u/hmm_interestingg

My view is that direct to cell communication services will become the largest source of revenue for the space sector (by far) over the next decade. There are currently 3 serious contenders for this market and I think the biggest question in space investing right now is how the pie will be divided amongst them.

.	ASTS	Starlink	Amazon LEO
Private or public company	Public	Private/part of SpaceX/IPO in 2026	Public/subsidiary of Amazon
Market cap	36 Billion	1200-1600 Billion, around 80% of SpaceX expected 2000 Billion valuation	Some fraction of Amazon's valuation at 2700 Billion
Constellation deployment fully funded?	Yes	Yes	Yes
No of sats required for global coverage & full service	90+	10,000+	3000+
No. of launches required to deliver global coverage & full service	16+ (medium lift)	200+ (super heavy)	100+ (medium lift)
Approximate cost to deploy global coverage	2 Billion USD	15 Billion USD	10 Billion USD
Spectrum cost to deliver global coverage	0.615 Billion USD	19.6 Billion USD	11.6 Billion USD
Rocket options/launch partners	Falcon 9, New Glenn, ISRO, Ariane 6, Vulcan Centaur	Starship	New Glenn, Ariane 6, Vulcan Centaur
Expected connection speed at full service	100-200mbps	150mbps	5mbps?
When are sats launching?	Now	Targeting mid 2027	Targeting 2028
Full service expected	2027-2028	2029-2030	2029
MNO partnerships	60, covering 3 billion existing customers	None	None
Spectrum secured	MNO partner spectrum + own spectrum	Own spectrum	Own spectrum
No. of patents relating to D2C service	&gt;2000	<500	?
Indoor service	Yes	No?	No?
Requiring phone modifications	No	Unclear	Unclear
Satellite lifetime	7-10 years	5 years	5 years

Globally, the cell service (mobile telecom) market generates approximately $1.1 trillion to $1.55 trillion in annual revenue, with mobile data alone accounting for over $800 billion of that total. Compound annual growth is currently around 5%.

The introduction of space based direct to cell services will accelerate this growth, offering connectivity to previously unserved areas of the planet including many fast growing, developing regions and remote areas where traditional cell towers will be leapfrogged. In the near to mid term, space based services will compliment ground based comms but eventually it will largely replace them.

Personally, I find it obvious from the available facts that ASTS is best positioned to take the largest share of the direct to cell market. I don't think the market has come close to pricing this in given the current valuation at around 1/50th that of Starlink.

They may not launch their own rockets but I don't think they need to, just like Apple doesn't need to own the trucks it ships phones on. The ASTS constellation requires far fewer launches than SpaceX and Amazon constellations and their sats are designed to fit multiple, non-competing carriers. Launch is destined to become increasingly competitive as tens of companies and countries are developing rockets similar to SpaceX's F9. There will still be money to be made in launch but the biggest market going forward will be communications services.

I'm targeting a $2000 share price by 2030 and $10000 by 2035.

Please comment if you have any corrections or additions!

I invested big in RKLB in 2022, my thesis was that retail investors who were frustrated about not being able to buy SpaceX would look for the next best thing. I made a bunch of money from that bet, but have recently realised I was missing something big and the market is still missing it too.

RKLB was never the next best thing.

I was just too focused on rockets, thinking of SpaceX as just a launch business. Back in 2022, the second most frequently launched rocket after Falcon 9, was Rocket lab's electron.

However, it's not launch thats driving SpaceX financials, it's Starlink, which accounts for the majority of SpaceX revenue and the share of this is accelerating.

The real competition to SpaceX is the alternative to Starlink and that is ASTS.

Unlike current Starlink, ASTS is designed to work directly with unmodified smartphones, ie. addressing a bigger market than Starlink currently addresses with home based broadband. SpaceX/Starlink is now playing catch up with plans to launch it's own direct to cell sats on Starship. They plan to compete directly with carriers globally whilst ASTS is partnering with them under a revenue share model.

The latter makes far more sense because space based infrastructure in the near to mid term cannot compete with ground based infrastructure in densely populated areas, which is already there and paid for. It is economical to serve the dead zones.

In addition to that, ASTS is launching giant satellites with the choice of multiple launch providers, they only need 45 sats up for US coverage and some rockets can launch many sats. ASTS is already shipping and launching sats. Starlinks D2C plan needs Starship reuse to be successful as well as many, many more sats up in the sky, they may well be late to the party.

ASTS market cap is around $30 billion, SpaceX IPO is expected at 2 trillion, if ASTS were to 10x from here it would still only be worth 1/6 what SpaceX is expected to be. The market is not pricing in how seriously ASTS will be competing with Starlink.

Rocket lab is still a great company, they're using their stock pump/dilution to acquire all kinds of interesting businesses to boost their growth. However, they are way, way behind SpaceX in launch and way way behind ASTS is communication tech. Their workhorse rocket (electron) is tiny and not reusable and their upcoming, unproven reusable rocket (neutron) is made from carbon fibre so it's not going to be coming back from the moon or doing anything super exciting like Starship may do. RKLB is not ready to compete with Falcon 9 and that is their intention with Neutron, ASTS is ready to go up against Starlink right now, the tech is already proven and they're aiming directly where the money is.