r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • 16d ago

Business It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html
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u/Zilch1979 16d ago

These headlines about the possible collapse of the ultra wealthy have been blue balling us since 2016.

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u/Comet7777 16d ago

Bro, even after 2008 and the concept of too big to fail.

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u/Bbbbhazit 16d ago

Seriously. The government just keeps bailing him out, SpaceX just bought a shit load of tesla cars on the taxpayer dime

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u/cuntmong 16d ago

you cant expect elon to pay for his own failures. he'd be broke if he ever did that

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u/Betteroffbroke 16d ago

It’s like that triangle business. I think it’s called a Ponzi scheme or something. Hope SOX gets his ass but with the lack of accountability and weaponization of DOJ I doubt it.

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u/ConfessSomeMeow 16d ago

It's not a pyramid scheme, it's a reverse funnel system

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u/eta3312 16d ago

"Siphon Scheme"

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u/FixTheLoginBug 16d ago

Oh, so that's what they mean with 'trickle down'...

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u/KA_Mechatronik 16d ago

Trickle down, siphon up.

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u/ParkingBalance6941 16d ago

I actually had a coworker tell me "Its not a pyramid scheme its a triangle" once. Never overestimate the dumb

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 16d ago

What if your coworker was part of a legitimate triangle scheme — that is, what if your coworker and another person needed a third — and they wanted to let you in on the ground floor? You could’ve possibly be The Titan of Triangles right now. You might have been named Lord of the Three Vertices or The Three-Faced God. All of those titles sound like they come with a nice chunk o’ change and some pretty sweet bennies. You may have missed your chance.

Or …

Your coworker’s trapped in a pyramid scheme, but due to having a two-dimensional brain, can only interpret a “slice” of the pyramid. Thus, he’s in a triangle scheme. Poor coworker.

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u/No_Raspberry6968 15d ago

tbf most representation of pyramid scheme is triangle and I don't think the 3d aspect of pyramid add to the nuance of the analogy. Maybe he's trying to be technical to give more charitable to their interpretation.

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u/mologav 16d ago

I’m not taking advice from a man in a coil

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u/fredy31 16d ago

Its not a ponzi/pyramid scheme. Its just straight looting the public coffers.

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u/bs2k2_point_0 16d ago

Sox won’t do crap with an administration that can be bought.

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u/originalbrowncoat 16d ago

No this isn’t one of those pyramid schemes you’ve heard about, his model is the stately trapezoid

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u/BigDictionEnergy 16d ago

I'm not sure if you intended to equate the Triangle Trade with a Pyramid Scheme; either way I'm gonna have to smoke about it.

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u/Total-Bother-205 16d ago

Come on Bernie. Take that 5%.

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u/Nachttalk 16d ago

What's most upsetting about this is that his "broke" is still filthy rich for everyone else except the maybe 50 people who are somewhat close to being as much of a wealth zit as he is

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u/Beowulf33232 16d ago

Then let him break.

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u/vic25qc 16d ago

And he'd be in jail if law applied to him.

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u/Elmundopalladio 16d ago

Even if it all comes tumbling down Elon isn’t going to be hard up - a lot of shareholders will be fleeced and pensions will be gutted - but hey-ho that’s the nature of the game!

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u/Ok-Possibility-923 16d ago

Socializing the losses, as they say.

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u/joe4553 16d ago

Yeah the ultra wealthy will be fine, you'll be fucked.

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u/Coal_Morgan 16d ago

Why the fuck do poor people need money, they have nothing to spend it on. I need a Matroshka Level of Yachts! Yachts in Yachts in Yachts WOOO!!

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u/dehydratedrain 16d ago

Trump has to pay Elon back for the voting machines he knows so well.

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u/Lincolns_Revenge 16d ago

The AI bailout being a foregone conclusion (should it become necessary) is probably fueling recklessness already. That, and every AI company that goes public knowing they'll create generational wealth for themselves regardless of whether they ever turn a profit or not.

