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SpaceX files to go public

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX files to go public

#541

Post by drzaiusx11 »

muskstinks wrote: post #465
laughing_man wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink seems like a no-brainer at this late date, but I remember thinking "He'll never be able to make money from internet satellites. This has to be some kind of scam. Look what happened to Irridium." Data centers in orbit certainly seem like a pipe dream, but SpaceX certainly has the technology it needs to put them there, and that's a huge competitive advantage (like it was for Starlink) if they do turn out to be…

Star link is not a 'no-brainer' they currently have 9/10 million customers and need 10k star link satelites. One satelite costs 300k and works for 5 years. To this, they need humans operating the space side, the base station, they need base stations etc. It is affected by weather as well. Its not a 'no-brainer' and while space x showed its somehow a business, amazon and others are entering this space now too. So they…

It's stupid, but it mostly works because they also own the sat deployment side of the equation as well.

Dropping the cost to launch (replacement sats etc) by continuing to take greater piece of all total space launches along with large step function capacity refinements with each new rocket generation, means they will continue to push the economics in their favor. $300k/sat might not be worth it, but unless there's a number of back to back unmitigated disasters with their new rockets (totally possible given the cost of getting it wrong) launch costs will continue to drop as they iterate. Even in the worst case where starship never works, they can still salvage and continually refine their current proven designs.

That said, I do not trust their IPO valuations at all. I have enormous respect for what SpaceX has accomplished in such a short time span. When the US government deprioritized further space R&D for all launch vehicles and relied entirely on Russian launch vehicles, I honestly thought it was the end of an era of innovation in space in my (current) country. I'm glad I was wrong to some extent, even if it means an over reliance on the private sector to make further progress.

You may point out that private space ventures sadly have similar problems to ceding to foreign nations, and you wouldn't be wrong. The only silver lining for me is getting to see continued progress in my lifetime. It doesn't take all the sting out of government funding drying up for space launch vehicles, especially when our other budgets like defense are so insane, but I'll take it at face value as a victory for humanity to continually improve space capabilities at scale in any form.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#542

Post by DennisP »

danw1979 wrote: post #472
shafyy wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jury is still out on Starship. And also a bold claim to say that SpaceX by itself has reduced the cost of a ton of mass into orbit by a factor of 10. Did it play an important role in that reduction? Sure...

Who else “played a role” in Falcon 9 reducing the cost of mass to orbit, exactly ? I guess some public money went their way ? Also which jury is still out on starship ? I haven’t read any serious criticism that suggests there are insurmountable technical obstacles to it working. Timelines and the exact final cost-to-orbit are still debatable I guess ? The achievements of the program so far and the infrastructure curr…

I don't think anyone can say there are insurmountable obstacles, but it's still a hard problem they haven't solved yet. Bits of the rocket are still melting on reentry, and they have to fix that to achieve rapid reusability. Plus they haven't demonstrated a heavy payload yet. We can't be sure they'll actually achieve extreme low cost until they've done both of these things.

For anything beyond Earth orbit, they also need to demonstrate orbital refueling.

I've seen articles raising technical concerns about all of these, but I'm not enough of an expert myself to have an opinion.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#543

Post by Betelbuddy »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #386
kanwisher wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine valuing Google in early 2000s on its revenue and dividends. It would have nearly zero value, but if you bought then you knew it was going to be one of the biggest companies in the world. Only boring stable companies that have no growth like Coca-Cola make sense only valuing without further growth.

Agree, but Coca-Cola has plenty of value despite being "boring" and "stable". The post I was replying to was saying that SpaceX had no growth and therefore little value. That's a mindset that sees companies as speculative assets that are only valuable if their price is set to change in a way that a speculative profit can be made. SpaceX is making money and doing well, the business fundamentals are working out, and it…

>> SpaceX is making money and doing well, the business fundamentals are working out, and it is valuable because of that.

Not true. They have to build a new constellation, every four years, at a cost of 8 billion dollars, and that is not accounted for.

Their main customer is...them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47613231

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#544

Post by Betelbuddy »

infinitewars wrote: post #356
projektfu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$16B is the top line gross revenue number. You don't count R&D as an expense per GAAP, so... They have claimed $8B in EBITDA, also leaving out the amortization of R&D costs. Those aren't audited numbers, as far as I know.

That article claiming $8b profit is indeed mislabeling EBITDA as profit. EBITDA removes any recurring replenishment costs, the cost of building the satellite, launching the satellite, the user equipment manufacturing and returns, all ground infrastructure build and replacement, all employee stock compensation (not counted!), no advertising costs (and they've actually had to do a lot of that lately to scrounge custome…

>> *they actually use "Adjusted EBITDA" which is even more nonstandard and means they define the accounting however they want!

