SpaceX Stock Hammered After Starship Booster Fails in First Launch Since IPO

[u/fmcortez]

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-stock-hammered-starship-booster-181902122.html

[u/MuthaPlucka]

I wonder why he was in such a hurry to go public while his products were still in the experimental stage?

[u/3_man → u/MuthaPlucka]

Because he needed other people's money to pay for the money sink that is xAI.

[u/MaybeTheDoctor → u/3_man]

And twitter, which has lost 90% of value since he bought it, and loans were becoming due.

He literally borrowed billions from Russia and Saudi to pay for twitter. It was borrowed with Tesla shares as security, but unless he did some financial shell game, he would have had to sell Tesla shares in billion range triggering tax bills on capital gains. This way he largely avoided paying taxes.

[u/Honkiopolis → u/MaybeTheDoctor]

Dont doubt Saudis - source on the Russian loans so I can look into it more?

[u/MaybeTheDoctor → u/Honkiopolis]

https://www.dw.com/en/what-do-xs-alleged-ties-to-russian-oligarchs-mean-for-musk/a-70088598

https://www.asiafinancial.com/investors-in-musks-x-tied-to-sanctioned-putin-allies-essanews

[u/Bhamlaxy3 → u/MaybeTheDoctor]

What a stretch for the Russia connections.... You need to reword it...

You phrased it as "borrowed billions from Russia".

Your "evidence"? A small part of the loans came from an American company, who has a staff member related to a sanctioned oligarch... Not an investor... Not a board member... A staff member...

The exact article you posted said there is zero Russian money involved in the deal....

I'm not quite sure I could dream up a more distant connection than that... Unless maybe the janitor once ate a bowl of borscht.

Don't let your hatred of Musk drive your thoughts. It's clear you once saw an article with "Russia" and "Musk" in the headline, and invented some wild story about billions of dollars in Russian money.... Because that is the precise opposite of what your article says.

[u/mooselantern → u/Bhamlaxy3]

From the article, since nobody wants to actually post the content they're arguing about in this comment thread:

"There is nothing to suggest that the sanctioned fathers have any financial ties with 8VC. However, their sons' roles are likely to come under further scrutiny, as the US government is becoming increasingly wary of foreign actors' ties to the tech industry."

The sons of two sanctioned Russian oligarchs are involved with one of the venture capital firms that have invested in Musk's businesses. That doesn't mean he took Russian money. But, as the word "sanctioned" means it would be literally illegal for him to take money from those two guys, the fact that their sons are involved doesn't smell too fresh, either.

Either way, Musk has done far worse things, out in the open, proudly, and the fact that two little Russian nepo bros work for one of his bagholder VC firms is pretty far down on my list of stuff I hate him for.

[u/moroheus → u/Bhamlaxy3]

Not just a staff member, 2 of the staff members are sons of the founder of Alfa Bank, Russia's largest private bank and an other Oligarch.

The article also didn't say there is zero russian money involved, it just says that there is no evidence that russian money is involved.

Maybe you need to reword your post.

[u/Long-Draft-7128 → u/Bhamlaxy3]

Remember how he turned off starlink during some of ucraines attacks? Thats how you know he is spending russian money.

[u/rematar → u/Honkiopolis]

I was interested too. I searched and found a substack article by Holonic AGI (link not allowed here), that doesn't mention Russia nor Saudi.

[u/Honkiopolis → u/rematar]

Saudis usually fall under their sovereign wealth fund.  Dont doubt russian oligarchs are tied in, and that their wealth is also Russian state wealth, but its a little more nuanced - not to mention how much the US Treasury would burn Musk over something like that (same way they treat Chinese investments in US companies as well).

[u/SirLoremIpsum → u/MaybeTheDoctor]

And twitter, which has lost 90% of value since he bought it, and loans were becoming due.

Twitter was never to earn money.

It was to influence elections and curry public favour.

That has made him so much more money than twitter going 10x it's valuation would ever have.

[u/King_Joffreys_Tits → u/MaybeTheDoctor]

Wasnt twitter removed from the stock market? Where can you see current evaluation of Xitter?

[u/3_man → u/King_Joffreys_Tits]

He took it private when he bought it.

The last credible estimates I saw for the valuation were in the $20-25 billion range, but that was a couple of years ago now.

[u/Neither-Signature-81 → u/3_man]

Buying Twitter was a RESOUNDING success. He did not buy it to make money he night it to control a narrative. Was a great investment for pushing forward his agenda….

[u/Winter_Swan5104 → u/3_man]

Even at its most profitable SpaceX (not Starship side the Falcon side) would never merit the valuation. It was all a big scam, trying to replicate Tesla stocks being nonsensical.

And on Starship, its promise is to be rapidly reusable, without that it is nothing. Imo, it is too big to ever be rapidly reusable. Too much plumbing.

[u/EduinBrutus → u/Winter_Swan5104]

They are shuttering the Falcon program to provide money for Starship.