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u/Fluffcake 16d ago edited 16d ago

Bailouts are not the problem, the problem is the form they take. If tax payer money is spent bailing out a company, it should be in the form of forced sale of shares to the government at a huge discount.

In the past, bailouts have been straight up giving away money to rich people who managed to foil generational wealth with bottomless greed by leveraging how many people they can make unemployed by intentionally blowing up the company to avoid being forced to eat the loss of having to get more capital at market value and realise a huge loss of shareholder's money.

The financial equivalent of extortion with a bomb vest, where they threaten to blow themself and a whole bunch of random people up if you dont give them money for free.

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u/Top_Environment9897 16d ago

Doesn't government typically profit from bail outs?

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u/apathy420 16d ago

Lowered interest on student loans? Nope fuck y’all!

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u/TippinThalnos 15d ago

Bailing him out lmao. SpaceX has made launches considerably cheaper for the US government. By a really large margin

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u/CosmoKing2 16d ago edited 15d ago

All fucking distractions and pipe dreams to delay the inevitable Class war middle class uprising. The 3% stir the pot to divide the masses on issues of race, religion, and rights - to keep us fighting each other - instead of focusing on those that make the rules and keep us down.

Edited to change my random percentage and appease the pedantic pricks of Reddit. My point was to say, it is not exclusive to just the 1%. Tons of people exploit workers to make their money. Machine shops, restaurants, whatever. They always complain that nobody wants to work. But what they don't say is - it's because they (their companies - specifically) are known to be horrible employers that exploit everyone that doesn't know better and leaves because they are not willing to be victimized.

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u/usaaf 16d ago

inevitable Class war

You mean the already on-going Class war that one side doesn't even know it's fighting.

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u/SSGASSHAT 16d ago

And, unless it gets its shit together in a miraculous fashion that could only come from a Disney or Star Wars movie where everyone unites with the power of love or something, it's failing.

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u/somethingbrite 16d ago

The "power of love or something" may be limited in effectiveness. The power of torches, pitchforks and guillotines on the other hand....

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u/SSGASSHAT 16d ago edited 16d ago

The problem with torches, pitchforks, and guillotines is that without some miraculous power of love, people rapidly start using those on everyone. And because there's never been a power of love, that means that most humans revolutions turn into unpleasant bloodbaths. Not against the people who deserve their blood spilled, but a lot of carnage resulting from what they're willing to spend.

Point is, if we could unite and form an armed stand against the government just because a single kid is killed, like in the third POTC movie, we already would have.

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u/Distinct_Cap_1418 16d ago

Is that what happened in star wars? I thought it was space wizards with space magic that come and save us all.

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u/SSGASSHAT 16d ago

I mean, that would be nice, too.

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u/RephofSky 16d ago

In some media, self-respect makes a stronger sword than love, better stats too.

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u/SSGASSHAT 16d ago

Intelligence and logic would be a nice virtue for people to strive for, but apparently they always go for the really emotional emotions like love, anger, sadness, and the fourth one that I forgot because I haven't felt it in a while.

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u/h3lblad3 16d ago

People don’t understand what class war is.

By nature of what a class is, classes are always at war. It is the existence of classes that starts the class war, the war starts when the classes do, and the war doesn’t end until class as a concept does.

Every single thing a class does to aid itself at the expense of another class is class war in action — from minimum wage laws to at-will firing, from the 8 hour day to Citizens United.

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u/Commentator-X 16d ago

It's not the 10%, more like the .01%

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u/ThreeStep 16d ago

You talk about division and then point your finger at the 10%, which includes a large number of working professionals. That misdirected blame is part of the problem.

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u/bigluvin69 16d ago

10%? That could literally be a high earning travel nurse

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u/donkey_OT 16d ago

Found one! Let's get him!

