SpaceX serves a large market that was underserved, via Starlink, and via satellite launches.
There's nothing comparably easy (for some values of "easy") to monetize underwater, except in shallow places like the continental shelves, and these areas are already being heavily developed (oil, wind).
There are many, many wonders deep underwater, but they are mostly not commercially interesting, alas.
I’ve always wanted to start a company that builds automated underwater swarms of “probes” that just search and return info and carry out small exploration tasks but over long amounts of time and space.
Do it right and you can send the first underwater explorers to Europa.
Hard to find the right way to monetize in the early stages though. SpaceX had a variety of options.
> Hard to find the right way to monetize in the early stages though.
Fugro got a tonne of money for sidescan surveys of large areas north of this Diamantina fracture zone up to the equator .. looking for traces of the lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
The search for the missing aircraft became the most expensive search in the history of aviation. It focused initially on the South China Sea and Andaman Sea, before a novel analysis of the aircraft's automated communications with an Inmarsat satellite indicated that the plane had travelled far southward over the southern Indian Ocean.
After a three-year search across 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi) of ocean failed to locate the aircraft, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre heading the operation suspended its activities in January 2017. A second search launched in January 2018 by private contractor Ocean Infinity also ended without success after six months.
Well if you ever find a monetization path this is what I wanted to do for years. I don't know where Schmidt landed in the court of public opinion but I appreciate that the Schmidt Ocean Institute is a thing. I just wish these things didn't reek of billionaire vanity.
The zone this whale necropolis has been found within is named after the Australian Navy hydrographic, meteorological and oceanographic research vessel that first coarsely mapped this deepest part of the Indian ocean in 1960, during my father's time of service onboard.
Mind you, if you go the service path you might end up scrubbing toilets or close sampling atomic bomb sites ... so your mileage (and lifespan) may vary.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10546-z
There's nothing comparably easy (for some values of "easy") to monetize underwater, except in shallow places like the continental shelves, and these areas are already being heavily developed (oil, wind).
There are many, many wonders deep underwater, but they are mostly not commercially interesting, alas.
Do it right and you can send the first underwater explorers to Europa.
Hard to find the right way to monetize in the early stages though. SpaceX had a variety of options.
Fugro got a tonne of money for sidescan surveys of large areas north of this Diamantina fracture zone up to the equator .. looking for traces of the lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370Mind you, if you go the service path you might end up scrubbing toilets or close sampling atomic bomb sites ... so your mileage (and lifespan) may vary.