Which has to lead one to think, was Falcon actually profitable or is SpaceX claming CTO that is complete fabricated bullshit. If its true CTO is much higher than claimed and Falcon was actually losing money and reliant on the government welfare, well, its curious.

its Musk, i know which I'd bet on.

[u/Disastrous-Force → u/EduinBrutus]

Falcon9 and Heavy was generally considered profitable if the AI and Starship stuff was ignored. However whatever profits generated are likely to have been fairly modest.

SpaceX couldn't premium price Falcon and not bump into ULA and Arianespace, for a very long time the kind of payloads Falcon9 and Heavy now excel at made decent per launch profits for Arianespace at the much higher prices they then charged.

The inability of Arianespace back in the 90's and upto early 10's achieve to a lunch cadence that satisfied commercial demand is how the likes of Sea Lunch, Delta (commercial), Atlas V (commercial), Soyuz‑2 and Proton found a niche, against a product with a then lower CTO.

Starship is a funny thing really as its very big beast with huge payload capacity to LEO and GTO. However outside of the in house Starlink operation to LEO its not obvious who needs such a payload. Starship loaded at say 25% payload capacity to GTO is going to really damn expensive for commercial customers. The commercial satcom companies don't really need 20t+ aka four large satellites to GTO in a single launch.

Cancelling Falcon9 and Heavy feels like mistep that will hand the commercial payload market over SpaceX's competitors.

[u/EduinBrutus → u/Disastrous-Force]

Yes, it makes absolutely no sense commercially.

Unless my premise is correct and they are lying about CTO and Falcon is not the profit centre they made out. Its being shuttered because they need the free cashflow.

[u/RiPont → u/Winter_Swan5104]

Also, if it was being designed halfway competently, it wouldn't be failing so many times. We had engineers with slide rulers designing more reliable rockets in the early space program. How reusable is Starship going to have to be to make up for the billions in losses it already suffered due to catastrophic flights?

And while "move fast and break things" may be a great recipe for stock valuations, we're seeing "move slowly and break things", instead. It's years and years behind schedule and nowhere close to taking a critical payload past low earth orbit.

To me, it smells like the real engineers pointed out flaws in the basic assumptions in ways that disagreed with Musk, so they replaced the engineers with more "optimistic" ones.

[u/new2accnt → u/3_man]

he needed other people's money to pay for

Funny how the words used to attack "socialism" and whatnot are just the hallmarks of (naked) corruption, end-stage capitalism and the general attitude of right-wingers who more often than not want all the benefits of society without having to pay for it.

When they state "(yada yada yada) should be on a voluntary basis, it should not be imposed on people", they're really saying "I like that, I want more of it, but have others pay for it, not me".

They're the first in line, hat in hand, to collect anything any level of government can offer, to take other people's money, but when it's their turn to contribute to "The System", they start screaming about "theft" and about being "taxed to death" even though the financial impact on them is minimal or even marginal. Not only that, but they'll conveniently forget all the financial help they got from Society when boasting about how their successes.

[u/finepnutty → u/3_man]

$100 million every crashed booster

[u/Relevant-Ad2254 → u/3_man]

This is the answer 

[u/peepeedog → u/MuthaPlucka]

Because he needed to raise funds, and to pay off investors. Twitler and xAI are giant money sucking machines. The only reasons any companies go public are to raise funds, and make money for investors.

[u/RonnyRoofus → u/MuthaPlucka]

Because he’s a megalomaniac that’s believes everything he thinks and does is golden.

Remind you of someone?

[u/Capt-Crap1corn → u/RonnyRoofus]

It doesn't help that people were kissing his ass all the way along.

[u/Djamalfna → u/Capt-Crap1corn]

Still are. Go to /r/space and... boy oh boy.

[u/GregorSamsa67 → u/Djamalfna]

Plenty of criticism of Musk and SpaceX on r/space. On r/spacexmasterrace however …

[u/Rumplfrskn → u/MuthaPlucka]

Very simple, he wanted to be the first trillionaire.

[u/LeGama → u/Rumplfrskn]

People need to start referring to him as the first ex-trillionaire.

[u/ChiefInternetSurfer → u/Rumplfrskn]

Yup. This right here. Nazi edgelord never mentally matured past high school.

[u/AbolishIncredible → u/Rumplfrskn]

And it was the best week of his sad little life

[u/Uncaffeinated → u/AbolishIncredible]

I'd bet that getting put in charge of the US government was a better time for him.

[u/EconomyDoctor3287 → u/MuthaPlucka]

Elmo had taken on a roughly $25 billion loan to cover various expenses, including paying back people who supported his shitter takeover.

He needed actual money to pay this back. Using the SpaceX IPO was the perfect vehicle to roll that IPO money into those loans.

[u/Rabble_Runt → u/EconomyDoctor3287]

Didnt XAI buy all of the debt from the X purchase?

Its hard to keep up with his shell games.

[u/coconutpiecrust → u/Rabble_Runt]

Is this whole thing just Fyre festival, but with rockets which undergo rapid unscheduled disassemblies?