Enron would be proud...Theranos-level Transparency...

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#545

Post by sham1 »

mlrtime wrote: post #490
sham1 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this idea presume that the hate that Elon gets isn't totally justified?

So nobody is entitled to a thought that is against the hive mind here? I think it's worse than what you're saying. It's almost impossible to have an objective discussion on any technology he touches in a online forum without someone mentioning his behaviors. Godwins law.

Well I don't know about you, but I at least think that it's good that the "hive mind" questions people who don't hate neo-nazis. Because that tends to be a warning sign when it comes to many other nasty opinions one might hold.

And I'll just pre-empt any argument about how Elon is not a neo-nazi because that gesture he did on that stage wasn't a Hitler salute or whatever, I'd suggest any potential person wanting to argue that to save their breath. Or whatever other arguments one can possibly come up with to excuse some of the statements and actions of Elon.

As for an objective discussion about the tech he's involved with, he has objectively ruined any good reputation and potential goodwill people had for... what exactly?

It's fine if all you (impersonal) want to do is talk about how cool SpaceX's rockers and whatnot are, but one shouldn't be surprised if others get uneasy due to the entity behind said rockets or that they wish to discuss that.

To complete the Godwin quota, it's like trying to have an "objective discussion" about the V2 rocket while ignoring that those rockets were built by the quite literal Nazis for their war capacity. And that some of the scientists and engineers working on said project, built by slave labour, ended up in America and the USSR due to operations Paperclip and Osoaviakhim respectively.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#546

Post by [deleted] »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #509
laughing_man wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a lot of people back in the early '90s who thought cell service would never be widely adopted because of the cost. It was clear you didn't need a mobile phone -- we'd all gotten long just fine without one.

I worked at Radio Shack in 1995 shortly after carriers started subsidizing phones aggressively and you could “buy one for penny”. They were selling like crazy. Just some quick Googling says that cellphone penetration went from 1% in 1990 to 50% by 1999. The Motorola Startec was introduced in 1996 and clones came quickly thereafter and were all the rage

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#547

Post by muskstinks »

drzaiusx11 wrote: post #541
muskstinks wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star link is not a 'no-brainer' they currently have 9/10 million customers and need 10k star link satelites. One satelite costs 300k and works for 5 years. To this, they need humans operating the space side, the base station, they need base stations etc. It is affected by weather as well. Its not a 'no-brainer' and while space x showed its somehow a business, amazon and others are entering this space now too. So they…

It's stupid, but it mostly works because they also own the sat deployment side of the equation as well. Dropping the cost to launch (replacement sats etc) by continuing to take greater piece of all total space launches along with large step function capacity refinements with each new rocket generation, means they will continue to push the economics in their favor. $300k/sat might not be worth it, but unless there's a…

I def also want to see continue progress and investing in space is only a problem in capitalism, which i'm not a big fan of anyway.

But it would be so much better if the person behind this would have more character.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#548

Post by DennisP »

le-mark wrote: post #518
shafyy wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the jury is out on this: > Also which jury is still out on starship ? I haven’t read any serious criticism that suggests there are insurmountable technical obstacles to it working. Timelines and the exact final cost-to-orbit are still debatable I guess ? There are also other space companies outside of SpaceX who have innovated and reduced the cost of mass to orbit. Just trying to add the perspective that while ye…

> There are also other space companies outside of SpaceX who have innovated and reduced the cost of mass to orbit. They should be easy to name then. I can’t think of any. Can you?

So far everybody's playing catch-up, but there are some innovative rocket companies out there. Blue Origin is finally getting to orbit with partial reusability, Rocket Lab and Relativity Space are doing some cool stuff, and Stoke Space is working on full reusability, evaporative cooling for reentry (using hydrogen fuel for the second stage, which works much better for this than methane), can steer for landing without gimbaling the engines, and has a full flow staged combustion engine like Starship.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#549

Post by BurningFrog »

krige wrote: post #435
BurningFrog wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stated goal for Grok is to be as truthful as possible. Maybe that shows up as being more right leaning than the competition.

Grok and Elon's ventures in general should really get the Purpose of a System treatement in public discourse. For all we know the purpose of Grok is to make nude edits of people. You can assign this to left or right leaning as you please.

The obligatory "Elon is a poophead!" responses anytime you mention Elon without criticizing him is my least favorite thing about this forum.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#550

Post by dmoy »

lokar wrote: post #171
dmoy wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it really about the index though, if the index fund doesn't track that public index? If the index fund is tracking some proxy that is float weighted, isn't that what matters? At least when it comes to people's money.

Index funds track an index, thus the name

Yes but they don't track the literal index that we the public see.

They track a float weighted approximation of it

(Typically - I thought QQQ did based on your earlier comment, but it also is float weighted)

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