• jobbies@lemmy.zip
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    13 minutes ago

    This is nuts. Can someone explain this cos I just don’t get it. Why would you invest in a company if its well established that its unlikely you’ll ever make a profit or even get that money back??

    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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      2 minutes ago
      1. Buy stock when it’s valued at $1.75 trillion
      2. Elon says on twitter the thinks it will be worth $3 trillion soon
      3. Some idiots buy stock, price goes up
      4. You sell
      5. Profit

      You can do this as long as there’s a bigger idiot down the line. If you’re still holding the stock when it collapses you’re the biggest idiot and you lose.

  • SirBucksworth@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Well… with the help of a lot of naive investors, some pedophile politicians and the amount of drugs he’s taking, everything is in the realm of possibilities

  • formergijoe@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I can’t wait for my 401k to lose a significant chunk of its value within the next 5 years because some chud at Fidelity needed to ride Elon to the moon. And also the AI crash.

    • Nighed@feddit.uk
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      1 hour ago

      No idea how US pensions work… But can’t you change the funds?

      I sold the default fund and moved it into non US stuff.

    • galbraith@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      The S&P 500 rejected adding SpaceX though. So no worries from them but when AI crashes and burns so will your 401k.

  • applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 hours ago

    in order to achieve that they’d have to hire pretty much the entire aerospace industry. everyone in the usa with any expertise in rockets or satellites. im doing my part by never working for that fucking fascist piece of shit.

    • nullify3112@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I’m sorry to i form you that they plan to have a majority of their business revenue come from their AI division, not their satellite division and definitely not their rocket division

  • Sludgehammer@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Right, but hear me out: I know that SpaceX is impossibly overvalued and that makes me smart. So what if I bought some SpaceX stock, waited for some rubes to buy the stock from me at higher price and then I cashed out? Since I’m so smart, I’m sure I could get in and get out before the whole thing falls apart. /s

  • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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    10 hours ago

    Never understood the business model for SpaceX and Starlink. Huge capital and operational costs without a clear understanding of who is paying for it.

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      42 minutes ago

      Yeah. Are they really expecting me to believe we can‘t have wide spread fiber that has fairly little maintenance costs but we can totally afford weekly space rocket launches to maintain Starlink? And Starlink is supposed to be an affordable option while still being profitable? Yeah, sure buddy. Totally doesn‘t sound like a hyperloop-esque pipe dream. /s

    • toebert@piefed.social
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      3 hours ago

      Stsrlink is about the only thing in the company pulling in solid revenue. There’s a good analysis on https://newspaceeconomy.ca/2026/05/30/what-is-starlinks-financial-performance

      But basically it’s a subscription service which they can sell around most of the planet and compete with infrastructure heavy services (as in expensive to replace them). They also have a lot of enterprise customer usecases (like agriculture and construction) as well as cashcow government (army).

      Their growth is actually massive compared to last year, and starlink itself is already profitable. Their economy gets better with the investment in the rocket tech. Starship will be able to lift 20x the amount of starlink than falcon 9, apparently also cheaper, while the next gen starlink sats will also be able to serve a lot more customers. That’ll drive their operating cost down, while allowing selling more.

      (Just to be clear, spacex as a company is still hot garbage because of the bundling of x and xai and also probably the control structure giving musk all the power while not even holding majority stake, the above is just about starlink and the rocket tech.)

    • Aniki@feddit.org
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      3 hours ago

      the business model today is to sell satellite internet

      in rural areas, satellite internet is cheaper than cable internet if the distance to the nearest town is large enough.

    • Juviz@lemmy.zip
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      10 hours ago

      For Starlink and SpaceX, I can probably understand the business model, considering the race to getting more satellites to orbit be it for surveying or in case of Starlink stable Internet anywhere. But anything beyond that, like data centers in space I just ridiculous. No way that their valuation is anywhere near what it is realistically.

      • axh@lemmy.world
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        50 minutes ago

        Starlink is basically a military tech that is too expensive even for the US military, so it was sold to gullible investors as a great deal… It won’t ever be profitable, at least not near the level that was promised. But it might turn out to be essential during a few wars.

      • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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        10 hours ago

        I look at Starlink where currently about 6 spacecraft deorbit a week and need replacement as a huge operational cost. Many SpaceX launches are Starlink launches, it raises the question of whether this is a circular or self fulfilling industry.

        • Juviz@lemmy.zip
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          10 hours ago

          As far as I understood, I always thought that they just used other people’s rockets to piggyback their own satellites to space basically for free

        • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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          9 hours ago

          Its actually a great business model as they need to do actual test flights to build better rockets and instead of that being pure R&D expenses, its supplemented by launching Starlink satellites which generate their own revenue for the company.

          • Zron@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            Great theory, but the Falcon 9 is already a proven design and most of SpaceX’s R&D is going to the starship, which uses completely different engines and which has blown up or disintegrated just as much as its successfully gotten above the atmosphere. It’s also never actually completed an orbit or delivered a gram of anything to orbit.

