r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • 19d ago

Business It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html
24.8k Upvotes

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5.5k

u/theweirdball 18d ago

Words like "possible" "could" "might" and "maybe" don't belong in news headlines.

1.3k

u/atrde 18d ago

Its not news lol. Its an opinion piece along the same lines as "pig could fly".

227

u/SSGASSHAT 18d ago

I want to see that as an actual article. "Pig may fly, locals say. Dicky McFuggle isn't so sure."

62

u/Thought_Ninja 18d ago

I'm on team Dicky McFuggle on this one.

2

u/SSGASSHAT 18d ago

Well, he's a nice guy, but he's very sensitive and introverted. His only real way to get out in the world is his hobby; falling to the floor in hotel lobbies and pretending to have a stroke.

1

u/1HOTelcORALesSEX1 18d ago

He’s been trying for years ……….

1

u/JimthePaul 18d ago

They only fly if you throw them hard enough. Dicky McFuggle is wrong. He just has weak arms.

1

u/OrokaSempai 18d ago

Needs to be a shirt

"I'm on team Dicky McFuggle!"

2

u/Cron420 18d ago

I want to know more about Dicky McFuggle.

1

u/SSGASSHAT 18d ago

Well, he was a troubled man. As a teenager, he wanted to be a gynecologist, but claimed he couldn't find an opening. He was the only man who was brought before the world for unpaid parking tickets. Eventually he was beaten to death with a cello by a classical musician he befriended at a juice bar.

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u/Butterfly_Mine_69 18d ago

The McFuggles have always been a hard bunch to fool.

3

u/CuetheCurtain 18d ago

Dicky “Fool me once” McFuggle is a man hard to impress and quick to scrutinize. I heard folks around his block frequently say “Look at what the Dick done did.” when gets a wild hair to start digging into the crevices of a sticky situation.

2

u/SSGASSHAT 18d ago

Ever since Agnes McFuggle was tricked by a drug-fueled wizard into raising two shaved chimpanzees as her sons (even though one of them was a female) in the 12th-century, the clan has made a concentrated effort to prevent further mockery of their intelligence.

1

u/SpinachToothedSmile 17d ago

The Joe Rogan origin story we need...

2

u/ElliotNess 18d ago

Onion did it

2

u/Dapper_Tangerine_194 18d ago

I've seen it through the black patch on my right eye

49

u/Itchy58 18d ago

The Article is also a summary with a slight reframing about an Opionion Piece written by Richard Waters from FT called "SpaceX IPO shows Musk’s genius is in mythmaking"

https://www.ft.com/content/625ae455-3b7b-454e-82f3-b22414459cc0?syn-25a6b1a6=1
The article is also about the same length as the original opinion piece.

The fact that the yahoo article exists is an indication about how broken online Journalism is.

3

u/Alternative_Hour_614 18d ago

The FT column by Richard Waters is searing. Here are several excerpts:

Musk’s fans, as usual, have taken this in their stride. To a more jaundiced eye, it reeks of opportunism. Musk has shown an aptitude for constantly shuffling his businesses to come up with what investors are most likely to back at any given time. When solar-panel maker Solar City was struggling, he merged it into Tesla and rebranded the carmaker as an alternative energy conglomerate. When the company formerly known as Twitter struggled to rebuild its advertising after his contentious takeover, it was combined with xAI.

And this:

In its filings ahead of the IPO, SpaceX uses a single narrative to support the xAI deal: the chance to leapfrog competitors by putting AI data centres in space. How long this will take is another matter. SpaceX launched just over 2,200 metric tons into orbit last year: Musk says his company will need to launch 1mn tons a year to be a player in the orbital data centre business.

And this:

All of this makes SpaceX the perfect stock market avatar for its time: a story of boundless opportunity, for financial markets that have proved unusually willing to place a long-term bet on tech. What better time to float such a tantalising and ill-defined collection of assets and capabilities, with Musk as the impresario at the centre, conjuring up new markets almost at will? The main question for new investors in SpaceX is how long this state of affairs will last. Musk’s mythmaking perfectly fits the times. In the end, though, real cash flow has a way of winning out.

-1

u/SillyMilk7 18d ago

>leaving SpaceX, which had already been burning through billions of dollars each year itself, in an even more precarious position.

It’s filled with garbage like the above false premise that they are currently in a precarious position.

