Scientists cast doubt on Elon Musk's lunar city plan

Elon Musk's plan to build a self-sustaining city on the Moon within a decade faces a critical flaw, as new research suggests lunar water supplies are insufficient to support a large permanent colony. A study in Frontiers in Space Technologies estimates that a city of over one million people would exhaust the Moon's roughly 600 million metric tons of water ice in just over two years. The ice, delivered by asteroid impacts, is confined to permanently shadowed polar craters. While water presence enables a small scientific base or "lunar village" without resupplying everything from Earth, even optimistic estimates show the Moon cannot sustain a full million-person city autonomously, according to Smithsonian astronomer Martin Elvis.