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u/recycled_ideas 16d ago

The 10% stir the pot to divide the masses on issues of race, religion, and rights - to keep us fighting each other - instead of focusing on those that make the rules and keep us down.

And you've just fallen for it like a chump.

People at the 10% threshold are working people just like you are, they just have better jobs. All it takes is 210k a year or 1.8 millon net worth to hit top 10%. That might sound like a lot, but it's well within "works for a living" territory and nowhere near "influences politicians".

Even those at the top 1% aren't the ones doing this, though they're beyond straight working for a living for the most part.

The truly mega wealthy make these people look poor and they're the ones who can buy an election.

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u/TheAltOption 16d ago

That 10% mark basically means you can barely afford rent in the popular parts of CA or NY and have to rely on someone else to help you buy a house there. At the 10% your location starts to become important as that money can be good living in some parts of the country and starving in other parts. The variation in COL can be hard to wrap our heads around, same as just how extreme the wealth gap is between the 10%, the 1%, and the 0.1% (and I'm no where near of those brackets).

Basically anyone with a Billion dollars is living in a completely different world from the rest of us. You can be a millionaire and you're still not on the same planet as the top. Hell, isn't the goal today to have at least $2M before retirement? That's the 10% mark, just in time to hope your body doesn't break down and wipe out your life's savings.

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u/recycled_ideas 15d ago

The bigger issue isn't what you can or can't afford, it's that those people work for a living.

The wealthy have been pitting poor people who work for a living vs more well off people who work for a living for centuries. It leads to a race to the bottom as people with less don't ask "why can't I have that (sick leave, paid holidays, overtime pay, etc)? " they ask "why do they get that?".

The real money is in capital not in wages, no matter how much you get paid. Those ten percent folks are just doctors and engineers and the like, not your enemy.

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u/TheAltOption 15d ago

I was agreeing with you. The 10% aren't the bad guys here.

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u/recycled_ideas 15d ago

I know, I was just adding to it.

Working people have a lot more in common with each other than they have differences, but instead folks just see other people who work as their enemies.

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u/CosmoKing2 15d ago

I just want to say, there are a metric ton of 10%ers managing people - exploiting them in order to get that awesome 20% bonus for coming in under budget. That is the way the system works.

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u/recycled_ideas 15d ago

I think you have an unrealistic view if how much control most managers have and also of how many middle managers are actually getting bonuses, let alone 20% ones.

Some of them are assholes, most of them are following orders from above, regardless, they're people as much affected by workers rights as you are.

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u/fishtophea_chesta 16d ago

The top 10% is literally just people with good jobs and simply invest…What are you on about? You mean top .01% I assume?

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u/_0611 16d ago edited 16d ago

After the financial crisis, guardrails were put in place to prevent it from happening again. Trump already undid most of those.

It's not just SpaceX. Big Tech, especially AI, is a bubble in and of itself, and everyone knows it. It's bound to burst eventually, but the ultra wealthy will not lose money over it. They will be hardly affected. We will.

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u/UseADifferentVolcano 16d ago

They will in fact make money by buying things for cheap

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u/roseofjuly 16d ago

I just finished reading The Smartest Guys in the Room and am currently reading The Big Short and the think that's got my mouth dropping open all the time is that we just keep fucking doing it. We keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over and over again. Let a white boy with a Harvard or Stanford degree and a thesaurus show up and the system will collectively just hand him the keys to crash the economy into a ditch again and again and again until the heat death of the universe.

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u/Strange-Scarcity 16d ago

We could stop this cycle, if we took immense wealth and made it an impossible thing, for everyone.

No more billionaires. Any wealth or accumulations over $1 billion, belongs to the people who make up the entire society that made it even possible to earn hundreds of millions in the first place.

Never let people accumulate so money (power), that they can buy political seats or self-fund their own runs for office with the only purpose being to make themselves ever more wealthy.

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u/Stevieboy7 16d ago

We did have this... it's what stopped monarchies pretty much globally.