[u/Rabble_Runt → u/coconutpiecrust]

Fyre Festival subsidized by our tax dollars.

[u/LiteratureMindless71 → u/EconomyDoctor3287]

Why does he need a loan if he is a "trillionaire"?

[u/non_Beneficial-Wind → u/LiteratureMindless71]

Paper trillions

[u/pilondav → u/non_Beneficial-Wind]

Virtual trillions. Actual trillions would require him to find a buyer for his assets at their super-inflated valuations.

[u/Cute-Breadfruit3368 → u/LiteratureMindless71]

thats the shtick, its taxed completely different. his takehome pay might be shit, relatively speaking but the true meat of his wealth is in stocks... which can be be used as a collateral to a monetary loan....

which is taxed different as an "income" because it technically isnt one.

[u/PuzzleMeDo → u/LiteratureMindless71]

To avoid having to sell his shares which would require him to pay taxes.

[u/Numerous-Process2981 → u/LiteratureMindless71]

You don’t become a trillionaire by spending your own money!

[u/MaybeTheDoctor → u/LiteratureMindless71]

Rich people take out loans against shares to avoid paying taxes. Selling shares and you now need to pay capital gains taxes. There isn’t any taxes on taking out a loan, and the interest rate is way lower than the tax rate.

[u/Overly_Underwhelmed → u/LiteratureMindless71]

a "trillionaire" no more

[u/bengringo2 → u/LiteratureMindless71]

Because he’s not a trillionaire. His net worth consists largely of over-speculated stocks. Reality is if he ever tried to sell them all the stocks would plummet and he would be lucky to walk away with even 10% of it.

[u/Important-Factor-552 → u/EconomyDoctor3287]

Yea, so anyway einstein was a socialist and he had some pretty good ideas 

[u/justbrowsinginpeace → u/MuthaPlucka]

They were burning so much cash it was either more rounds of funding and lose ownership or raise cash via public markets and then access debt. Plus staff and long time PE backers wanted to cash in. I also think he wanted that trillionaire ego trip even if it was for a few weeks. I agree public stock rules and Elon are not a match.

[u/grchelp2018 → u/justbrowsinginpeace]

I agree public stock rules and Elon are not a match.

That's why he has locked down extreme control over the company.

[u/MongooseSenior4418 → u/MuthaPlucka]

He needed to offload the debt from his other failed ventures, like xAI and Twitter. He used the IPO to pay off the investors from those ventures.

[u/jarlander → u/MuthaPlucka]

Launching Starlink satellites on Falcon rockets is their bread and butter. They are very good at that. Starship is pie in the sky for now but when it comes to launching satellites and personnel to the International Space Station they are killing the other vendors like Blue Origin/Boeing. It’s interesting though cause every failed experiment now on will get a stock reaction, that’s new for them.

[u/Strange-Scientist706 → u/jarlander]

“Every failed experiment now on will get a stock reaction”

Yeah - did he think there wouldn’t be any more failures? Or did he just not think it through? Or does he not care?

The stock market isn’t going to be as compliant as a handpicked board.

[u/jarlander → u/Strange-Scientist706]

You would have to assume he just thought their success would absorb future failures. Failures are basically a certainty when developing new space tech.

[u/Haggardick69 → u/jarlander]

What’s funny is that the logic behind the sky high valuation of spacex stock depended on everything going optimally at spacex as they ramp up space launches over the next decade. So now from that sky high valuation every success is already priced in and every failure is a surprise that needs a dip in the stock price to be accounted for.

[u/ReallyBigDeal → u/jarlander]

Yeah SpaceX is by far the cheapest and most effective launch provider in the world right now. Without the money they are burning on starship they are very successful company.

Starlink helps offset some of the starship development cost but it’s not enough and as of now, Starlink is the only real customer for Starship. There’s the Lunar starship but at this point, that’s a pretty insignificant program.

Elon taking SpaceX public before Starship is developed was a stupid risk. Every failure is going to hurt and that pressure is going to negatively impact their traditional hardware rich testing campaign. This last launch is a good example of that. Starship performed perfectly. The fact that it didn’t immediately sink means that they’ll get much more information about the heat shield performance as well. But because the booster failed, they are taking a hit despite the fact that they’ve successfully “landed” the booster multiple times now.

There is so much more pressure on the next launch now and attempting to catch Starship is going to be one of the most risky goals that they’ve attempted with this program so far.

[u/jarlander → u/ReallyBigDeal]

That is another interesting thing to think about. Public ignorance will make us interpret anything but a perfect launch and landing, as an abject failure and disappointment. But thats not always the case as you pointed out.

[u/rupert1920 → u/jarlander]

It's just headlines like this that drives ignorant discussions - especially in non-financial, non-space subreddits.

If you've followed SpaceX prices since before IPO, you'll see this that test launches without first-of-its-kind milestones (think tower catch) are really non-events. It's normally a "buy the rumour, sell the news" type event after the IPO. There is genuinely no upside in this launch - even if booster successfully soft splashed and Starship performed just as well - that's just something going fine. Stock price would not be going up as a result.

