If SpaceX doesn't get Starship operational soon, they're going to lose their advantage to Blue Origin and probably at least one of the several Chinese rocket companies.
Given Musk's pay package that requires getting Tesla's valuation to $8 trillion, isn't it obvious that he should absorb all of his holdings (SpaceX, X, xAI) into Tesla?
Would think that blue origin and project kuiper launching for amazon that would put downward pressure on SpaceX, as they are about to have a huge amount of competition for starlink, as Amazon has massive distribution advantages - wouldn't be surprised introductory bundling with Prime etc...
Probably a good idea to do it now, because Trump has made sure SpaceX is about to have yet another European, a Chinese and an Indian competitor soon. 2 out of 3 have already demonstrated landing a rocket, as has Blue origin in the US with the New Glenn launch + landing. Plus a few countries are thinking about it, at least Switzerland, South Korea and Israel if you can believe it.
Also the EU has setup a working Starlink competitor (by approving the feature on "old" satellites), and China is already doing launches and theirs should be at least partially operational. Russia claims to have a working Starlink competitor and India is building one.
Oh and as for profitability ... not that Starlink hasn't been tried 10 times before, with the most spectacular crash being Iridium, but that was far from the only attempt+bankruptcy building Space internet. Well, the economics are discussed in this video:
TLDR: SpaceX is bankrupt, Starlink is a pets.com "We lose on every sale but make it up on volume" style move. So yes, high time to sell the stock indeed.
Oh, and Blue Origin has beat SpaceX to Mars and will be the first private company getting a payload to Mars soon (the "ESCAPADE" mission). As in payload is on the way and there's no way SpaceX can catch up anymore. In fact it's pretty tough finding another rocket manufacturer that has not launched a mission to Mars. Boeing has launched payloads to Mars. Blue origin has. Arianespace has. Russia has. Not especially economically relevant* but worth mentioning. Economics are not what determines either rocket building or launches and hasn't ever done so. Which means rocket launches are cheaper than they can be in private hands.
* what is economically relevant though is that SpaceX is not even saving the US government money. The US government cannot risk having SpaceX as a single option to get to orbit, so it has no choice developing a publicly funded rocket program. Everyone always makes the point that SpaceX is cheaper than SLS. However ... this fails to correctly compare prices for the only options the US government has:
Option 1: pay for SLS
Option 2: pay for SLS and SpaceX.
So really the price of SpaceX rocket launches doesn't even matter, not using SpaceX will be the cheapest option because math.
Blue Origin is losing many billions every year and has only survived thanks to a hobby project. And even if they continue, to get to SpaceX like cadence is a long way away, and many more billions in investment.
Europe is a decade plus behind and has no way ever to get to the launch cadence. And even then they have 0 chance competing for international launch. And a true Starlink competitor out of Europe is fantasy.
> Also the EU has setup a working Starlink competitor
No it doesn't.
> .. not that Starlink hasn't been tried 10 times before, with the most spectacular crash being Iridium
If you really think Starlink and Iridium are comparable, you should get your head checked.
And just because something hasn't worked before, doesn't mean changing technology doesn't change that.
The question you should ask is "Are there historical example where a 10x drop in cost allowed for a new much larger volume in an industry". And if you look at it that way, its patently obvious.
SpaceX doesn't even need to pay itself margin, if SpaceX had to fully buy SpaceX launches, the economics would be a lot worse.
> TLDR: SpaceX is bankrupt, Starlink is a pets.com
This is analysis where my only conclusion is that you just hate Musk and SpaceX for political reasons.
Did pets.com make like 10 billion in revenue and had many major militaries as costumers? I must have missed that.
> so it has no choice developing a publicly funded rocket program.
It does have a choice the US doesn't need to publicly fund anything. They already have ULA, SpaceX, BlueOrigin, Rocket Lab, Stoke space, Relativity.
> Everyone always makes the point that SpaceX is cheaper than SLS. However ... this fails to correctly compare prices for the only options the US government has:
You act as if SLS is the law of the universe, but it isn't. Anybody with a brain has known for 10+ years that eventually the US will switch to commercial rocket launch. As NASA has already mostly done, and DoD has done 100% already.
SLS is the last vestige of a dying system of cronies from the Shuttle days. It has not future. Only a long political fight to suck up as many resources at can be extract from congress before it inevitably dies.
The future in the US is clear, competitive launch with SpaceX as the leading provider and ULA, Blue and friends competing for contracts.