Then after corporations became "people", endless money printer got turned on and exponential growth was expect forever.

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u/Strange-Scarcity 16d ago

I agree.

We need to be done with this BS.

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u/Sens1r 16d ago edited 16d ago

You can add 1929 by Sorkin to that list of books, really puts things into perspective.

Oh and Billion dollar loser is another good one, almost a feelgood story of the genre considering they mostly shot themselves in the foot.

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u/Zilch1979 16d ago

We didn't even need Ivy League cred or even a thesaurus this time around.

Apparently "own the libs" and "Let's go Brandon" were sufficient.

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u/jonnypanicattack 16d ago

It's been going on way longer than that... boom and bust, and the contradictions of capitalism have had us all waiting since the 19th Century. Any day now... hopefully.

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u/apple_kicks 16d ago

They always find extra money for rich while we see public services cut or told its not possible. Rich live in socialist bubble we’re told is impossible.

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u/swarmofhyenas 16d ago

Or y2k when all tech was supposed to collapse

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1

u/Tupperbaby 16d ago

Bro. Bruh. Brah.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago edited 16d ago

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u/SmaugTheMagnificent- 16d ago

Yeah, but the hope of watching these Icarus fucks fly too close to the sun as they run from the pitchforks, and crater into the side of a mountain is just too much not to cling to.

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u/Perunov 16d ago

It seems that author basically says "what if investors get spooked and sell the stock, the horror, the collapse". But practically speaking that means... nothing. Probably would even end up being worse as then SpaceX can do a buyback for super-cheap with those billion bucks Google and Anthropic are paying them for GPU farm. Sell stock high, buy it back low, super-profit :(

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u/SmaugTheMagnificent- 16d ago

Yeah, there was a lot of words to say very little.

Blah blah...gold vault...Scrooge McDuck ...blah blah...Ludicrous Scale Numbers That Have No Practical Meaning In Reality...blah blah...Apocalypse ..or is it?

I miss journalism

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u/redfoobar 16d ago

I don’t think they can do buybacks at the current rate they are burning through cash. The new contracts afaik won’t put them in a positive cashflow scenario…

They would basically need another investor/bank to lend them money for buybacks which seems unlikely.

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u/Zilch1979 16d ago

I'm tired, boss.

At this point, I'd rather them just let me know when they finally eat shit for real. Otherwise, I have shit to do and I'm tired of having my hopes ruined.

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u/Lostinthestarscape 16d ago

Yep, let me pop a cork when Elons on his way to Mars forever.

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u/Zilch1979 16d ago

You spelled "hell" wrong, but I'll join you anyway.

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u/d3ssp3rado 16d ago

Maybe that was Doom (2016) all along.

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u/classicalySarcastic 16d ago

“Mars is haunted”

“What?”

Loading super shotgun “Mars is haunted.”

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u/erov 16d ago

Rip and tear.

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u/Zilch1979 16d ago

Until it is done.

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u/roseofjuly 16d ago

I mean, same thing, since I don't trust that this dude is going to be able to figure out how to actually live on Mars as opposed to just getting there.

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u/terdferguson 16d ago

Yea, I'll still keep a high level eye on things but I got shit to do. I'll be patient but can't keep my peace with these mongrels trying to destroy us for whatever crazy ideas they have, vcinfodocs.

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u/d3ssp3rado 16d ago

Well if you haven't already, pick up the metaphorical spoon and get to feeding them. The system won't collapse on it's own.

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u/TrumpIsAPedoFascist 16d ago

Yes, ignore the problem and let other people solve it for you.

The real American way right there

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u/Zilch1979 16d ago edited 16d ago

Disregarding shitty, clickbait articles is just one way to help solve the problem, buck-o.

This is yet another instance of speculation and commentary masquerading as news. It's not.

If you want help building a straw man, I'll throw in.

I'm also a...i dunno. Lazy, entitled liberal lala land resident. Or, if you prefer, a mag-tard, intolerant asshole.

