[SlinkyOnStairs]

The datacenter thing is mostly just a meme that billionaires say because it makes them feel smart and gets them media attention, it doesn't seem to move stock significantly.

The actual distortion field is around Starlink. Which is the main product and the only one that's (nominally) profitable. It's the one all the hype centers around. xAI is barely even notable in the AI space.

This also makes it possible to judge the size of the distortion field, as Starlink is just an ISP, for which we have accurate valuations. And for what it concerns shareholders, a strictly worse one than a conventional ISP. Space infra is much more expenive than putting some glass in the ground, once.

Comcast is a behemoth of a company doing far more than just ISP. Worth a "mere" $90 billion. Charter Communications is a similarly sized "pure" telecom. Worth $20 billion.

Both of the above ISP companies have roughly 30 million subscribers. Starlink has 10 million. Yet they want $2 trillion at IPO.

A 20x to 100x overvaluation. And what do you get beyond an ISP?

* A private aerospace company that's not doing notably better than the space divisions of old aerospace. (Remember: Starlink is already accounted for so doesn't count here)

* An AI company that has so little demand it's currently handing a bunch of compute to Anthropic for such a deep discount the latter has claimed to become profitable.

* Twitter. Which is worth either $33b if you count Elon's internal buyout valuation, or $10b if you count realistic valuations.

While there is some hype around "The future of space!", the reality is that the long term growth for that is fairly dead in the current geopolitical climate. Nobody's saying it out loud yet but US Aerospace is being replaced. Fewer and fewer US launches will be bought. The EU is even building their own Starlink equivalent.

[narrator]

Starship is going to make whole entire industries viable that were not viable previously. It might even take a significant chunk of air freight which is going to be a big deal with rising oil prices.

[nradov]

Is that supposed to be a joke? There is no plausible scenario where SpaceX gets any significant fraction of the air freight market. Even under the most optimistic scenario the costs for suborbital launch are much higher than regular airplanes.

In a few decades there might be a small market for carrying passengers long distances really fast. Initially for the military to insert special ops troops in a crisis, and eventually maybe for wealthy consumers after safety improves.

[thg]

> Starship is going to make whole entire industries viable that were not viable previously.

Starship is a complete and utter failure, as you can read about here, among other places: https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-is-going-nowh...

> It might even take a significant chunk of air freight which is going to be a big deal with rising oil prices.

By being several magnitudes more expensive than an airplane would ever be?

[tristanj]

Starship in its current incomplete form (v3 fully expendable ship and booster) already has the lowest cost to orbit in $/kg of any launch vehicle ever. It's around $400/kg to orbit fully expendable.

Add in booster reuse, which SpaceX has already demonstrated on test flight 9, and the cost to orbit drops to $200/kg.

[thg]

A fully reusable Starship has a launch cost of around $75m - $90m and the last V3 launch managed 44 tonnes of payload on a sub-orbital flight of not even 200km (Starlink satellites have an orbit of around 550km). That's an optimistic launch cost of $1.700/kg for a rather meaningless altitude and assuming a fully reusable Starship that doesn't keep blowing up.

I have no idea where you pulled your $400/kg number from, but it's complete and utter nonsense. To be economical at all, Starship needs to reach its target capacity of 100 tonnes to orbit, which is simply never going to happen. But even if it somehow does, it's physically impossible for Starship to ever make it further than the moon, at extreme costs, due to the refuelling requirements and fuel boil-off in orbit.

[tristanj]

There's so much wrong here, a ton to unpack.

> A fully reusable Starship has a launch cost of around $75m - $90m

No, that's the Starship build cost, i.e. the cost of an expendable Starship. A fully reusable Starship currently does not exist, but reusable launch cost be around $5m/launch (amortized).

> the last V3 launch managed 44 tonnes of payload

Intentional, Starship wasn't fully loaded.

> on a sub-orbital flight

Intentional, test flights are sub-orbital.

> of not even 200km

Intentional, done to target the landing site in the Indian Ocean.

> That's an optimistic launch cost of $1.700/kg

You can do basic math, but you are intentionally using incorrect numbers. Garbage in, garbage out.

