埃隆·马斯克提出,为实现每年远超1太瓦的能源产出,人类必须前往月球建立工厂和“质量投射器”,并以此发射AI卫星。他认为,通过月球上的质量投射器,能源产出可提升数个数量级,最终达到太阳能量的一小部分。马斯克描绘了在月球建立自维持城市、前往火星乃至探索整个太阳系的愿景,并指出这是发现可能存在的外星文明遗迹的唯一途径。他强调,实现这一宏大目标的关键路径就是在月球部署质量投射器。
ELON MUSK: "If you want to go beyond a mere terawatt per year, you have to go to the moon. So by having factories on the moon, building AI satellites and having a mass driver, which is the kind of thing you really need to learn about in read about in science fiction, but we're going to make it real. We're actually going to have a mass driver on the moon.
And if you do that, you can go several orders of magnitude greater. You can go to 1000 gigawatts or more per year, and ultimately get to maybe a millionth, and then a 1,000th and maybe even a few percent of the sun's energy.
I really want to see the mass driver on the moon that is shooting AI satellites into deep space just go like just one after the other. I can't imagine anything more epic than a mass driver on the moon and a self sustaining city on the moon, and then going beyond the moon to Mars, going throughout our solar system, and ultimately, being out there among the stars and visiting all these star systems, maybe we'll meet aliens. Maybe we'll meet see some civilizations that lasted for millions of years, and we'll find the remnants of ancient alien civilizations. But the only way we're going to do that, do that, do that is if we go out there and we explore, and this is the path to making it happen."