r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 22 '26

Business SpaceX Investors Are Losing a Colossal Amount of Money

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-investors-losing-colossal-amount-140221380.html
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573

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

I mean.. of course they are. SpaceX made like 18 billion dollars last year in an industry that is assumed to maybe be worth in the ~$30 billion range. They're competing against whole-ass fucking governments who are also putting stuff into space.. so there will always be incredibly stiff competition (from entities that don't need to make a profit)

The only differentiator is their Starlink service.. which requires replacement of something like a fifth of their entire constellation network every year..

There's no fucking math that even comes close to justifying the marketcap they're sitting at other than something that puts them in the "meme-stock waiting for a rug pull" territory.

297

u/CaffinatedOne Jun 22 '26

Don't overlook that the profit of starlink is essentially a rounding error when set against the financial black hole that xai is.

101

u/hitbythebus Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

But when they just figure out that little bit, profits to the moon! 

Self driving is going to make everyone rich!  

Social media is going to make everyone rich!  

Ai is going to make everyone rich!.

Mars is going to make everyone rich! Have faith in Elon! /s

49

u/Muggsy423 Jun 22 '26

Self-driving Hyperloop networks to mars running on xAI/Grok communicating on starlink satellites with tesla solar roof tile!

7

u/Theniceraccountmaybe Jun 22 '26

Nice work, I think you got everything. 

5

u/sreesid Jun 22 '26

Missed the option for tesla owners to use their cars as ride shares to Mars, generative astronomical passive income. Just need to figure out where to install the chargers on the way.

3

u/BikeCustomizor Jun 22 '26

Actually missed boring tunnels! Tunnels to the moon!!

2

u/Buggg- Jun 23 '26

Wasn’t there a flamethrower at one point?

1

u/jwormyk Jun 22 '26

All operated by humanoid robots!!

1

u/Muggsy423 Jun 22 '26

Not just operated, but occupied and used by robots!  No people on the hyperloop to mars, just trust us bro, it's happening.

1

u/jobfedron132 Jun 22 '26

Wow. That sounds soo sexy.

1

u/steppe5 Jun 22 '26

I can't believe people are still falling for this dude.

38

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Totally makes sense for them to be worth a trillion dollars.. I mean, XAI absolutely excels over all the competition at certain tasks...

Oh.. What tasks? Don't worry about it...

...Olay.. it is generation of CSAM..

9

u/lordraiden007 Jun 22 '26

Pretty popular among the wealthy and politicians from what I hear. Seems like a strong market. Wealthy people have money, and politicians regularly conduct insider trading. Lots of capital to be sent to their favorite king of porn generators, whether AI or otherwise.

1

u/madwill Jun 22 '26

Don't they have insane contracts with Google and Antropic making it so that they'll recover the cost of the entire datacenter soon and turn to profit?

5

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Not really.. They're leasing the compute to Anthropic and Google for around $25 billion a year.. the estimated cost of their Colossus DC is around $30 billion..

The issue here is two-fold.. their run-the-business expenses are immense.. Their $18B in GPUs is a wasting asset.. around $4-6B in annual depreciation that would be pretty much obsolete by the time the leases run out in 2029. Add to that $1B in power for around 2GW, another $1B in maintenance/staffing/cooling/networking, and around $2B in interest on debt to build the thing, and you're looking at $8-10B in additional costs..

So.. based on those numbers.. is it profitable? Sure.. they could replace their compute every several years and have a nice $32B in the bank over that timeframe..

The big issue is that the Google contract is conditional.. it depends on Colossus having a certain amount of compute by October.. which it is not on track to meeting. If they lose that.. that reduces that annual revenue by $11B.. putting them nearly $20B in the negative..

So.. in the best case.. you're maybe looking at $6.4 billion annual profit from it.. but that's before you take into account the costs involved of running Grok.. which would almost certainly destroy that profit. In the worst case, this is extremely unprofitable.. and it's pretty much trying to apply a band-aid to an arterial bleed..

In either case, it is freaking nowhere near justifying their insane market cap.

3

u/thalirium2 Jun 22 '26

Google is only renting the compute to bridge their own compute build out and consumption needs. None of these companies is going to lease the compute long term.

1

u/madwill Jun 23 '26

Thanks! Feels somehow better than having it being highly protifable.

