[tomder55]

Remember a short time ago when the space race between Richard Branson and Elon Musk was treated a trivial pursuits by the uber-rich with too much time on their hands ?

Well maybe not . The value of Musk's Space X shot up to $100 billion today....up 33% from February . It is now the 2nd most valuable private company in the world .

Is this greedy capitalist pocketing his riches ?

Nah this funding is the result of massive space projects the company is leading .

One is called Starlink . The goal of Starlink will be to launch thousands of interconnected satellites with the purpose of spreading high speed internet around the globe . More than 1700 sats so far have been launched servicing over 100,000 net users in 14 countries . Service costs $99 /month

Elon Musk: US Nationwide Starlink Rollout Is Coming This Month | PCMag

The other big project is Starship .Starship is a next generation rocket that the company has invested a fortune in to date . It is designed to be a heavy lift rocket for missions to the Moon and Mars . The rocket is at a point where it has flown short term flights . The next step is to reach orbit. SpaceX is awaiting regulatory approval for this step.

FAA releases draft environmental review of SpaceX's Starship | Space

Let's face facts . Private space is the future . NASA is going to retire ISS by the end of the decade and is expecting to replace it with something a private company designs and launches . It will save the taxpayers $1billion annually . The main goals of private space companies is to reduce the cost of access to space and making space accessible to people who are not specially trained astronauts.

So maybe it will be the Musk ,Branson, Bezos billionaires who will be taking the joy rides . But it will not be long before space tourism will be an option for the well travelled tourists . This in turn will spur more investment in areas like launch, communications and exploration ,a new chapter in the history of space .

[jlisenbe]

More than 1700 sats so far have been launched servicing over 100,000 net users in 14 countries.

Hmm. That works out to one satellite per 60 or so users. Hard to imagine how that's supposed to work out. BUT, in the brave new world where 3.5 trillion dollar spending programs add nothing to the national debt, then anything's possible.

But I think you are right concerning private ventures. NASA needs to be largely retired over the next few years.

[tomder55]

It is designed to provide service to low to medium population density areas .To make it global then more sats are required . These are not massive sats . They are about the size of a table . They are also stationed much closer to the earth than a typical comm. sat . So more need to be employed to create a 'constellation ' . But since they are 60 x closer to earth than the traditional sat deployed at 22,000 miles ,the data takes much less time to travel.
I'm sure it will take time to build up subscription; especially in areas where big telecom have virtual state approved monopolies .

[jlisenbe]

Good point, but if it's a private venture charging about 100 dollars a month, and each sat only provides service for 60 customers, then the chance of making a profit would certainly seem to be zero. At a cost of 14K dollars per pound, putting a sat into even low earth orbit is still wildly expensive.

[tomder55]

Yes at this point it is bleeding money to the tune of $5-10 billion in initial investment and anticipated up to about $30 billion .He also has been subsidizing the hook up too, The beta hook up costs $1000 and he was selling it for $500

But investors see the future in it . The OP said that Space X is now a $100 billion company. He has the long game in mind .In interviews Musk speculated that internet connectivity brings in $1 trillion annually around the world and more in the future . He expects to be in the 5 % range or $50 billion annually . June he said he expects to have 500,000 users world wide in the next 12 months .

This is nothing . His goals for starship is to be used to build colonies on the Moon and cities on Mars . and other trivial pursuits. He believes Starlink will fund those projects .