alt Hacker NewsThe total addressable market (TAM) for SpaceX is finite. There are only so many nation-states and large corporations that want to launch payloads into orbit.
And even if their internet service provider is uniquely capable for now, it only fills a strategic need for certain customers.
So instead, Musk and Co. need to find bubbling market trends that look like they will have huge gigantic TAMs to justify the potential growth of this company.
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SpaceX also wants to put data centers in space. That's the big market for SpaceX and how it ties into AI.
Space Opportunities + Robots (Tesla merger when it happens) + Software factory (Cursor).
It is a umbrella enterprise.
Musk would argue infinite. They literally want to create offworld colonies, with everything that entails. Obviously it's crazy, but it beats the pants off more adtech.
I'm bullish on DC in space with laser links. The whole sentient sun/railgun on the moon... hey, go big or go home. I would have probably just asked MBS for money on that one, and renamed the railgun "the line (of ketamine)".
A global centralized internet provider? I mean, just that, might be a trillion dollar company. Let alone build out datacenters? Those are not easy or cheap here on earth. You can build out datacenters at scale with minimal need for power or cooling. I think the current rate for a data center (not gpu) is 120million. Datacenters are super hip now too.
Last week a 13 year old video of ceo of Ariane Airspace got popular on twitter. When asked about spacex and reusable rockets he said: "there are only 25 satellites launched a year, every year, and that’s not going to change"
Currently a single Starlink launch is 25 satellites. And there are 100 such launches a year.
All markets are finite. But you're thinking too finitely -- remember that there was a proposal to use Starship (BFS?) as a point-to-point method of people transport too (London to Sydney in under 50 minutes I seem to remember).
You also have other services: Starlink is an obvious one they're pursuing now, but there's many other things that they could branch into with no effective competition right now, from harvesting resources such as Helium-3 to Rare Earths (ironic name), to... (thinks for several minutes) banishing people to the Phantom Zone?
But you get what I mean, it's not just about rockets, it's about the things cheap and reliable rocketry enables.