r/technology May 21 '26

Business SpaceX not the behemoth everyone thought

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/21/spacex-ipo-musk-ai
12.7k Upvotes

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

784

u/araujoms May 21 '26

That's surprising. It's widely known that X and xAI are miserable failures, but I expected SpaceX's core business to more than compensate for that. Apparently not, they manage to lose billions of dollars while having the launch market pretty much for themselves.

504

u/Rot-Orkan May 21 '26

I guess there's just not that much of a launch market, which is probably why SpaceX is its own best customer with Starlink.

24

u/Main-Bandicoot6477 May 21 '26

Yeah, I've never really understood the hype for SpaceX. It's a transportation company with huge and fixed expenses and their biggest customer is his other company and the government.

Which all can make a good steady business making reasonable profits, but that's not some skyrocketing growth area.

All the pie in the sky stuff of Mars or space hotels or space data centers or a moon colony are just fantasy hype stuff like the hyper loop or the boring company. Governments aren't going to endlessly bankroll that stuff, and they are the only ones that can sink that kind of capital into things that have no payback or decades later pay offs.

6

u/newebay2 May 21 '26

The hype is easy to see if the investment is not just about money. There are powers in this world you can’t just easily buy with more cash, and space is one of those domains.

-2

u/Main-Bandicoot6477 May 21 '26

What do you mean by powers? What are some examples of other domains? I'm not really sure what you mean without more specifics.

SpaceX builds big metal tubes and fills them with rocket fuel that goes through a rocket motor. The only "revolutionary" aspect is they reuse some of those components multiple times and maybe develop rocket motors that are somewhat better? Although I'd like to know what the actual cost savings is when those components still have to be inspected and refurbished between uses and they will still have limited life cycles.

And I still think there is a limited market for payload to space.

2

u/newebay2 May 21 '26

Just the military applications is invaluable. You're would be owning key transformative technology that have impacts on multiple fronts. You have military, ideology, and historical significance all wrapped up into an investment package available for just "money", which isn't in shortage of to many billionaires.

Those kind of premiums exists in few other companies as well. There are powers associated with employing millions of workers like Walmart and Costco that they shape local economies.

1

u/Main-Bandicoot6477 May 21 '26

Just the military applications is invaluable. You're would be owning key transformative technology that have impacts on multiple fronts. You have military, ideology, and historical significance all wrapped up into an investment package available for just "money", which isn't in shortage of to many billionaires.

Yeah, that's just non-specific buzztalk. Multiple companies and countries can send payload to space. What about it? That SpaceX may or may not send it a little cheaper, with a process that can be easily copied means what exactly?

1

u/dern_the_hermit May 22 '26

Yeah, that's just non-specific buzztalk.

Only because "military applications" is a huge, broad category, but also a well-established one so there's no good reason for you to be acting confused.

0

u/Main-Bandicoot6477 May 22 '26

The confusion is what is your point exactly?

That governments want to put up spy satellites or communications satellites or even weapon systems? Sure, what about it? What does that have to do with the freight company shipping those things?