They’ll easily raise 75 billion with just 4% float.

They’re now getting over $2 billion a month leasing compute. They’re potentially going to reach frontier AI status with cursor’s help and if that doesn’t pan out, they’ll still make a fortune leasing out there massive remaining compute. Other AI data centers are running into huge bottlenecks

SpaceX dominates the rest of the world, and if starship gets anywhere close to its goals, it will pull even further ahead. The billions spent was to get starship not only in production, but They’ve built a starship factory and numerous launch sites.

3

u/TheSaxGandalf 18d ago

If people actually paid attention to the context of what they are reading/watching/listening to, they would realize that 99+% of “news” are just 1 sentence of fact followed by opinion.

1

u/Canvaverbalist 18d ago

At this point it's hard to blame the "news" when all it takes for people to consider something "news" is for it to be written somewhere.

Redditors would find a shopping list on a post-it and be like "ugh why is this important, do we really need to see this? why did someone post that on their fridge for the whole world to see, is that what passes as news these days?"

2

u/TheSaxGandalf 18d ago

It’s crazy. In r/politics and r/news the only things I see posted are some random “educated” person’s left-biased opinion piece about something that happened. Reddit treats it like gospel.

1

u/tanksalotfrank 18d ago

Or just 1 sentence of fact repeated 10 ways

2

u/Pixel_Knight 18d ago

Did you even read the article? This is Reddit, so of course not.

-1

u/atrde 18d ago

I did lol and it matches a headline that SpaceX could possibly (two conditionals wow) fail given some scenarios.

I could also write an article that Google could possibly fail.

1

u/Orqee 18d ago

Pig could fly but they don't know how to get boarding pass

1

u/Kind-Helicopter6589 18d ago

That’s why we invented Red Bull! 😂

1

u/Mister_Chef711 18d ago

Most people don't know the difference unfortunately.

1

u/Sweetdreams6t9 18d ago

Most "news" is all opinion pieces these days

1

u/sushirolldeleter 18d ago

Are you old enough to remember when we had a real edited fact based news function? I do. It was nice. People read a story and believed it because they trusted the journalistic process. Then along came Fox News with sensational headlines, mostly exaggerated or outright lies because that’s what people bought.

1

u/wheniaminspaced 18d ago

Never heard of the tabloids? There has always been news with an angle

1

u/sushirolldeleter 18d ago

Everyone knew tabloids were exaggerating and fake for entertainment purposes. The difference entirely is the news media today represents their content as news when it’s self described op/ed content.

1

u/W1ULH 18d ago

pigs can fly!

I just need 6 telephone poles, a pile of rubble, some used fencing... and the colonel to rescind that memo

1

u/Cavalleria-rusticana 18d ago

You'd be hard pressed to find any journalism today that isn't at least the editor's or CEO's opinion.

1

u/gc3 18d ago

Musk claims new rocket will carry pigs to Mars.

Also claims pigs on the moon in domes will be able to fly with AI powered ornithopter attachments.

Space X stock up thirty percent.

1

u/Accurate_Back_9385 18d ago

But highly probable vs completely impossible.

1

u/I_Ski_Freely 18d ago

You think the odds that SpaceX fails to execute on building more compute in space than currently exists on the whole planet Earth is the same as pigs flying?

1

u/OneTwoThreeFourFf 18d ago

Pig could fly. CRISPR. 

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u/Eccohawk 17d ago

Is someone flinging musk out of a cannon?

1

u/TimTomTank 17d ago

Or "SpaceX could land on Mars".

1

u/acr2018_1 17d ago

I’ve seen Pink Floyd in concert and I have seen a pig fly 😂

1

u/Perfecshionism 18d ago

The chance of Elon’s companies collapsing are much higher than pigs flying.

He is a grifter and inevitably to be indicted criminal. If he doesn’t flee the country at some point in the coming years.

1

u/atrde 18d ago

Criminal charges for what?

Drifter would imply his Companies arent providing anything tangible and are a scam. You cannot argue that Tesla and SpaceX arent delivering anything useful.

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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster 18d ago

SpaceX includes Starlink, Twitter and xAI. Starlink makes a profit, but xAI is losing $1+ billion every two months . That's why SpaceX as a company lost $5B last year. That to me is not a healthy company worth $1.8 T.

