How SpaceX will pay for Mars

SpaceX future finance far exceeds Starlink

SpaceX want to create a colony on Mars to safeguard the light of consciousness and advance human knowledge. They estimate a city of a million people is required to make the colony self-sustaining, and protect it from changes in political climate or resupply issues. Given the challenge of constructing a city so distant from Earth, a reasonable cost estimate is ~$1tn per year, sustained for at least 25 years. Fortunately SpaceX has engineered this level of finance from direct, indirect and virtual sources, all due to arrive in the next decade...

Starlink Revenue

“The total addressable market for launch, with a conservative outlook on commercial human passengers, is probably about $6 billion. But the addressable market for global broadband is $1 trillion. If you want to help fund long term Mars development programs, you want to go into markets and sectors that are much bigger than the one you're in.” ~ Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX COO/Via Satellite

In 2018 SpaceX began to build the Starlink satellite constellation, aimed at moving the internet to space. More recently these satellites were upgraded to operate as cell towers, to provide portable phone service anywhere on Earth. The potential addressable market for internet is $1tn, with a comparable figure for phone service, which suggests Starlink could supply the majority of finance needed for Mars. Fiber internet and cell towers will still be used in towns and cities but Starlink could supply everywhere else, i.e. the other 4 billion people in isolated locations (rural areas, planes, ships etc). Hence Starlink revenue could reach $600bn p.a. before the end of the decade, considering it doubles every year…

“Starlink’s customer base doubled last year, adding 2.3m customers—an acceleration from 2023, when it added 1m.” ~ Payload

Note: Starlink has software levels of margin, so the profits from SpaceX’s commercial launch business should cover the constellation’s operating costs, meaning all Starlink revenue could be considered profit.

Private and Corporate Finance