The $28 trillion gamble: A risk, a dream, and a bet on the vision of one man

SpaceX's flotation is a colossal act of speculation, but it is exactly this kind of risk-taking that is the engine of capitalism and progress. With a 'Total Addressable Market' worth $28 trillion, the company is hoping to sell, on average, $3,500 worth of goods or services to every man, woman, and child on the planet.

But what exactly those goods and services might be is still unknown. It isn't so much the size of the SpaceX flotation that boggles the mind, though the statistics are pretty staggering in themselves.

An echo of Amazon's humble beginnings

Think of Amazon. Jeff Bezos didn't set out to become a vast gloabl retailer; he wanted to be a bookseller.. Facebook started out as a wheeze to keep university chums in touch. I don't know exactly what SpaceX is going to deliver, and nor does anyone else, including Musk.

But think what the company has alrready done - cutting the cost of sending stuff into orbit by a factor of ten. The objective, as I understand it, is to keep cutting that cost - with more and bigger and ever more efficient rockets - and then suddenly all kinds of thins might become possible.

The mystery of SpaceX's vision

According to Elon himself, the objective of the company is 'to extend the light of consciousness to the stars'. That sounds like a noble and exciting ambition, but we are left vague about what happens when he succeeds. How does that butter our parsnips here on Earth? The truth is that we don't know - and that's precisely why the whole thing is so utterly magnificent.

We don't know whether we will really be able to make a go of Life on Mars, and in truth it all sounds a bit forbidding,what with the temperatures at -60C and no air to berathe. We haven't the faintest idea how to get to the stars, or what we would do once we got there.

What auditors flagged in the May filing

We know so little about the possibilities of space that this SpaceX flotation is a colossal act of speculation, perhaps the biggest ever; and yet I support it and believe in it passionately - because it is exactly this kind of risk-taking, driven almost always by the energy of one man, that is the engine of capitalism and progress.

Think of the benefits for humanity. No more Miliband madness. No more turbines marching over our moors and killing our birds.

Who is the unnamed buyer?

But for a moment I want you to ignore the spooling digits of the new financial superlatives. Close your ears to the cheers of Wall Street and peer through the great hissing clouds of high-octane intergalactic hype that currently wreathe the launch pad.

As SpaceX blasts off, the single most wonderful and inspiring fact about the prospectus is that it contains - and relies on - a mystery. This vast and unprecedented wall of money is being staked on a punt. It's a risk, a gamble, a gigantic bet on the vision of a single individual, and his ability to turn a dream into a reality.