SpaceX has always had pie colony-in-the-sky dreams, founded as it was with the “ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets." But the company also intends to better life on Earth by launching 11,943 satellites that will give fast internet access to the globe.

According to details in November 2016 and March 2017 filings with the FCC, SpaceX’s idea is to use those satellites to make a truly World Wide Web, by beaming internet access to everyone, including the 57 percent of the global population that doesn't access the online world.

That sounds nice, as does an interplanetary society. But Elon Musk—while he may care about humanity’s future and this planet and also other planets—is not running a charity. He’s running a business. And given the riskiness of the space-web market, something beyond a global internet service might help him turn a profit on these things.

In the past, satellite-provided internet hasn’t been a winning venture. Companies like Iridium, Teledesic, GlobalStar, and SkyBridge either disappeared or initiated bankruptcy proceedings in the pursuit. Musk wants to alter that narrative, and he isn't the only one. A company called OneWeb plans to launch its first internet satellites—more than 600 to start—in 2018. Facebook, through its Internet.org initiative, is also invested in bringing access to the hard-to-reach people, who definitely have statuses they would like to update.

That makes financial sense for Facebook. But why would SpaceX jump on this particular bandwagon, given the huge upstart cost of launching thousands of satellites?

What if—hear me out—there’s more on its thousands of satellites than internet beamers? In commercial satellite land, if a satellite isn’t beaming communications information down to Earth, it’s likely taking pictures. Pictures its owner can sell. There’s a decent case to be made that SpaceX should stow away Earth-facing cameras on its internet satellites—if it's not already planning to.

The Earth observation market—in which satellites keep a record of the planet and hawk it as images or analysis—is hot right now. It’s saturated with startups like Planet, which currently holds the soon-to-be-broken record for the biggest private satellite constellation (149). A tech giant like SpaceX could conceivably come along and squash some of those startups, by putting Earth-facing imagers on the thousands of satellites it was building anyway.

Photo Bomb

Let’s just begin by noting that SpaceX hasn’t said it plans to have cameras on its internet satellites, and a representative declined to comment specifically on the possibility or to grant an interview with a company engineer.

Nevertheless, there are a few hints that the sats might have cameras up their sleeves. In 2015, the company got a NOAA license for two prototype satellites. “This NOAA license allows each satellite to carry a single low-resolution panchromatic video imager,” it read. “The imager will capture low-resolution images and video of Earth and the satellite itself. The images and video will not be used for commercial purposes and could potentially be used for general educational purposes, such as through the release of inspiring public Earth images.”

I am all for inspiring public Earth images. I need desktop backgrounds, after all. But, again, SpaceX only exists because it monetizes things, in addition to making the children dream.

SpaceX didn’t end up launching these prototypes. Instead, it built two new ones. “Because SpaceX has made revisions to the design of its hardware and constellation since it applied for that authorization,” an FCC filing for these second-generation prototypes read, “it has opted to seek authority for different experimental satellites that will provide a better test bed.”

There’s currently no NOAA filing for the second set of prototypes, which the company plans to launch starting this year. But in that same FCC document, a table does list three “telemetry/video” transmitters, meaning the satellite will record video that these transmitters will then send back to Earth. This filmage will be of “key events on the satellite such as slewing and solar array deployment.” But it means that yes, Virginia, there are cameras aboard.