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SpaceX is too big to fail. It's important for national security. I wonder if Elon wants to tangle all his businesses into SpaceX so they are all kept afloat by
by Buttons840 8mo ago
SpaceX is too big to fail. It's important for national security.
I wonder if Elon wants to tangle all his businesses into SpaceX so they are all kept afloat by SpaceX's importance.
- UltraSane 8mo agoMerging SpaceX with a public company like Tesla would create a lot of issues for the classified projects SpaceX does.
- wongarsu 8mo agoI imagine those are surmountable challenges. Boeing somehow manages. But more likely that merger would consist of SpaceX acquiring Tesla and taking it private
- HWR_14 8mo agoThere is no way Elon could raise the 1.4 trillion to take Tesla private
- bragr 8mo agoNo? Almost every big defense contractor is publicly traded.
- cyberax 8mo agoRaytheon is public.
- tenpies 8mo agoWhat sort of issues are you thinking? Plenty of defense contractors with classified projects are already publicly listed, so this is not uncharted territory. Lockhead Martin for example: https://investors.lockheedmartin.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lockheed-martin-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025 https://investors.lockheedmartin.com/news-releases/news-rele... Gives this level of detail: > Aeronautics classified program losses $(950) > MFC classified program losses - It seems very safe from a national security perspective.
- Zigurd 8mo agoStarship has a large number of critical milestones coming: Can it land and quickly reuse the upper stage? If not, it can't make refueling flights without building a dozen or two starships. Can it carry the full specified payload? If not, it can't even try to refuel in orbit. If it can't refuel in orbit, it can't go beyond earth orbit. Etc. Everything has to go right or it will be irrelevant before it works.
- TacticalCoder 8mo ago> Everything has to go right or it will be irrelevant before it works. Starship is not all of SpaceX. Saying, maybe because one hates Musk, that SpaceX is going to become irrelevant is wishful thinking. In 2025 SpaceX launched more rockets into space than the entire world ever sent in a year up to 2022, something crazy like that. Then out of, what, 14 000 active satellites in space more than half have been launched by SpaceX. SpaceX is, so far, the biggest space success story of the history of the human race (and GP is right in saying that SpaceX is now a national security matter for the US).
- Zigurd 8mo agoModel S was the most successful EV. If you think cybercab is the vehicle of the future, look at the timeline of the only robo taxi in commerce in the US. Everything has to go right with that, or cybercab will be irrelevant before it works. Same deal. Same bullshitter.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- terminalshort 8mo ago97% of their sales are model 3 / Y
- iknowstuff 8mo agoModel S was successful until Model 3/Y blew it out of the water. Waymo’s timeline is not relevant because they lose money on every car and every deployment. Tesla’s the only financially successful developer of self driving. They can scale it up much faster.In fact, instead of making $5k per car produced, cybercab will net them $50k per car per year.
- protastus 8mo agoElon can't legally financially entangle Tesla to SpaceX due to Tesla being a public company, so his hands are tied. Tesla is clearly benefiting from protectionism and its sales would collapse if BYD were allowed to openly sell in the US. Most people just want affordable, maintainable and reliable cars.
- estearum 8mo ago[Nearly] all is possible when you have a board of simps/cultists
- w4der 8mo agoBYD are just affordable and maybe reliable, regarding maintenance their spares are hard to come by and are almost as hard to work with as Tesla and other brands.
- vonneumannstan 8mo agoAre you a car mechanic living in China?
- piker 8mo agoPresumably "hard to come by" would be somewhat irrelevant in any jurisdiction other than the US?
- w4der 8mo agoNo, but I live in a country were Chinese cars have been sold since the 2010s and spare parts are still an issue. It might be an issue with their sales partners here, but many sell other brands from Korea and Japan and have no issues with them.
- bdamm 8mo agoI've done plenty of work on my own Tesla. It's not hard to work on at all. Parts are not even very difficult. There are plenty of 3rd party shops (such as one I went to when I needed to replace my windshield.) I really wonder why people continue to think this. It's not 2016 any more.
- rideontime 8mo agoAnd our tax dollars.
- garyfirestorm 8mo agoI think he will spin Tesla off since electrification and autonomy are no longer cool (he can’t build good quality cars or reliable FSD)
- iknowstuff 8mo agoFSD is incredibly reliable. Build quality of US built cars is middle of the pack, Europe/China built Teslas are top of the pack.
