Musk wants to go to the moon. But how will he build his ‘self-growing city’?

It goes without saying that we shouldn't take everything Elon Musk says too seriously. There are whole websites dedicated to those times when he has 'talked the talk' but failed to 'walk the walk' — as well as those times when he has been factually untrue. But his latest claim, which is that he will build a "self-growing city" on the moon by 2030, is worth considering because whether he or someone else is the one to make that happen, we can be cautiously optimistic that it is a question of "when" and not "if.

There's a problem here — and it isn't to do with getting to the moon. It's true that Artemis is behind schedule, and that it's been a long time since the United States landed on the lunar surface. But we know it can be done.

If processed into a fibre, for example, lunar regolith becomes more than 20 times stronger than the next-strongest sintered or melted regolith product. In fibre form, it combines high tensile strength with flexibility and large surface area. That means it could reinforce load-bearing structures for landing pads, roads and shelters, while also functioning as a textile for dust mitigation, filtration and insulation.