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SpaceX files to go public

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX files to go public

#511

Post by drzaiusx11 »

kanwisher wrote: post #334
marcus_holmes wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think that valuing businesses by their expected growth is doing really bad things to our society. We used to value businesses by their current returns, usually dividends paid to shareholders. And we treated any statements about their future plans as interesting but not something anyone should trust. Now we value stocks on what their price will do in the near future, because the primary return to shareho…

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.

So speculative fiction, making this basically gambling since the entropy for picking a "winner" is so high. For every Google there's a hundred others that had similarly brilliant ideas that either flopped or failed to monetize. Your anecdotal example is just retroactive survivorship bias.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#512

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

WalterBright wrote: post #394
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I personally believe SpaceX has a 70% chance of achieving its Mars ambitions." When will that be? There are so many unsolved problems with Mars that creating a civilization on Mars will probably be decades or centuries away. Creating an autonomous station on Antarctica or the moon is child's play compared to Mars. And we are far away from that too.

> Creating an autonomous station on Antarctica or the moon is child's play compared to Mars. That's because it's unnecessary. It's cheaper to just ship supplies in.

A Mars base isn’t exactly necessary either. My point was that we should have such a base for quite a while before we send people to Mars where sending supplies or rescue will take months. There are so many things that can go wrong and the people there will have to deal with these problems on their own without external help.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#513

Post by drzaiusx11 »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #113

SpaceX has reduced the cost of getting a ton of mass into orbit by a factor of 10 and with their new system (Starship) it's poised further reduce that to 100x. They launch, land and re-use their rockets so often now that what was considered impossible 15 years ago is now routine. They currently put more things into space than the rest of the world combined and by a huge margin. They also have the most advanced intern…

At some point we'll reach saturation of what we're comfortable putting into LEO, or at least greater pushback from governments leading to regulations in hopes of avoiding that. There's a lot of space junk out there already and they're still pumping out those isp satellites en mass.

Luckily these specific spacex LEO sats decay pretty rapidly (unless they've made them more advanced recently, I haven't followed closely as of late.) So I guess they'll keep themselves busy at least refreshing the fleet.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#514

Post by drzaiusx11 »

dawnerd wrote: post #196
indoordin0saur wrote: post #113

SpaceX has reduced the cost of getting a ton of mass into orbit by a factor of 10 and with their new system (Starship) it's poised further reduce that to 100x. They launch, land and re-use their rockets so often now that what was considered impossible 15 years ago is now routine. They currently put more things into space than the rest of the world combined and by a huge margin. They also have the most advanced intern…

Hey are absolutely not replacing “legacy” isps and certainly not mobile. Even if they had perfect coverage, sat signals are way too sensitive to obstructions.

They do make internet convenient and somewhat reliable for places that had no other options (on my boat, etc.) But I doubt they can displace wired or microwave relays, and why would they? On-earth systems are much cheaper to maintain even if the cost to LEO reduces by another order of magnitude.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#515

Post by conception »

drzaiusx11 wrote: post #513
indoordin0saur wrote: post #113

SpaceX has reduced the cost of getting a ton of mass into orbit by a factor of 10 and with their new system (Starship) it's poised further reduce that to 100x. They launch, land and re-use their rockets so often now that what was considered impossible 15 years ago is now routine. They currently put more things into space than the rest of the world combined and by a huge margin. They also have the most advanced intern…

At some point we'll reach saturation of what we're comfortable putting into LEO, or at least greater pushback from governments leading to regulations in hopes of avoiding that. There's a lot of space junk out there already and they're still pumping out those isp satellites en mass. Luckily these specific spacex LEO sats decay pretty rapidly (unless they've made them more advanced recently, I haven't followed closely…

Yes humanity has a great track record of taking care of the commons.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#516

Post by drzaiusx11 »

rcxdude wrote: post #447
dawnerd wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey are absolutely not replacing “legacy” isps and certainly not mobile. Even if they had perfect coverage, sat signals are way too sensitive to obstructions.

And density is limited. Starlink cannot more than a tiny fraction of a city.

Limited by the amount of satellite coverage? Or on the ground limitations from ever greater division of bandwidth? I guess those two are directly correlated, but they could in theory add microwave relays into the mix to help offset higher population dense areas from lower density ones with less used bandwidth.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#517

Post by niklasd »

superjan wrote: post #39

Patrick Boyle (fund manager, professor, youtuber) recently discussed this IPO on his channel. Informative and entertaining. https://youtu.be/8rS3fTbC7TE?is=TGpEdM2Y7sknP-cW

I found his take on the space data center a bit negative. No idea if it is feasible right now, but you could have made the same jokes and ridicule about the feasibility of electric cars (batteries too weak!) before Elon build Tesla. And Patrick just lists some reasons why it is currently hard to do. I'm by no means a Elon fan, but if anyone could pull it of it's him, and attempting these hard challenges is a good thing.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#518

Post by le-mark »

shafyy wrote: post #489
danw1979 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#519

Post by drzaiusx11 »

damnitbuilds wrote: post #445
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…

I'd like to see lists of "Things Elon Musk will never be able to make money from, but did" and "Things Elon Musk will never be able to make money from, and didn't".

Cult of personality will take you pretty far apparently. So far in Elon's case he could drop his mask of technical genius and become an inordinatly wealthy memelord/shitposter and still have a following.

Re: SpaceX files to go public

#520

Post by le-mark »

panick21_ wrote: post #175
indoordin0saur wrote: post #113

SpaceX has reduced the cost of getting a ton of mass into orbit by a factor of 10 and with their new system (Starship) it's poised further reduce that to 100x. They launch, land and re-use their rockets so often now that what was considered impossible 15 years ago is now routine. They currently put more things into space than the rest of the world combined and by a huge margin. They also have the most advanced intern…

Sure, but factor of 10 cheaper in a market that is tiny still isn't that much. Even if you assume a 10x market size increase, its still tiny. > They also have the most advanced internet infrastructure in the world and are poised to replace legacy ISPs and even mobile carriers in the coming decade. That's quite the claim. I believe Starlink is a great business, the largest sat business for a long while to come (unlike…

I fully expect Jevons paradox to hold for cheap kg to orbit. Spacex could be the monopoly transportation provider of the Solar Alliance. Yes that’s fanciful, but it illustrates the potential.
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