[afransen]

And yet even now, Musk et al. aren't going all out to figure out space mining. It's NASA leading the moon mission. Not Space X or Blue Origin. These guys always talk a big game. They never put their money where their mouths are.

They aren't the only ones. In defence, you have companies like Andruil pretending they are coming up with really novel ideas when they are simply scaling down other weapons without scaling down costs at the same rate. But since it's tech bros who know how to market, everybody thinks they are geniuses and the military is clueless.

SpaceX seem to have a viable business with Starlink as a legitimate, large scale business requiring orbital launch capability. The economics of going to the moon, Mars, etc. doesn't seem to be there. Musk's ventures are to help fund his dream of people on Mars. The rationale of settling Mars seems tenuous as there doesn't seem to be any economic rationale. Colonialism on Earth was driven by exchange of commodities. There is nothing on Mars worth exporting to Earth. Mars is a shallower gravity well than Earth for launching mass to places other than Earth's surface, but is there much of a market for that?

 

[lenaitch]

SpaceX seem to have a viable business with Starlink as a legitimate, large scale business requiring orbital launch capability. The economics of going to the moon, Mars, etc. doesn't seem to be there. Musk's ventures are to help fund his dream of people on Mars. The rationale of settling Mars seems tenuous as there doesn't seem to be any economic rationale. Colonialism on Earth was driven by exchange of commodities. There is nothing on Mars worth exporting to Earth. Mars is a shallower gravity well than Earth for launching mass to places other than Earth's surface, but is there much of a market for that?

There's a number of companies doing commercial low earth orbit launches, and once Starlink has the sky covered in satellites, then what. Perhaps if/when his model of vehicle recovery proves to be more economical that the traditional expendable platforms.

 

[afransen]

There's a number of companies doing commercial low earth orbit launches, and once Starlink has the sky covered in satellites, then what. Perhaps if/when his model of vehicle recovery proves to be more economical that the traditional expendable platforms.

SpaceX has a dominant share of the launch market. Their competitors are mostly struggling.

Starlink has to be continually replenished. The satellites have a service life of 5 years after which their orbit decays and they burn up in the atmosphere.