Elon Musk says Grokipedia — his encyclopedia launched in October — should be preserved permanently by etching its contents into stone and distributing copies to the Moon, Mars and deep space. He likened the effort to a "modern-day Library of Alexandria" to prevent the catastrophic loss of knowledge. The site lists 885,279 articles and briefly went offline during a Cloudflare outage; Musk plans to rename the project Encyclopedia Galactica once it is more mature and says it will be open-source.
Elon Musk's Vision: Etch Grokipedia in Stone and Send Copies to the Moon, Mars and Deep Space
Elon Musk says Grokipedia — his encyclopedia launched in October — should be preserved permanently by etching its contents into stone and distributing copies to the Moon, Mars and deep space. He likened the effort to a "modern-day Library of Alexandria" to prevent the catastrophic loss of knowledge. The site lists 885,279 articles and briefly went offline during a Cloudflare outage; Musk plans to rename the project Encyclopedia Galactica once it is more mature and says it will be open-source.
08:52 PM, 11/18/2025Science
Elon Musk wants a 'modern-day Library of Alexandria' — and to send it into space
Elon Musk says his online encyclopedia project, Grokipedia, should one day be preserved in a near-permanent form — literally etched into stone — and distributed beyond Earth to guard human knowledge against catastrophic loss.
Speaking with Ron Baron, founder of Baron Capital, Musk framed Grokipedia as more than a Wikipedia-like site: a central repository intended to endure across generations and, if needed, civilizations. "It was the great tragedy that the Library of Alexandria burned down," Musk said, arguing that to prevent a similar cultural and scientific loss "we want to literally etch it in stone, in sort of stone microfont, and distribute it widely."
"In order to preserve this knowledge, I think we want to literally etch it in stone... and distribute it widely." — Elon Musk
Launched in October, Grokipedia currently lists 885,279 articles. The site briefly experienced downtime during a Cloudflare outage but has since returned online — a reminder that the project is still early and not yet immune to interruption. It also remains unclear whether the article count is actively growing.
Musk described a worst-case scenario in which a future civilization would discover the archive and "see what we learned" and then "pick things up from there," an idea he links to his admiration for Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. To extend the archive's reach, Musk said copies would be sent to "the Moon and Mars and out to deep space."
There is some precedent for symbolic items launched into space: in 2018 SpaceX sent a red Tesla Roadster into heliocentric orbit with a spacesuit-clad mannequin dubbed "Starman"; Musk has noted that books by Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams were included among items placed in the car.
When Grokipedia reaches a more mature state, Musk said he intends to rename it Encyclopedia Galactica — a nod to classic science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams. He told Baron the project will be open-source: anyone could access and use it, and others would be free to train on the dataset if they choose.
Why this matters
Whether practical or symbolic, the plan highlights growing interest in long-term, distributed preservation of human knowledge. Etching data into durable media and storing copies off-world are ambitious ideas that raise technical, ethical and logistical questions — but they underline Musk's broader goal of creating a resilient record of humanity's achievements.