looking back at the history of starlink, when was it decided to pursue this project at SpaceX? Was it always the natural evolution, i.e. cheap launches = more communications sats? Or was there a specific communications engineer/person that brought it up to Elon or Gwynne?
Starlink is based on the strategic defense initiative (SDI). Both reusable rockets (DC-X) and large satellite constellations (Brilliant Pebbles) were SDI inventions.
SpaceX was in fact founded with the architect of SDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin who went from the CIA to become head of NASA and funded the early SpaceX (10x from what Musk himself put in!)
Now in 2026, SpaceX is the frontrunner for the Golden Dome, which is an SDI reboot.
The company was always about Wars not Mars.
SpaceX originally partnered with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Wyler and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutelsat_OneWeb in 2014, then they eventually went their separate ways.
https://x.com/greg_wyler/status/1116101020675977218
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrey_Satellite_Technology
You can clearly see the tech had an older history at SpaceX pre acquisition
2004
I believe they also signed up a teledesic exec Larry Williams around the same time
I'm not actually sure myself, but I was really surprised to learn how profitable it is. SpaceX made $15b of revenue last year and $8b of profit. Starlink was 60-80% of that!
It turns out the demand for really good internet everywhere is huge.