- dgxyz 8mo agoOh c'mon now. Damn model 3 and model S I have driven were considerably lower quality interiors than an ass end Citroen or Fiat. The Model S, a 2023 model the doors didn't even fit properly. And that was all Europe. As for FSD, nope. Unless you redefine the word reliable. Edit: I owned a 2018 Model S as well. Literally the worst fucking car I have ever owned or driven.
- iknowstuff 8mo agoI disagree. Model 3 has soft touch everywhere. Freaking bmw 3 series has plastic on most frequently touched bits. Since you are in europe you have no idea how good fsd is.
- dgxyz 8mo agoBMW actually has a reasonable control surface though, not a grand user interface experiment by some crack heads. As I'm in Europe I just get trains.
- iknowstuff 8mo agoThe bmw interface is the actual fucking joke. Everything you need on Teslas is accessible from the steering wheel in addition to the touchscreen.
- SilverElfin 8mo agoLet’s be honest - this is just a way to prop up Twitter/X. It makes SpaceX shareholders subsidize X, and also American taxpayers who are giving contracts to SpaceX for highly sensitive things. The government should ideally refuse to give SpaceX work unless it unwinds this.
- adastra22 8mo agoWhy? The government is paying less for SpaceX than alternatives. It th cheapest and best service.
- SilverElfin 8mo agoBecause Twitter/X is distorting our politics (with ann unbalanced scheme of censorship / amplification / suppression) and destroying the country by mainstreaming far right supremacist politics. Twitter/X does not deserve a single dollar of taxpayer money. If SpaceX is now part of that machine, it doesn’t deserve a single dollar either. I would rather pay more for alternatives and encourage their growth. I also look at any money given to this company as the equivalent of GOP campaign funding, so I feel it should be treated as illegal under the law.
- adastra22 8mo agoI would rather our government not get in the habit of violating the multiple laws put in place to keep it from playing favorites and picking winners.
- terminalshort 8mo agoThe government is prevented from doing that by a little thing called the first amendment. "Mainstreaming far right supremacist politics" is just a hyperbolic way of saying he has politics you don't like and is exercising his freedom of the press by promoting it on the media platform he owns. Legally that is no different then the rights that every newspaper and TV station in the country has.
- 8mo ago
- awesome_dude 8mo agoSpaceX is slated to go public some time this year - June IIRC The biggest selling point /was/ that Musk was being managed there, he wasn't tinkering with SpaceX like Twitter or Tesla, and his foolhardy direction was kept out of the company. BUT, like Tesla, Musk cannot help himself and is making SpaceX look like a very bad investment - tying his other interests with SpaceX, allegedly using SpaceX money as a "war chest" in his battles. There is also a danger that investors will see xAI as politically dangerous, which will really hurt SpaceX IPO
- itsprobablyok 8mo agoThey want to go public, but have to sell the hell out of it in the meantime. I'll bet SpaceX financials aren't as great as some people think. Remember, Elon was the guy who tried to take Tesla private, and talked a lot of smack about how silly it is to be a public company. All of a sudden he wants SpaceX to go public?
- awesome_dude 8mo agoMusk has a pattern here - he used Tesla the same way, diverting resources to xAI and treating it as a funding vehicle for other ventures. Once he started doing that, Tesla's financials got murky and harder to trust. Now he's doing it with SpaceX right before the IPO. For investors, that's not 'too big to fail' protection - it's a red flag that the company finances are entangled with his personal empire instead of focused on the core business.
- kcb 8mo ago> The biggest selling point /was/ that Musk was being managed there, he wasn't tinkering with SpaceX like Twitter or Tesla, and his foolhardy direction was kept out of the company The biggest selling point to who? Definitely not wall street
- arppacket 8mo agoI think Musk is just that obsessed with his mission of reversing social progress and controlling the direction of the world, using the anti-woke combination of xAI and Twitter. He knows that tying them to SpaceX will hurt its IPO, but now they're part of an entity that's too essential to fail. They're also probably rushing out the IPO to beat the bubble pop. I think everyone earlier expected to keep the bubble going a few more years, that's why they made all those circular deals. But then Trump spooked Europe into possibly scaling back US investments and decoupling from US tech. So now you have an unsure Nvidia walking back their OpenAI deal, etc.