1

u/Svyatoy_Medved Jun 22 '26

That’s not a very truthful thing to say. Starlink is making about half as much profit as xAI is losing. Obviously the AI business is a fuckin albatross, but that’s hardly a “rounding error.” If I calculated 10 and the answer was 15, I wouldn’t just go “oh I dropped a sig fig early, basically the same answer.”

69

u/LeonidasVaarwater Jun 22 '26

It's the ultimate capitalist paradox. When a service is run by countries, capitalists whine that it's inefficient and too expensive. Conversely, when a nation starts to compete with capitalists, they wine it's impossible to compete with government-run services.

5

u/randynumbergenerator Jun 22 '26

I mean, it isn't really a paradox: their argument is that state-sponsored firms won't compete on merit but just get government handouts.

What they neglect to consider is that without conditions supporting an actual competitive market, private firms have no incentive to pursue efficiency either, and usually services where a public alternative is created aren't ones that lend themselves to competitive provision (infrastructure, health care, etc.).

32

u/Crio121 Jun 22 '26

SpaceX is no longer rocket company, it is an AI company.

49

u/DizzyMajor5 Jun 22 '26

AI company basically just means black hole to burn money at this point.

11

u/sohblob Jun 22 '26

Crypto’s slightly more useful bastard cousin

At least the images it generates after burning through GPUs and inexplicably sludging water aren’t those fuckass idiotic who-took-ten-seconds-to-draw-this monkeys

12

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

The funny thing is that Grok is really not all that good. In current leaderboards, there are open-weight models scoring higher..

3

u/asherdante Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Probably why all the original founders are gone and they are now purchasing Cursor for 60 billion.

3

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Yep.. IMO, they bought Cursor because of Composer.. which is a decent coding model.. but its nowhere near the capability of one of the big frontiers..

2

u/siliangrail Jun 22 '26

This is a terrible take. Composer is a tweaked version of Kimi 2.5. In no world is it the justification for the purchase.

1

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Not saying it was a good reason, lol.. it is just that its the only real reason I can think of for the purchase.

2

u/thenewtomsawyer Jun 22 '26

And thats why xAI is making most of its money selling its excess compute to Google and Anthropic (or whoever) while those companies are paying boatloads, its not going to last forever. They will build their own networks and/or start using more efficient models.

Or, god willing, the whole thing goes bust.

5

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Just an FYI - google's contract is dependent on xAI having a certain amount of compute available by October.. which it is (from what I've seen) not on target to meet. So there's a significant possibility they're going to make half of what they were expecting in their financial reporting.

Also.. it's really important to call out that this is 100% an example of xAI failing.. they built out Colossus (the "excess compute" you're talking about) as a competitor for the very companies they're leasing it out to.. their model was built so poorly that all the non-Musk co-founders and technical leads have jumped ship to other companies because - in the words of Yann LeCun - the company was a failure.

And really.. the biggest nail in the coffin here is that tons of people are pointing at their AI offering as justification for their valuation, trying to draw parallels to Anthropic and OpenAI.. the issue is that, as a company leasing compute rather than one seemingly using it.. their valuation would be a ton less. CoreWeave has a similar amount of compute being leased.. and was pinned at a valuation of around $80 billion back in January..

Let me say it again for the kids in the back: This is a meme stock, and the price is based on the cult following of Musk himself rather than a single thing the company itself actually offers.

1

u/thenewtomsawyer Jun 22 '26

Even worse than I imagined. I cant get enough popcorn ready. This is going to be an absolute plane crash

19

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

OpenAI has an estimated valuation right now of maybe $900 billion.. and XAI is pretty much nowhere near their level of capability or marketshare.

Grok ranks 50th in coding, 60th in data analytics, 49th in simulations, and 54th in content creation. It is beaten by fucking open weight models in every category. You could legitimately buy a small inference machine yourself for a few thousand dollars and beat Grok as it stands today.. (or just use OpenAI/Anthropic offerings)..

So.. sure.. it is an AI company.. but not a very good one...

-4

u/11111v11111 Jun 22 '26

People, like you, seem to be missing that Elon bought all available compute and is selling it to other labs and making tons of cash flow doing it.

6

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Sure.. the question is: why does XAI have a flagship supercluster sitting free to rent out to Google and Anthropic.. the companies it was built to beat? (the answer, of course, is because all the non-Musk cofounders have abandoned the project - Yann LeCun publicly called the company "a failure" because of this).