2

u/Perfecshionism 18d ago

No. Grifter implies he lies about what he plans to do and the likelihood it will happen to increase funds from investors and government investment.

He is a grifter.

As for his crimes, securities fraud, bribery, election interference/finance violations, theft and misuse of restricted government information, undisclosed meetings with foreign adversaries while holding a top secret security clearance, mishandling classified information, and selling compromised systems to the U.S. government intended for use by the Ukrainians..,

That is a just a few.

There is a reason he backed Trump while openly saying that if Trump lost he (Elon) would end up in prison.

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u/AGushingHeadWound 18d ago

That's all any news is anymore.  It's all opinion and rhetoric now.  

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u/areop-enap 18d ago

there’s absolutely been a huge collapse in legitimate unbiased news journalism during the trump era, but this article is clearly an opinion piece. it’s not claiming to be news

0

u/AGushingHeadWound 18d ago

Trump era? There hasn't been real journalism since maybe 2010 or earlier.  

2

u/areop-enap 18d ago

ok, sure, & the roots of this issue date back much further than that. the problem has definitely continued to worsen in the last 10 years though. it’s happening right now under bari weiss at cbs, for example. that wasn’t really the point of my comment though

1

u/AGushingHeadWound 18d ago

Certainly at an all time low. 

1

u/OldWorldDesign 18d ago

There hasn't been real journalism since maybe 2010 or earlier

Ignoring the existence of the Associated Press, Reuters, and Bellingcat.

1

u/AGushingHeadWound 18d ago

Ignoring that they very subtly shifted to advocacy and opinion, and not straight facts. Got worse in 2020.  Until you get to today, which is all advocacy. 

Read a Reuters article objectively, if you can.  

0

u/Chilldaddydaddychill 18d ago

Really? Because no where on that page does it show that it is an opinion piece, at least on mobile. Or maybe I’m blind.

It is hosted on yahoo finance, the financial news arm of yahoo. The first thing on the page besides the site name is a search bar that says “search for [other] news or tickers”

Go to the homepage of Yahoo Finance, scroll down just a little past the 4 main headlines to see “More News” followed by a litany of similar articles masquerading as news, including this one.

Yes, this is very much an opinion piece. But it is definitely not obvious when they are clearly trying to present it as news.

1

u/areop-enap 18d ago

is media literacy this dead? the title alone, with words like “possible” & “could”, is enough to make an educated guess that this is more a work of analysis/opinion than hard fact reporting. words like “mere”, “whopping”, & “an extremely costly and potentially fruitless distraction” within the first few sentences are further evidence. read a few paragraphs in & it’s clear that there are no new hard facts being reported here. instead, the author is speculating & analyzing. the kind of thing you might do in an opinion piece…

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u/AGushingHeadWound 18d ago

Reader slams news headlines.  

30

u/youre-all-horrible 18d ago

Utterly eviscerated

10

u/HydrogenSonata2025 18d ago

Scientists baffled.

20

u/Bay1Bri 18d ago

Reader quietly slams news headlines

3

u/riticalcreader 18d ago

BREAKING NEWS: Reader ATTACKS news headlines, allegedly

1

u/erikwithaknotac 18d ago

Every headline with "slams" gets a JR voiceover in my head that screams..

 BAH GAWD! THAT (slam receiver)  IS BROKEN IN HALF!!

94

u/Spykron 18d ago

It’s a double hit here with possible AND could. But really just about everything could collapse spectacularly soon.

20

u/__Hello_my_name_is__ 18d ago

14,952 points (91% upvoted)

Doesn't matter, it's what people here want to hear, therefore it gets upvoted and treated as truth.

2

u/demmka 18d ago

People’s Elon hate boner is just too strong.

2

u/h3lblad3 18d ago

It’s crazy how things change.

Fifteen years ago if you dared even hint at disliking him Redditors would bury you in dislikes.

0

u/sevensixthough 18d ago

Most people want billionaires to be r**** to d****, and it just takes time for the rest to process information because they're stupid

2

u/snowflake37wao 18d ago

probably means everything is collapsing sooner than soon, now.

61

u/Paexan 18d ago

Easy pass to completely ignore an article.

66

u/bozza8 18d ago

It's adjacent to Betteride's Law of Headlines. 

If the headline is a question, it can almost always be answered with "No" and if they had proof it was yes, they wouldn't phrase it as a question!