- outside1234 8mo agoWhy? Let it fail. Bring back NASA.
- farresito 8mo agoNASA just splurges money. The private sector is far better when it comes to money.
- q3k 8mo ago... as we can tell by whatever the everloving fuck is going on with this press release.
- farresito 8mo agoI'm not talking specifically about SpaceX, although historically the cost of their rockets have been much lower than NASA. I'm being much more general. The public sector doesn't have the same incentives that private companies have, whether it's rockets or any other technology. It's sad, but it's the truth.
- etchalon 8mo agoWe have absolutely no way of gauging this until after SpaceX goes public.
- terminalshort 8mo agoSpaceX can use the same booster 30 times. NASAs new rocket can use it one time. We don't need to see financial statements to figure this one out.
- luke5441 8mo agoI wouldn't be too sure. Depends on NASAs mission profiles and a lot of factors. Falcon heavy can bring 26.7t to GTO in expendable mode and only 8t in reusable mode. Reusable cost of Falcon is US$97 million vs US$150 million expendable. How much does it cost to develop and maintain the reusability? Is it worth the trade-offs in lower tons to orbit due to more weight? Is it worth it adjusting the payload into smaller units, including developing things like refueling in LEO? Idk, I'm not on the inside doing those calculations...
- kortilla 8mo agoBeing too big to fail is not really a desirable outcome, it’s just better than failure. Boeing is too important to fail as well but it’s been terrible as a shareholder
- JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago> > Boeing is too important to fail as well but it’s been terrible as a shareholder Your opinion on Boeing being terrible as a shareholder vis-a-vis Tesla would be completely reversed if dividends and capital gains of the 2 companies were to be offered in the form of miles to be flown on Boeing planes and miles on Teslas Uber/Taxi/Autonomous taxis instead of dollars The absolute overperformance on the stock market that Tesla has enjoyed vis-a-vis Boeing is not rooted in a concrete and tangible quality of life improvement for citizens. Not American citizens, nor global citizens for that matter. It is my opinion that for all public companies in which it is possible to do so government should mandate payment in kind to all shareholders and board members to prevent the excessive promotional , cult and all around BS aspect of marketing to take over and allow people to profit just by riding off those, and Musk is the GOAT at that.
- kortilla 8mo agoIm not comparing it to Tesla, im comparing it to any normal successful company (apple, google, nvidia, Exxon, whatever). Boeing is an anemic company that doesn’t innovate and it should have been allowed to bankrupt and break off into businesses that worked and actually competed for customers.
- JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago> > Boeing is an anemic company that doesn’t innovate The public is very afraid of innovation in anything aviation related, same goes for nuclear reactors. If you are in those businesses you have your hands tied behind your back. Still you'd buy the stock if the only way to get miles aboard Boeing planes were to own the stock and get paid dividends and capital gains in the form of miles. This underscore how essential and vital Boeing is to the world whereas if you disappeared Tesla nothing would really happen
- smileson2 8mo agonational security is pretty felixaeble
- derektank 8mo agoHow vital is it really to national security? Starlink will have competition from Amazon Leo in the next few months. And while SpaceX is obviously in the lead in launch capability with Starship, there are multiple launch providers capable of providing roughly the same services the Falcon 9 and Heavy provide today.
- zpeti 8mo ago> Starlink will have competition from Amazon Leo in the next few months Amazon Leo will have 14k satellites in space in a few months? Wow! Amazing!
- Sparyjerry 8mo agoThe same services as Falcon 9 are 20x the cost and launch 1/20th as much as well. That's like producing hand made good in America versus via a manufacturing line in China.
- turtlesdown11 8mo agoThose figures are not accurate. Other launch vehicles are currently 2-4x the cost (with comparable pricing coming online ex New Glenn), and SpaceX accounts for half of launch volume, not 20x other services. Reduce your claims by a factor of ten.
- Sparyjerry 8mo agoSome claim launch costs are only at 2-4x the cost but they only have a few launches or are small rockets. On a per/kg basis at best the closest competitor in the US is ULA which claims about 3x the cost but only had 1 single launch in 2025, total payload launched was about 1/50th of Spacex's total payload launched. New Glenn has had zero commercial launches. SpaceX launched 5x the mass to orbit of all other US companies -combined-, easily 20x the cadence of any other company.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> SpaceX is too big to fail. It's important for national security So was GM. Didn’t stop it from going bankrupt.
