4 ms·

When's the IPO?

• wolf550e 12y ago
  Elon Musk said many times that not soon.
• cryptoz 12y ago
  SpaceX will IPO when their Mars Colonial Transporter is making regular trips between Earth and Mars. Elon thinks that taking the company public before then would result in a potential derailment of Mars colonization plans. Having MCT making regular Earth-Mars trips before going public will ensure that quarterly-return-investors won't try to interfere with sending millions of people to go live on Mars. Citation: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/342566837852200960 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/342566837852200960
  • Crito 12y ago
    For anyone that isn't aware, this is actually what Elon Musk has stated in interviews in the past.
  • tsotha 12y ago
    I think we can all read that as "not in my lifetime", though I may just be a pessimist.
    • cryptoz 12y ago
      MCT should be flying its first trips in about 15 years (Elon says 10-12, so we add some). So I'd guess IPO in around 15-20 years. The real colonization effort will probably be getting going in 20-25 years. SpaceX will want to send about 80,000 people each year (or each launch window), and that scale is probably 30-40 years away. Most of us will see SpaceX go to Mars. And optimistically, I think many of us will go too.
      • tsotha 12y ago
        Who is going to pay for it, though? If Musk is then, okay, maybe. But if he's counting on Congress to pony up the cash it may never happen at all. Probably won't, in fact.
        • cryptoz 12y ago
          Elon will not wait for Congress. Who will pay for it? 1. The people who want to move there - target price $500k USD. $500,000 is the estimated price at which the demand is estimated at 80,000 tickets. Elon figures that if the price of moving to Mars is comparable to buying a home in California, the number of people who could afford to go and would want to go is ~80,000. So that's ~$40B or so. 2. Elon - maybe worth $50-100B by then? If we assume that SolarCity and Tesla will continue to grow for the next 10-20 years, then Elon's net worth will probably be ~$50B or so. Not enough to fund a full Mars colony, but it'd be a really good start. 3. Satellite internet profits The recently announced satellite internet effort by SpaceX, financed by Google and Fidelity, is intended to provide high-speed, low-latency global internet access to billions of people. Elon expects to be able to fund part of the Mars colonization project with profits from that. 4. NASA / Congress NASA already expects to spend many billions on making trips to Mars. It does not seem unlikely that, in 20 years, they would be willing to join some efforts and allocate $10-30B towards Mars colonization with SpaceX. 5. VCs and billionaires. The Martian economy may have a rough start but will probably grow wildly once established. SpaceX already attracts VC funds in the billions from large firms and billionaires, and this will certainly be amplified in the future.
      • dragonwriter 12y ago
        > MCT should be flying its first trips in about 15 years (Elon says 10-12, so we add some). Judging from Dragon, Elon says 10-12, so it'll be 10-12 years off in 10 years.
• sandstrom 12y ago
  I think they've said 'not until after Mars'.