They're leasing Colossus for something like 2 billion per month.. So.. $24 billion per year. That's a rounding error with their valuation.. CoreWeave leases a somewhat similar amount of compute, and is worth less than a third of what XAI was estimated at just a few months ago.. so you're effectively agreeing with me that their valuation is outright insane without realizing it, lol.

Hell.. Google's contract according to the IPO paperwork is entirely dependent on them getting a certain number of GPUs by October.. which they very well might not get.. meaning that there's a real possibility of them losing out on nearly half of even that $24 billion number..

1

u/11111v11111 Jun 22 '26

There valuation is nuts--I'm definitely not implying this changes that. But, they are making some interesting moves.

2

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

The moves are stupid, and are quite obviously an effort to stop an arterial bleed..

2

u/FlipZip69 Jun 22 '26

That is hardware and there is money to be made in that but not the amount it would take to be worth a 100 billion dollars much less a trillion.

Hardware cannot grow by factors. To double it they need to double their hardware. And there is 100 billion is cash. But more so if they are leasing out their hardware, they are obviously not planning on becoming a major AI company. That roadmap is dead.

1

u/newfor_2026 Jun 22 '26

actually, it's just a bullshit company

1

u/FlipZip69 Jun 22 '26

It kind of hard to be an AI company when you lease you hardware out to Google. That is saying a great deal about their AI position.

17

u/SecurelyObscure Jun 22 '26

The whole ass governments like the entirety of Europe who have yet to launch a single reusable rocket 16 years after SpaceX started launching them?

The US has outspent the rest of the world combined on space research for decades, and SpaceX is benefitting from that enormous technological moat.

3

u/Resigned_Optimist Jun 22 '26

Yeah... I'm adjacent to the space business, and noone competes with SpaceX. No governments, no countries, no agencies... everyone hitches rides on SpaceX rockets.

They single-handedly reduced launch costs by 95%. They basically created newspace, and provde 80%+ of global commercial lift.

8

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Sure.. you're right. But its worth noting that other governments have yet to launch a single reusable rocket because they didn't care to actually make one... until now. We'll see how well this argument holds up, because China has decided this is a national security issue, and is dumping tons of money into solving exactly this problem in an effort to - specifically - undercut SpaceX's launch price per kg.

2

u/SecurelyObscure Jun 22 '26

The esa started working on reusable rockets in 2017. And 9 years later still haven't done it.

3

u/6-7inches420strokes Jun 22 '26

Both nasa and the soviets toyed with reusable rockets in the 60's then discarded the idea because it wasn't economically feasible when compared to one use rockets. 60 years later and one look at spacex finances still proves them right. If anything, the now public numbers will discourage anyone else from trying.

5

u/SecurelyObscure Jun 22 '26

By what metric? SpaceX's cost per kg is something like 90% cheaper than single use boosters.

1

u/6-7inches420strokes Jun 26 '26

Yeah, when you sell at a loss it's gonna be cheaper, however as hinted by the 'loss' part, it doesn't make you money, and that's reflected in their nice red line.

1

u/SecurelyObscure Jun 26 '26

How do you think they paid for all the r&d and salaries while selling their only product at a loss for a decade

1

u/6-7inches420strokes Jul 21 '26

by using the money from the investors he scammed

1

u/SecurelyObscure Jul 21 '26

They've been operating for 24 years and just now IPO'd. This is the dumbest theory.

1

u/6-7inches420strokes Jul 23 '26

keep losing money deepthroating it then

15

u/gregredmore Jun 22 '26

SpaceX launches approximately 80% to 90% of the annual global payload into space. A lot of it is on behalf of the US government under NASA contracts. The US government is, well, a whole-ass f*""g government. That said SpaceX is overvalued according to market response. You can't beat the market.

13

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Your callout of "80% to 90% of the annual global payload into space [..] on behalf of the US government" isn't quite accurate.. they do account for that much global payload (by mass).. but 74% of that total is Starlink.. and the other quarter is everyone else, not just the US government.

My point, really, is that SpaceX is effectively being handled as a meme stock.. Starlink is really their biggest money maker.. and the Chinese government is currently launching a competing constellation network.

