Space, Continued: The Seven Future Markets SpaceX Just Validated

SpaceX filed its S-1 on May 20, 2026. $18.7 billion in 2025 revenue. $4.9 billion in losses. $135 per share IPO target. The biggest public offering in history is now in motion.

The audited financials are the headline. But the more valuable signal is buried in the prospectus -- in a single page labeled Future Markets. SpaceX laid out seven specific categories the company believes are next:

• Point-to-point terrestrial travel
• Space tourism
• In-orbit manufacturing
• Passenger and cargo transport to the Moon and Mars
• Energy production on the Moon and Mars
• Manufacturing capabilities on the Moon and Mars
• Asteroid mining

This isn't venture marketing. This is a publicly filed S-1 from the most credible space company in history telling investors which categories it's underwriting next. SpaceX won't own all seven. It will validate all seven. That distinction is the entire investment thesis.

For investors, the S-1 just published the investment map for the next decade of space.

The Seven Future Markets and Where Independent Companies Compete

Below, the seven markets in detail.

1. Point-to-Point Terrestrial Travel

SpaceX's Starship has long carried an implied use case: New York to Tokyo in 30 minutes. The Future Markets page makes it official as a category.

The investible angle isn't SpaceX itself. It's the layer of independent operators using next-generation reusable launch and reentry tech for cargo and defense missions.

Stoke Space is building a fully reusable second stage, the holy grail of launch economics. The company closed a $260M+ Series B with Industrious Ventures and YC alumni in late 2024.

Inversion Space raised $44M from Spark Capital and Lockheed Martin Ventures to build orbital cargo capsules that can deliver payloads anywhere on Earth from orbit. The pitch is point-to-point logistics for the DoD.

Outpost is building reusable reentry vehicles for returning cargo from orbit -- the foundation layer for both terrestrial point-to-point and in-orbit manufacturing.

Hypersonic terrestrial travel is decades out for consumers. Hypersonic cargo and defense logistics is here now, and the anchor customer (DoD) is paying for it.

2. Space Tourism

This is the category most investors instinctively dismiss as luxury entertainment. The funding flowing in says otherwise.

Blue Origin opened its doors to external investors for the first time in 25 years (May 2026), aiming for 100 launches per year. After 25 years of Jeff Bezos writing the checks alone, this is the signal that suborbital tourism is being scaled like a real business.

Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) is in production on its next-generation SpaceShip platform after pausing operations to retool. Sales for the next round of seats opened in early 2026.

Space Perspective raised $40M+ to build a stratospheric balloon experience -- $125K per ticket for a six-hour journey to the edge of space. The price point is meaningfully lower than rocket-based tourism, and the engineering risk is lower. They've sold out flights through 2027.

Space tourism has multiple price points emerging: $125K balloon, $450K suborbital rocket, $50M+ orbital private mission. Each tier has a clear customer profile. The category is real because the demand at $125K-$450K is actually elastic and the operational tempo is increasing.

3. In-Orbit Manufacturing

This is the most economically interesting Future Market. The argument: microgravity unlocks materials science that's impossible on Earth -- pharmaceutical crystals, exotic alloys, semiconductors with perfect crystal lattices.

Varda Space Industries raised $187M Series C in July 2025 ($329M total raised), and in May 2026 signed a deal with United Therapeutics to manufacture drugs in space. This is the first real commercial revenue from in-orbit pharma manufacturing. The company has already returned multiple capsules with experimental drug crystals.

Sierra Space closed a $550M Series C in March 2026 at an $8 billion valuation, bringing total capital to over $2B. Sierra is building both space stations (Dream Chaser, LIFE habitats) and the manufacturing infrastructure that will operate inside them.

Axiom Space is building modular space stations explicitly designed to host commercial manufacturing tenants. They've raised over $500M and have NASA contracts for ISS-adjacent and ISS-replacement infrastructure.

The path: microgravity pharma proves the economic case -> exotic alloys and semiconductors follow -> commercial space stations become factories with attached labs and tourism revenue. This is the most under-priced category in the Future Markets list.

4. Passenger and Cargo Transport to the Moon and Mars

NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is the anchor customer. NASA is paying private companies to deliver science and tech to the Moon at $150-180M per mission.

Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) won a $180.4M NASA contract in March 2026 to deliver Artemis science to the Moon. The company also closed a $175M strategic equity investment in February 2026 and acquired Lanteris Space Systems. It's the most operationally credible independent lunar transport company.

Astrobotic has multiple lunar missions in flight, including the Peregrine and Griffin landers.

Firefly Aerospace closed an $868M IPO in August 2025 and successfully completed the Blue Ghost lunar mission in March 2025 -- the first private soft landing on the Moon. The company is moving into Mars cargo capabilities.

The CLPS program alone is multi-billion dollars over the next decade. As NASA increases cadence, the independent landers absorb the budget. SpaceX doesn't compete here directly -- their value is the launch vehicle, not the landed payload service.

