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The SpaceX Sham

dissentmagazine.org

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Re: The SpaceX Sham

#41

Post by sfblah »

ggreer wrote: post #40
sfblah wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't require "lying," per se. It just requires hiding the truth, kind of like what Musk has done for dozens of his other ventures. You do know that SpaceX owns Twitter now, for example? You do know that he tricked his investors into giving his cousin a ton of money for his fake solar lease scheme? You do know that there's still no new roadster, something like 10 years after he accepted deposits for it? Even if…

I'm trying to address one very specific point: Whether Starlink is profitable. I'm not trying to litigate other business practices. The development timeline for a different's company's fancy car for the super-rich is not related to whether Starlink is profitable. You can't hide the truth if you say you're following GAAP in your SEC filings, and then publish numbers saying that Starlink is making money. Doing so risks…

ChatGPT estimates Tesla has received $33B in government money directly and indirectly. My guess is it’s much more, since there are intangible benefits such as free marketing. For SpaceX the estimate is $35B+.

The reason no one else has lower launch costs is because no one else has a guaranteed customer willing to waste money on pointless rocket launches. SpaceX’s technology isn’t even particularly novel. If space nerds want Star Trek to actually come true, an actually novel propulsion system is needed, not just scaled up versions of the same thing that’s been done since 1957.

I am absolutely certain Musk has committed securities fraud, repeatedly. I hope that one day the US government returns to normal operations and he gets the Elizabeth Holmes treatment he deserves.

And this has nothing to do with DOGE and woke politics. That’s the one thing where I thought he was on the right side of things, more or less. The problem is straight-up low-interest-rate-enabled financial crime.

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#42

Post by tim333 »

orwin wrote: post #21
caconym_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that it actually opened at $150 on public markets. It's kind of funny how we call the $135 figure the "public offering" price when there is really nothing public about it. Maybe it made more sense in some past era when it was more difficult for third parties to make private pre-IPO investments. Not that there's anything particularly unusual about this. High profile tech companies almost universally (actu…

Really? i got out of the crypto/finance bubble a few years ago, but that feels heavily like a crypto scam. You create a coin, you keep a few, sell another few to influencers cheaply, then ICO, then profit.

There's some real business there unlike crypto.

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#43

Post by tim333 »

rendang wrote: post #8

> punitive capital gains taxation A strange turn of phrase. What is the crime in view that's supposed to be punished?

Being rich. "Anti-oligarchy initiatives" as he puts it. Sounds a tad socialist.

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#44

Post by tim333 »

>The real scandal is how much capital the tech oligarchs have been able to raise on the promise of an automated, even transhumanist, future.

Dunno. Why shouldn't they raise money for that? People can always not invest if they think it's bunk.

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#45

Post by Zigurd »

bigbuppo wrote: post #24

Whether it's a good idea don't matter. Fundamentals don't matter. What matters is if enough investors think they can make a lot of money. The bet is on a government bailout of some sort. SpaceX itself is now critical to national security, as is Starlink. Tossing every other Musk company into SpaceX means that when they fail SpaceX itself has to be bailed out. Probably safer than government bonds at this point if you…

How many government bailouts, like GM for example, continued to trade at astronomical ratios of price to revenue, never mind earnings? Corruption can work miracles and we are in a Golden Age now, but still there are practicalities.

Beltway bandits have been at this game for 100 years, and look at their stock price.

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#46

Post by Zigurd »

baron3dl wrote: post #10

The real sham has yet to materialize. You only get a single $1T IPO. For the AI labs, investors are tapped out, and the only thing left is a huge IPO. Google, Meta, Microsoft's cash reserves are drying up, they're squeezing operations for every cent, and sure they can issue some stocks to raise cash, but not $1T. I think this bubble's failure mode matches that of a Ponzi scheme.

Not to imply that AI spending isn't a bubble, but there's a difference between cash rich tech giants going slightly free cash flow negative, and a company like Oracle that's all in.

Apple is sitting it out, Google and Microsoft are not taking existential risks relative to their resources, Meta is doing who knows what but it won't break them, and Oracle's fate couldn't happen to nicer people.