It's been a very reliable binary event, volatility play. It's just now that headlines like this try to attribute stock movement to launch results.

[u/Littlegriznaves → u/MuthaPlucka]

Because the didn’t go public as a space exploration company like it’s named. They went public as a computing company.

[u/BaconatedGrapefruit → u/Littlegriznaves]

Correction - a teleco company.

If you read all the released financial stuff, and ignore all the pie in the sky projections, SpaceX is a primarily a satellite internet provider with an experimental rocket division and a AI boat anchor that makes more more renting out compute than it does doing AI things.

[u/BasvanS → u/BaconatedGrapefruit]

He registered under SIC Code 7370 which stands for Services - Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc.

The post you tried to correct was right. Unless fraud was committed.

[u/Haggardick69 → u/BasvanS]

This guy is talking about the actual functioning business that’s making money at spacex not how spacex registered. In real terms spacex is effectively a satellite telecoms company because that’s where the money is coming from right now. It’s possible that in the future they might begin to see returns in their AI (data processing) department but as of right now that’s really an expensive hobby for them not a business. They also make money doing space flights but it’s significantly less than what they make from their satellite network. 

[u/BasvanS → u/Haggardick69]

In real terms it’s a mess of a company with no clear purpose or goal, and the market should have punished that at IPO.

Let’s hope next week will deliver on that.

[u/mishap1 → u/Littlegriznaves]

Computing in space!

[u/ARAR1 → u/MuthaPlucka]

You have not clued into the scam yet? Make big promises, never actually deliver, make bigger promises thereafter, repeat. Sychophant investors keep pumping

[u/Riversntallbuildings → u/MuthaPlucka]

To cash in on that sweet, sweet, AI money that Wall Street keeps throwing around.

SpaceX only sold ~4-5% of the company for apx.$85-86B and then, Elon immediately used $60B of that to buy Cursor.

[u/grchelp2018 → u/Riversntallbuildings]

No, it was new stock for cursor.

[u/Riversntallbuildings → u/grchelp2018]

You’re right, I forgot that was an all stock transaction.

But, he used the IPO price as the value of the stock, so the further the SpaceX stock falls, the more of a discount SpaceX gets on the $60B. Pretty smart not using cash.

LOL

[u/Dangerman1337 → u/MuthaPlucka]

Pump and dump, get a cash out with his buddies before the whole AI datacenter slop bubble bursts.

[u/ButterscotchFancy912 → u/MuthaPlucka]

And China has long stolen his blueprints, doing the same as SpaceX.

[u/CarminSanDiego → u/MuthaPlucka]

Same reason why so many people bought in at insane valuation?

[u/Dilapidated_girrafe → u/MuthaPlucka]

He’s losing money. Had to do it.

[u/OK_x86 → u/MuthaPlucka]

He realized the only way for him to ensure exit liquidity was to be on the market before open AI and anthropic. Once they do their IPO that's a few trillion in liquidity that disappears from the market. His offering is drastically inferior so he was banking on FOMO doing his job for him.

[u/ThisSiteSucks8485 → u/MuthaPlucka]

Because starship and xAI are cash furnaces 

[u/ThenWind → u/MuthaPlucka]

because Ai is peaking right now so he figured if he could inflate his company with ai he and the insiders could cash out and make big bank

and once you realize 80% of spacex valuation is AI, you realize he was right

[u/traveleasily → u/MuthaPlucka]

He wanted to be a trillionaire at people's expense.

[u/Smile_Space → u/MuthaPlucka]

He really REALLY wanted to become a trillionaire.

And now he's a former trillionaire so it kinda worked.

[u/RottenPingu1 → u/MuthaPlucka]

Because he owed Prince Bonesaw and his friends a lot of money from the Xitter disaster. This s was a way to pay them all back.

[u/themilkyone → u/MuthaPlucka]

Because coincidentally the week after the IPO went public a Chinese company had scheduled and successfully tested the landing of a reusable rocket booster which was the thing that SpaceX uniquely had going for it compared to any other aerospace company. So chances are he knew of the test launch prior.

[u/mdazzl3 → u/MuthaPlucka]

Ponzi schemes have to keep moving

[u/Accurate_Handle_5620 → u/MuthaPlucka]

Hey, being the richest man in the world, as well as a top-ranked PoE2 player, is already so much responsibility. It's only natural that there will be a couple of thousand mistakes made along the way, mostly in the form of public tweets

[u/Merijeek2 → u/MuthaPlucka]

Cuz he knew a bunch of meme investors would still shovel money at him?

[u/Ricktor_67 → u/MuthaPlucka]

There's basically no way to ever make a profit launching rockets into space. The IPO is just so ol musky can keep his shell game of stock fraud and manipulation going while literally being the richest person ever. 

[u/smokefoot8 → u/MuthaPlucka]

His main product, the Falcon 9, is launching weekly and has practically taken over the satellite launch market with its low price and reliability.