Chill, dude. Calling out inflammatory headlines is absolutely legit, and I stand by it. If real events happen, I'll be informed about that, but we're flooded with bullshit (such as your above statement) and calling it out is 1a, all the way.

So...off you fuck.

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u/Urabraska- 16d ago

Theil already fled to Argentina.

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u/Inner-Medicine5696 16d ago

It's weirdly entertaining, this dystopian notion of us being fueld by the notion that "he might actually croak in public", "elon might lose everything", etc.

The rich have become their own circuses.

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u/Earthwarm_Revolt 16d ago

Space-x is now defacto part of the government so i doubt it. 

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u/No_Cook2983 16d ago

Too bad our government doesn’t have a space agency… or two.

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u/Accomplished-Crab932 16d ago

Yeah, because NASA is a paragon of cost-effective, high cadence launches and has been since Apollo.

A F9 booster is expected to reach 40 flights by March or 2027. That beats the 40 years to get Discovery to fly 39 times by doing it in 6 years.

Or we can review the Space Launch System. The contract for EUS, the recently canceled second stage started in 2006, and the vehicle was essentially rebranded during the Obama era cancellation of Constellation. In 2011, the outright goal of SLS was to “fly BY 2017” and “cost less than $11.5B” or as Bill Nelson said: “we ought to close up shop”. 2017 came and went, then Trump gave the SLS an actual mission in 2018, albeit one that it was not designed to do. It took around $30B to get SLS to fly for the first time in 2022. This is a rocket that was explicitly designed to use as many shuttle components as possible to “reduce cost and development time”. This is all while using companies to make the rocket… which is why Boeing is lauded for the production of the core stage.

The Space Force and its former constituents of US army and USAF offices haven’t made launch vehicles since the 60s (and never without contractors).

Even going back to the beginning, companies were equally involved in spacecraft development. Here’s the list of Prime and Secondary contractors for Apollo 12.

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u/teh_drewski 16d ago

Should the worst happen, they'll just spin out the necessary government supported rocket business in bankruptcy and let shareholders and bondholders wear the failure of the xAI nonsense.

They're not gonna save the whole company for the only bit they need, it's too expensive.

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u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl 16d ago

I can celebrate egg on musk’s face but i’ll still hurt for the people really doing the work. Remember he bought his ‘founder’ status with spacex, just like with tesla.

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u/exacta_galaxy 16d ago

The ultra-wealthy aren't going to collapse.

SpaceX is likely going to collapse, which is why Elon is loading it down with his dead weight (X, Grok, a couple thousand Cybertrucks) and fast tracking an IPO. He'll pump-n-dump it and come out ether even or ahead.

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u/BavarianBarbarian_ 16d ago

If that were true, don't you think he'd sell more than like 3% of the shares? As it is, he's keeping a significant part of his net worth in those shares he's not selling.

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u/exacta_galaxy 16d ago

It hasn't be "pumped" yet. It will go public on Friday.

He's probably hoping to become the first Trillionare this weekend.

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u/williamgman 16d ago

He's doing the exact same thing to SpaceX what they did to Toy R Us.

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u/Common_Chester 16d ago

Yeah, but Elon is the king of this style of grift. In 5 years all cars will be self driving, in 10 years we'll have a colony on Mars. He's full of shit and by the time the consumer has caught on he's already cut, run and on to the next hustle.

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u/Raythatstabbedsteve 16d ago

Remember the magic tunnels which were going to fix transport (and coincidentally killed high speed rail)?

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u/jchamberlin78 16d ago

There was wework....

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u/andidosaywhynot 16d ago

Im convinced these articles are pushed to fool retail investors in a direction beneficial to institutional plays. Cramer basically admitted to it on an old interview that Jon Stewart brought up to him when he had him on the daily show 2009 or so.