> I have no idea where you pulled your $400/kg number from

Starship V3 manufacturing cost (one-off, not mass manufactured) is around $80-100m. Mass manufactured V3 would be in the $50m range. Starship V3 has 100T payload capacity to orbit in reusable config, see https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/05/future-starship-bloc... . In expendable config, Starship can carry 200T, see https://newspaceeconomy.ca/2026/04/16/detailed-review-of-sta...

Using today's numbers, we get:

$80 million / 200 tons = $400/kg to orbit (fully expendable).

This number is already exaggerated, the booster is already proven to be reusable.

If the current Starship is mass produced, this improves to $50 million / 200 tons = $250/kg to orbit (fully expendable).

> To be economical at all, Starship needs to reach its target capacity of 100 tonnes to orbit

You do realize the Starship + Booster stack weighs 5,000 tons, and that a 100 ton payload is only 2% of the rocket mass? And that 2% is an achievable fraction, both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have a payload fraction >4%. The Starship upper stage alone weighs 1,600 tons.

> refueling requirements

In terms of problem difficulty, orbital refueling is a minor engineering challenge to solve.

> fuel boil-off in orbit

I hope you are being facetious at this point. How do you think LNG is transported around the world? You realize this problem was solved decades ago?

[checkbuzz]

Wow. Please tell me this is a joke.

That $75-90 million figure is the current cost to launch Starship. It is also the approximate cost to build Starship. Both of these things are true.

$5 million per launch is an Elon Musk wet dream that's never going to happen. You know like Tesla FSD?

Sure 44 tons to orbit was intentional. You can report back when they intentionally launch 100 tons to orbit. Until then it's just another worthless Musk promise.

The fact that the Falcon 9 and heavy can launch more than 2% of their mass into orbit has no bearing on Starship's capability to do the same.

You're comparing apples with oranges.

Neither of those rockets is fully reusable like Starship. They don't have to carry a return supply of fuel for landing, or a heat shield, landing legs, aerodynamic wings and everything else that's required for full reusability.

And refuelling in orbit is only a minor engineering challenge? That's just hilarious! Try reading something other than Musk's X feed.

I hope you are being facetious at this point. Please don't tell me that you think Starship is fuelled with LNG propellent.

Fuel boil-off in orbit is real, just like it is on the ground. Except in orbit you don't have a big cryogenically cooled tank of propellant to top it up with sitting only 100m away.

Have you ever watched any rocket launch ever? Serious question.

Ever wondered what those huge clouds of vapour are? You know, the ones streaming out of the rocket while it's sitting on the pad ready for launch?

Boy are you in for a big surprise!

[kortilla]

> The datacenter thing is mostly just a meme that billionaires say because it makes them feel smart and gets them media attention, it doesn't seem to move stock significantly.

A significant portion of their valuation is based on this. The spacex private stock price moved significantly based on this data center narrative.

> And for what it concerns shareholders, a strictly worse one than a conventional ISP.

This is ignorance. There is absolutely zero meaningful competition to Starlink in the maritime, aviation, and remote internet markets. 150mbps down with <80ms latency isn’t impressive in a city but it’s mind blowing on an airplane 1000 miles from land.

> The EU is even building their own Starlink equivalent.

No they aren’t. The only somewhat credible competitor so far is Amazon Kuiper(Leo) and they are still nascent.

You also forgot starshield.

[SlinkyOnStairs]

> There is absolutely zero meaningful competition to Starlink in the maritime, aviation, and remote internet markets.

There are roughly 100,000 ships at sea. There are roughly 15,000 planes in the sky.

The remote internet markets are remote because either A) exceedingly few people live there, or B) exceedingly poor people live there. (And usually, both at the same time)

This just isn't a big market. That's why the telecom giants haven't bothered. To justify a trillion dollar valuation you're gonna need a billion users. SpaceX would be better off putting fiber into the ground in Africa.

[kortilla]

> There are roughly 100,000 ships at sea. There are roughly 15,000 planes in the sky.

That’s pretty great for price range of $500-$2000/mo.

