The opening bell on the New York Nasdaq market on the 12th of this month deserves to be recorded as an inflection point in the history of humanity's space industry. SpaceX raised 75 billion dollars, the largest amount in the history of initial public offerings (IPO). Elon Musk, the SpaceX chief executive officer (CEO) who has long shouted "Let's go to Mars," filled his rocket to space with the fuel of capital. Yet there is another side of this listing worth gazing at. It is a space infrastructure power that has connected the entire Earth with a data network — namely, Starlink.
Among SpaceX's three core pillars — rockets, satellites, and artificial intelligence (AI) — the only segment currently turning a profit is Starlink. Of SpaceX's total revenue of 18.7 billion dollars last year, satellite internet accounted for 61%. Not only does its revenue scale overwhelm the rocket launch (22%) and AI (17%) segments, but it is also the sole cash cow. SpaceX's first-quarter revenue this year came to just 1.4 billion dollars, while its operating loss reached 3.1 billion dollars. This was because an enormous 15 billion dollars was poured solely into developing the super-heavy rocket "Starship" and building AI infrastructure. The hidden force that covered the endless capital expenditure and made the listing possible is precisely Starlink, which posted net profit of 4.4 billion dollars last year.
Starlink, which has launched 9,600 satellites into low Earth orbit, has secured 10.3 million subscribers across 164 countries worldwide. Of the 165 rocket launches SpaceX carried out last year, about 120 were for Starlink. Moreover, in the Russia-Ukraine war, it replaced the devastated ground communication network of the Ukrainian military and even changed the tide of the battlefield.
Korea, too, is already within Starlink's range. There is no guarantee that the domestic telecommunications industry, which currently maintains a cooperative relationship with Starlink, will not become prey to a cold-blooded predator at any time. The core of the coming sixth-generation (6G) mobile communication era is low Earth orbit satellite communication. Now is the time to pursue building independent satellite infrastructure and securing space territorial sovereignty, so as not to become subordinate to the space monopoly network that Starlink has woven. This is why one cannot simply watch the SpaceX listing in a daze.