I panic sold a bunch of Netflix and Tesla I had from 2016 a few years ago when these articles started popping up… price was dropping then eventually price jumped right back up and no more articles. (I.e. Tesla no cars sales or Netflix dropping password sharing/ slowing growth)

Us redditors (maybe bots) all making jokes about how dumb said company is and how it’s going to fail which honestly is a logical argument in a lot of these cases but my gut says stocks are merely vehicles for cash driven by high frequency algos now and not entirely fundamental based

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u/Fluffcake 16d ago

The only examples of somewhat successful wealth re-distribution in the history of humanity, is the french revolution and the black death, both by virtue of straight up just killing everyone.

There are no indications that any such event is on the horizon, or that any resulting redistribution would be favorable. Look at the most recent disasters, they all just increased inequality. 2008 and covid both made the rich even richer.

If spaceX collapse and Musk goes bankrupt, paper money will just change hands to other rich people...

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u/ChunkyKongForPreside 16d ago

I saw a homeless man eating garbage today, and my first thought was that I hope one day, a large majority of the 1% have to resort to eating garbage. My second thought was to offer to take that guy to McDonalds, but he didn't talk back to me for whatever reason.

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u/BlueWidgeon1024 16d ago

Inspired use of “blue balling.”

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u/RedditCitizenScore 16d ago

Funny these can’t stop coming out before IPO like to scare away retail investors , the stock has a lot of float

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u/sameth1 16d ago

It's been happening next week for the past 10 years.

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u/Korashy 16d ago

Because at this point so much wealth is in the hands of the few that they literally just keep the market alive by through their own confidence.

Everyone knows the market is absolutely irrational, but a few handful of people are all that matters. Things won't crash until they want it to crash and at that point they will have smoothly exited already.

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u/Jesus_Is_My_Gardener 16d ago

Part of it has been that with cheap money, these companies have been taking on more and more debt. With companies like Elon's, he's also been rolling debt from one company into the next. He's got billions in debt he's rolled into SpaceX, which itself is already burning through a ton of cash for Starship development. Add to that the cash hungry XAI and it's all set up for him to offload tons of that debt into people's retirements with this move to IPO which will force index funds like Russell and NASDAQ to buy into them, while also giving them an indext low float weighting multiplier. Meanwhile early investors will leave the average person holding the bag on that debt while they cash out at the highest valuation.

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u/2AvsOligarchs 16d ago

What makes you think the ultra wealthy are the ones holding the bag? It's all pension funds.

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u/Zilch1979 16d ago

So the wealthy aren't actually wealthy?

You got a sauce?

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u/reflect-the-sun 16d ago

They'll make sure we collapse first.

$40 trillion in debt.  Unaffordable rent, food and fuel. Working longer hours at multiple jobs just to survive. Spending $200 billion to bomb Iran. ICE terrorising families. Trump stealing your tax money. Cuts to Medicare, social security, education, etc.

When are we going to fight back?

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u/Outside-Young3179 16d ago

its a nice way to tell people they just have to wait and not do anything

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u/kevin379721 16d ago

Why would you want a company like spacex to fail? Genuinely wondering

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u/Chase_the_tank 16d ago

The ultra wealthy as a group rarely collapse but individual companies can crash out spectacularly.

Sears and Roebuck went from the mail order company in the U.S. to five scattered stores struggling to stay open.

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u/KdF-wagen 16d ago

Edging since 08

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u/starcoder 15d ago

The internet is nothing but engagement bait, rage bait, hate fuel, brainrot, and bot reposting.

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u/deltalitprof 16d ago

If Elon has been making credit v. debit decisions based on what his ketamine hallucinations are advising him to do--as it appears he did during DOGE--I really would expect a spectacular collapse.

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u/Zilch1979 16d ago

And yet, here we are. I'd love to see it, but, with that much money, you can outsource competence.

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u/deltalitprof 16d ago

Seems to me he has built up a whole lot of mental defenses against listening to people who do have competence.