            Starlink is a useful tool to boost launch numbers precisely so investors think things are better than they actually are. Originally SpaceX burned through government and private investor money. Now that they’ve blown through the entire Artemis budget the interim director of nasa gave them through blatant corruption, and launched even more billion dollar fireworks using private investor money, they are desperately trying to convince the public for more fireworks funds.

            • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
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              7 hours ago

              I suppose that it is that dependence upon Starlink to boost launch numbers makes me suspicious of the books. The whole thing just feels ponzie scheme.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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      10 hours ago

      It’s a FOMO play for morons.

      The entire valuation is that they say that they can find $28T of businesses on mars and the moon, that that creating these business ideas is something they can do repeatably.

      • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        To be fair, you’re only a moron if you are considering it a “hold forever” stock. If you get out in time, or even if you miss-time it, that’s just gambling, which only makes you a moron if you can’t afford the loss.

          • Greg Clarke@lemmy.ca
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            8 hours ago

            A steady dividend stock might be a hold forever stock. Especially if you don’t want to realize the capital gains of the stock’s appreciation.

            • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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              5 hours ago

              It’s one single stock for one company, there is still high risk of extreme losses over a very long time

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Starlink is massively profitable, look at their balance sheets. It’s very simple, their users pay them a lot of money to access the internet. Far, far more than the launch costs to maintain the constellation.

      Their defense launch business is also profitable, though I haven’t checked how much.

      The Starship development and stupid acquisitions (xai) have been a money pit though.

      • Lydon_Feen@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Starlink is the only part of SpaceX operations that turns a profit.

        Rocket launches do not, and xAi is a bottomless money pit just like every other AI venture.

        • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          I don’t think that’s quite true. (Happy to be proven wrong if somebody has better numbers than me.)

          From what I can see the launch business generated $4.1 billion, but profits in that segment are negative because the $3 billion in Starship development costs are lumped in to that. The overall loss (-$600 million) would instantly turn into great profit if they decided to give up on Starship.

          But for sure, xAi is a nightmare. Absolutely Elon trying to bail himself out again.

          • Lydon_Feen@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            Generated 4.1 billion with a profit of how much?

            And how much money did they get from the US government?

          • The_Decryptor@aussie.zone
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            5 hours ago

            The best numbers I can find are from 2024, when Starlink made a total of $72 million in profit.

            Not great numbers though, as the article explains. It only talks about the cost of the end user hardware and providing the service, so the profit is against those expenses. It doesn’t factor in the cost of launches and satellites.

      • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
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        8 hours ago

        I don’t think Starlink includes their launch fees, leaving that on SpaceX side of the balance sheet. But I haven’t read details.

    • eleijeep@piefed.social
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      10 hours ago

      And doesn’t SpaceX now also own xAI and Xitter? He’s trying to offload his terrible investments.

    • chocrates@piefed.world
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      8 hours ago

      You’re not wrong, they were kinda burning money to create a business model. I’m a space fanboy though so I’m glad someone is doing it.

      Pretty sad that musk is involved at all, but he started it. More sad that it now has the ai cancer stuck to it.

      Still I want humans to go beyond earth and I guess I’m willing to let th devil do it

    • perviouslyiner@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Reusable vehicles meant something like 1/20 the per-launch costs of the pre-existing competition? No matter what you want to pay to have put in space, the supplier who reuses equipment will have a huge advantage.

      And starlink? Satellite internet access for remote properties used to have all the latency of a return trip to geostationary orbit. Starlink is a massive advantage compared to that.

  • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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    10 hours ago

    That’s 59% growth annually, every year, for 10 years straight.

    Any miss or early miss throws the schedule off significantly.

  • thisbenzingring@lemmy.today
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    9 hours ago

    If they can get to an astroid with some titanium or other rare minerals, they can probably be worth it. But I don’t see that happening in my lifetime

    • Aniki@feddit.org
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      3 hours ago

      the moment that rare minerals become plentiful, they devalue. you can’t get a trillionaire with asteroid mining

    • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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      9 hours ago

      Getting there isn’t a problem. The problem is what you do once you’re there. There’s no way to mine an asteroid and bring those minerals back to earth and I don’t see any way for that to change for quite a long time.

    • MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      Mining such an asteroid will only destroy the metals’ market value into oblivion by nullifying it rarity.

      • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        I’m not so sure. That would certainly be the case if you had access to it all at once, but that’s almost certainly not how it would work. Just like how we don’t have access to all of it’s that’s available on earth at once. It’ll be more like a new mine opening up.

        This is assuming we don’t mine multiple asteroids at once or open a ton of new mines on a single asteroid. We may get there at some point but that won’t be how it starts. It’ll almost certainly start as a one off, if it gets there at all.