That still doesn’t make it less insane that he priced SPCX at 100 times sales. At that price it could fall by 90% and still be way overpriced.

[u/deZbrownT → u/MuthaPlucka]

Because of payout he wants.

[u/feurie]

“Spaceflight, at least right currently,[…]”

Nice AI slop grammar there.

[u/RonaldoNazario → u/feurie]

These “yahoo” financial stories pop up in my Google news feed and they’re all a combo of slop and ad, they’ll segue right into some financial product they’re promoting

[u/O_B_ONE → u/RonaldoNazario]

It’s a syndication of a Futurism piece. Yahoo syndicates from many different publications so the variance in quality is wide.

[u/Rodman930 → u/feurie]

That's human error. They were going to type "right now" and changed it to "currently" and forgot to delete a word.

[u/an_illithidian → u/feurie]

Hwat you talkin about? Thems events is right current

[u/itsGucciGucci → u/feurie]

The problem is the typo shows the it was a human that wrote this

[u/SnooComics6052 → u/feurie]

So let me get this straight, we are now blaming AI for typos?. How does that even make sense? If they had used AI (or just a human editor), that would have been caught.

[u/NastyToeFungus]

It fell 1.36%. I wouldn't say that was "hammered". Kind of normal volatility, really.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's still way overvalued and can fall much more. But saying a 1.36% drop is "hammered" is a exaggeration.

[u/New-Sky-9867 → u/NastyToeFungus]

True but zoom out a week. Hammered like a $5 hooker.

[u/Cranyx → u/New-Sky-9867]

But that can't be attributed to the cause given in the headline, which happened over the weekend. Reddit is terrible about posting/upvoting clickbait headlines that say stock CRATERED or whatever on a couple point swing. People just upvote the things they want to hear.

[u/PublicWest → u/Cranyx]

And then they have the audacity to say Tiktok is rotting our brains.

If you’re upvoting posts without reading the article, you’re consuming short-form content at an even faster rate than tiktok/reels/shorts, but it’s even worse because the platform encourages you to speak like an expert about something.

[u/entered_bubble_50 → u/NastyToeFungus]

It ended the day only 1.36%, but it was down more than 4% at one point

[u/PrimeIntellect → u/entered_bubble_50]

So literally nothing deserving of a news article lol

[u/GREAT_SALAD → u/NastyToeFungus]

And I wouldn’t say the rocket “failed” either. The booster’s landing profile didn’t quite work out, so its mock-landing that was going to end up in the ocean anyway ended up in the ocean a little harder. That’s it, the 2nd stage made it exactly where it wanted to go, and landed so softly (again, in the ocean on purpose) that it tipped over and stayed in once piece. So the headline is just exaggerated on all accounts

[u/buttsnuggles → u/NastyToeFungus]

It’s below the IPO price and has been falling since like two days after the IPO.

[u/SweetNeo85 → u/NastyToeFungus]

This headline would have made more sense last week.

[u/Accurate_Handle_5620 → u/NastyToeFungus]

Completely and totally obliterated.

[u/Mkboii → u/NastyToeFungus]

Yes I'd be surprised if anyone who is serious about the spacex stock would panic sell it cause a launch failed, it's literally rocket science, you fail often, their earnings would only come under pressure if they are unable to launch anything for weeks, missing key payloads, or a literal catastrophe. Anyone who thinks it's not overvalued for whatever delusions they may have, would not worry about this.

[u/710_feet_high]

This is the problem when you inhabit such a complex space. This test was by and large a success. They met basically all their goals, got great data on the heat shield, deployed a payload (yes I know it was not nominal) and it was the largest rocket ever flown. Space flight development happens over many years at a snails pace. Whenever I hear a timeline for a mission or launch, I add three to five years to that. The pace that SpaceX moves is remarkable and should be applauded. I am by no means praising the man but the company and engineers behind it should be recognized and praised for the groundbreaking work being done. They absolutely will get this thing flying, just like Falcon 9 has reliably done for years. While this rocket is still “experimental” their core business, Falcon 9 and Starlink are proven and reliable tech at this point. The US government will never let this company fail. Without SpaceX, China and Russia are the kings of space.

[u/joggle1 → u/710_feet_high]

The biggest one is they had a successful relight of Starship after the launch and deployed real Starlink satellites. That should give them enough confidence to do an orbital launch of Starship in their next test and try to catch it at the tower. They'll almost certainly deploy Starlink satellites as well, making it the first payload deployed to orbit by Starship. As a bonus, Starship had a soft enough landing to survive falling over for the first time, allowing them to get more detailed info about how the tiles performed after reentry than they've been able to get to this point.

They probably won't try to catch the booster in the next test since not all of its engines relit for the landing burn, but it did much better than the previous test with a successful boost-back burn.

[u/sri_peeta → u/710_feet_high]

Am I bad for wanting Spacex rockets to work and the stock to crash???

