If Musk was after money, he wouldn't have started SpaceX. A rocket company is the dumbest way to make a fortune that you could imagine, short of putting your money in a pile and lighting it on fire. That he's made it work (so far) is miraculous.

Rather, SpaceX is the very definition of what venture capital is supposed to invest in--A high risk / high reward enterprise.

I don't know, VC is all about high-risk/high-reward, but there are differences of degree. A rocket company is rather higher risk and lower reward than the typical VC fodder.

Even if it was VC worthy, throwing all your money into two companies like that, when you're already rich, is not the sort of thing you'd see from someone motivated by money. The whole point of VC investing is to invest a little money in a lot of them to even out the risk.

He's running it at a loss with money from other ventures so that when he works it out he is the person you have to go to.

There is no altruism here, he's trying to create an industry where he would be the monopoly.

That makes little sense. There's no vendor lock-in and SpaceX has no inherent advantage over its competitors, just a greater willingness to push ahead, try new things, and relentlessly streamline. The moment one of the incumbents decides to start imitating them, or some other billionaire with an interest in space (<cough>Bezos</cough>) starts their own version, they'll have competition again, if competition even went away in the first place.

For what it's worth, I honestly think Musk is just a geek who got lucky enough to be able to pay everyone else to build his toys. I don't think he saw SpaceX as an investment I think he saw it as crazy fun. If it hadn't worked out he would have gone on to build another valuable startup, since he already had a track record at that point. It just happened to work.

Wouldn't mining trillion+ dollar asteroids make you a fortune?

The odds of SpaceX ever getting that far were tiny. There's a standard saying in aerospace: if you want to make a small fortune in the business, start with a large fortune.

Musk wants to change the world directly by providing products designed to be world-changing.

Zuckerberg hopes he can change the world through the side-effects of a product designed for advertisers to sell stuff.

To be fair, Facebook was an idea that caught on, and advertising was all they could come up with to keep the lights on.

I mean, I can't think of anything else they could do for revenue.

Makes no sense. With $10 billion in net worth, if Musk sold his stock and lived for 40 more years, he could spend about $685,000 per day for the rest of his life.

Yet people think he's in this for more money. Hysterical.

Yet you think Zuck is in it for more money?

No, I don't know what Zuck is in it for. I just don't like what he does, nor the way he does it, regardless of what his intent is.

Didn't he put like 99% of his wealth into a charitable trust or something?

Maybe he doesn't have much of an intention. Maybe he's just sitting on top of a rocket ship and looking around and going "okay, what now?"