Edit: The fanboys can’t accept hard proof and are downvoting the hell out of this comment and the post.
Real mature for supposedly “future” and “forward” thinking people.
Omfgnta on
So Elon can pay himself with your money.
ClassroomOwn4354 on
They are afraid of Amazon that wants to compete with their main revenue source and need a big slush fund in order to weather the inevitable turbulence because Amazon almost never plays fair and as a company is two orders of magnitude bigger than SpaceX in everything but valuation. And a new rocket seems to be debuting every other month at this point and lately those have been attempting to land their first stage like what they are famous for. The ISS is being de-orbited in 5 years and so there goes the Dragon revenue. That is their 3 products – launch, starlink and dragon.
Substantial__Unit on
Private investors are probably topped off, this can happen when the smart money feels like SpaceX is at the top of its value,or is heavily over valued. The less smart money from public markets can then help SpaceX bit it can also push its over valuation higher making it even more risky. Which of these it is I have no idea.
sewand717 on
Pre-Trump, the conventional wisdom would say public ownership would kill the Martian dream as there’s little possibility of profit. But now, Musk may feel he can bully the board and his investors into supporting whatever he wants (see Tesla).
So is Elon giving up on Mars, or is this just another sign that the uberbillionaires can do whatever they want?
Skeptical0ptimist on
Hmm.
For years, Musk has been poo-pooing space based solar power generation due to conversion losses from optical photon to electrons, then electrons to microwave photons back to electrons.
But I guess now that the use point is in orbital space (space AI data center), he’s on board?
Given how difficult it is to put in new generation capacity in the terrestrial U.S., and SpaceX virtual monopoly on orbital launch (especially once starship becomes functional), he may have an insurmountable advantage in scaling up AI data centers by launching them into space, at least among the US AI players.
The_Axumite on
Tesla is ruined..only way to be a trillionare now. We are never going to mars any time soon.
TheDudeAbidesFarOut on
Exit
Liquidity
Exit
Liquidity
Cronus_Z on
Elon desperately wants to be able to say he’s a trillionaire. Bringing it public will push him over that mark easily.
So basically a stupid move to soothe his ego at the expense of risking what has made the company successful
adarkuccio on
He knows just like tesla it’ll be extremely overvalued so he wants da money
runningoutofwords on
Maybe they’re afraid the Tesla memestock has run its course, and the floor is about to drop out. Time to move the grift over to the next memestock.
zoinkability on
So Musk can grift more money out of shareholders, presumably. It’s been working great for him at Tesla.
ElZacho1230 on
Oh yay, instead of Mars we will get more AI Slop, but from Space.
forseti99 on
>“The level beyond that is constructing satellite factories on the Moon and using a mass driver (electromagnetic railgun) to accelerate AI satellites to lunar escape velocity without the need for rockets,”
Dear god, this guy watched a video of Dyson Sphere Program, or something similar, maybe that
Kurzgesagt video of “How to build a Dyson Sphere”.
Gullible_Meaning_774 on
Are they going to socialize the losses now?
Ehgadsman on
so Saudi Arabia can buy the United States space program and ballistic missile technology, duh!
RulerOfSlides on
For all the people I’ve argued with here over the years that Starship was a bullshit program and Musk was a charlatan, now that Mars is about to be abandoned by an IPO, where’s my apology?
Drone314 on
Tesla is dying. The cars are going to have lets say, a challenged resale environment. International competitors are going to eat Elon’s lunch with new sales and Tesla may vary well fold into the dustbin of auto manufacturers. So he needs money. Now that BO is on the scene competition in launch can begin in earnest.
B4SSF4C3 on
They are about to get real competition. If they wait until other firms have reusable vehicles, they will not get as high a valuation. They are cashing out now while the cashing out is good.