- sharts 8mo agoWhen you’re connected to Epstein, you’ll always be too big to fail
- geuis 8mo agoOf course it isn't "too big to fail". Even banks aren't. Despite recent history large banks have failed often throughout history. There's no such thing. It may take down the supporting sovereign government (Dutch East Indies) but life goes on and new political orgs appear. People be people. Too big to fail is a very recent modern myth. Go back 100+ years and lots of banks failed leading into the Great Depression. Every system has a break point.
- RealityVoid 8mo agoRight. You do have a point, and I think Dutch East Indies is a good example, but I feel this is discussing semantics. Too big to fail, I interpret in this situation as the government having a strategic reason to keep it afloat so it will probably prop it up in case something goes wrong. This makes it have a much more stable position.
- smrtinsert 8mo agoWhy are we still supporting this person? His cars are being outclassed internationally and he's directly meddling in this countries politics. He spectacularly failed (or wasn't it blatantly misled) the CA government with regard to the tunneling, and damaged the public sector while shutting down oversight and regulatory bodies against his companies. Where is the benefit? These awesome tech demos? It just screams charlatan to me on an epic scale. I see no reason a government shouldn't step in to assume control if its "too big to fail".
- indoordin0saur 8mo agoSpaceX launches more rockets than the rest of the world combined with a better price and far better safety record.
- acjohnson55 8mo agoSimply put, yes. This is not good for SpaceX. It's a less valuable company with X and xAI. But it helps Elon make it look like he runs two successful businesses.
- duped 8mo agoSpaceX could fail tomorrow and nothing would change with national security.
- Ms-J 8mo agoThis. National security is one of the most abused phrases of all time. Many companies could simply cease to exist tomorrow, including Spacex and Starlink, and the world would go on. Frankly for the better in a lot of cases.
- einrealist 8mo agoWhy is it too big to fail? SpaceX can be dissected, parts be sold to the government or the competition. It's too big to fail for Musk, because it is one source of his money, in large paid by the US tax payer.
- Ekaros 8mo agoI see no reason why Starship could not be dumped. And Falcon rockets kept being produced as needed, maybe with higher cost.
- Ms-J 8mo agoThat is what they want you to think it isn't too big to fail there are plenty of competitors with much stronger engineers and principles than this grifter.
- spacebanana7 8mo agoWho? Finding great engineers is comparatively easy versus knowing how to navigate the DoD procurement process and having the balance sheet strength to run huge losses for ages. Blue origin might have the capital and talent, whilst Boeing has the DoD procurement locked down, but neither have both.
- Ms-J 8mo agoI'm not endorsing merely listing, but yes Blue origin. You are correct about the issues of navigating the DoD but that isn't a reason to accept these assholes the process needs to be open to normal companies and promote standards without any grifter connections.
- spacebanana7 8mo agoYeah I hope their procurement becomes more open, but feel pessimistic because that’s been an ongoing simplification project for decades.
- kamaal 8mo agoThat could be true, but the real question is why haven't they built and shipped a Starship yet? You can play around with words as much as you can, but Musk even with a very high rate of failure seems to be making a lot of things work.
- d--b 8mo agoSpaceX is too big to fail for sure. If it goes bankrupt, it'll be broken down, and trimmed down to the succesful launching operation. But I don't think it's the reason it's buying xAI. SpaceX buying xAi means that xAI shareholders are cashing in on its current high valuation. It makes it look like Musk is not very confident that xAI can navigate through the AI cycle, so he might as well sell it to rake in the profits. But he still needs control over it because of the Tesla plan and in case something else happens in the AI field that he doesn't want to miss. So he's buying it with SpaceX, because he can, freeing some of SpaceX cash to pay himself and his xAI investors. That he managed to bullshit SpaceX investors into buying xAI is pretty crazy. But I guess that's his main talent.
- amai 8mo agoThis won’t help him. Because Elon is not important for national security. But our stupid oligarchs will soon learn the same lesson, the russian and chinese oligarchs have already learned.
- peterlada 8mo ago100%. Next is Tesla.
- stevenwoo 8mo agohttps://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/spacex-seeks-early-index-entry-as-it-prepares-massive-ipo-8445ed59 https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/spacex-seeks-early-index-... It also appears as though it’s a play to boost stock price by forcing SpaceX to be carried by index funds.