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It would be fascinating to see how the proceeds of such an offer were split. I've heard whispers that SpaceX has a bunch of debt that is collateralized by Tesl

It would be fascinating to see how the proceeds of such an offer were split. I've heard whispers that SpaceX has a bunch of debt that is collateralized by Tesla stock, if that's true there is clearly a case for margin pressure there. There is the open question of what SpaceX will do with "all that lift capacity, if you give all earth to orbit contracts to SpaceX it still takes a long time to pay back that investment. Starlink was a good fit for Falcon 9, and murmurs that it is cash flow positive not withstanding, having your finger on "world internet" is cool[1] until the world takes it away from you. On orbit refueling, which means having a fuel depot in orbit that has active cryo chillers operating to keep fuel for long periods of time, could be that answer since there is nominally "unlimited" demand for fuel in orbit, but the technology to make that work still has a lot of unknown unknowns. (I loved the ULA concept of using fuel boil off to run an internal combustion engine in the fuel depot that did active refrigeration, but that is still untested) Still, having the only functioning orbital gas station would have even more leverage than having the only world internet. As Exxon et al have shown, you can extract a lot of value from people who can't get their gas anywhere else. Let's say a Starship flight costs $150 million to put 10 tons of cryo-fuel into orbit, can you sell it at $20 M/ton to customers? It only costs $250 - $300 to "make" liquid methane, maybe $200/ton for oxygen. That's some healthy markup and that would definitely make money. [1] I am a Starlink customer and it has made working remotely from anywhere actually possible, that said if they decide to squeeze really hard that could cease to be the case.

avmich 2y ago
With working Starship, it's much easier to put industry on the Moon. The first product could be oxygen from the rocks, which could outcompete Earth-based oxygen for refueling on LEO. We actually seem to have more and more need in the space-based industry. Not only unique products requiring microgravity to get produced. For example, right now we need a lot of data centers - and those could be placed in space, reducing load on Earth environment and power. And all of that increase in activity is going to go through Starships initially. SpaceX is in a really unique position. In XIX century nobody thought they'll need to use railroads to travel far and often. But there were many railroad-building companies. Now we have problem figuring out why we need cheap massive access to space. Could it be that we won't find uses for it?

avmich 2y ago

With working Starship, it's much easier to put industry on the Moon. The first product could be oxygen from the rocks, which could outcompete Earth-based oxygen for refueling on LEO. We actually seem to have more and more need in the space-based industry. Not only unique products requiring microgravity to get produced. For example, right now we need a lot of data centers - and those could be placed in space, reducing load on Earth environment and power. And all of that increase in activity is going to go through Starships initially. SpaceX is in a really unique position. In XIX century nobody thought they'll need to use railroads to travel far and often. But there were many railroad-building companies. Now we have problem figuring out why we need cheap massive access to space. Could it be that we won't find uses for it?