Musk wants a ‘self-growing city’ on the Moon: Does the Moon have enough water?
A new study suggests that the Moon lacks sufficient water resources to support Elon Musk's vision of a self-growing city housing millions of people. While smaller lunar bases remain feasible, the research indicates that water scarcity poses a hard limit on large-scale human colonization.
Why it matters
It challenges the feasibility of long-term, large-scale space colonization plans by highlighting critical resource constraints.
A city on the Moon that grows by itself, produces its own resources, and eventually houses millions of people: this idea sounds like pure science fiction, but then again, so did reusable orbital rockets not long ago. In early 2026, according to Reuters, Musk told the world that SpaceX was shifting its eyes toward the Moon and that a self-building lunar metropolis could be on the horizon within a decade.That dream just hit a big obstacle. And it’s not money, launch costs, or robots. It’s water.A new study by scientists Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell looked at how much water might actually be up there.
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