> I wonder what SpaceX's long term goals are.

Mars, vis-a-vis making buttloads of money on Earth.

Elon is positioning to launch a 4k-strong comsat fleet, with which he hopes to commandeer a large fraction of Earth's internet backhaul traffic (in addition to securing millions+ of internet customers around the planet, otherwise too expensive and sparse to reach with cables).

My bet is that it will turn out to be SpaceX's biggest financial play, and that the private + NASA orbital launch contracts are functioning as a way to get someone to pay for rocket development and build the necessary capital for the telecom move.

Although once a reusable first stage has been demonstrated, I imagine launch costs will drop by a large fraction, and possibly open up a new rush of investment and innovation in low Earth orbit-- with Musk selling pickaxes and shovels.

It's possible if more people knew the price drop that's about to happen in rocket launches, they'd be scrambling to launch their own 4k-satellite constellations, and that Musk's inside knowledge and control gives him a huge head start into the business.

My first thought on the satellite network he is launching was to help power self-driving Teslas.

I thought it was the other way around: SpaceX wants to go to Mars and will find profitable things to do to achieve this.

Similar to Tesla selling a nice car so it is in a position to build a battery factory, no?

Yeah, and as always, it comes down to energy -- there's an established way to turn CO2 and H20 into Methane and Oxygen, given enough energy for input. And SpaceX has put some research into methane-fueled rockets already. So some people are theorizing that the play is to plunk an unmanned nuclear reactor and electrolysis equipment on the surface of mars, let it crank out a trickle of fuel for a couple years, and we've got the infrastructure to send a there-and-back mission to mars with on-site refueling. No big deal, right?

The only thing that bugs me about this strategy -- whenever you look at a rocket launch, there is a lot of infrastructure and people running about doing stuff prior to the launch. So how is this going to happen on Mars? The only way the Moon return missions were possible was because of the low gravity and no atmosphere on the moon. I just can't see a rocket launch from Mars happening with on-site manufactured fuel and automated facilities.

I don't think it's coincidence that SpaceX is continually testing the automation of their launch and recovery processes. They aren't there now, certainly, but by the time regular there and back missions to Mars are viable, they probably will be.

Mars is substantially easier to launch from since there is less atmosphere and gravity. Still, it is going to need far more autonomous rockets that can launch with less infrastructure.

If Spacex to manage to make a "Just add fuel" rocket they're striving so hard to do, automating the logistics if a robot connecting a fuel pipe doesn't seem so bad.

That is a rather large hurdle to get over though.

That would certainly jive with the Oxygen creating greenhouses that he was playing with. Methane could be gathered from the same greenhouse idea but for animals. Funnily enough, both of those things work pretty well to support human life too... Interesting to see where it goes, that's for sure.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson was just talking about how the first trillionaire will come from astroid mining: http://www.salon.com/2015/05/04/neil_degrasse_tyson_the_firs...

Super fascinating read. It's also great because it will create a commercially viable reason for companies to want to explore space, which will make it cheaper for everyone else.

Given his other commercial interests I suspect Asteroid Mining has to be pretty high on his list.