An interesting question (because all the others will probably be too slow) is what does that change for SpaceX itself (which can be fast)?

It gets to complete and upgrade Starlink. Sure. And that keeps it busy for what? Two years? At most. Sure. Done. Just kidding, that provides some background launches as a guaranteed customer going forward. But nowhere near enough to make a dent in what will be the new SpaceX launch capabiity.

So what else can it do, that exploits its own launch capability?

Going to Mars is not an obvious commercial venture - not at first - not until some government somewhere convinces itself to fund that.

So what else? What can SpaceX do on its own with this launch capability?

One answer might be "infrastructure". Infrastructure in space will become big if space becomes big (beyond launching telecom, observation and science - which are small for now, compared to their launch potential.) SpaceX will need infrastructure itself - like refueling, landing stuff in exotic places, cargo delivery to other spacecraft, de-orbiting stuff, spacecraft to spacecraft networking, bringing cargo back to earth, carrying / delivering crew around, spacecraft repair, emergency access, etc.

A bit like Amazon then: if SpaceX needs some capability in their grand plan to Mars or whatever, they could try and package that as a commercial service after using the bare bones version for themselves.

> So what else? What can SpaceX do on its own with this launch capability?

Apart from Starlink, not much I believe. The main thing will be the Artemis contract with NASA, which requires two figures worth of Starship flights to LEO to refill the Starship tanker to get the HLS Starship to land a few people on the moon.

So I do think Starship will mostly generate money through NASA contracts, Starlink, and commercial launches. Though there aren't that many commercial launches currently. Perhaps there will be more once the launch prices drop due to reusability, though that remains to be seen. Developing a satellite is already more expensive than launching it.

We saw that solar power venture unveil their idea. With lower cost/kg, there might be quite a few flights just to deliver piles of hardware in various new orbits. And these might require refueling launches as part of that process. Some delivered all in one place, some in separate locations.

Yeah, there are some very speculative markets. Solar power from space, commercial space stations etc. The chances seem relatively low that those would develop into a big market and require a lot of Starship launches. I currently don't see a big space economy on the horizon. Space (LEO) tourism perhaps could be thing to some extent when Starship gets human rated for both launching and landing. Because a Starship could actually deliver larger quantities of people, unlike Dragon or Starliner capsules, but this is still many years away.

thankfully elon has hundreds of billions of dollars and presumably will spend most of that sending shit to mars, either before he dies or as part of a trust. most of what we need to send there isn't expensive - electronics and steel and composite materials. the limiting factor isn't going to be the cost of stuff we send there, it's only going to be how many starships we can get flying and how often they fly