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SpaceX files to go public

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX files to go public

#181

Post by panick21_ »

pnw wrote: post #173
luke5441 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how replacing mobile carriers with space based infrastructure is physically possible.

5G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) is already part of the 5G standard. It's not a replacement for terrestrial carriers, it's an expansion that enables devices to be always connected and select the appropriate terrestrial vs satellite connection transparently. ~75% of the land mass on Earth has no cell coverage, ~90% if you include the oceans. It's the same transition in theory that we had from landlines to cell towers…

Great, but the overwhelming majority of money is made from the place people actually live. Those places are called cities. Only about a few % of earth are built on, and even among those the top 1% is where most people live.

Don't get me wrong, that fucking great business, but its not 'replacing terrestrial ISP' level great.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#182

Post by ryandrake »

Spooky23 wrote: post #155
lacy_tinpot wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to be incredulous at xAI, you'd have to be incredulous of the AI business in general, which is fair. But then you'd also be basically betting against the entire tech sector, and really the entire US economy and against the value add of AI. That kind of bet is much more difficult to swallow.

Who is using Grok seriously?

Right wingers and generating creating nude images of girls and women who post on xitter, without their consent? Those are the only things I even associate with Grok anymore. The venn diagram may line up pretty nicely between them, too.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#183

Post by lenerdenator »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #154
TheAlchemist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish more people were aware of this. It's a major scandal and definitely not being talked enough about. Nevermind SpaceX, which at least have some importance for US defense industry, but xAI ? We will be investing in Elon's private venture, at the price that he himself set and which is at least 2 orders of magnitude too high...

> It's a major scandal and definitely not being talked enough about It’s being extensively talked about and debated. It hasn’t entered the mainstream discourse because it’s too technical.

It doesn't need to enter the mainstream discourse.

It needs to enter the inbox of a grand jury docket.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#184

Post by panick21_ »

tristanj wrote: post #156
luke5441 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how replacing mobile carriers with space based infrastructure is physically possible.

It's not meant to replace terrestrial networks, it's a space-based alternative that serves areas carriers have no financial incentive to cover. Terrestrial cellular towers cost between $150k to $500k per tower, and are not economically feasible in less populated areas. There are also many dead-zones in mountainous regions, since cell signals are blocked by mountains. Starlink Mobile supplements this, it's simply chea…

Well if you make the argument that it will replace terrestrial networks and that's why its worth X trillion $ then yes, you do actually need to cover the 1% of earth surface where the waste majority of people actually spend most of their time.

The question is not if its a good business, the question if its a 2 trillion $ business, and if you only cover the 95% of earth without coverage. That more like a couple 100 billion $ business at best.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#185

Post by JumpCrisscross »

lenerdenator wrote: post #183
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a major scandal and definitely not being talked enough about It’s being extensively talked about and debated. It hasn’t entered the mainstream discourse because it’s too technical.

It doesn't need to enter the mainstream discourse. It needs to enter the inbox of a grand jury docket.

What crime do you think was committed? Indices are privately maintained and transparently rebalanced.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#186

Post by panick21_ »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #16

Rabble rabble... debt... rabble rabble... xAI burning revenue... > In the United States, SpaceX accounts for five of every six launches into space, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. That's why.

Maybe go look up how large the space launch market is ... you might learn something.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#187

Post by Spooky23 »

stickfigure wrote: post #74
jordanb wrote: post #15

You don't have to believe. If you have a 401k you will be an investor 15 days after launch. The IPO will go great, because the company will float a fairly small issuance. The big shareholders will not immediately sell. They will hold on and maybe even buy to support the price. Then, after 15 days, it will enter the indexes and everyone's 401k will start auto-buying this stock. You might say this is an obvious flaw in…

Serious question: Is there some ETF that is "Index of S&P500 minus anything that smells like Musk"?

If you have $100k, you can do it with direct indexing at Schwab. The management fee is 0.40%.

I looked into it, but there are gotchas with wash sale rules and taxes. You really need $500k-$1M to avoid tracking errors. End of the day, the overhead seemed more problematic than the problem, so I ended up increasing my global allocation instead.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#188

Post by pnw »

panick21_ wrote: post #181
pnw wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) is already part of the 5G standard. It's not a replacement for terrestrial carriers, it's an expansion that enables devices to be always connected and select the appropriate terrestrial vs satellite connection transparently. ~75% of the land mass on Earth has no cell coverage, ~90% if you include the oceans. It's the same transition in theory that we had from landlines to cell towers…

Great, but the overwhelming majority of money is made from the place people actually live. Those places are called cities. Only about a few % of earth are built on, and even among those the top 1% is where most people live. Don't get me wrong, that fucking great business, but its not 'replacing terrestrial ISP' level great.

They said the same thing about cell phones vs landlines back in the day. Based on Starlink's revenue doubling year on year, and a six fold increase since 2022, I don't think anyone really knows what the upper bounds for global access is yet. And traditional telcos are usually limited to a region whereas Starlink is global. Just the top 20 global telcos alone are almost $2 trillion in market cap and $1.35 trillion in revenue. Starlink has captured less than 1% of that revenue to date.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#189

Post by cj »

CactusBlue wrote: post #150
stickfigure wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: Is there some ETF that is "Index of S&P500 minus anything that smells like Musk"?

If you have a big enough portfolio, direct indexing (using something like Frec or Wealthfront) could be an interesting option, and weighting the companies that you don't want at 0.

Wealthfront offers the ability to blacklist stocks in your account (the feature is meant for people legally prohibited from investing in certain tickers).

It won’t exclude from regular indexes, but it will exclude from the direct indexing. I’ve been using it to exclude NVDA ever since it peaked (or at least reached the peak valuation I’m comfortable with)

Wealthfront’s portfolio minimum used to be $100k, but I think they have a new direct indexing product with a $5k minimum.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#190

Post by notahacker »

convexly wrote: post #120

I'm genuinely waiting to see at what the valuation lands at. The gap between what SpaceX charges per launch and what everyone else charges is so wide that the moat basically is the rocket. Hard to compare against anything even now.

That feels like a surprisingly weak moat though; costs have already fallen to the point where launch isn't the biggest cost of space hardware any more, the competition is hotting up, and whilst launch costs give Starlink an advantage over other LEO satcomms constellations, other countries have strategic incentives to underwrite the existence of that competition, and once those assets have been sent to space it's a straight fight for subscribers in a remote broadband connectivity market which is definitely real but also looks... actually not that huge, relative to a trillion dollar valuation, unless they're able to drop their prices to wired broadband levels without service degradation. Launch cadence is a bigger advantage for SpaceX than cost, but again something other entities plausibly will match, when the demand is there.

The real question is what comes first: viable commercial large scale infrastructure in space that might create new demand for SpaceX launches, or the competition?

SpaceX is pitching their own orbital data centres as a ready to go source of demand for lots and lots of Starship launches, but the unit economics of those vs boring old ground-based server racks and solar farms look dubious even before one considers just how convenient a justification it is rolling Elon's loss making businesses into the IPO.

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