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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

by spwa4 11mo ago

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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaUCDZ9d09Y 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.

vardump 11mo ago
> Plus Blue Origin has beat SpaceX to Mars What about that Tesla that regularly crosses Mars orbit? Ok, it's not on Mars, but it was just about calculating an orbit. They could have smashed it on Mars as well.
- spwa4 11mo ago
  Nice, the wording of "smashed it". Because, the point of getting to Mars or Mars orbit is that you need rocket burns to insert and to land on Mars. Getting to places in space is a delta-V game and paying only half your delta-V costs doesn't count because it doesn't work.
  - wat10000 11mo ago
    If that's why it matters, then why are you crediting BO for that when they didn't have anything to do with the parts which will be performing those burns?
    - cma 11mo ago
      I guess they get partial credit if those parts and payload are heavier than the car.
      - wat10000 11mo ago
        Alas for BO’s credit, the two spacecraft together are only a little over one ton.
- notahacker 11mo ago
  Injecting a dummy payload into an eccentric helicentric orbit which periodically crosses' Mars' orbit /= a Mars mission. The complexity and relevance to future human presence on Mars isn't close (Though tbf the choice of launch vehicle isn't that relevant to whether the ESCAPADE mission succeeds, and missions involving Mars flybys like Hera which are lot more serious than the Tesla one have been launched on SpaceX rockets)
  - wat10000 11mo ago
    If injecting a payload into an eccentric heliocentric orbit doesn't count, then why does injecting a payload into MEO count, just because that payload is then capable of getting to Mars from there? BO didn't launch it to Mars, they launched it to orbit, and ESCAPADE is now getting itself to Mars.
dgoodell 11mo ago
Option 1 isn’t really an option, unfortunately. There are no viable single launch options using it. So it’s really SLS x 2. But building and launching one SLS at a time is almost too much as it is. If that’s the only option, I think Artemis is dead and we should start over.
renewiltord 11mo ago
Every time someone mentions Eutelsat as a competitor I'm reminded that my own friend group has multiple people who can simply buy the entire company, which sort of describes how successful it is. Option 1 isn't an option, really. NSSL policy is to ensure that there are two independent providers so that Assured Access To Space can work.
diamond559 11mo ago
Yep, he is desperate for cash, he is leveraged to the hilt on his shares which is why he desperately begs his fanboys for more. His empire is a house of cards.
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> Blue Origin has beat SpaceX to Mars As you said, not especially relevant to a financial discussion. > as for profitability SpaceX is profitable. > 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 Being the U.S. government's prime contractor while it keeps ULA on life support is a great deal. Same for Europe and Arianespace.
- spwa4 11mo ago
  > SpaceX is profitable. Strange. For me profitable means money_out > money_in, over the whole company history. OpenAI stock is worth 137 billion. Of this, at least 20B was actual money put in (some "free" by the US government). So let's say $18B investment, although that should really be increased by whatever investments were made in Starlink, which is also >$10 billion. Revenue for SpaceX, with starlink split out (because starlink pays in equity). Obviously, these are guesses. 2024: $14 billion revenue, of which $10b is Starlink investment 2025: $15 billion revenue, of which $11b is Starlink investment Starlink, when some figures were publicly discussed, in 2023, had $55 million profit on $1.5 billion revenue (but that was counting Starlink shares as cash), about 3.7% Let's very generously say they doubled that in the past 2 years, and hey, we're being generous, round up. Say they're at 10% margin (Musk's claim, of course, is 60%). So: 2024: $140 million profit, of which $10b was invested in Starlink 2025: $150 million profit, of which $11b was invested in Starlink Cashflow: 2024: $-10 billion 2025: $-11 billion So I think I can be very comfortable in saying that SpaceX is not profitable, it's deep in the red, getting worse over time, only supported by Starlink valuation. With somewhat less confidence I can say it's actually getting less profitable over time, rather than more. They would need to at least 5x the launches they did in 2024 to just breakeven (while potentially reducing starlink launches to zero, which would make it close to 15x), and they only increased the launches by 20% (138 in 2024 vs 129 launches in 2025 up to october). 20% is generous. There is the question of how much of these launches were Starlink, and for 2025 there is no good data, but up to 2025 Starlink launches increased by over 40%. My assessment is unless Starlink takes over global internet, SpaceX is bankrupt and will have to sell it's designs and launch technology for pennies on the dollar. Oh and can I just add, I've interviewed at Starlink and received a (pathetic) offer, which people on reddit claim was pretty typical. Which told me one thing: Starlink is already very aware of the need to drastically save money.
wat10000 11mo ago
Ridiculous. SpaceX offers a product that costs far less than its competitors while being as good or better in most respects. Their profit margins on launches must be enormous at this point. That in turn enables Starlink. They can put up thousands of satellites very cheaply. Then they can turn around and sell subscriptions. Starlink has about 8 million active customers. At $40+/month, that's at least $4 billion/year in revenue. Probably a lot more. Given their launch costs, that's a ton of profit. "not that Starlink hasn't been tried 10 times before" is just... not true. Nothing like it was ever tried before. Iridium is the only one that came even vaguely close, and it was still a radically different type of service. Iridium was extremely low capacity phone service, then low-bandwidth (it made dialup look super fast by comparison) data, with a network of a few dozen satellites covering the globe. It could not support many customers because it had few satellites. It also had to pay for launches in the 1990s, so an order of magnitude or more costlier. That means that it was enormously expensive, for a product few people actually needed. Handsets cost thousands of dollars, then you got to pay several dollars per minute on top of that. Iridium was basically space dialup, and extremely expensive space dialup at that. Starlink is space broadband, and their cheap launch costs and other technological advancements mean the service is profitable at a competitive price point.
da-x 11mo ago
TDLR: A link to bad short-seller video from 4 years ago and a lot of unsustainable claims.
panick21_ 11mo ago
> as has Blue origin in the US 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.

