It's 24 years old with 16 billion revenue. Suppose you had a warchest and had the option to buy SpaceX at 1750 billion, or to spend a fraction of that to replicate its technology. Could you?
I've seen estimates that SpaceX spent less than $50-60 billion in cash during its lifetime. That's in the range of its cumulative revenue + capital raised, too.
I just don't really see how this couldn't be replicated, if the market was big enough. But it seems to me that Space isn't that useful yet, and the market isn't that big yet, to the point that it doesn't warrant lots of competitors like the thinking on AI.
Even the SLS cost less than $50bn to develop, which is a lot, but only a fraction of what SpaceX is apparently worth.
Developing a new rocket like the Falcon 9, even a reusable one, would cost a private investor less than $10bn. It would take time, that is the hardest part. But in terms of cash, it is a fraction of this valuation.
Then a constellation like Starlink - again, we are talking $10-$15bn. Once you have the rocket, the satellite design is not going to cost much. The challenge is getting the regulatory approvals and getting the launch rate up.
Then developing something like Starship, again a few billions, certainly far less than $50 bn. A crew capsule too, that would be a few billion, but probable <$5 bn.
For a trillion dollars you could probably throw in a space station (the ISS was about $100bn), a few advanced orbiting telescopes, a human mission to Mars, and maybe an intensive exploration of Europa. Heck, why not land something on Pluto just for kicks.
Profitable remains to be seen, but it is undoubted that the potential resources in the solar system are (pun intended) astronomically valuable. Getting at them is "just" an engineering problem.