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#47

Post by jotux »

MarkusQ wrote: post #27
jotux wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how our perceptions are driven by the source of our news. I generally perceived the positive coverage in regular news as unrelenting. I know the tech news sources I read were constantly complaining about rule changes and manipulations on the part of Spacex, but run-of-the-mill national news outlets seem to be endlessly hyping the stock to the point that a few of my non tech-savvy family members were asking…

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/why-we-think-spacex-ipo-i... https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/technology/spacex-ipo-elo... https://montanaskeptic.substack.com/p/the-spacex-ipo-will-be... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rS3fTbC7TE https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/06/03/heavily-in-de... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X6YzlY_8tM https://jamesthomason.com/spacex-ipo-bagship-carries-full-pa... https://www.…

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6398250508112 "SpaceX makes its historic stock market debut today, set to be the largest IPO of all time with a $1.77 trillion valuation. Elon Musk, founder and CEO, anticipates becoming the world's first trillionaire. Shares will go live at $135 each, potentially surging immediately due to high demand"

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/12/business/live-news/spacex-goe... "What we covered here • SpaceX soared Friday in its blockbuster stock market debut, with shares gaining 19% after Wall Street’s biggest-ever IPO. • The rocket and AI company, which Elon Musk founded in 2002, is now valued at over $2 trillion, joining Musk’s Tesla as one of the world’s top-ten most valuable companies. • Musk, who owns nearly half the company’s stock, has now made history as the world’s first trillionaire."

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/spacex-ipo-tr... "For now, investors appear eager to overlook Musk’s politics and focus on his company.

Dan Hanson, a senior portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, which invested in SpaceX while it was still private said investors should think of SpaceX not just as a rocket company, but as a combination of its launch business, Starlink satellite internet network and artificial intelligence ambitions.

“This team is just getting started,” he said. “There’s a significant opportunity for them to create value as they execute.”

I suspect the vast majority of americans are getting their news from cnn, fox, nbc, abc, pbs.... And I doubt a ton of them are reading the irish times, montana skeptic, or the verge.

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#48

Post by MarkusQ »

jotux wrote: post #47
MarkusQ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/why-we-think-spacex-ipo-i... https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/technology/spacex-ipo-elo... https://montanaskeptic.substack.com/p/the-spacex-ipo-will-be... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rS3fTbC7TE https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/06/03/heavily-in-de... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X6YzlY_8tM https://jamesthomason.com/spacex-ipo-bagship-carries-full-pa... https://www.…

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6398250508112 "SpaceX makes its historic stock market debut today, set to be the largest IPO of all time with a $1.77 trillion valuation. Elon Musk, founder and CEO, anticipates becoming the world's first trillionaire. Shares will go live at $135 each, potentially surging immediately due to high demand" https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/12/business/live-news/spacex-goe... "What we covered here…

Fair enough. I grabbed the list above by searching HK.

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#49

Post by inemesitaffia »

ggreer wrote: post #37
sfblah wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an OK article on the topic: https://archive.is/eKCJu Starlink is almost certainly playing games with capex and depreciation to appear profitable when it is not. They're also using political patronage to get contracts from the government to do things that are probably worthless.

The income/profit numbers I used include depreciation, and even if you subtract all space capex from Starlink income, the program would still have a profit of $482 million last quarter. That's a very pessimistic estimate, as it includes costs for many things outside of what's necessary to build Starlink satellites and put them in orbit. The post you linked to seems to be incorrect on matters of fact. For example, it…

Starlink v2 satellites are 600k per IPO

Re: The SpaceX Sham

#50

Post by inemesitaffia »

sfblah wrote: post #31
ggreer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Starlink financially unsustainable? In 2025, Starlink generated $4.42 billion in income from $11.39 billion in revenue. Last quarter Starlink generated $1.6 billion in income from $4.3 billion in revenue.[1] So it's already a profitable enterprise, and their costs will likely go down over time as their launch capabilities improve. 1. https://s21.q4cdn.com/184289198/files/doc_financials/2026/q2...

Here's an OK article on the topic: https://archive.is/eKCJu Starlink is almost certainly playing games with capex and depreciation to appear profitable when it is not. They're also using political patronage to get contracts from the government to do things that are probably worthless.

Will is an idiot.

You can tell by reading SpaceX IPO docs

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