon in the next ten years, or in his own lifetime – well, we have 10,000 robot butlers to sell them.

He plans to build a mass driver, an electromagnetic catapult for launching rockets, on the lunar surface – although we’re not sure who died and made him king of the Moon with permission to build there.

This plot twist makes his past comments – like this one – kind of awkward.

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.

Reactions on Twitter included the parade of Musk sycophants with their blue ticks, hammering out praise from the safety of their mums’ basements. There were also some that were less complimentary.

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