Space is particularly exciting for the super-rich of our planet.
Billionaires like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos invest fortunes in their space projects.
Munich – Not only the world powers are struggling for control over space, private investors like Elon Musk are also at the start.
Tesla and PayPal have made the 51-year-old South African one of the richest people in the world.
With his aerospace and telecommunications company "SpaceX" he is reaching for the stars.
SpaceX has big plans.
It builds rockets, operates its own launch facilities for this purpose - and is currently building a satellite network with the "Starlink" project, which is intended to make the Internet globally usable.
This requires satellites – and lots of them.
Elon Musk: Starlink already has 3612 satellites in orbit
According to calculations by the industry
service Space FlightNow
, Starlink currently has 3,612 satellites in low-Earth orbit.
The growth is remarkable.
As of September 2019, Starlink only had 67 satellites.
And the expansion continues.
Starlink also wants to be usable for commercially available smartphones and to connect passenger aircraft to its network – for $150,000 per plane and monthly service costs between $12,500 and $25,000, as reported by the
Handelsblatt
.
According to the Handelsblatt, the US communications regulator FCC has approved the launch of up to 7,500 additional satellites of the latest SpaceX generation.
The company originally applied for the deployment of up to 42,000 satellites.
The FCC said the number was capped to "address concerns about space debris and space safety."
Space Debris: What Happens to the Satellites of the Super-Rich?
Elon Musk is not idle when it comes to space debris.
Its satellites are equipped with a propulsion system that causes them to burn up in the upper atmosphere at the end of their lifetime.
"That's very good," says Hauke Fiedler, astrophysicist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen.
Elon Musk is not the only entrepreneur pursuing ambitious goals in space: Amazon, Boeing and many other companies plan to launch a total of 100,000 satellites into space within the next 10 to 15 years.
Then there is the Rwanda Space Agency, which plans to launch another 330,000 satellites.
The founder, the US tech entrepreneur Greg Wyler, has already raised 50 million US dollars and launched the first test satellites in May 2022.
After 25 years, according to the internationally agreed guideline, satellites should be steered into the atmosphere to burn up.
"With so many satellites, a period of 25 years will not be enough and should be significantly reduced," warns Fiedler.
He suggests that "all satellites that are deployed above the ISS should be equipped with a propulsion system to avoid space debris or other satellites, thereby avoiding possible collisions."
Life in space: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their visions
But the dreams in space go much further - which could increase the garbage problem.
Musk, who also carries out manned space flights for the US space agency NASA with his company SpaceX, wants to start a manned Mars mission in the foreseeable future.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also runs a space company with "Blue Origin" - and dreams of inhabited settlements in weightlessness.
The idea of a life beyond the earth inspires the world's super-rich.
Not least because space also offers financially astronomical prospects.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the turnover for the manufacture, operation and maintenance of satellites was 271 billion US dollars in 2020.
List of rubrics: © P. Martinez Monsivais/Carstensen/dpa
