That's my understanding as well - that if you have that kind of lift capacity you can make $x selling it to other or if $10x putting up your own satellites for something like Starlink.

That's funny because I assumed Starlink was just a POC for "best way to have internet on Mars".

That's funny because I just assumed Elon found another old and inefficient monopoly to disrupt.

It's this one.

Starlink is an easy way to make oodles of money, which they can redirect toward getting to Mars.

They can launch their satellites at cost (or less, if they sell ride sharing). No other telecom can do that. And their customer cost is already fraction of everyone else's.

Add to that their mass-production optimized satellites, and no one else can even touch them. There is a very good chance that Starlink will achieve its goal of printing money.

I like the idea of a networked sat based computer based on solar energy for computations, radiation for cooling, thermally neutral. The real "cloud". Free from earthly constraints and free of gross externalities.

everyone in this thread is right and deserves upvotes

including you and me.