Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Elon Musk continued his pivot from products that generate revenue to crazy-pants vaporware that generates press releases. In an xAI meeting, he informed employees that the company would need a lunar AI satellite factory equipped with a “gigantic catapult” for flinging hardware into orbit. The New York Times reviewed the audio and noted Musk spoke with the certainty of a man who has never been to the Moon, or near it, yet remains confident in his expertise. Which could be construed as the billionaire equivalent of “hold my beer, y’all, and watch this.”
Guessing he's thinking something along these lines. (Odd News)
Musk explained that lunar presence was mandatory for xAI’s mission, stating simply: “You have to go to the Moon.” He did not clarify who “you” referred to, whether that person had consented, or what HR documentation would be required. The AI produced by such a facility, he added, would possess intelligence so vast that imagining its thought process was essentially impossible. It was a logical leap that would have made the Underpants Gnomes proud, if they existed, although it’s likely that they would have pointed out that yet again Musk failed to make “profit” his last step.
The catapult portion of the plan would need to achieve velocities around 3,800 miles per hour to escape the Moon’s gravity. This is technically possible with electromagnetic railgun technology, though any satellite launched that way would experience roughly 10,000 g of acceleration, enough to reduce most circuit boards to powder. Musk did not address the durability requirements, possibly because the satellites haven’t been invented yet, nor has the factory, or the colony, or the AI. I could go on and on.
The orbiting AI data center these satellites would form is intended to harness solar power while staying cool in the vacuum of space. Several experts contacted by the Times described this thermal management strategy as “not how vacuums work,” noting that space is actually quite bad at removing heat from electronics, a problem NASA has been solving with heavy radiator systems since before Musk was born. But the experts also conceded they were not thinking at the scale Musk was thinking, mostly because that scale does not yet correspond in any way to reality.
Notably, Musk posted on X just last year that SpaceX would be going “straight to Mars” and that “the Moon is a distraction.” He has since pivoted to describing the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars. Musk now estimates a “self-growing city” on the Moon within ten years. These figures were calculated using methods he did not disclose, though his 2017 prediction that SpaceX would send cargo missions to Mars by 2022 remains available for context.
A Musk-less Mars. (NASA)
The xAI workforce reportedly received the announcement with what sources described as “engaged silence,” a posture refined across multiple employers who have learned that questions about feasibility tend to negatively extend meetings without positively altering outcomes. One attendee noted that the mood was “honestly pretty normal for Elon,” which may itself be the most damning observation available.
No timeline for the catapult was provided. No specifications for the factory were shared. No colonial infrastructure was detailed beyond the fact that it would need to exist. Musk closed the meeting by expressing excitement about witnessing intelligence at planetary/lunar scale, leaving employees to contemplate how much ketamine Musk might have consumed for breakfast, like somewhere between “a lot” and “all of it”.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
