“Brother, can you spare a dime?”
Or maybe a little more. OK, a lot more.
An analyst has peered into his crystal ball and found that Tesla CEO Elon Musk could very well end up being the first trillionaire in the history of the world. What’s interesting is that it won’t be because of the company that made him a billionaire.
The Hill:
The richest man on Earth could be well on his way to becoming the world’s first trillionaire with the help of his private space-exploration company.
Elon Musk earlier this month reclaimed his title for richest person in the world from Amazon founder and space rival Jeff Bezos due to surging Tesla stock that put his net worth above the $200 billion mark. According to Forbes, the Tesla and SpaceX founder is currently worth nearly $220 billion.
But while Musk’s wealth is largely attributed to the electric-car maker’s success, a Morgan Stanley analyst predicts Musk could venture into trillionaire territory with SpaceX, which currently makes up about 17 percent of Musk’s net worth, according to Bloomberg. The company was valued at $100 billion earlier this month, making it the world’s second-biggest privately held company.
SpaceX is at the forefront of the private sector involvement in space flight, having recently launched an all-civilian crew into orbit for three days. That’s well ahead of anything Bezos’s Blue Origin or the Boeing Starliner program have accomplished so far.
The development of the SpaceX Starship rocket technology is what has the potential to be the real game changer. Here’s a brief description from the SpaceX site:
SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket (collectively referred to as Starship) represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.
The Morgan Stanley analyst referenced in the article from The Hill quotes a client who said, “talking about space before Starship is like talking about the internet before Google.”
Musk’s space ambitions are huge. He’s not interested in shuttling to the International Space Station or even getting us back to the moon, he wants to go to Mars. Personally. He’s practically accomplished more in the last five years than the moribund NASA bureaucracy has since Neil Armstrong took his first famous lunar step.
If the government can be content to provide the occasional assist and stay out of his way, Musk may have us partying off-world sooner rather than later.
He better be buying though.
Source: PJ Media
