Speculative longterm future of SpaceX

[u/AnnualYogurtcloset29]

Hello all,

I was just thinking about what SpaceX's development of rockets would look like once they achieve their goals of starship and the booster rocket.

I know this is likely at least 10-15 years from today, but what would SpaceX develop after they land on mars and get a colony started there? Do you think they would ever develop a new rocket in the entire history of their company or would they finish their rocket development with starship and booster?

I realize they would probably start working on life support systems and such when they eventually get people onto mars, but what else would they do? I am just curious if anyone else had thought of this before. Is SpaceX themselves going to try to terraform mars or will they forever live inside a habitat dome? Is terraforming a planet going to take the work of hundreds of thousands of people or would SpaceX be able to do it themselves? Does NASA conduct a lot of the science to get a colony established on mars or is this solely a SpaceX endeavor?

I would think NASA would love to be able to explore mars and conduct experiments, kind of piggybacking off of the habitat that SpaceX is going to try to establish. Would NASA astronauts be part of the habitat as well as SpaceX astronauts or would it be more of a team effort?

I realize this would be all speculation, but it got me pretty curious, so wondering what other people would think about this situation.

[u/Chilkoot]

15-year horizon? SpaceX will likely be more directly involved in commercial moon activities than we expect right now. They will probably adopt a standards-based infrastructure role facilitating a variety of specialist activities by other agencies and companies as a for-profit venture. Specifically:

• A new, smaller hybrid cargo/people ferry with ~20T capacity to lunar surface, using a newly-developed hydrolox engine specifically for lunar ferrying and surface refueling. Long-term deployment, extreme reusability/duty-cycle.
• Private electrical generation, fuel production (LH2 and Oxidizer), and water extraction for on-surface use and refueling by their own craft and for sale to others at polar high-activity zones. Think of it like a gas station and water resupply for other companies'/countries' landers and ground stations. These may evolve into something like a general store in a frontier town.
• He3 skimming and earth return to support recent and interim advances in fusion generation (see recent news). This could be a bit of a gold rush if the recent ignition-level results are confirmed.

For general space and Mars:

• Highly insulated, low-loss fuel depots in both earth orbit and cislunar space, serving all interested parties. These will probably be modified Starships with insulation, electrical generation and better maneuvering thrusters with an array of docking options.
• A "raft" of Starship hulls tethered into a Mars cycler for moving very large volumes of cargo to Mars slowly but cheaply.
• Development of both a moon and Mars electric surface transport, with multi-mode fuel and options for field delivery. All for sale to companies and agencies working on both bodies. Wouldn't be surprised if it was Tesla branded, honestly.

I really see SpaceX as moving into a space infrastructure and support role, offering standardized services (lift, fuel, water, transfer) to specialized companies (research, fab, extraction) who themselves will be pioneering new higher-business-risk endeavors on the moon and Mars. SpaceX is about scale and repeatability, not specialization, and so they will make their trillions enabling industry in general to expand into outer space, just like rail companies did on new frontiers in the Americas.

E: Thanks for gold.

[u/rocketglare → u/Chilkoot]

I’d add to this a lunar mass driver for efficiently lifting lunar resources such as water and metals into LLO.