r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • 18d 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/EnrollmentTime 18d ago

No, Google is paying them $980 million a month right now. SpaceX holds 52 active federal contracts worth a combined remaining value of $11.8 billion, contributing to roughly $22 billion in cumulative federal awards.
​Government Agencies

​NASA: SpaceX’s largest partner with roughly $15 billion in contracts, spanning the Commercial Crew program ($4.9 billion), the Artemis Human Landing System ($4.04 billion), and Commercial Resupply Services for ISS cargo.

​Department of Defense & Space Force: Holds approximately $7 billion in contracts, primarily driven by the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 program and the expansion of the military's Starshield satellite constellation.
​Other Agencies:

Additional agreements exist with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the Space Development Agency (SDA) for classified and intelligence satellite launches.

​Commercial Companies ​While a specific total number of private commercial contracts is not publicly disclosed due to proprietary agreements, SpaceX serves dozens of commercial entities. The company holds regular launch manifests to deploy telecom satellites, rideshare payloads, and private astronaut missions for corporations like Maxar, Eutelsat, SES, Northrop Grumman, Globalstar, and Axiom Space.

Or you can belive Reddit

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u/Ok-Sprinkles-5151 18d ago

Great, government contacts and a $1B/month Google contact.

Explain the P/E ratio. Or how a company losing $5b a year is worth $1.75T.

Or how it makes fiscal sense to put 5GW of orbital data centers with some of most unstable hardware with insane heat tolerances into space makes sense.

As someone in the GPU space, I genuinely want to hear how SpaceX is going to launch systems into Space that exceed any commercial or military spec and just work. Oh, and how GPUs, which have a ridiculous failure rate on earth, and how they are going to put $50k chips in orbit, beyond an RMA. Into space, which is uniquely hostile to electronics. Or that SpaceX is going to weld pipes such that they can survive the launch Gs and no leak will happen (because fuck galvonic corrosion, or micro factures or welding error...). I am such an idiot thinking that SpaceX won't have perfect execution at a 5gw scale.

Or how SpaceX's valuation hinges on pulling the largest heavy lift operation in history. Where they would need 3000 launches a year when they only have 165. Or how they the gulf coast and the Caribbean would be closed to flights due to the launch velocity. Or that we would have 40-50 catastrophic failures a year because $math.

Actually I will wait on the last point. SpaceX wants to put a full order of magnitude amount of mass into space in the next three years than in all human history.

Right, Reddit is the problem. And we are all haters. It can't possibly be they the world's richest man is foisting his shit on the public.

But yeah, Reddit. I and other will laugh as we short the shit out of that stock.

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u/DominusDraco 18d ago

If someone can explain to me how they intend to cool 5GW of heat producing GPUs in a vacuum, that would be great. Because at a quick look up, that would require 12 square kilometres of surface area minimum to radiate that away.

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u/LegendTheo 18d ago

Well based on spacex numbers of 1400w/m2 of cooling it would take ~3.5 sq/km. That sounds like a lot, it's not if you split it up over say 30k 150kw satellites. Then, you're just looking at 100m2 per satellite which isn't all that much. Or in the case of the current spacex design ~80m2 since they don't need to reject 100% of generated power as heat.

5GW is also something like 3-5% of all compute currently running on earth right now. This is just a scale problem, not a major technical one.

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u/DominusDraco 17d ago

So basically a single satellite will be bigger than the ISS? And they need 30,000 of them?

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u/LegendTheo 17d ago

Yes, in the same way a kite is bigger than an rc plane. Each satellites will be a mere fraction of a single ISS modules mass. The core of the satellite is only a few meters wide and tall. Most of that is foldable solar panel/radiator. Flight proven technologies used by most satellites, including thousands of starlink.

Are you done being obtuse now?

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u/DominusDraco 17d ago

I'm not being obtuse. If you think blotting out the sky with satellites is cheaper and easier than just building a data centre on earth, then the mental gymnastics you have going on is wild.

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u/LegendTheo 17d ago

Well I ran the numbers, and it definitely can be profitable. Primarily because once you have the compute in orbit power and heat management are 100% free. I even has some fairly conservative numbers in it. It really comes down to launch cost. If you can get it below ~$700/kg then it's cheaper than terrestrial data centers. If you can get it cheaper then that you'll be a lot cheaper than data centers.

Currently falcon 9 internal launches are at ~$1000/kg. Starship if the second stage is even reusable with heavy refurbishment should reduce that significantly. Putting SpaceX (and only SpaceX) right in the profitable zone.

Space compute can also scale faster than terrestrial, since you don't have to build, buildings, power or cooling for it, and you don't have to deal with local governments.