Spiritual_Impact8246 on
Private equity will only take you so far without giving up all your ownership. Going public now means keeping the majority stake and continuing to raise funding. You always want to wait to go public until you have maxed out private equity
InSight89 on
This really shows how much Elon Musk has changed over the years. He’s gone from a man who deeply opposed taking his companies public due to the inherit flaws in doing so to a man who is now in support of it.
That being said, I’ll probably look at investing as I’m sure there’s some money to be made. But the whole humans to Mars goal will basically be tossed right out of the window.
Raspberries-Are-Evil on
To make money for the executives.
PM_ME_YER_MUDFLAPS on
Elon needs to cash out. It is that simple
internetlad on
That trillion ain’t gonna pay itself
nim_opet on
What kind of a question is that? Going public will get the private shareholders and exit and something between 300 and 1000% return on their investment.
cplchanb on
Their starships are costing a fortune
TheWorldRider on
He probably realized his spacefaring goals are unlikely in his lifetime. Might as well cash in.
-BluBone- on
Go public and enshitify space exploration 🙄
robdalky on
It is a bit surprising, for a space endeavor one of the benefits of staying private is freedom from FOIA and the ability to keep anything you want under lock and key
It seems like having a publicly traded entity would jeopardize a lot of the privilege that certain government agencies and private entities can employ
Glass-Helicopter-126 on
Interesting article and yet I don’t see any thoughtful answers here about why this might make sense for SpaceX. “Mmm Elon suck” isn’t a thoughtful answer. Maybe it’s true, but back it up with something other than cynical speculation.
ringobob on
Why? Because Tesla is wearing thin. No more or less complicated than that.
m1013828 on
Money for mars would be my guess.
Decronym on
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nteh60i “Last usage”)|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nteradq “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[tanking](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nteo899 “Last usage”)|Filling the tanks of a rocket stage|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
i Won’T bRinG Ai to nOt-TwiTteR iF I dON’t gEt mOneY eVEn ThoUgH i cAn’T COde!
babganoush on
A trillion more to add to the Tesler payout. And one more industry to short on will before that payday.
unskilledplay on
Musk has consistently sworn that he will never allow SpaceX to go public because he would lose control.
I think the change of mind is due to his entrance into the political realm. If SpaceX doesn’t go public and detach itself from Musk, next administration has the authority to react to Musk’s political activities by regulating SpaceX. FAA and subsequently the US president has absolute authority over airspace.
By going public the degree in which the next administration will be willing to punish SpaceX for Musk’s activities is somewhat mitigated.
slimnerdy on
they are at the point where the need the dumb money
Lugubrious_Lothario on
I love space stocks but I hate Musk. This is genuinely a difficult two red buttons choice for me.
Prize_Proof5332 on
Before everyone realizes that Starship is the Cybertruck of rockets.
I_am_no_Ghost on
Once enough of the rich shareholders sell their stocks off to the public they’ll announce bad news. Stock prices take a dump. Panic selling ensues. Rich buy back stock for pennies on the dollar.
Just my guess.
GunnyStacker on
*Looks at Boeing
Yeah, what could go wrong?
_Stormhound_ on
This is bad for mars city ambitions
airfryerfuntime on
This is very odd. Musk has resisted because he didn’t want what happaned with Tesla to happen with SpaceX. There must be some major cash on the line for him to change tunes like this.
maniaq on
TL/DR for those who don’t want to RTFA:
> Abhi Tripathi, a long-time SpaceX employee who is now director of mission operations at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, believes that once Musk realized Starlink satellites could be architected into a distributed network of data centers, the writing was on the wall.
think about that for a moment…
Musk not only understands robots and AI heavily rely on data centres, he also knows that SPACE EXPLORATION will **heavily rely on robots**
_he wants to surround the Earth with a giant space brain_
Mr_Lobster on
Because how else will Musk become a trillionaire?
GimmeSumCredit on
Theory: SpaceX goes public, then a Musk ETF opens with basket including spaceX and Tesla. ETF causes Tesla stock to rise, resulting in Elon hitting his requirement to be given his $500b bonus resulting in becoming the first trillionaire on earth.
