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The overwhelming majority of SpaceX holders are institutional. They had planned to allocate 30% to retail, but it ended up in the 20% range as a result of insti

The overwhelming majority of SpaceX holders are institutional. They had planned to allocate 30% to retail, but it ended up in the 20% range as a result of institutional demand. [1] No clue what's going on right now as their stock is going to the Moon. But in any case, I think the people that don't understand why it's doing well are mostly those who are unfamiliar with the space industry. SpaceX has already revolutionized space by dropping the cost to orbit by multiple orders of magnitude relative to the Space Shuttle, which it replaced. And it looks set to do that again with the Starship. The main reason humanity hasn't meaningfully started expanding into space is because it used to cost $54,000 to get a liter of water into space. SpaceX brought that down to about $5000, and then further down to near $1400. That's a massive reduction in price, but you're still left with the problem that it costs $1400 to get a liter of water to space, which is why we still can't have nice things, yet. Starship has the promise of bringing that down a couple of more orders of magnitude where the goal is to get it within the $10-$20 range. If they succeed, then you've just opened the doors to an entire new frontier of expansion and growth for humanity which is practically infinite. And right now there's no real reason to think that they won't succeed. And more importantly than this is that nobody seems to be able to compete on their level, or even remotely close. Their closest competitor is probably China who remains technologically well behind. And so SpaceX today is akin to being able to get a piece of some sort of super-ship making monopoly, just prior to the Age of Sail. The downside risk is basically zero since they're still making rapid progress - the only question is how rapid. And upside potential is basically infinite. [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/11/spacex-cuts-retail-ipo-allocation-to-low-20percent-range-source-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/11/spacex-cuts-retail-ipo-alloc...

cjrp 4mo ago
> The main reason humanity hasn't meaningfully started expanding into space is because it used to cost $54,000 to get a liter of water into space. Am I naive in thinking that we haven't expanded into space because we don't need to? What's the benefit?
- andsoitis 4mo ago
  > we haven't expanded into space because we don't need to? What's the benefit? Access to resources. A sense of adventure. Learning.
  - lokar 4mo ago
    Which resources are cheaper to get from space? I’ve only ever seen hand waiving arguments, never any math.
    - somenameforme 4mo ago
      The hand waving is probably reasonable for a couple of reasons. The first is that you can't really math things out yet when costs are shifting by orders of magnitude on relatively short timeframes. What seems impossible in one year is a casual achievement in the next. If we go back to 2002 (when SpaceX was founded) and I told you that within 2 decades they'd have lowered the cost to get stuff to space by more than 97% relative to Space Shuttle, it'd have sounded somewhere between unreasonable and impossible, yet that is exactly what happened. And Starship is set to send prices plummeting yet again. The second reason is that the notion of economics becomes kind of odd when you start introducing space. Space has practically infinite resources of every type imaginable. For instance one single asteroid, Psyche 16, is thought to have orders of magnitude more gold than has ever been extracted in human history. But I mean, what does this even mean economically? Obviously if you start bringing back hundreds of thousands of tons of gold, the price is going plummet. And even the viable possibility of this happening would probably send the price of gold plummeting. So... it's weird. We're in uncharted waters. And then on top of this access to space will mean we will start expanding outward - colonies, vastly larger stations stations, and so on. And these expansions will develop their own parallel economies with their own needs/production/etc. This is all kind of like trying to predict the economics of the internet before the first cable had been laid.
      - lokar 4mo ago
        Most people I see online freak out at the idea of normalizing living in an apartment/condo and slightly higher density. I don’t see them lining up to live in space :)
threetonesun 4mo ago
You really think cost is the main reason humanity hasn't expanded into space? I'm all for space exploration and learning from space but actual humans are quite squishy, like gravity, dislike radiation, and would need to take a lot of water with them just to visit a rock very indifferent to their existence.
- somenameforme 4mo ago
  Definitely. Humans expand. It's probably an evolutionary imperative in many of us. Africa was essentially an oasis and yet some of us decided to go make our way outward to inhospitable freezing ass places where the environment itself is just constantly trying to kill you in a million different ways. And we knew nothing about how to deal with it, at first. Or take the early sea voyages. Not only were there endless worries about things that were ultimately nonissues like sea monsters or falling off the edges of the Earth, but there were endless very real dangers awaiting which we had no clue about or how to deal with - scurvy, rogue waves, and much more. In the aforementioned Age of Sail, it was just expected that a significant chunk of your crew would die. Yet somehow we pushed onward and outward. And the infinite possibilities of space are going to absolutely dwarf all previous frontiers in terms of interest and potential.
  - threetonesun 4mo ago
    You're much more optimistic about the concept of infinity than I am!
    - somenameforme 4mo ago
      You mean in terms of us creating a system of gods and serfs?
CuriouslyC 4mo ago
So, your argument for SpaceX is that they'll take physical systems that they've already tried to squeeze down, and squeeze them down nearly two orders of magnitude? What fundamental scientific discovery do you think is going to enable this? Or do you think that AI is magically going to do it for them?
- somenameforme 4mo ago
  That has nothing to do with how they have already reduced costs, and how they continue to do so. Before SpaceX, you launched a rocket to space once, and then you discarded it. Imagine how much a plane ticket would cost if each time a plane was flown once, it was then discarded. The big revolution with SpaceX was meaningful reuse (I can get into the comparison with Space Shuttle if you're unfamiliar there). Landing and reusing rockets is something that Boeing et al thought was impossible from an economic point of view, and actually taunted SpaceX in their early years over it along the lines of 'Oh you're going for reuse. Yeah we researched and trialed that out a decade ago. The economics don't work. Cute to see you trying though.' Their success there is what helped bring the costs way down. But there's still plenty that's not reused - in particular they currently only reuse the first stage (the big rocket that gets things off the ground initially) while discarding the second stage - the space-optimized payload delivery rocket. With Starship they're going for 100% rapid reuse. So you're looking at this absolutely massive 2 stage system where both parts will be able to be repeatedly and rapidly reused.

