Technology

I'm in the same boat. For years I'd been excited to potentially own some SpaceX shares if they went public. No interest at all now due to xAI merger. I did gamble a bit of money on day 1 just because the odds of a pop were real, but i just got in and out and I was done.

Sure, but without the AI part there's no way to get investors excited.

Space is really fucking hard and doesn't scale well.

Software scales up really well and theoretically can be much more profitable without additional overhead.

It's all part of the stupid AI bubble, but there's no way SpaceX would have hit that valuation on its own without Grok.

And over half of that was government contracts with no milestones.

I know a guy who bought in to it. I asked him recently how thats going for him. He is underwater and bag holding... the hype for many retail investors was real. Glad I didnt jump in.

It’s at $162 right now. Above where it IPO’d at. How are people losing their fortunes? I’m not defending spaceX or Elon (fuck that guy). But how are people losing a fortune exactly?

I know it’s a scam but honestly most of the market feels that way right now anyway.

Specifically Elon Musk is an irresponsible ketamine addict. Most CEOs just stick to a cocaine addiction which leaves them moderately competent.

I think it's in the NASDAQ 100 now, but not every retirement fund will have that. Thank god the S&P500 held out. Also, the S&P didn't change their rules and being big isn't enough to get in, they also gotta be profitable for a period of time, so 1 year isn't a guarantee.

Edit: My bad, Nasdaq is July 6th, so tomorrow. So it'll probably pump a little temporarily until insiders can sell.

Starlink (which is suffering from congestion problems already and cannot be scaled up).

Where does this come from? Yes there are congestion issues at the moment and even congestion charges, isn’t this just a matter of more satellites? They only have like 10,000 but planned for a gazillion and are continuously increasing …. The very definition scalable

I still want to know how having anyone on mars was supposed to be profitable.

Unless a government is paying you to run a private prison there.

Space experts have since pointed out that the vacuum of space does not sink heat.

I'm merely a casual Elite: Dangerous player and I could have told him that.

He's a genius btw

There has been questions about if those rockets were reused at all.

It’s honestly not the rocket business that is the problem. Yeah, it’s risky, but it’s actually ambitious and starlink makes money. So, they have a money making product that could actually fund development of a real reusable rocket.

The actual problem is the AI money pit they slapped on to the side. The amount of money XAI spends is so insane it’s like 80% of the whole capex. Which most people dont realize because it’s still called spacex, but in reality the whole space business has become the side project for an AI company burning money at an unprecedented rate.

I work in the aerospace industry, mainly to satellites these days but I've worked in launch in the past and have plenty of friends who have as well.

That 450 figure is probably all of Falcon 9s development which has gone through several design iteration cycles. Industry rumors point to a new Falcon 9 booster being around $50 to build and a million or two to refurbish on average. The re-use is saving them a significant amount, but the upfront design cost was just so stupid high.

It's also worth noting that Starlink supposedly launches at near cost meaning little profit for each of those, but then SpaceX turns around and prices Falcon 9 close to Atlas V for government contracts (90-150m total price so probably 60m profit) and gouges people on Transporter (they're almost certainly pulling in 150-200m on each of those)

Falcon 9/Heavy has already shown that reusability is feasable. Their rocket business is not making money because of the development costs if Starship. But Starship is also incredibly ambitious compared to other rocketry programs