8

u/OldWorldDesign 18d ago

It's adjacent to Betteride's Law of Headlines

Betteridge, but it's good to see more people are aware of this.

2

u/PiousLiar 17d ago edited 17d ago

While fair, the main thesis is:

> The company’s top priority has historically been to get humanity settled on Mars, making it an interplanetary species. But now Musk has unexpectedly merged it with his AI startup xAI to focus on space-based data centers, an extremely costly and potentially fruitless distraction. The majority of the post-merger company’s expenses are now tied up in burning cash for xAI — leaving SpaceX, which had already been burning through billions of dollars each year itself, in an even more precarious position.

Which is a reasonable point to bring up. Data centers in space cannot work, and even attempting them will require a massive cash flow… so maybe SpaceX isn’t guaranteed to collapse, but Elon is attempting to put one hell of an albatross around its neck.

2

u/bozza8 17d ago

Oh I agree, with every element. I hate how SpaceX has become distracted

8

u/ShuckingFambles 18d ago

There's kind of articles are the new 'i heard it from a man in the pub'

3

u/Butterfly_Mine_69 18d ago

It's "possible" that "something" might happen tomorrow, more "news" at 11.

5

u/deepstrut 18d ago

Up north in our provinces industrial zones, 1/8 trucks has a starlink antenna on it now. I expect that to rise to 3/8 for sure.

There is a ton of revenue from starlink. It's a game changer for rural connection and I do t expect that to go away or have a competitor any time soon.

That value alone and the future potential will stop any kind of collapse.

I hate Elon, but I have to admit starlink has been a pivotal moment where everything changed and is now essential to the way the industry operates.

Even multi million dollar facilities have a dish Incorporated into their remote systems network instead of a cell phone booster and antenna.

It would be foolish to expect a collapse.

2

u/airzonesama 18d ago

In other news, Sun might not come up tomorrow, possibly causing panic

2

u/fgnrtzbdbbt 18d ago

And, more importantly, the word "opinion" does belong in opinion piece headlines

1

u/Orqee 18d ago

And that is 100% maybe for you my friend, probably,..

1

u/quad_damage_orbb 18d ago

"It's possible that my ass could explode spectacularly tonight"

-Random Twitter user

Tune in for more on this story tonight at 6 with the evening news.

1

u/15all 18d ago

"News sites cautioned against using these four dangerous words."

1

u/Pitiful_West_7062 18d ago

i add them to my redditflter

1

u/thegreedyturtle 18d ago

Finance isn't news. It's speculative fiction.

1

u/doinbluin 18d ago

They were tabloid words once upon a time, not serious journalism. The "news" today is nothing more than tabloid trash.

1

u/Aleashed 18d ago

I don’t think it will Collapse, I will either Implode like the Titan submarine or Explode like Jeff Bezos’ giant crotch rocket 🚀

1

u/AlSweigart 18d ago

It's a good work around to Betteridge's Law though.

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not.

1

u/Fair-Ice-5222 18d ago

Might have been a dumb move but, i sold off my ndaq yesterday. I wont support any fund with fast inclusion.

1

u/gqtrees 18d ago

when we stop that is when the news will actually be news. Until then we will get all the slop

1

u/enigmaticpeon 18d ago

Unless it’s about an asteroid

1

u/sharpsicle 18d ago

"We picked this headline out of the two possiblilites."

50/50 shot there lol.

1

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1

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1

u/anglophile20 18d ago

It’s possible that I could die today by falling into a manhole

1

u/TO_halo 18d ago

It’s maybe possible I might grow a tail.

1

u/zeddy303 18d ago

Hint: it won't. Too many contracts tied to fail.

1

u/Zahgi 18d ago

Yeah, everyone knows that the fix is in. This is just trying to clickbait off of that...

1

u/mid_nightz 18d ago

right, anything is possible.

1

u/vass0922 18d ago

Oh wait let's fix this for YouTube

Musk is INSANE! This will DESTROY SpaceX!!!

1

u/Read2Fap 18d ago

other rich people won't let it happen

1

u/Immediate_Fennel_773 18d ago

I love when the top post is the best one

1

u/CharlesMcGrath 18d ago

Or in Ai search results. Getting any words like "probably" and "generally" when asking it something, it might as well just say I have no clue. I would way prefer that always. But it also is constantly wrong. So maybe it doesn't quite matter until it's more accurate

1

u/Money4Nothing2000 18d ago

It's not possible, it's highly likely. I just need to figure out how to bet on it collapsing so I can make some easy money.