cjrp 4mo ago

> The main reason humanity hasn't meaningfully started expanding into space is because it used to cost $54,000 to get a liter of water into space. Am I naive in thinking that we haven't expanded into space because we don't need to? What's the benefit?

andsoitis 4mo ago
> we haven't expanded into space because we don't need to? What's the benefit? Access to resources. A sense of adventure. Learning.
- lokar 4mo ago
  Which resources are cheaper to get from space? I’ve only ever seen hand waiving arguments, never any math.
  - somenameforme 4mo ago
    The hand waving is probably reasonable for a couple of reasons. The first is that you can't really math things out yet when costs are shifting by orders of magnitude on relatively short timeframes. What seems impossible in one year is a casual achievement in the next. If we go back to 2002 (when SpaceX was founded) and I told you that within 2 decades they'd have lowered the cost to get stuff to space by more than 97% relative to Space Shuttle, it'd have sounded somewhere between unreasonable and impossible, yet that is exactly what happened. And Starship is set to send prices plummeting yet again. The second reason is that the notion of economics becomes kind of odd when you start introducing space. Space has practically infinite resources of every type imaginable. For instance one single asteroid, Psyche 16, is thought to have orders of magnitude more gold than has ever been extracted in human history. But I mean, what does this even mean economically? Obviously if you start bringing back hundreds of thousands of tons of gold, the price is going plummet. And even the viable possibility of this happening would probably send the price of gold plummeting. So... it's weird. We're in uncharted waters. And then on top of this access to space will mean we will start expanding outward - colonies, vastly larger stations stations, and so on. And these expansions will develop their own parallel economies with their own needs/production/etc. This is all kind of like trying to predict the economics of the internet before the first cable had been laid.
    - lokar 4mo ago
      Most people I see online freak out at the idea of normalizing living in an apartment/condo and slightly higher density. I don’t see them lining up to live in space :)

threetonesun 4mo ago

You really think cost is the main reason humanity hasn't expanded into space? I'm all for space exploration and learning from space but actual humans are quite squishy, like gravity, dislike radiation, and would need to take a lot of water with them just to visit a rock very indifferent to their existence.

somenameforme 4mo ago
Definitely. Humans expand. It's probably an evolutionary imperative in many of us. Africa was essentially an oasis and yet some of us decided to go make our way outward to inhospitable freezing ass places where the environment itself is just constantly trying to kill you in a million different ways. And we knew nothing about how to deal with it, at first. Or take the early sea voyages. Not only were there endless worries about things that were ultimately nonissues like sea monsters or falling off the edges of the Earth, but there were endless very real dangers awaiting which we had no clue about or how to deal with - scurvy, rogue waves, and much more. In the aforementioned Age of Sail, it was just expected that a significant chunk of your crew would die. Yet somehow we pushed onward and outward. And the infinite possibilities of space are going to absolutely dwarf all previous frontiers in terms of interest and potential.
- threetonesun 4mo ago
  You're much more optimistic about the concept of infinity than I am!
  - somenameforme 4mo ago
    You mean in terms of us creating a system of gods and serfs?

CuriouslyC 4mo ago

So, your argument for SpaceX is that they'll take physical systems that they've already tried to squeeze down, and squeeze them down nearly two orders of magnitude? What fundamental scientific discovery do you think is going to enable this? Or do you think that AI is magically going to do it for them?

somenameforme 4mo ago
That has nothing to do with how they have already reduced costs, and how they continue to do so. Before SpaceX, you launched a rocket to space once, and then you discarded it. Imagine how much a plane ticket would cost if each time a plane was flown once, it was then discarded. The big revolution with SpaceX was meaningful reuse (I can get into the comparison with Space Shuttle if you're unfamiliar there). Landing and reusing rockets is something that Boeing et al thought was impossible from an economic point of view, and actually taunted SpaceX in their early years over it along the lines of 'Oh you're going for reuse. Yeah we researched and trialed that out a decade ago. The economics don't work. Cute to see you trying though.' Their success there is what helped bring the costs way down. But there's still plenty that's not reused - in particular they currently only reuse the first stage (the big rocket that gets things off the ground initially) while discarding the second stage - the space-optimized payload delivery rocket. With Starship they're going for 100% rapid reuse. So you're looking at this absolutely massive 2 stage system where both parts will be able to be repeatedly and rapidly reused.