As side hustles go, Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is really quite something. Entirely separate from the humdrum day job at Tesla, where his only real challenge is weaning humanity off the internal combustion engine, Musk’s multi-billion dollar SpaceX operation sets itself no less a target than bringing down the cost of space travel and ultimately helping mankind colonise Mars.

Spoiler alert – firing gigantic rockets into space every other week is not a cheap undertaking. And while there’s no question Elon Musk has a few bucks to his name, his pockets aren’t bottomless. Somehow, all those dazzling launches – and landings – need to pay for themselves. So strap in and get ready for ignition sequence, while we investigate today’s burning question – how does SpaceX make money?

In October this year, influential investment bank Morgan Stanley went on record saying it believed SpaceX would very soon be worth a cool 100 billion dollars.