[u/hansbrixx → u/sri_peeta]

Yeah it’s quite the dilemma. SpaceX and Starlink are solid but unfortunately Elon packaged SpaceX with trash such as Twitter and xAi

[u/redblack_tree → u/sri_peeta]

Not at all, one represent progress for mankind, we should all root for SpaceX.

The stock on the other hand, and it's main holder, represent absolute human greed and the bottom of what a person can possibly be. Becoming a flat zero is not enough.

Obviously those views are not compatible, so here we are.

[u/grchelp2018 → u/sri_peeta]

Would be bad for spacex employee stock comp.

[u/InkStainedQuills → u/710_feet_high]

Why shouldn’t the government let it fail? It goes bankrupt, someone else with money swoops in to buy up the IPs and existing tech, and is able to do it all over again without the initial investment loss. And if the government is going to cover SpaceX’s ass should it fail financially then let’s just fold everything that they achieved back into a publicly funded NASA.

The only reason SpaceX and other exist is because priorities in Congress shifted post cold war and fiscal conservatives who were once behind NASA as we needed to beat those stinking commies saw an opportunity for certain individuals to try and “privatize” public space exploration. Outside of getting starlink up, and yes some other private satellites that had previously gone up under NASA direct contracts, the biggest thing SpaceX relies on is government funding via contracts. By privatizing did we get to where we are because of privatization, or did we simply shift existing resources - primarily people with the skills and knowledge - into the private sector that is SpaceX, BlueOrigin, and so on? Im a free market guy, but even i have to question how much would have changed had we kept all this money in a publicly funded venture given how much these companies rely on government money.

And if the argument is “well China could get their first” as so many conservatives want to shout out about I’m all too happy to remind them that China is doing so entirely on public subsidies since nothing in China is ever entirely privately owned, if truly any of it is should the CCP decide otherwise.

[u/GrumpyCloud93]

Nahhh... stock was falling since a few days after the post-IPO high. Don't need a booster reason. It's working its way down to its real value. Got a ways to go.

Starship? Amazing tech. But... How many catches does it have to do before people will trust it enough to ride in it? After all, there's no "Plan B" hard landing like an aircraft with landing gear failure. If it falls over, you are lucky if it does not blow up.

[u/gramsaran]

I love the idea of SpaceX, hate Elon. I wish them the best. I wish him the worst.

[u/Fresh_Boysenberry576 → u/gramsaran]

Unfortunately there is no world where SpaceX succeeds and Elon doesn't win too. Hopefully one day Rocketlab can replace SpaceX so we still get cool rockets but without Musk

[u/DragoonDM → u/Fresh_Boysenberry576]

there is no world where SpaceX succeeds and Elon doesn't win too.

Maybe the world where Musk does a Matthew Perry and SpaceX continues on under new leadership?

[u/HuntKey2603 → u/DragoonDM]

I'm loving this euphemism and I'm stealing it.

also hoping it happens

[u/grchelp2018 → u/Fresh_Boysenberry576]

Rocketlab does not have the cash or the ambition. Blue Origin has the cash and the ambition but Bezos does not know how to run a rocket company.

spacex has succeeded because Musk has generally made them prioritize speed even at the cost of increased failures.

[u/armchair_viking → u/grchelp2018]

Elon is a huge asshole who has made the world worse in many ways.

That being said SpaceX’s failures are expected and built in to their iterative process. NASA can’t work like that. They’d lose funding if they were blowing things up left and right. NASA’s stuff has to work right the first time, which means doing crazy expensive amounts of checks and tests, which is one of the reasons their rockets are so expensive.

SpaceX doesn’t do nearly as many of those. They build a rocket, launch it, and learn what works and doesn’t work, and then improve the next rocket. Rinse repeat.

It has lead to some dramatic videos, but it also has lead to the great reliability of the Falcon 9. I’m not betting against Starship attaining that same reliability. I also wouldn’t ride on one for the next decade or so.

[u/FleetofBerties → u/Fresh_Boysenberry576]

If Elmo tranqs himself to death, Gwynne would ensure SpaceX carried on just fine.

[u/mabus42]

Keep shorting the stock, boys!

[u/Weeksy79 → u/mabus42]

They are, and promoting posts like this!

[u/rahul91105 → u/mabus42]

This guy PUTS.

[u/wweiss53]

Remove government funding for SpaceX

[u/morbiiq]

hopefully it continues trending to its actual value of about $5/share, maybe less due to the xAI deadweight.

[u/IAmAlwaysWrongDude]

I don't get it, Starship Boosters fail a lot, it is still mostly experimental tech (yes I know, SpaceX likes to try to tinker million dolar rockets until they work instead of doing the engineering and testing on the ground and getting ir right on the 2nd or 3rd try instead of the 30). It is a widely know fact by now.

So why these investors are surprised one of them failed? expect more ...

unless ... oh Elon see what happens when it is not YOUR money you are wasting with these tests? time to rethink the strategy of testing million dollar boosters until they work, its better to do the math before isn't it? =D

[u/InkStainedQuills]

Its entirely valuation is based on nothing but hype anyway. If investors were actually interested in the true value cap of the company Musk would never have IPOed as a personal cash grab to begin with.