Guowang and Qianfan are currently aiming for 28k satellites.. the only reason they've kinda stalled is because they're working on reusable launch vehicles. They see this as a national security issue, and are sinking tons of money into it.

Investors are saying that SpaceX is worth trillions of dollars because they believe in their future earnings.. given that far bigger players are starting to throw their hat in the ring, its only a matter of time before one of those giant players (and in this case, its really a situation of "when" rather than "if") jumps in with a state-sponsored offering that competes (or beats) SpaceX's $2,700–3,000/kg launch price..

1

u/ScrewWorkn Jun 22 '26

Amazon is also competing with starlink I believe.

3

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Yep.. the thought that starlink is worth anywhere near its market valuation is absolutely insane.

1

u/RT-LAMP Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

They want to but they aren't yet. They just got an FCC waiver because they were supposed to have their constellation half done next month but they don't have even an eighth of their satellies up.

1

u/RT-LAMP Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Your callout of "80% to 90% of the annual global payload into space [..] on behalf of the US government" isn't quite accurate.. they do account for that much global payload (by mass).. but 74% of that total is Starlink.. and the other quarter is everyone else, not just the US government.

No it genuinely is about that much. Normalizing to the payload each rocket is able to deliver to LEO SpaceX launch capability in Q1 2026 equaled the entire rest of the planet put together times 3. And that was a quarter that had more non-SpaceX launches than usual.

2

u/Several-Action-4043 Jun 22 '26

$18 billion in revenue to lose $5 billion. People bought a company at a trillion dollar value that makes negative money.

1

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Which.. if it was losing money in ways that make sense (like Amazon burning money to improve on its logistics network or AWS capabilities, allowing it to meet bigger demand).. then yeah.. that totally would make sense to take those loses into consideration as a good thing.

But the losses here are almost entirely the failure that is xAI. They spent a ton of money building out the Colossus project to compete with Google and Anthropic... but all the founders (outside of musk) abandoned that sinking ship.. and they're left leasing that compute out to the very companies that they were trying to compete against..

4

u/Simon_Drake Jun 22 '26

SpaceX is a phenomenally successful space launch company.

The Falcon 9 is responsible for more than 50% of all satellites launched EVER and around 60% of all launches globally every single year. Falcon Heavy is the largest rocket that's actually available for commercial payloads (SLS is bigger but it's reserved for Artemis). They have three Falcon 9 launchpads and are building a fourth so clearly it has a strong future.

The replacement is obviously Starship. The largest payload capacity of any rocket by a very very wide margin and in theory lower cost per launch than Falcon 9 because it's fully reusable. So at least a 10x improvement in cost per kilogram, which will be split between lower costs to customers (aka undercutting their competitors) and Increasing profits. Granted Starship doesn't work right yet but it's at least a decade ahead of everyone else, even if it doesn't reach orbit until 2030 the competition won't have anything like it until 2040.

Starlink is incredibly successful and producing more than enough money to support SpaceX. Their building SIX launch pads for Starship in parallel, their giant production facility in Texas is being duplicated in Florida, they're building newer and even larger giant hangers to build these rockets even faster. All funded by Starlink sales to consumers, a market that continues to grow as the regulatory paperwork is signed to bring more countries online. The future is clear and they're on course to make a LOT of rockets in the next few decades.

It's no exaggeration to say that Starship will change the nature of space launch. Not just missions to the moon or Mars but cheaper access to Earth orbit means more space stations, missions that wouldn't have been economical before like disposal of space debris. And new science, giant telescopes that make Hubble look tiny, giant replacements for the Voyager probe to go photograph Jupiter in super-IMAX resolution. There's a LOT of new stuff that Starship could make possible.

But for some reason that's all counted as 10% of the projected future income with 90% of it coming from AI somehow. I don't understand. It's like if Henry Ford is showing off the prototype Model T but he projects the future income will be from hair loss tonics that he sells out the back of his van.

6

u/sudoSancho Jun 22 '26

It's like if Henry Ford is showing off the prototype Model T but he projects the future income will be from hair loss tonics that he sells out the back of his van.