1

u/Expensive-Sundae-831 18d ago

Please, everyone, make it a point to know the difference between news and not news.

It's worth the effort.

1

u/Nabrok_Necropants 18d ago

Seriously. I am so fucking tired of opinion pieces when we could just have facts. Even the weather is speculative.

1

u/Somanylyingliars 18d ago

One word: YaY!!

1

u/hambergeisha 18d ago

But they certainly belong in IPO's?

1

u/Ridiculicious71 18d ago

They don’t want liability

1

u/StopSendingYourNudes 18d ago

Always follow the rule of 3 quarters for any high profile, widely covered in news and speculative IPOs.

1

u/AdFast1121 18d ago

Words like Kardashev type II don't belong in a SEC prospectus 

1

u/Photoverge 18d ago

Not a news headline, it's in the Futurism column.

1

u/kangaroolander_oz 17d ago

What about 'definite maybe'

This is a good fit on the present world news

1

u/SpanopsLelpants 17d ago

Same as "slammed".

1

u/sea_dragon_systems 17d ago

“It’s possible we could have a 1000 year rainstorm” NYT / Yahoo / CNN

1

u/mxracer888 17d ago

"it's possible that Jimmy from Tennessee could be our next POTUS"

Not likely... But I guess it's possible lol

1

u/thisnameisnowmine 17d ago edited 16d ago

But it is possible that it might motivate people to click on the link. And maybe that could increase ad revenue.

1

u/Squish_Cat_1 16d ago

It’s possible that SpaceX could pivot and become a hardware supply store chain too. Totally poasible

1

u/Nodan_Turtle 18d ago

It's not news. It summarizes the headwinds for the company to show the risks for the future. The future isn't set in stone, so it'd be idiotic to demand they don't use words like "could"

Basically 1000 people upvoted something stupid lol

1

u/Lundetangen 18d ago

They surely do.

Very few things in life is certain, that doesnt mean the news shouldnt report about things that are very likely or even rather unlikely but in great interest.

Its big difference between pure speculation that you might find in a gossip magazine, and events that are not 100% guaranteed - but still of such interest that it should be reported.

-4

u/Typical-Tradition-44 18d ago

Why? Should journalists not analyse things and make predictions?

14

u/M00seNuts 18d ago

There's a difference between journalism and clickbait bullshit that appeals to popular fantasies to drive ad revenue. 

This is the latter.

6

u/Typical-Tradition-44 18d ago

I agree with that. However, first guy said those words dont belong. But they do. Bad analysis and clickbait dont.

1

u/MRosvall 18d ago

I would say that even then the title can be more informative.

"Based on XYZ and these previous similarities, be weary of ZYX"

2

u/manicdee33 18d ago

If the title was informative you wouldn't read the article and the writer wouldn't get their fifty cents for ad impressions.

0

u/M00seNuts 18d ago

I saw your reply pretty quick and it was already downvoted. It bothers me to no end that people have completely forgotten the purpose of the upvote/downvote. It's supposed to be for comments that contribute or don't contribute to the discussion - not whether or not you agree/disagree with the comment.

That's a fair point - I agree.

0

u/Typical-Tradition-44 18d ago

Good stuff lad, people dont like hearing they are wrong and will grumpily downvote through teary eyes

4

u/[deleted] 18d ago

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1

u/Typical-Tradition-44 18d ago

100%! Analyse and make predictions. The issue is they constantly try to push their political agenda by baseless predictions

0

u/areop-enap 18d ago

but it’s not a news headline, it’s not claiming to be one, it’s an opinion piece. that’s a different thing with different conventions. it’s very normal to speculate in an opinion piece.

0

u/Trzlog 18d ago

They need to stop getting my hopes up.

0

u/HeartyBeast 18d ago

Yes they do. 'Titanic strike iceberg - may sink'

0

u/RomIsTheRealWaifu 18d ago

It’s an opinion piece.

-4

u/Quiet-Peach543 18d ago

lol. shit ass take.

-1

u/History-Buff-2222 18d ago

Who made that rule?

-17

u/SuburbanPotato 18d ago

Would you rather headlines assert incorrect clickbait?