Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, said recently that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing mission was an anomalous situation. What Happened: The fact that we were able to go to the Moon in '69 was such an anomalous situation and it was like reaching into the future and bringing the technology forward, said Musk on the Full Send podcast.
The landings, which saw Neil Armstrong become the first human to step on the lunar surface, were not the natural pace of technology development, according to SpaceX founders.
The United States just collectively decided that this has to be done, Musk said, referring to the space race between the US and the Soviet Union.
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Why It Matters: Musk agreed with the podcast hosts that it was weird that the U.S. had not returned to the Moon's surface since 1972.
Musk said SpaceX is a super-heavy lift launch vehicle Starship is gigantic compared to anything that has been done before, and SpaceX has an asset contract to take astronauts to the Moon. It is capable of putting 100 tons of payload on the moon. You can build a moon base with a starship. Musk said that we could go a long way beyond what was done with the Apollo program, where they had a small lander. SpaceX would take astronauts to the Moon before it took them to Mars, the billionaire entrepreneur said.
I think we should build a city on the moon and in Mars.