Where Will SpaceX Be in 100 Years?

Rarely do investors hold a stock for 100 years. But thinking about what will happen to a business over such a long stretch of time can help investors keep an eye on the long term, critically analyzing the key factors that will make the business successful in the decades to come.

Where might SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) be one century from now? We have a few clues from the company's IPO prospectus.

These are the foundations for SpaceX's next 100 years

To understand what might happen to SpaceX over the next century, it's critical to understand four major catalysts.

The first is the commercialization of the company's Starship megarocket. Starship would be, by far, the biggest rocket ever commercialized at scale. It will dramatically lower the costs involved in getting a payload to space, as well as rapidly accelerate the timeline for getting more things into space. The success of SpaceX's Starship rocket is arguably the most important pillar for getting the next three catalysts below off the ground.

After Starship is commercialized, SpaceX will have a real chance at launching data centers into space -- so-called orbital data centers. There are real physics challenges involved with operating data centers in the vacuum of space. But low ambient operating temperatures, vast stretches of free, open "real estate," and huge amounts of free solar energy make the effort too attractive to pass up. If orbital data centers are realized, it makes the next long-term growth catalyst even more valuable.

Image source: Getty Images.

SpaceX's Starlink internet service is already profitable. If data centers are scaled in space, however, this division becomes even more attractive. AI companies can send their data into space via Starlink's satellites, running compute on SpaceX's orbital data centers, and sending the results back to Earth on Starlink's network. It's a vertically integrated network that can support what should become a multitrillion-dollar AI economy.

Over the next century, SpaceX should get even more vertically integrated by producing its own AI chips through a venture it calls Terafab: a chip manufacturing initiative with a long-term goal of producing one terawatt of compute hardware each year.

If all of these efforts succeed, SpaceX can shoot for its fourth major growth catalyst: interplanetary life. According to SpaceX's IPO prospectus, the company seeks "ultimately to build a base on the Moon and cities on other planets." This is where everything comes together. SpaceX wants to launch Starships to the Moon and beyond, repurposing landed Starships into permanent living and working infrastructure. Starlink satellites and orbital AI data centers, meanwhile, will aid in communication and workflows by overcoming power and latency limits inherent in terrestrial connections.

A century from now, SpaceX could be operating the first permanent human bases on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. But it all begins with successfully commercializing its Starship megarocket.

Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.