I've long thought that when humans finally expand into space to stay, it would be the private sector, for the most part, that takes us there. There are incredible mineral resources as close as the asteroid belt, which (unlike resources found on a planet) don't have to be lifted out of a gravity well. Some of the moons of the gas giants, while still having that gravity well issue, have nearly-unlimited volatiles, like methane, and even water vapor.
There's a lot of money to be made in space, if we can just figure out how to send humans out there without having them, you know, die.
In my first major science-fiction epic, humanity has already expanded into the asteroid belt and to some of the Jovian satellites, when a French guy named Hiram Eugene Gellar invented the first faster-than-light (FTL) spaceship drive, which would be known as the Gellar Star Drive. It was a huge affair, and I admit I did some near-Star Trek-level handwaving about how it worked; the thing involved a huge mass tunnel, and something called "negative energy" to warp space in front of the ship, allowing for superluminal jumps.
Hiram Eugene Gellar didn't do that for the betterment of mankind, in this future I envisioned. He did it for personal gain. The first Gellar Drive starship was built on specs provided by Gellar, and he piloted it personally, along with his aide Edda Fauvier, to the Centauri system, where he confirmed the existence of two mineral-heavy but lifeless planets.
The Gellar Drive worked, and Gellar himself sold it to a private company called the Peebles Mining Corporation. Gellar took his massive boodle to the south of France, married Edda Fauvier, and retired to live in luxury. Peebles took the drive, immediately started improving it, and used it to develop mineral resources in nearby systems, eventually finding life-bearing planets.
If you want to see what happened next, well, read the books.
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Look at what SpaceX has done so far. Elon has been running it as a skunk-works: When a launch fails, SpaceX collectively shrugs, figures out what went wrong, and tries again. Now they are catching boosters back on the pad for re-use, which only a few short years ago many would have called impossible. Musk's space-based efforts also include the near-universal internet coverage of the planet by Starlink satellites; now we hear rumors that he is intending to put data centers in space. And, Elon himself has said he's determined to go to Mars, personally.
I have always thought that when mankind expands into space in any substantive way, it will be the private sector that takes us there. Elon Musk seems pretty determined to prove me right on that. The very day I write these words, on Friday, the SpaceX IPO went live. My Tesla stock has been pretty kind to me, so I put in a buy order for a chunk of SpaceX. As I write this, the order is still pending, but hopefully there won't be any snags. I am, you see, putting my money where my mouth is. This IPO stands to make Elon the world's first trillionaire. To that, I can only say, "Good. He has earned it." And I'm hoping his SpaceX offering will make me a nice chunk of cash, too. As of this writing, my Tesla stock is way up over the purchase price. I'm betting SpaceX will do better.
Cross your fingers!
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