When German historian and investor Rainer Zitelmann began writing about space capitalism years ago, he was met with laughter. Today, that concept is no longer science fiction. SpaceX, Elon Musk's private aerospace company, is poised to launch what is expected to be the largest initial public offering in history, aiming to raise $75 billion. The move could catapult Musk to trillionaire status, fulfilling a prediction made over a decade ago by US Senator Ted Cruz.
Zitelmann, who has written extensively on the subject, declares he will not buy shares himself—citing a desire to avoid conflicts of interest and a preference for passive investing through globally diversified ETFs. Yet he calls SpaceX "the greatest company founded in the past fifty years" and compares Musk to industrial titans like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
SpaceX's Dominance in Orbit
According to the IPO prospectus, since 2023 SpaceX has transported more than 80 percent of all mass sent into orbit worldwide each year, with a Falcon 9 mission success rate exceeding 99 percent. If SpaceX were a country, it would rank first in successful rocket launches in 2024, 2025, and so far in 2026—ahead of China. Of the approximately 15,000 active satellites currently in orbit, around 10,000 are Starlink satellites.
In 2025 alone, SpaceX conducted twenty times as many launches as Europe's entire state-organized space program. The company developed the world's first truly reusable orbital rocket more than a decade ago—something no government space agency has achieved. Compared with the Space Shuttle, SpaceX has reduced launch costs by roughly 95 percent.
From 1957 until today, all governments combined have launched 15,062 satellites into space. Musk's company has placed 14,844 satellites into orbit within just a few years.
Visions Beyond Earth
Musk's ambitions extend far beyond satellite deployment. The prospectus outlines plans for orbital data centers that could operate on solar power while avoiding terrestrial energy and land constraints. But the grand objective remains the colonization of Mars. Musk aims to establish a population of one million people on the Red Planet, requiring approximately 1,000 Starships carrying 100 settlers each during every 26-month launch window.
The company believes its activities could "catalyze transformative breakthroughs, reshape terrestrial industries, and ultimately create entirely new trillion-dollar markets on the Moon, Mars, and beyond." Critics, however, worry that profits from ventures like Starlink could be consumed by Mars-related projects with little financial return. The prospectus remains vague on this point, mentioning potential future areas such as space tourism, orbital manufacturing, and asteroid mining—but only briefly.
One notable omission is real estate. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits nations from claiming ownership of celestial bodies, but whether this applies to private companies is legally debated. Some space-law scholars argue the treaty bans national sovereignty beyond Earth but does not necessarily prohibit private ownership, based on the doctrine expressio unius est exclusio alterius.
European Implications
For Europe, SpaceX's IPO underscores a growing gap between private-sector innovation and state-led space programs. The continent's space efforts, coordinated through the European Space Agency (ESA) and national agencies like France's CNES or Germany's DLR, have struggled to match the pace and cost-efficiency of Musk's company. European investors now have an opportunity to participate in the space economy through the IPO, as detailed in our guide on how European retail investors can buy shares and assess risks.
The listing also comes amid a broader wave of tech IPOs, including OpenAI and Anthropic, as reported in our analysis of the $4 trillion IPO wave. SpaceX's debut on the Nasdaq is a landmark event that could reshape global capital markets and accelerate the commercialization of space.
As Zitelmann notes, the prospectus describes SpaceX's mission as developing technologies to make life multi-planetary, deepen humanity's understanding of the universe, and extend conscious life beyond Earth. Whether this vision will translate into shareholder value remains uncertain—but the capitalist space revolution has undoubtedly begun.