by spwa4 11mo ago

vardump 11mo ago

> Plus Blue Origin has beat SpaceX to Mars What about that Tesla that regularly crosses Mars orbit? Ok, it's not on Mars, but it was just about calculating an orbit. They could have smashed it on Mars as well.

spwa4 11mo ago
Nice, the wording of "smashed it". Because, the point of getting to Mars or Mars orbit is that you need rocket burns to insert and to land on Mars. Getting to places in space is a delta-V game and paying only half your delta-V costs doesn't count because it doesn't work.
- wat10000 11mo ago
  If that's why it matters, then why are you crediting BO for that when they didn't have anything to do with the parts which will be performing those burns?
  - cma 11mo ago
    I guess they get partial credit if those parts and payload are heavier than the car.
    - wat10000 11mo ago
      Alas for BO’s credit, the two spacecraft together are only a little over one ton.
notahacker 11mo ago
Injecting a dummy payload into an eccentric helicentric orbit which periodically crosses' Mars' orbit /= a Mars mission. The complexity and relevance to future human presence on Mars isn't close (Though tbf the choice of launch vehicle isn't that relevant to whether the ESCAPADE mission succeeds, and missions involving Mars flybys like Hera which are lot more serious than the Tesla one have been launched on SpaceX rockets)
- wat10000 11mo ago
  If injecting a payload into an eccentric heliocentric orbit doesn't count, then why does injecting a payload into MEO count, just because that payload is then capable of getting to Mars from there? BO didn't launch it to Mars, they launched it to orbit, and ESCAPADE is now getting itself to Mars.

dgoodell 11mo ago

Option 1 isn’t really an option, unfortunately. There are no viable single launch options using it. So it’s really SLS x 2. But building and launching one SLS at a time is almost too much as it is. If that’s the only option, I think Artemis is dead and we should start over.

renewiltord 11mo ago

Every time someone mentions Eutelsat as a competitor I'm reminded that my own friend group has multiple people who can simply buy the entire company, which sort of describes how successful it is. Option 1 isn't an option, really. NSSL policy is to ensure that there are two independent providers so that Assured Access To Space can work.

diamond559 11mo ago

Yep, he is desperate for cash, he is leveraged to the hilt on his shares which is why he desperately begs his fanboys for more. His empire is a house of cards.

