Image: SpaceX
Building on his overnight orbital compute forecast, Elon Musk said Saturday that a mass driver on the Moon could launch superintelligence satellites into deep space at far more than a petawatt of new capability each year.
Replying to TV personality Spencer Pratt, Musk wrote: “Launching super intelligence satellites into deep space with a mass driver on the Moon can achieve >>petawatt/year capability, which would far exceed the best case value of Earth’s economy.”
Pratt had shared a SpaceX financial model from Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire. Musk’s reply skipped past the revenue figures and pointed instead to a lunar launcher for deep-space compute.
A mass driver is an electromagnetic accelerator that flings payloads along a track instead of lifting them with rockets. Low lunar gravity and no atmosphere make that idea attractive on paper. Musk did not say when SpaceX might build one, how it would be powered, or how the satellites would be aimed once they leave the Moon.
SpaceX is already sketching the hardware that would ride those launches. Its planned Star Mind AI satellites are meant for large in-orbit compute formations, with designs packing more than 250 kilowatts of solar power per craft. NASA has also shown early looks inside a Starship Moon lander cabin ahead of 2027 tests.
One petawatt equals one million gigawatts. Musk cast the lunar mass driver as a yearly addition on that scale in deep space, well beyond the Earth-orbit compute path he outlined Friday night.
Could a Moon mass driver really outrun the best-case value of Earth’s entire economy?
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