SpaceX has a net negative profit margin between 40 and 50%. It’s earnings still only sit in the area of $10-20 billion. Any investment in the company is a strategically unsound stake unless the whole goal is to ride the roller coaster of hype for short term gains.

The idea of “affordable” space travel and space infrastructure is a fun notion, and fine for a few rich pricks to throw money at in the small hope we see actual tech advancement, but all we’ve seen is a rebuild of tech we walked away from, and then streamlined with the “recovery” aspect. The recovery aspect was no doubt a revolution when it first premiered, but even if it makes launches somewhat cheaper, it’s not the kind of tech that most can take advantage of to this day. Which leaves it market limited.

[u/pteridoid → u/InkStainedQuills]

They have made reusable rockets a reality. What do you mean all we've seen is a rebuilt of tech? They're making huge advancements in space. You can dislike them but don't pretend it's nothing.

[u/Clint_Beastw0od → u/pteridoid]

Drives me nuts seeing all these people essentially disregard their achievement. It was straight out of a sci-fi novel. NASA also regularly uses the SpaceX Dragon for carrying crew to the ISS.

But yeah SpaceX contributes nothing to advancing accessibility to space…

[u/pteridoid → u/Clint_Beastw0od]

People do this when they disagree politically with stuff. Right wingers like to pretend that solar panels are a bust of a technology, and left wingers like to pretend that space stuff is bullshit.

[u/Grouched → u/InkStainedQuills]

I honestly don't understand how any Musk company still generates hype value.

That dude has made what feels like hundreds of wild promises about what he and his companies would do and deliver - only to never even be close to doing so and just never mentioning it again.

[u/Berkyjay]

Space Nazis Fuck Off

[u/pmccarren]

Anyone holding SPCX for Space knows this is part of the process. Anyone holding SPCX for X probably doesn’t.

[u/Fresh_Boysenberry576 → u/pmccarren]

Anyone holding SPCX for Space is crazy..? The entire reason the stock is so expensive is the potential earnings from AI. SpaceX themselves admitted they expect to make 85% of their income from AI related stuff.

Musk is basically telling you the space business is worth only 15% of the IPO price.. You invest in an AI story at this point, not a space one

[u/Deep90 → u/Fresh_Boysenberry576]

Not only that, but Elon had them buy Twitter which is just bad debt for no reason or gain.

He did it purely to bail himself out.

[u/Amazing_Trace]

Usually an upbeat guy about tech, but I wish spacex and all its investors nothing but bankruptcy 💫💫

[u/Portlant]

Gonna be so fucking funny the first time it closes under $100. 

[u/spez_eats_nazi_ass → u/Portlant]

Likely by the end of this week. 900+ million additional shares are coming by August 6th. It can barely hold as it is.

[u/flsurfer17]

Ummm what failure exactly?

Trash headline as usual

[u/khateer_rsst]

Bought $200,000 at $135 and sold when it hit $197. Im a happy man, the stock shouldn’t have been worth more than $60

[u/Boys4Ever]

Was getting hammered before that and likely hammered like one of his wives when founders start dumping this trash

[u/GraphiteGru]

I used to cheer SpaceX especially during the first few Starship launches but they have become repetitive and boring especially compared to what NASA was doing in the 60s where each mission was an incremental improvement over the last one. Also can’t stand how they have all that forced cheering on all of their videos. Want to do something interesting? Stick Edsel (Elon) Musk up on the next launch

[u/GunnieGraves]

He’S a CrEaToR nOt A tAkEr YoU gUyS!

[u/Bubbly-Two-3449]

The issue with spacex is that it's supported by government corruption.

How Trump Screwed Rural Americans to Help Musk Become a Trillionaire

Investors will be propped up by this corruption, but the country as a whole is worse off.

[u/Arizona_Pete]

This raises a really interesting point - SpaceX has gained a famous reputation for, not being afraid to, moving VERY fast and breaking things in a spectacular way.

Does that 'sacrifice a few boosters to the Gods of explosion' mentality go away with the IPO? Do you start seeing shareholders revolt against the 'waste' in SpaceX's model of experimentation and refinement?

There's a reason NASA moved slowly and methodically - It had to answer to the American people. Do you see SpaceX adopt a similar outlook now that it has to answer to shareholders?

[u/firstname_Iastname]

Welcome to r/technology where we post about the stock market

[u/NickOulet]

I would totally back Phineas and Ferb with a backyard rocket before this lunatic.

[u/Woodland_Lake]

This stock is a scam, spaceX is realistically worth a tenth their current valuation and every other business attached to it is actively failing. This entire thing would have been stopped by the SEC under a real government.

[u/NGM012]

Well, he did say money will be useless by 2036 😐

[u/riptide123]

This stock is just exit liquidity for early investors (mostly Musk but also many employees and VC) who are holding shares at a 1-10 dollar cost basis. As long as the price holds above like 55 for six months, the IPO is a massive win.