> The remote internet markets are remote because either A) exceedingly few people live there, or B) exceedingly poor people live there. (And usually, both at the same time)

This is incorrect. Its usually just places people live that are difficult to reach with good telecom infrastructure because of lower income and/or lack of a good business infrastructure for internet. This includes the US that was frequently over capacity on Starlink in essentially the entire southeastern US for over a year when I was trying to get it there early on.

I suspect you don’t realize that “cell phone coverage” != “good internet”. You usually only need to go about 10-20 miles out of town before all fiber/DSL/cable evaporates. The cell coverage in an area like that isn’t the good kind you get in the city. You’ll get 5-10mbps down and brutal data caps.

Starlink is popular in the Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, and even Europe for a reason.

> That's why the telecom giants haven't bothered.

Telecom giants can’t bother because their costs don’t scale the right way due to tech limitations. A LEO sat can provide coverage in remote/sparse places AND coverage in denser money making places all in one orbit. A fiber on the other hand can’t serve the Aleutian chain and then the Congo 15 minutes later.

> To justify a trillion dollar valuation you're gonna need a billion users.

No you don’t. I think you ignored the part of my message about a significant portion of the valuation being from datacenters in space (a yet unproven market).

> SpaceX would be better off putting fiber into the ground in Africa.

No they wouldn’t. This doesn’t work. I recommend you look up why this has failed every time so far and why Africa is served by undersea cables to coastal cities.

Fiber is terrible for places with poor infrastructure. If there aren’t people adequately maintaining a power grid, there sure as hell aren’t people to maintain even more delicate fiber and required last mile infrastructure.

[Topfi]

>> The EU is even building their own Starlink equivalent.

> No they aren’t.

That’s exactly what IRIS [0] is though…

[0] https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space/iris2-s...

[kortilla]

IRIS is a 290 sat constellation that doesn’t have any proven sats in orbit or a user terminal. The capacity even if they deliver what they claim on paper is not a Starlink equivalent.

The tyranny of being in MEO/LEO is that your sats are not overhead at least half of the time.

Lower capacity, higher latency, and worse coverage makes it more of a viasat improvement than anything like a starlink equivalent.

They fumbled by not trying to provide global coverage.

[tristanj]

I find it amusing to read comments like these, because they remind me of the massive awareness gap between people who understand SpaceX's product line, and those who don't.

In your world, you only see and interpret SpaceX's existing products. You then see SpaceX's eye-watering valuation, and then are confused where this comes from.

Meanwhile, people who understand SpaceX's product line, and the implications these products in five or ten years, can analyze the situation more accurately.

I can tell you are in the unaware group, since you don't mention nor analyze two of SpaceX's world-changing products (Starship and Starlink Mobile).

[bryanlarsen]

Rocket launch ex-Starlink is a small $N-billion market; a few dozen flights at $50M per flight. Starship is revolutionary and I can easily believe that it will expand the market by a remarkable order of magnitude. Multiple tens of billions. How does that justify a valuation over $1T?

Starlink Mobile is more significant, but it's still unlikely to double Starlink revenue -- most mobile traffic will always be transited by local cell phone towers.

P.S. I think somebody is going to make a lot of money from Starship. The money in space is not from launch but from the services it enables. Starlink >> Falcon9. But I don't think SpaceX is going to be the ones to find the next Starlink. It's much more likely to be a third party who launches on multiple providers to keep costs down.

[aurareturn]

I'd love to know what your analysis. This is a genuine request. No snark. I'm genuinely curious of other view points.

[tristanj]

I'll mention the ones no one else is talking about.

The Golden Dome buildout will deliver $200-300 billion in revenue to SpaceX through 2040 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s... . Golden Dome is only viable with low-cost Starship, and SpaceX will build the satellites housing the radars, IR detectors, interceptors, and backbone communications network. The interceptors themselves will likely be built by existing players i.e. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. SpaceX revenue here is astronomical, potentially $500+ billion if a full buildout occurs.