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

> Blue Origin has beat SpaceX to Mars As you said, not especially relevant to a financial discussion. > as for profitability SpaceX is profitable. > 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 Being the U.S. government's prime contractor while it keeps ULA on life support is a great deal. Same for Europe and Arianespace.

spwa4 11mo ago
> SpaceX is profitable. Strange. For me profitable means money_out > money_in, over the whole company history. OpenAI stock is worth 137 billion. Of this, at least 20B was actual money put in (some "free" by the US government). So let's say $18B investment, although that should really be increased by whatever investments were made in Starlink, which is also >$10 billion. Revenue for SpaceX, with starlink split out (because starlink pays in equity). Obviously, these are guesses. 2024: $14 billion revenue, of which $10b is Starlink investment 2025: $15 billion revenue, of which $11b is Starlink investment Starlink, when some figures were publicly discussed, in 2023, had $55 million profit on $1.5 billion revenue (but that was counting Starlink shares as cash), about 3.7% Let's very generously say they doubled that in the past 2 years, and hey, we're being generous, round up. Say they're at 10% margin (Musk's claim, of course, is 60%). So: 2024: $140 million profit, of which $10b was invested in Starlink 2025: $150 million profit, of which $11b was invested in Starlink Cashflow: 2024: $-10 billion 2025: $-11 billion So I think I can be very comfortable in saying that SpaceX is not profitable, it's deep in the red, getting worse over time, only supported by Starlink valuation. With somewhat less confidence I can say it's actually getting less profitable over time, rather than more. They would need to at least 5x the launches they did in 2024 to just breakeven (while potentially reducing starlink launches to zero, which would make it close to 15x), and they only increased the launches by 20% (138 in 2024 vs 129 launches in 2025 up to october). 20% is generous. There is the question of how much of these launches were Starlink, and for 2025 there is no good data, but up to 2025 Starlink launches increased by over 40%. My assessment is unless Starlink takes over global internet, SpaceX is bankrupt and will have to sell it's designs and launch technology for pennies on the dollar. Oh and can I just add, I've interviewed at Starlink and received a (pathetic) offer, which people on reddit claim was pretty typical. Which told me one thing: Starlink is already very aware of the need to drastically save money.

wat10000 11mo ago

Ridiculous. SpaceX offers a product that costs far less than its competitors while being as good or better in most respects. Their profit margins on launches must be enormous at this point. That in turn enables Starlink. They can put up thousands of satellites very cheaply. Then they can turn around and sell subscriptions. Starlink has about 8 million active customers. At $40+/month, that's at least $4 billion/year in revenue. Probably a lot more. Given their launch costs, that's a ton of profit. "not that Starlink hasn't been tried 10 times before" is just... not true. Nothing like it was ever tried before. Iridium is the only one that came even vaguely close, and it was still a radically different type of service. Iridium was extremely low capacity phone service, then low-bandwidth (it made dialup look super fast by comparison) data, with a network of a few dozen satellites covering the globe. It could not support many customers because it had few satellites. It also had to pay for launches in the 1990s, so an order of magnitude or more costlier. That means that it was enormously expensive, for a product few people actually needed. Handsets cost thousands of dollars, then you got to pay several dollars per minute on top of that. Iridium was basically space dialup, and extremely expensive space dialup at that. Starlink is space broadband, and their cheap launch costs and other technological advancements mean the service is profitable at a competitive price point.

da-x 11mo ago

TDLR: A link to bad short-seller video from 4 years ago and a lot of unsustainable claims.

panick21_ 11mo ago

> as has Blue origin in the US 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.