5. Energy Production on the Moon and Mars

This is the most technically constrained Future Market. Solar doesn't work during the lunar night (14 Earth days of darkness). The only viable answer is small nuclear reactors.

DARPA's DRACO program and NASA's Fission Surface Power program are actively funding development. Westinghouse, X-energy, BWXT Advanced Technologies, and Rolls-Royce are competing for the contracts. X-energy alone has raised $700M+ across multiple rounds, with Amazon as a major backer for terrestrial small modular reactor deployment that doubles as the platform for lunar use.

The pure-play "lunar nuclear" startup doesn't exist yet at scale. The investible angle is dual-use: companies building small modular reactors for Earth (data centers, defense bases) that have a clear lunar/Mars application path. That's a much more capital-efficient bet than waiting for a Mars-specific energy startup to emerge.

6. Manufacturing Capabilities on the Moon and Mars

In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) -- using lunar regolith and Martian soil to manufacture habitats, fuel, and infrastructure -- is how human Mars settlement gets economically viable. The alternative (shipping everything from Earth) doesn't scale.

ICON has raised $400M+ and is building 3D-printed habitat technology with NASA's Project Olympus. They're already printing buildings on Earth and have a clear path to lunar deployment.

Redwire Space (NYSE: RDW) is a public pure-play space infrastructure company building 3D printing systems already operating on the ISS. They acquired Made In Space, the original in-space manufacturing pioneer, and are positioned across multiple infrastructure categories.

Honeybee Robotics (acquired by Blue Origin) is building drilling, sampling, and surface manipulation tools required for ISRU.

The thesis: lunar and Mars manufacturing is decades out, but the underlying technology (3D printing, regolith processing, robotic assembly) has near-term Earth and lunar surface applications. The companies that win are the ones with terrestrial revenue subsidizing the lunar R&D.

7. Asteroid Mining

The most speculative Future Market. Also the one with the most asymmetric upside. A single platinum-group-metal-rich asteroid contains more of those elements than has ever been mined in human history. Water ice on near-Earth asteroids becomes rocket fuel in cislunar space.

AstroForge has raised $55M+ and launched its first prospecting mission (Odin) as a secondary payload on Intuitive Machines' IM-2. The mission had technical problems but the operational tempo is real -- they're aiming for additional prospecting missions through 2027.

Karman+ raised a $20M seed in February 2025 from Plural and Hummingbird to build an autonomous asteroid-mining spacecraft. Denver-based, focused on supplying the in-space economy first (water for fuel, metals for structures).

TransAstra is taking a different approach: capturing small asteroids and moving them to stable Earth orbit for processing. The company has DoD and NASA contracts for the underlying propulsion and capture technologies.

Asteroid mining is a 10-20 year payoff. Most investors should treat it as long-duration optionality, not a core position. But the seed and Series A pricing is reasonable, and the customer base (in-space refueling, eventually rare-Earth supply chain) is real.

The Contrarian Take

The biggest mistake investors will make reading the SpaceX S-1 is assuming the Future Markets page is aspirational marketing. It isn't. SpaceX is publicly committing capital to all seven categories. Even if SpaceX builds only one (likely Starship-enabled passenger transport), the company's validation creates oxygen for independent competitors in every other category.

The second mistake is overweighting the obvious bets (launch, connectivity, defense) and underweighting the categories that are less mature but have clearer customer commitments today:

• In-orbit pharma manufacturing has commercial revenue right now (Varda + United Therapeutics).
• Lunar transport has the CLPS budget locked in for the decade.
• Space tourism has sold-out flights through 2027 at multiple price points.

The picks-and-shovels layer is the unsexy compounder: propulsion components, ground stations, in-space refueling, satellite manufacturing as a service. Companies like CesiumAstro ($470M Series C in late 2025) that supply infrastructure to whoever wins each Future Market. Quiet, capital-efficient, riding SpaceX's slipstream.

The Investment Frame

SpaceX's Future Markets page is the most credible category map in space history. Seven distinct multi-billion dollar markets, each with funded independent competitors, clear customer demand, and emerging unit economics.

The near-term investible categories: in-orbit manufacturing (Varda, Sierra, Axiom), lunar transport (Intuitive Machines, Firefly), and space tourism's lower price points (Space Perspective, Blue Origin's external round).

The medium-term: terrestrial point-to-point cargo (Stoke, Inversion, Outpost) and lunar manufacturing (ICON, Redwire).

The long-duration bets: lunar energy (dual-use SMR companies) and asteroid mining (AstroForge, Karman+).

The question worth debating: if SpaceX trades at $1 trillion+ post-IPO, does that pull up all space valuations -- creating a window where independent companies in each Future Market category get repriced -- or does it compress competitor multiples by becoming the obvious default for every investor's space allocation?