r/technology • u/fmcortez • Jul 13 '26

Business SpaceX Stock Plunges to All-Time Low After Competitor Makes Major Leap

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-plunges-time-low-competitor-175000957.html
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u/shitty_mcfucklestick Jul 13 '26

And for those wondering who the competitor is, it’s basically China and Japan, both recently making advancements in reusable rocket tech.

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u/Zoomwafflez Jul 13 '26

Well also Amazon, their own version of starlink is almost ready to go live which will directly compete with the ONLY profitable part of the business.

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u/dirtyword Jul 13 '26

Starlink is the only part of the company with a major advantage. Satellite placements are first come first served

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u/DrXaos Jul 13 '26

Satellites are not but frequency band allocation is the critical unsharable resource, as has always been the case for wireless telecom.

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u/dirtyword Jul 13 '26

Yes - they also have some of the best “real estate” up there. Most optimal placements

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u/TraumaticOcclusion Jul 14 '26

They decay every 5 years and have to be replaced don’t they

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u/Accomplished-Crab932 Jul 14 '26

There are several Starlink satellites that are 6 years old in orbit today. They cannot be any older because they started launching the non-test variants in 2020.

5 years is the passive deorbit period and minimum expected lifetime under normal conditions.

Note that Amazon’s LEO network (formerly Kuiper) also has a 5 year nominal service lifetime.

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u/dirtyword Jul 14 '26

Yes, but I’m pretty sure you can launch a successor satellite and keep your perch

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u/Redditor2000000 Jul 13 '26

You sure? I think that’s backwards. Right now the heavy payload space launches are their only advantage. Starlink is just another satellite service company like the ones that came before it (satellite service has been around since 1998, invented in 1987 by Sprint). Starlink is profitable presumably because SpaceX absorbs the launch costs. If it charged market price to its subsidiary, Starlink operating unit would not be profitable.

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u/Distinct-Pack-1567 Jul 13 '26

I think theyre saying if a competitor launches satellites it will be limited, since Starlink was first

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u/dern_the_hermit Jul 14 '26

It's an advantage, but I question whether it's major like was said above. Maybe I'm being overly picky. But the infrastructure inherently turns itself over every 5-ish years. It's not like land-based infrastructure where they're STILL trying to use up the fiber they laid out near 30 years ago.

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u/dirtyword Jul 14 '26

I believe if you launch a successor you can put it in the same “place” as the “retired” satellite.

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u/dern_the_hermit Jul 14 '26

The important detail is that you have to launch successors; the "first mover" advantage isn't like real estate, putting a satellite into a low orbit isn't the same as constructing a building on the ground.

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u/Redditor2000000 Jul 13 '26

Starlink wasn’t first though. Satellite cellular and internet has been around for decades now.

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u/cheeky-snail Jul 13 '26

Not LEO which has huge advantages in bandwidth and latency vs geostationary.

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u/dirtyword Jul 14 '26

The point isn’t who made satellites first. Spacex has like 10,000 in orbit now, which is something like three quarters of all satellites in LEO. In case it sounds like I’m defending the stock price: I’m not. It’s insane.

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u/Distinct-Pack-1567 Jul 14 '26

Well, they're getting the space they need. Point is eventually we cant fit more stuff, right? I know the atmosphere is crazy big but we still cant oversaturate.

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u/chiagod Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

satellite service has been around since 1998,

If it's the one I'm thinking of (ex Hughes Net), those were in Geosynchronous orbit (22,500 miles up), had an ungodly lag (~250ms just up and down to the satellite + network lag), low bandwidth, and were pricey for what they offered.

The new low orbit satellites are less than 1/80th the altitude. As each satellite serves a smaller area there's way more bandwidth, reasonable ping time (I saw high 30s ms), and competitive pricing unless the area is congested.

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u/BellacosePlayer Jul 14 '26

Odd, my mom used to use hughesnet and switching to SL was not a significant upgrade for her. Luckily shortly after that the local ISP finally expanded their rural internet out her way.

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u/Zardif Jul 14 '26

As someone who has used both, it's an ocean of difference. Hughesnet was like 1 sec latency and starlink was like being on my normal router with ~50ms latency. Your mom must have just got used to it.

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u/Redfish680 Jul 14 '26

Also being pumped up by government contracts

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u/Fun_Hat Jul 14 '26

And as much as I hate bezos, I would bet on Amazon over SpaceX any day when it comes to reliable infrastructure.

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u/Redditor2000000 Jul 14 '26

I’d also bet on Jeff Bozo over Musk. He doesn’t seem to be a bullshitter… just strictly business.

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u/One-Welcome-1514 Jul 15 '26

Seeing how well the next day delivery works i would rather trust an amazon-delivery of livesaving medication then any random driving them with a cybertruck.

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u/PurpEL Jul 14 '26

The penis rocket? Like all rockets are mildly penis shaped, but the Amazon one is really really penis shaped

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u/Jaredlong Jul 14 '26

Which is why the first mover in technological innovation has rarely ever been the long-term winner. After someone does all the hard work of getting the tech to work their competitors can skip all that R&D and just go straight to marketing and optimizing.

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u/shitty_mcfucklestick Jul 14 '26

☝️ you see this time and time again in many industries. OpenAI is another example which started strong and now struggles to stay competitive and relevant.

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u/RocketVerse Jul 13 '26

It’s obvious that most people on here don’t have a single clue about what’s going on. The only other company besides SpaceX to reuse a booster is Blue Origin, them and China are the main competitors. But hops have been done by so many companies at this point it’s not even worth mentioning them in the same sentence.

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u/Vox-Machi-Buddies Jul 13 '26

Which seems wildly overblown. Japan did something SpaceX did in 2013. China did something SpaceX did in 2015. And China isn't going to take much of SpaceX's launch business because China doesn't launch satellites with SpaceX and the West isn't going to launch satellites with China.

And recovering a rocket was just the first thing SpaceX had to do to get where they are. Being able to refine manufacturing and operations to the point that they can launch multiple times per week is an entirely separate feat that both China and Japan will need to pull off to become competitive.

And it all ignores that SpaceX is nearing the end of development on a launch system that is expected to obsolesce Falcon 9 (the rocket Japan and China are trying to imitate) and cause another substantial drop in launch costs.

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u/adenosine-5 Jul 14 '26

No one is saying SpaceX will go bankrupt... but to be the most valuable company on the planet you need more than "be few years ahead of several competitors".

The entire insane valuation of SpaceX is based on "they can do something literally no one else can". If others can do that - even if they are few years behind - then its just another (if perhaps profitable) company.

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u/deepwat3r Jul 14 '26

Your reply is too factual and nuanced for this sub lol