[ggm]

An interesting variant of "privatise the profits, socialise the losses" played wholly in the private sector capital investment space. "When you're rich they let you" is big in this because a functional board of a company about to be vested with a massive debt overhang from a serial offender (X and xAI) would surely have said "could we NOT" about this and the whole model including A and B class voting shares suggests this is a control issue: given proper control models none of this could happen.

[testaburger]

Is spaceX absolutely vital for the US national security through Starlink as well as the launch of military satellites? Yes, and as a matter of fact this is also true for NATO allies, Japan, Taiwan, SK, etc in any future conflict for at least the next 5 to 10 years, just as it has been for the past 4 years in Ukraine. In addition to land based infrastructure that can be targeted in any future war -undersea cables are now under constant threat around the world (Baltic Sea, Straight of Hormuz, Red Sea, South China Sea, and the Taiwan Straight, etc). Which leaves Starlink as the last resort option should shit hit the fan.

Note the tide has changed considerably in the Ukraine war in Ukraine's favor once Starlink locked down access - this proves how vital internet access it was to both sides, as once Russia could no longer use stolen terminals their manpower advantage became moot.

So I simply don't get this manufactured outrage - the vast majority of US retirement savings are already tied to the military sector (RTX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman) via index funds. I personally would have more concern with those laggards in the new age of drone warfare vs the likes of SpaceX and Anduril (when they ipo).

[nradov]

The US national security depends far more on the separate but related Starshield constellation than on Starlink. Your general point is correct though in that widespread use of high-bandwidth, low-latency satellite communications has caused another revolution in military affairs on the same level as GPS and precision guided munitions. SpaceX might be overvalued but politically it's too big to fail.

[gedy]

> the vast majority of US retirement savings are already tied to the military sector (RTX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman) via index funds

I don't hear any concern about SpaceX due to military ties, it's that it seems like financial tricks are being used and forcing it into the markets and it might be seriously unstable.

[lokar]

It’s the absurd governance and obvious manipulation of inclusion rules and limited float.

[awesome_dude]

Is it *vital*

No.

It's really helpful, but it's not vital.

WRT Ukraine - the drones are now (AIUI) flown with a tethered fibre connection (inside the Ukraine) - because jammers have made radio traffic with drones near impossible for operators

[nradov]

Nope. The fiber optic drones are relatively short range, maybe up to 20km. And they can only work over land, not significant bodies of water. Ukraine is still using Starlink heavily for controlling longer range and naval drones. Starlink uses an ingenious phased array antenna system which makes it highly resistant to jamming. Recently Russia has been trying to overload Starlink satellite transceivers with powerful directional jamming but the huge size of the constellation limits how many birds they can effectively target.

[richwater]

The SP500 (the index the article is using for their example) literally requires profitability. Tesla wasn't includes for years and years because of it.

[rayiner]

If SpaceX succeeds, the gains will go to the same people who will bear the losses if it doesn’t. Both the gains and losses are privatized.

The consumer/ad tech bias of HN is really showing. The app I use to share photos of my kids with my elderly relatives is worth $1.45 trillion, but somehow companies that make freaking EVs, robots, and rocket ships, and AI can’t possibly be worth that much? I’ve been in HN for 16 years and heard so much breathless cheerleading for web apps “changing the world” but now we have companies that really might change the world and it’s a scam?

[wasabi991011]

> but somehow companies that make freaking EVs, robots, and rocket ships, and AI can’t possibly be worth that much?

The sky-high valuation of SpaceX is almost entirely related to it's estimated TAM from AI entreprise solutions, not robots and rocketships. HN news comments have a similar bias against the sky-high valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic.

[rayiner]

> The sky-high valuation of SpaceX is almost entirely related to it's estimated TAM from AI entreprise solutions, not robots and rocketships

That’s not how TAM works. The valuation of each business unit isn’t just a simple proportion of its TAM like that. In the SpaceX/xAI merger, which was just a few months ago, the rocket company was valued at $1 trillion and the AI company at $250 billion: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/how-math-works-175-...

[sensanaty]

The difference being, of course, that the photo app actually earns a profit, whereas the "EVs, robots and rocket ships" and ESPECIALLY the AI so far do not, and most likely will not any time soon.

[saagarjha]

There are a lot more consumers in the world willing to use the photo app than entities that do rocket launches. This isn't to say that it is changing the world more, it's just that it makes more money. That's how capitalism is set up right now.

[asdff]

There is no moat around what they are doing really and they have competitors in all these sectors. All it takes is another administration to come in with a brain and a spine to not just hand contract blindly to Elon.

[nradov]

Which competitors? Blue Origin and Amazon are trying but they're way behind on space launch capability, and still using SpaceX to launch a lot of their TeraWave and Kuiper satellites. Arianespace and ULA seem to have given up and aren't even trying to compete.

[grosswait]

Who do you think the viable alternatives are? Be realistic.

[rayiner]

“No moat” around rocket launches? Reusable rocket technology plateaued in 1981 before SpaceX reignited progress. Boeing and Lockheed and Rockwell made no progress in decades.

[drawnwren]

But if SpaceX does anything _other than become the most valuable company in history by delivering at least two technologies predicated on the largest stock rise in history based on a single technology (LLMs)_, the gains from zero to now will have been privatized and the losses will be born by the public. Which is what everyone is thinking about.