[MattDamonSpace]

Idk…

The original “revenue thesis” was that SpaceX, with landing orbital rocket boosters, can undercut all competitors and essentially have a monopoly on payload-to-orbit, and that their lower prices would massive increase the market.

Seems a fine business.

But then a couple years ago they say “actually with this brand new technological edge we can spin up a monopoly on an entirely NEW industry, Space Internet” and within a short timeframe they’ve got billions in revenue off this entirely new service.

It’s hard to predict the future but if Starlink is the last “new space industry” that spacex has borderline-exclusive access to, I’ll be shocked.

The valuation is speculative, yes, but they have such an incredible cost advantage in a nascent space that id be hard pressed to bet against them.

It’s reminiscent of everyone claiming Uber could never succeed, citing the size of the existing taxi market. TAM can change radically when costs move down orders of magnitude, in ways that are hard to predict.

[amanaplanacanal]

Starlink has a hard limit on how much it can grow. If you are within the reach of wired Internet, you aren't going to pay more for starlink. As terrestrial coverage continues to increase, the potential market shrinks. Basically mobile devices is what their market is. Aircraft, ships, etc.

I don't know what to think about data centers in space. It's hard to see how it could be cheaper than terrestrial. Plus, if you actually have to service any of those space assets, it's going to cost a fortune.

Asteroid mining doesn't make sense to me unless you are going to use those mined resources in space somehow, and that seems far off.

[remus]

> Starlink has a hard limit on how much it can grow. If you are within the reach of wired Internet, you aren't going to pay more for starlink.

I think you may be underestimating a little here. Even in places with reasonable wired availability, the convenience of being able to slap a dish on top of your house and get pretty good internet ~anywhere for ~not too much is pretty valuable.

[MattDamonSpace]

You don’t service them, you let them deorbit and send up a new one

You also don’t try to send a Data Center to space. You send smaller satellites that are essentially individual racks. Cheap, marginal, easy to decommission

[moate]

To be fair, a lot of us thought Uber would fail because governments would actually enforce regulations meant to protect consumers regarding what are taxis and laws around meant to protect workers regarding drivers' employment status, and it turns out "NAH, MONEY MACHINE GO BRRRR!" was the option they went with.

I thin some of us were betting against a return to the bad old days of race to the bottom for labor, but the gig economy sure kicked the shit out of that hope. But it sure helps those "employment" numbers!

[ssorallen]

79.6% of SpaceX’s Total Addressable Market is listed under “Enterprise Applications” of AI. This is in the S-1 itself. SpaceX is not planning to make its money in space or in broadband - SpaceX claims it’s an AI company.

[MattDamonSpace]

Eh everyone’s claiming to be an AI company these days

[margalabargala]

I don't disagree, but how many anchors can you tie to a rocket ship before it fails to launch?

I agree with everything you said about SpaceX's tech, but it's also been saddled with xAI and Twitter.

[stefan_]

Except that whole payload-to-orbit business turned out to be a dream of SciFi readers, very prevalent on HN, not so much a real massive business. Which is why Starlink is still the biggest "customer". It's probably most interesting for governments, which is also of course why China & co. will have their own SpaceX, not this one.

And then meanwhile the whole thing got merged with the corpse of Twitter and the failed xAI. With the latter nobody can quite explain why it continues to employ extremely overpaid 20 year olds when it has meanwhile pivoted to selling energy to its biggest competitors, an absolute turd of a business.