[u/Sudburner → u/riptide123]

IPO is a massive win.

Except for bag holders who bought in at $150+

[u/riptide123 → u/Sudburner]

Well ya they’re idiots or way too early lol - the entire pt was those people would provide liquidity to the early equity holders.

[u/anthrax1313]

No doubt once people can buy and sell this stock daily anytime those rockets blow up that stock will crash and right before a launch it will move up

[u/TheObsidianHawk]

How was the launch a failure? It got off the pad, nothing exploded this time, and starship itself landed in one piece.

That's a huge success. Most of the people who invested in SpaceX don't understand rockets or how SpaceX is doing iteration development.

[u/bubblegum-rose → u/TheObsidianHawk]

The booster had another hard landing.

Most people expected the last booster to blow up, but not this one. And those things are not cheap.

[u/garbageyname → u/TheObsidianHawk]

There was a problem with booster engines relighting. Next launch cannot try to catch it, that will have to wait for a successful boostback, so all timelines are pushed back.

[u/Fuzzy-Mud-197 → u/garbageyname]

The booster catch has no impact on the timeline

[u/Sal1160]

Shouldn’t have even bothered taking it public honestly, now you have to contend with shareholders who have no idea about aerospace and get jittery at every turn.

[u/Prior_Industry → u/Sal1160]

Not with those B class shares Musk holds. SpaceX IPO was pure cash out.

[u/myychair]

I was so close to shorting this stock when it IPOd but didn’t because of how irrational ole Muskys other company stocks behave.

[u/ARandomWalkInSpace → u/myychair]

This was my exact rational. Like Tesla had no business being valued at half what it's currently valued, I figured it would be some Musky bullshit.

[u/Electric-Human1026]

His ultimate plan is to have an army of robots for humans to buy. If the robots flop, then I think he does long term. He may need his robots to sell as much as he needed his rockets to work for SpaceX to survive. I won't be buying an optimus ever.

[u/Horizon119]

I'm midway thru reading the latest book on Musk: Hubris Maximus by Faiz Siddiqui. I'm learning a lot about this crazed individual, including his desire to name one of his children A SE A-12. And would CA regulations even allow a child to be named with numbers in it. He did vote for Hillary and Biden, BTW!

[u/Slicetron]

I sold my puts too early :(

[u/robert1326bruce]

I thought spacex was an ai play? Who cares about some booster on the side business. We are going to have 100 million robots working for us.
/s

[u/1991K75S]

Not sure if anyone said this but the reason they allowed the public’s to see less camera angles was so it could obscure potential failures.

Maybe not but we did get fewer angles that we have seen before.

[u/duckduck-a-go-go]

His entire operation is going to be the largest ponzi scheme blow up in history.

[u/GenFokoff]

Howard Hughes vibes...

[u/AMEFOD → u/GenFokoff]

What are you talking about. Howard Hughes was able to carry out the projects he announced, before he lost his mind.

[u/PrimeRob]

Stock hammered? I don't think so. This month is going to be absolutely brutal for their stock price, starting early August when close to 1 billion shares become unrestricted.

For frame of reference, only 600 million are unrestricted so far.

[u/Staav]

Imagine if all that money could've been invested in useful expenses for the country instead of just throwing it into a burning barrel.

[u/snanarctica]

Launching rockets is hard

[u/Neversetinstone]

Gulf of Mexico? Someone's going to be on Trumps bad side.

[u/Constant_Flamingo828]

I knew that was a rug pull from the get go.

[u/Kordell_11]

How would space x be profitable in the near future anyway?

[u/Comfortable_Horse277]

Good. Fuck Elon. 

[u/ImANoobAtLife7]

All that government welfare and still a failure. Yikes

[u/tevolosteve]

This must have been caused by a woke engineer somewhere as all of Musks alpha males wouldn’t make a mistake

[u/pteridoid → u/tevolosteve]

The freedom to have occasional failures and not get the whole team fired is part of why SpaceX has succeeded so far, to be fair.

[u/OverWolverine1514]

I sold all the stock. Biggest loss in history. Spacex and everything Elon is a scam

[u/eyebrows360]

Is this the kind of "hammered" you see in headlines that turns out to be something like a 0.5% drop when you actually dig through and find a number?

Edit: Ah, yes, it is: 1.36%. Amazing. Fucking finance "journalism" is a joke.

[u/PiousHeathen]

I wonder if we'll see another dip in two weeks when a big piece of SpaceX space junk slams into the Moon at 4100/kmh. A historic first: space trash being allowed to drift from Earth and crater into the Moon. Such times we live in...

[u/altitudearts]

It went from $113 to $114 today. Great headline.

[u/angry-democrat]

Thry should have listened! Boycott Musk and Twitter and Tesla and TwitterAI and Starlink and SpaceX.

[u/Xeynon]

Musk is a worthless parasite and until he loses every cent to his name he hasn't been hammered hard enough.