SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has experienced a massive attitude adjustment concerning going back to the moon. Recent posts on X suggests that the space billionaire entrepreneur has started to see value in accessing Earth’s nearest neighbor after all.

Last January, Musk Musk posted, “No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.” For Musk, everything was about going to Mars to found a settlement.

Much more recently, he posted, “Starship will build Moonbase Alpha,” referencing a lunar base featured in the late 1970s sci-fi TV series “Space: 1999.”

Musk seems to have changed his position around the time that Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy threatened to reopen the Human Landing System contract — the idea being that the SpaceX Starship version was taking too long and new bidders were needed.

In reply Musk issued a number of middle school-style insults attacking Duffy’s intelligence. But he also released a great deal of information about the Starship Human Landing System, adding that SpaceX has submitted a streamlined version that could be made operational sooner.

NASA is currently studying that proposal, among others, including one from Jeff Bezos’s Blue Moon.

Musk has also boasted that, if necessary, SpaceX could build Moonbase Alpha on its own. But that means that he has to find a way to make it profitable, beyond the hitherto mentioned........

© The Hill