I wonder if this has more to do with XAi than SpaceX. He recently had SpaceX invest $2B into XAi due to the AI arms race. If SpaceX had unneeded cash sitting around why raise money now?
This has since then been confirmed to not be true:
There has been a lot of press claiming @SpaceX is raising money at $800B, which is not accurate.
SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors.
Valuation increments are a function of progress with Starship and Starlink and securing global direct-to-cell spectrum that greatly increases our addressable market.
And one other thing that is arguably most significant by far.
While I have great fondness for @NASA, they will constitute less than 5% of our revenue next year. Commercial Starlink is by far our largest contributor to revenue.
Some people have claimed that SpaceX gets “subsidized” by NASA. This is absolutely false.
The SpaceX team won the NASA contracts because we offered the best product at the lowest price. BOTH best product AND lowest cost. With regard to astronaut transport, SpaceX is currently the only option that passes NASA safety standards.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 43.3 ms ] threadAlso the EU has setup a working Starlink competitor (by approving the feature on "old" satellites), and China is already doing launches and theirs should be at least partially operational. Russia claims to have a working Starlink competitor and India is building one.
Oh and as for profitability ... not that Starlink hasn't been tried 10 times before, with the most spectacular crash being Iridium, but that was far from the only attempt+bankruptcy building Space internet. Well, the economics are discussed in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaUCDZ9d09Y
TLDR: SpaceX is bankrupt, Starlink is a pets.com "We lose on every sale but make it up on volume" style move. So yes, high time to sell the stock indeed.
Oh, and Blue Origin has beat SpaceX to Mars and will be the first private company getting a payload to Mars soon (the "ESCAPADE" mission). As in payload is on the way and there's no way SpaceX can catch up anymore. In fact it's pretty tough finding another rocket manufacturer that has not launched a mission to Mars. Boeing has launched payloads to Mars. Blue origin has. Arianespace has. Russia has. Not especially economically relevant* but worth mentioning. Economics are not what determines either rocket building or launches and hasn't ever done so. Which means rocket launches are cheaper than they can be in private hands.
* what is economically relevant though is that SpaceX is not even saving the US government money. The US government cannot risk having SpaceX as a single option to get to orbit, so it has no choice developing a publicly funded rocket program. Everyone always makes the point that SpaceX is cheaper than SLS. However ... this fails to correctly compare prices for the only options the US government has:
Option 1: pay for SLS
Option 2: pay for SLS and SpaceX.
So really the price of SpaceX rocket launches doesn't even matter, not using SpaceX will be the cheapest option because math.
Blue Origin is losing many billions every year and has only survived thanks to a hobby project. And even if they continue, to get to SpaceX like cadence is a long way away, and many more billions in investment.
Europe is a decade plus behind and has no way ever to get to the launch cadence. And even then they have 0 chance competing for international launch. And a true Starlink competitor out of Europe is fantasy.
> Also the EU has setup a working Starlink competitor
No it doesn't.
> .. not that Starlink hasn't been tried 10 times before, with the most spectacular crash being Iridium
If you really think Starlink and Iridium are comparable, you should get your head checked.
And just because something hasn't worked before, doesn't mean changing technology doesn't change that.
The question you should ask is "Are there historical example where a 10x drop in cost allowed for a new much larger volume in an industry". And if you look at it that way, its patently obvious.
SpaceX doesn't even need to pay itself margin, if SpaceX had to fully buy SpaceX launches, the economics would be a lot worse.
> TLDR: SpaceX is bankrupt, Starlink is a pets.com
This is analysis where my only conclusion is that you just hate Musk and SpaceX for political reasons.
Did pets.com make like 10 billion in revenue and had many major militaries as costumers? I must have missed that.
> so it has no choice developing a publicly funded rocket program.
It does have a choice the US doesn't need to publicly fund anything. They already have ULA, SpaceX, BlueOrigin, Rocket Lab, Stoke space, Relativity.
> Everyone always makes the point that SpaceX is cheaper than SLS. However ... this fails to correctly compare prices for the only options the US government has:
You act as if SLS is the law of the universe, but it isn't. Anybody with a brain has known for 10+ years that eventually the US will switch to commercial rocket launch. As NASA has already mostly done, and DoD has done 100% already.
SLS is the last vestige of a dying system of cronies from the Shuttle days. It has not future. Only a long political fight to suck up as many resources at can be extract from congress before it inevitably dies.
The future in the US is clear, competitive launch with SpaceX as the leading provider and ULA, Blue and friends competing for contracts.
Boeing for comparison has a 2x multiple (65b rev with a 154b valuation).
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1iarntp/orbit...