Forget mars: The real space fortunes will be made on the moon and earth

Despite SpaceX’s deep-space ambitions, the smart money is staying closer to home, backing a high-stakes ecosystem of lunar tech, orbital refueling, and terrestrial spaceports. While SpaceX’s IPO captures global financial headlines, a high-stakes space ecosystem has been quietly emerging. By shifting the goalposts from Mars to the moon and low Earth orbit, a broad coalition of smaller players have been investing in and building the infrastructure for a new space economy, and they’re poised to profit from the next century in orbit.