TLDR
- Voyager Technologies CEO Dylan Taylor predicts humans will be living and working on the moon by the early 2030s
- Taylor expects jobs in resource mining, orbital data centers, and power grid construction to emerge on the moon
- Voyager went public last year at a $3.8 billion valuation, making Taylor a billionaire at 53
- Taylor sees Mars as a backup plan due to radiation and distance, not a primary destination
- Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman have all made similar predictions about humans living and working in space
Dylan Taylor, founder and CEO of Voyager Technologies, says humans will be living and working on the moon within a decade. He told Fortune that by the early 2030s, people on Earth will be able to look up and see lights from lunar settlements.
“We’ll have a moon base, people living and working on the moon,” Taylor said.
Taylor points out that humans have already been working in space continuously for 26 years aboard the International Space Station. He says the industry is now actively working to scale that up from a few trained astronauts to a broader population.
Jobs on the Moon
Taylor believes the first lunar jobs will be in resource mining, orbital data centers, and power grid construction. He does not think humanoid robots like Elon Musk’s Optimus can handle everything on their own.
“You’re not going to be able to program Optimus to do everything on the moon,” Taylor said. “You’re going to have to have humans to figure it out.”
Taylor is not speaking as an outside observer. He made his early fortune in electronics, finance, banking, and real estate before stepping away at 37 to pursue space full-time.
He became an angel investor in Space Adventures in 2007 and was an early backer of Relativity Space alongside Mark Cuban. In 2017, he founded Space For Humanity, a nonprofit that aims to give broader access to commercial spaceflight.
Two years later, he founded Voyager Technologies. The company went public on the NYSE last year with a valuation of $3.8 billion, making Taylor a billionaire at 53. Voyager is now building the replacement for the International Space Station and holds multiple NASA contracts.
Taylor himself flew to space on a Blue Origin flight in 2021, becoming the 606th person to leave Earth’s atmosphere.
Mars Is a Backup, Not a Home
When it comes to Mars, Taylor is more cautious. He sees the planet as a contingency against major disasters on Earth, not a primary destination.
“The moon and the Earth are really the same planetary system,” Taylor said, agreeing with Musk that some diversification is needed in case of an asteroid or other catastrophe.
He acknowledges that radiation and the sheer distance from Earth make Mars far more difficult than the moon. He does think a small colony is possible eventually, driven by people with what he calls the “adventurer gene.”
Taylor is not alone in these predictions. Musk now expects manned Mars missions to begin in 2028, though his 2016 prediction of reaching Mars by 2024 did not come true. Jeff Bezos has said millions of people will be living in space by 2045, with robots helping do surface work. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes today’s college graduates will hold well-paid jobs in space that will make current careers look outdated.
Taylor’s view is that enough people share his appetite for adventure that a lunar workforce, and eventually a Martian colony, is a matter of when, not if.
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