Starlink Mobile is atrociously underestimated, with Starlink V3/V4 satellites and the $17 billion Echostar spectrum, Starlink will deliver 4G speeds direct to cellphone for thousands of customers per cell across the globe. It will never match the bandwidth throughput of terrestrial towers but will be extremely cost competitive in rural areas. A single cellular tower costs ~$250k to build and tens of thousands per year to maintain. It will be far cheaper for mobile operators to partner with SpaceX than do their own costly buildout. Assuming quick adoption, revenue will be $50-100 billion per year by 2040, with high margins.

Not to mention Starship, which in its incomplete form of V3 already has the lowest cost-to-orbit of any launch vehicle ever, will usher in a wave of space exploration. The moat is huge, Starship is 15 years ahead of the competition.

[aurareturn]

Cool. If it drops, I might buy a few shares.

[emj]

Isn't Spaceship an requirement to make starlink profitable?

[tristanj]

You mean Starship. And not it's not, Starlink is already extremely profitable, currently running at a 60% profit margin.

[Gomotono]

Srsly?

Just to be very clear about Starship: We have a very limited amount of payload we are sending up in space every year.

The biggest jump in payload is starlink itself. Starlink though doesn't scale very well. V2 can only handle a certain amount of customers and has only a lifetime of 5 years.

Space-X has to build Starship to even being able to send v3 up to increase the margin of this setup. But even then, every 5 years that thing has to be replaced and new build.

Every mobile tower, fiber cable etc. underground has a lot higher lifetime than that.

Starlink also has the issue of latency handover. Every few minutes you have to do a handover which leads to package loss. I can't do a Teams Call through Starlink fyi.

And Starlink already exists and is relativly affordable despite that, they only have 9-10 Million customers and they had to increase the price.

And while all of this 'magic no one gets' is happening, Starship hasn't profen non leo orbit with proper payload AND reusability. Without reusability, they will not get the costs down that much anymore. Its already relativly cheap.

And in parallel all of this 'trillion dollar future margin magic' gets opposition by other companies like eutelsat and Amazon.

Ah yes the world changing product of starlink mobile. Which doesn't get booked in the USA, is slow and needs a lot of energy. Whatever you think this is, 500km mobile range is 500km and this on a planet were normal people already have a very very well working mobile setup for at least 10 years by now.

Is space-x some kind of business gap? yes sure. Will they make billions with this? Depending on other companes, yeah sure. Is it a trillion dollar business? No

Yes yes i'm fully unaware of this.

Btw. Musk def sells you the story of Mars and dyson sphere and stuff to keep the magic but while he does all of this, he rents out colossus 1 and 2 to his competitors because he is unable to sell his OWN AI product.

[ImPostingOnHN]

'If you don't agree with me it's because you don't understand' is such a tired, boring trope.

Do you have anything to add to that sentiment? Maybe a pro-forma, rather than feelings?

[SlinkyOnStairs]

"You just don't understand bro" has been the trite handwaving of criticism for a over decade now. It already wore out when the bitcoin bros kept saying it to all their critics.

> I can tell you are in the unaware group, since you don't mention nor analyze two of SpaceX's world-changing products (Starship and Starlink Mobile).

Just because I did not mention Starship by name does not mean it's not in the reply.

And Starlink Mobile is still an ISP. "It's worth a trillion dollars because it's mobile!" Haven't heard that one since the Dotcom bubble.

But more to the point:

> Meanwhile, people who understand SpaceX's product line, and the implications these products in five or ten years, can analyze the situation more accurately.

They are looking 10 years forwards. I am looking 10 years back.

This exact same "just you wait, in 5 years there'll be a miracle technology that generates infinite profit" rhetoric has been used for those 10 years.

Still waiting on the miracle self-driving that was supposed to justify Tesla's $1.6 trillion.

[tristanj]

> They are looking 10 years forwards. I am looking 10 years back.

And that's your flaw. Companies are priced by looking ahead and projecting future revenue and earnings, not by looking 10 years into past. Your analysis is fundamentally flawed for this reason. Neither of SpaceX's major future revenue drivers (Starship and Starlink) existed a decade ago. This explains your confusion regarding SpaceX's valuation.

[mavhc]

Self driving is already here, so far the remaining bugs are pretty much just noticing thin objects and parking in restricted spaces

[chinathrow]

Enlighten us then, please. What are we missing?