SpaceX: A Communications Company with Rockets

SpaceX communications company with rockets


I was reminded of the genius of Elon Musk today by a tweet from @angusdav.

Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial accomplishments are impressive enough on their own. As the imperator of Hyperloop, Tesla, The Boring Company, Space X1, Neuralink, not to mention PayPal…

But colonizing Mars may be his most audacious goal.

The decisive launch of the Falcon Heavy provided the nation with a dose of inspiration and some much needed distraction from excrescent politics.

And yet it was an extemporary salute to the real business opportunity in SpaceX, which is:


A lot of satellites.

…Over 12,000 of them.

SpaceX is an Internet Company That Builds Rockets

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that SpaceX has over $1 billion in cash and no debt.

What will Musk do with that cash?

His long term plan for SpaceX is to transport people to Mars, which he hopes will happen by 2024… And the Falcon Heavy was a major step toward that goal.

But there is a more terrestrial intermediate business on the horizon.

This coming Saturday, according to “The Verge“, another smaller Falcon9 launch will include two test spacecraft – named Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b.

These small test satellites will be used as a pilot for SpaceX’s plan to create a satellite Internet service.

The Internet service will be delivered from a constellation of thousands of satellites capable of delivering Internet connectivity and communications anywhere on the planet.

By selling Internet connectivity, Elon Musk will have the war chest needed to actualize his vision for a colonization of Mars.

(And while he’s at it, since smart phones go pretty well with Internet, if Tesla launched a high end smartphone to compete with Apple, a lot of people would probably buy it.)2

SpaceX internet company that builds rockets

Two years from now, SpaceX projects that the majority of its revenue and operating income will come from Internet communications related revenues, not rocket missions.

By 2025, Elon Musk projects that he’ll generate a profit of between $15-20 billion.


Chart by The Wall Street Journal.


  1. Also randomly noted today that is not HTTPS yet… Odd.
  2. Apple currently rakes in over 87% of all global smartphone profit.