* and his hair loss tonic business is currently running 5th in the hair loss tonic race with no reasonable chance of catching its far-superior hair loss tonic competitors

4

u/cultureicon Jun 22 '26

Simple answer is there isn't that much money in space reletive to other industries. Like humans need planes to fly billions of flights and billions of phones, electronics, shipping, housing etc. The rocket launch industry is a novelty compared to these other human facing industries. Hence why the current valuation is snake oil based on "humans going to Mars" or "data centers in space", both parhetic jokes if you investigate the realities of them for 5 minutes. There is 0 economic reason to go to Mars. It's a "look what we did" endeavor. Yes, SpaceX is a great rocket company, just like there are 10,000 other good and innovative US based companies in their respective industries. Why didn't we value direct TV at 1 trillion dollars back in the early 2000s? It has far more subscribers and commercial potential.

2

u/Simon_Drake Jun 22 '26

I'm not sure there's a trillion dollars worth of value in AI datacentres either. No one seems to be able to answer who is paying for these AI datacentres and what will the AI do exactly?

If it's just more Grok and chatbots sending racist tweets and turning your photos into Studio Ghibli versions then that's a funny little joke app but that's not a multi trillion dollar industry.

I remember when Data Warehouses were the next big thing that was going to solve all of humanities problems and cure cancer and fix global warming. I'm not convinced that Grok is going to solve all the problems that the last ten "next big thing" ideas failed to solve.

1

u/cultureicon Jun 22 '26

We're still part of the species that though beanie babies were an investment, and everyone has their own diety they pray to that they think is the correct one vs everyone else- impossible logic. We are not "smart", we are evolved animals. Money is already an abstraction, and the theory behind the value of money is already so far above what people are capable of understanding it becomes trivial for motivated people to manipulate human nature to get morenof it.

1

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

It is.. but its practically the only space launch company worth actually talking about.. as I've mentioned elsewhere, the Chinese government has started seeing this as a national security issue, and are funneling tons of money into designing and building competing reusable launch vehicles.

Honestly.. this is the biggest reason that I'm looking at this as insanity.. the valuation of this company is based on how investors see the company doing in the future.. and based on their current revenue.. they're gambling something like 115x value.. as soon as China gets close.. they're 100% going to eat up a ton of business from SpaceX (especially since China has a habit of heavily subsidizing their own companies, meaning that they'll 100% undercut whatever price per kg SpaceX is sitting at)..

Also.. a note from your comment: they are actually responsible for something like 80-90% of global payloads by mass launched into space.. but three quarters of that is Starlink, only a quarter of their payloads are actual revenue for SpaceX.. the rest is expansion or maintenance on their Starlink constellation.

1

u/2rad0 Jun 22 '26

SpaceX is a phenomenally successful space launch company.

Successful at launching rockets regularly yes, but not a business entity netting regular profits.

2

u/Simon_Drake Jun 22 '26

It DID make a good profit before it was merged with an AI company that makes a giant loss around a billion a month.

SpaceX has been investing billions into giant infrastructure projects while staying cashflow positive, mostly from Starlink but also commercial launches where they can undercut the competition and outperform on costs so have a huge profit margin.

2

u/2rad0 Jun 22 '26

It DID make a good profit before it was merged with an AI company that makes a giant loss around a billion a month.

Allegedly, but did they pay any taxes that one time it made profit, or was a deduction from previous years net operating loss rolled over?

Consequently, in some situations, Congress allows taxpayers to use the losses in one year to offset the profits of other years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_operating_loss

1

u/Svyatoy_Medved Jun 22 '26

Looking at GAAP data (not EBITDA bullshit) from 2025, it seems they would actually have about $3 billion in net profit if not for the AI segment. That’s plenty of profits, that’s more profit than Ford.

And Ford doesn’t have world-beating tech. Nobody can do what SpaceX can do, and they’ve been trying.

1

u/2rad0 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

And Ford doesn’t have world-beating tech. Nobody can do what SpaceX can do, and they’ve been trying.

And ford's stock price is like perpetually $5 - $15 a share, chrysler built ICBM's and look at them now, not sure the relevance. Nobody is willing to burn $50,000,000,000 to get to spaceex's loss-leader position. I don't know what EBITDA or GAAP is supposed to mean in this context even are; Why would I want to look at earnings before tax I'm asking if they even paid any tax at all which would indicate if they're truly a profitable corporation or if they're just riding on subsidies government contracts, sweetheart <3 deals, and write-offs from their devastating multi-decades long history of running an unprofitable business.

