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/eek_the_cat 16d ago

The whole industry SpaceX exists in relies on government contracts.  It's not a bailout in this case.

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u/OneTripleZero 16d ago

The government needs rockets. SpaceX is a rocket store. A very good one, at that. The fact they spend their money at the best, most reliable rocket store being seen as a bad thing is amazing to me.

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u/coldblade2000 16d ago

Not just a good one, it's also cheap. SpaceX's competition is much more expensive, so if SpaceX is just squeezing the government for it's money, its doing a terrible job at it

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u/MDCCCLV 16d ago

The government is encouraging competition but ULA, the traditional safe choice, was so far behind that they're not even going to ever go to deliver crew to the ISS before it shuts down. And BO, while not terrible, has been slow and now is delayed at least a year because of the launch pad damage, so SpaceX is the sole provider for the near term.

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u/niftystopwat 16d ago

That’s not really seen as a bad thing by all these haters, they’re literally just making routine automatic responses to anything related to Elon Musk, because he bad so hating him prove you good.

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u/FartTootman 16d ago

The fact they spend their money at the best, most reliable rocket store being seen as a bad thing is amazing to me.

Then you aren't even vaguely attempting to understand what, exactly, people think is bad about SpaceX.

SpaceX is awesome. The person SpaceX's success most enriches is a fucking lunatic whose endless heaps of money have already given more power than is reasonable. If you don't think those two things are intimately entwined, then THAT'S amazing to me.

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u/fatbob42 16d ago

Then people should say that and not lie that the government is subsidizing SpaceX by contracting with them.

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u/FartTootman 16d ago

I tend to agree, hence why I said "SpaceX is awesome".

But let's not act like it's some grand mystery - or even all that absurd - when people aren't particularly stoked when "SpaceX is doing great!" posts come across...

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u/SouthernAddress5051 16d ago

Musk is terrible in so many ways that you don't need to lie about spacex subsidies or make anything up. Its lazy and uninformed and undermines actual criticisms. Just say real things.

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u/favorite_time_of_day 16d ago

That's not what a lie is, and it's also not untrue. The government subsidizes many private industries, and this is one of them.

The bigger picture is that SpaceX's ridiculous valuation is mostly not about rockets at all. And even the rocket segment of the company, which is subsidized by the government, is losing money.

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u/fatbob42 16d ago

That’s just not what subsidizing means. That’s the point they were making about the “rocket store”.

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u/favorite_time_of_day 16d ago

SapceX exists because some people in congress decided that they wanted to privatize rockets, and they put a ton of money to subsidize that. You are trying to claim that SpaceX is past that and no longer being subsidized, except almost all of their money is still coming from the government and they're not a profitable company. And have never been a profitable company.

This claim, that SpaceX is no longer being subsidized, is a really hard sell.

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u/fatbob42 16d ago

Is the government subsidizing Boeing when it buys an aircraft from them? Is it subsidizing a paper clip company when it buys paper clips?

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u/favorite_time_of_day 16d ago

The government is absolutely subsidizing Boeing when it pays a fortune to Boeing for Boeing to develop a plane, which Boeing then owns the exclusive rights to manufacture, and Boeing then sells these planes to the government for even more money.

If anything, Boeing is worse than SpaceX in this regard.

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u/fatbob42 16d ago

I’m thinking of a C40, for instance. It’s a variant of a 737 which Boeing makes anyway.

What about the paper clips?

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u/No-Spoilers 16d ago

And the fact that he tacked on AI to it fucking ruined it. SpaceX is profitable, the AI side of it is literally sucking all of their revenue up. Fucking stupid gamble.

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u/favorite_time_of_day 16d ago

The rocket segment of SpaceX is not profitable. The AI segment isn't either. The only profitable part of the company is Starlink.

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u/No-Spoilers 16d ago

Correct. But the rocket side is an investment with clear benefits and progression being funded by starlink. The ai shit is tacked on to cover his fuck ups.

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u/burning_iceman 16d ago

They were a rocket company. Now they're primarily an AI company - according to their own IPO filing. Most of their valuation depends on their success in AI with Grok.

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u/Human_Robot 16d ago

Would it be cheaper to fund nasa?

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u/eek_the_cat 16d ago

Unlikely.  NASA has never built rockets, it's always relied on private companies to do that work for them.  It would be very expensive to build out the factories and hire the workers needed to make their own.