SpaceX at $1.75tn: what Starlink actually does

SpaceX is now worth $1.75tn. But most people do not know what Starlink actually does, or how it works. It has become one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in space, with applications across communications, aerospace and defence.

Most people still think of it as satellite internet. That misses the point. Starlink is a distributed communications network in low Earth orbit.

How it actually works

Your dish uses 1,200+ tiny antennas to track satellites moving overhead. Those satellites then use lasers to pass data between each other, so communications move from ground to satellite to satellite to satellite to ground.

Starlink satellites sit roughly 500km above Earth, dramatically closer than traditional geostationary satellites at 35,000km+. That means far lower latency.

Why the architecture matters in defence

A traditional communications network relies on physical infrastructure that can be located and destroyed. A constellation of thousands of moving satellites is a different problem.

Ukraine demonstrated this in practice. Starlink became a critical communications layer during the war, and the technology is only getting more capable.

The real aerospace advantage

Building this network requires something most competitors do not have: the ability to manufacture and launch satellites at enormous scale. SpaceX went from 13 orbital launches in 2019 to 165 in 2025.

That is the real aerospace advantage. Not just building the satellite, but building the entire system around it: launch, satellites, communications, ground infrastructure, and eventually direct-to-device connectivity.

This is where the intersection of aerospace and defence gets interesting. The next generation of military capability will depend on the infrastructure connecting everything together.