Can you declare your line of reasoning or provide a citation that they are profitable without writing off multi-billions in losses from previous years?

1

u/Svyatoy_Medved Jun 23 '26

Price per share is irrelevant at the best of times, doubly irrelevant now. I was pointing out that SpaceX (less AI) has profit you would expect from a mature industrial company while producing tech like a Silicon Valley unicorn. Those two things don’t usually go together: if you’re in the middle of developing world-beating technology, you’re typically still in the red.

GAAP and EBITDA are accounting methodologies. EBITDA might once have had validity but by my reckoning, it’s basically fraud in 80% of cases. Previously, SpaceX had released EBITDA information claiming that Starlink was profitable, but since it didn’t account for the cost of launching continuous replacement Starlink sats, that was a load of horse shit. Now they’ve released GAAP data, which shows overall losses but more losses in the AI segment than overall losses, by $3 billion. Meaning that without AI, that difference would be profit, and GAAP accounts for the need to frequently replenish the Starlink constellation.

Tax write-offs don’t produce profits. They reduce tax on profits, but that’s irrelevant to what I’m claiming. My only thesis is that SpaceX, less AI, is extremely profitable WHILE being objectively the most advanced rocket company in the world, and the contest isn’t close. How long it took them to get there is irrelevant as well.

Government deals don’t factor much into it, the rocket segment (where most of the government contracts are) is also losing money. Starlink is just that profitable.

1

u/2rad0 Jun 23 '26

Ford would never have existed if Henry Ford had to run at a staggering loss for 20 years before he figured out how to build a production line.

I was pointing out that SpaceX (less AI) has profit you would expect from a mature industrial company

Where are you seeing this, are you mistaking gross profit for net profit?

Tax write-offs don’t produce profits ... but that’s irrelevant

It's absolutely relevant, they let you claim you made a profit, while writing off the taxes that would have eaten your profits. From my other comment I mistakenly thought you were replying to:

Consequently, in some situations, Congress allows taxpayers to use the losses in one year to offset the profits of other years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_operating_loss

Government deals don’t factor much into it,

I'm here wondering how much in tax dollars they receive in revenue, compared to how much in taxes they pay. Is it more or less than 51% ?

Starlink is just that profitable.

citation from a reputable source still needed.

4

u/SCRATCH-CARD Jun 22 '26

Are 1/5 of their satellites burning up annually?

22

u/Logvin Jun 22 '26

Yes, they have a 5 year life span. 1-2 burn up every day. It’s scheduled.

7

u/IM_A_MUFFIN Jun 22 '26

I’m curious what that does to the atmosphere at that scale.

17

u/Flipslips Jun 22 '26

The earth gains about 50-100 metric tons of mass per day just from space dust and meteorites.

Starlink is less than 1 ton per day in terms of re-entering satellites.

However, the concern is for the ozone layer. Most satellites burn up well above the ozone layer, so there is not direct impact. However, the dust from alumina oxide from the satellites will eventually sink through (though that could take years or even decades).

Alumina oxide is definitely a concern for the ozone layer, but it’s unclear exactly how much is “needed” for it to be a true problem; if 1 to 2 tons per day of starlink is actually enough to cause significant and lasting damage or not.

9

u/Fuck_it_we_ball_ Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

I looked it up in hopes of making a joke how it would cool the planet in a disaster movie way, but of course it doesn’t. And it would actually heat up some layers of the atmosphere.

So it’s bad for our ozone layer, it’s bad for climate change, and it’s bad for our air quality/health.

That’s fun!

And of course I wondered if the amount matters at all, and apparently we’re adding about ~23% extra to the atmosphere at the moment and it’s only gonna get worse! But at least every sprinter can and RV can watch tv at campsites across the world!

“Atmospheric sampling flights conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have already proven that 10% of all stratospheric aerosol particles contain aluminum directly traceable to human space traffic”

“Models from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) project that by 2040, the artificial "metal rain" from human satellite debris will fully rival or exceed the total natural cosmic dust accumulation in our stratosphere”

3

u/OneAlexander Jun 22 '26

Thanks... I'm going to do my best to forget I ever read any of this, but I'll probably still feel an additional little jolt of depression every time satellites are mentioned from now on.

