Mars Colonization is a fine goal that all Catholics should be at least open to. Basically if we cooperated with nature properly then mathematically Earth would be too small. Not saying we are close now, but our teaching on birth control etc should mesh with our view of the scale of the cosmos that God commands us to "fill and subdue"
So very long term (centuries/millenia) I am very bullish on a SpaceX like entity.
But we don't actually have to fill earth up first. Right now there is no viable export for Mars, the only real hope is for enough people to want to go for other reasons like freedom, adventure, etc; such that Mars can build its own economy and sell to itself. Exports will be unexpected and fall out of whatever Mars ends up doing well, we can't predict that now.
This isn't where I see SpaceX making money any time soon.
Near term, I do suspect they will win a huge chunk of global telecoms. Even I have reasons to switch from AT&T. I drive accross northern Wisconsin and the U.P. of Michigan to visit family and coordinating our arrival is a pain because signal is so spotty.
They will have a decade as the world's only telecom company with complete global coverage and it will be trivial, reletive to everyone else, to extend that to the moon/mars.
It will just be a matter of economics for most users including governments. Spend millions upfront for new seabed fiber or just subscribe to laser link backhaul through space to wherever in the world you want.
Also datacenters. I don't see anyone competing with SpaceX for deployment velocity for at least 5 years and could be longer. I am not even talking about in space. There are reasons beyond deck chair movement that other companies are buying compute from Elon, though some of it really is just shuffling the money around to make things look attractive.
The main problem is how fast capital can be deployed and converted into compute. Spacex can execute in months where other companies take years. Even if we are on an S curve and not an exponential, being 2 years faster on iteration makes them win in very short order.
They have the cash to get equipment and the people to get it running. As they said repeatedly on their earnings call ROI is under a year. I don't think that will last, but it means that for right now every other AI company is paying SpaceX to get further ahead.
I suspect resentment will kill them eventually though. Government isn't going to like having that level of power around.