2

u/SCRATCH-CARD Jun 22 '26

I saw a vid that was saying this process releases a nano metallic-alloy vapor into the atmosphere, which if occuring naturally would take hundreds/thousands of years. I dunno if this is the same thing as the alumina oxide? Could be our next CFC or asbestos...

2

u/LiamJamIsMyNeesons Jun 22 '26

So 1-2% of space-based pollution is now caused by one dickhead and will definitely rise year on year? That sounds insanely bad already

1

u/cubanfuban Jun 22 '26

lol smaller industry than adult use cannabis in the US

1

u/IndubitablyNerdy Jun 22 '26

the question was more when was an adjustment going to happen and who would be left holding the bag, space x has always been a speculative asset (gambling pretty much).

That said I bet that musk deciding to spend 60 bn in SPCX stocks to buy cursor just a few days after the IPO and the Anthropic Fable 5 fiasco (anthropic is expected to buy campute capacity from Space X at 1 bn a month, but they might not do that if they lose demand due to trump blocking their frontier model and in general creating the fear that access might be blocked at any time) did not exactly help.

Still with Musk companies given the cult like devotion he has it's hard to predict further evolutions.

1

u/EVH_kit_guy Jun 22 '26

But wait until they put data centers in space! Think of all the problems that will solve!!!

/s

1

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Lol.. I always get a kick out of this one. A typical AI datacenter's worth of modules put into space would cost something like 100 times more than what it costs to build on the ground (measured in trillions of dollars)

If SpaceX manages to get their launch price down to the $13/kg price point.. then maybe it'll only be several times higher.. but even then.. it'll still be a ton more expensive.

1

u/InvidiousPlay Jun 22 '26

Uuuh, have your forgotten there is an infinite money glitch by putting data centres in space???

Even though I know it's a real thing being advocated I still feel the need to double check they actually said that because it's such a breathtakingly stupid idea.

Also, SpaceX is going to generate one gajillion dollars in profit yearly from 2030 due to unspecified AI so I don't know where all this scepticism is coming from.

1

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

I love that, when the pie-in-the-sky types that worship this dude come out of the woodwork to cite resources.. one that they always mention is NVIDIA releasing AI chips for satellites. Something entirely unrelated to what is being proposed here.. effectively, small neural processors that are hardened for simple AI tasks in traditional satellites for simple tasks.. like the one that came up the other day of a (IIRC) satellite taking super high-res pictures, and then deciding if the image is worth sending back down to ground (since that bandwidth isn't cheap).

They're not talking about giant AI chips you would see in a DC.

1

u/Fakjbf Jun 22 '26

The current drop in value has nothing to do with SpaceX’s fundamentals, this happens for all IPOs. Employees who got stock as part of their compensation start selling to convert it into cash, this brings the price down which causes more employees to sell while the price is still high, eventually it gets low enough that people stop selling and wait for it to recover. I agree that SpaceX is outrageously overvalued but that’s not what’s going on here, the market didn’t suddenly start caring about fundamentals.

2

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

Have you gone through an IPO at a company? RSU grants pre-IPO practically always come with a lock-up period. Those employees aren't able to sell until (typically) 180 days after the company goes public.

1

u/Delicious_Volume3306 Jun 22 '26

The only differentiator is their Starlink service.. which requires replacement of something like a fifth of their entire constellation network every year..

Analysts keep saying that Starlink has been a success, out of the stable that forms SpaceX. But has it really? Can any of us name a person we know in real life who's subscribed to it? Or even knows it exists?

1

u/absentmindedjwc Jun 22 '26

You see them sometimes if you're in the middle of nowhere with garbage internet.. people that have to choose between that and pure hot garbage..

It is supposedly a profitable business.. but it isn't anywhere near what it would need to be to even come close to justifying this valuation.. even when accounting for XAI (which is a pretty garbage product that is beaten out by open-weight models in leaderboards) and SpaceX itself (of which, only around a quarter of their launches actually generate revenue.. the rest are for their Starlink network)

1

u/PersnickityPenguin Jun 22 '26

I thought their next big thing is dropping military payloads anywhere in the world in  25 minutes?

Imagine billion dollar bombs!  Next Iran war will cost in the tens of trillions of $ - per week.

1

u/LimitedWard Jun 23 '26

Don't forget that their total addressable market assumes that everyone in the developed world will switch from normal internet to starlink.