SteroidSandwich on
More money in someone’s pocket.
ApprehensiveSize7662 on
“Data centres in space………..started his own company, xAI, in 2023.”
So basically there’s a fair chance spaceX is going to go bankrupt trying to do AI in space because elon said something stupid and got sued in to buying twitter and is now trying to turn it in to xAI?
frisbeethecat on
Timing. The market is poised to crash, and crash hard. This raises peak IPO money before the AI bubble crashes.
50 Comments
Money.
It’s not a complicated question
[Elon confirmed](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1998900795207725073?s=46&t=Co5mseB-5-sNUFodl861bw) for all the spacex fanboys who can’t accept this.
Edit: The fanboys can’t accept hard proof and are downvoting the hell out of this comment and the post.
Real mature for supposedly “future” and “forward” thinking people.
So Elon can pay himself with your money.
They are afraid of Amazon that wants to compete with their main revenue source and need a big slush fund in order to weather the inevitable turbulence because Amazon almost never plays fair and as a company is two orders of magnitude bigger than SpaceX in everything but valuation. And a new rocket seems to be debuting every other month at this point and lately those have been attempting to land their first stage like what they are famous for. The ISS is being de-orbited in 5 years and so there goes the Dragon revenue. That is their 3 products – launch, starlink and dragon.
Private investors are probably topped off, this can happen when the smart money feels like SpaceX is at the top of its value,or is heavily over valued. The less smart money from public markets can then help SpaceX bit it can also push its over valuation higher making it even more risky. Which of these it is I have no idea.
Pre-Trump, the conventional wisdom would say public ownership would kill the Martian dream as there’s little possibility of profit. But now, Musk may feel he can bully the board and his investors into supporting whatever he wants (see Tesla).
So is Elon giving up on Mars, or is this just another sign that the uberbillionaires can do whatever they want?
Hmm.
For years, Musk has been poo-pooing space based solar power generation due to conversion losses from optical photon to electrons, then electrons to microwave photons back to electrons.
But I guess now that the use point is in orbital space (space AI data center), he’s on board?
Given how difficult it is to put in new generation capacity in the terrestrial U.S., and SpaceX virtual monopoly on orbital launch (especially once starship becomes functional), he may have an insurmountable advantage in scaling up AI data centers by launching them into space, at least among the US AI players.
Tesla is ruined..only way to be a trillionare now. We are never going to mars any time soon.
Exit
Liquidity
Exit
Liquidity
Elon desperately wants to be able to say he’s a trillionaire. Bringing it public will push him over that mark easily.
So basically a stupid move to soothe his ego at the expense of risking what has made the company successful
He knows just like tesla it’ll be extremely overvalued so he wants da money
Maybe they’re afraid the Tesla memestock has run its course, and the floor is about to drop out. Time to move the grift over to the next memestock.
So Musk can grift more money out of shareholders, presumably. It’s been working great for him at Tesla.
Oh yay, instead of Mars we will get more AI Slop, but from Space.
>“The level beyond that is constructing satellite factories on the Moon and using a mass driver (electromagnetic railgun) to accelerate AI satellites to lunar escape velocity without the need for rockets,”
Dear god, this guy watched a video of Dyson Sphere Program, or something similar, maybe that
Kurzgesagt video of “How to build a Dyson Sphere”.
Are they going to socialize the losses now?
so Saudi Arabia can buy the United States space program and ballistic missile technology, duh!
For all the people I’ve argued with here over the years that Starship was a bullshit program and Musk was a charlatan, now that Mars is about to be abandoned by an IPO, where’s my apology?
Tesla is dying. The cars are going to have lets say, a challenged resale environment. International competitors are going to eat Elon’s lunch with new sales and Tesla may vary well fold into the dustbin of auto manufacturers. So he needs money. Now that BO is on the scene competition in launch can begin in earnest.
They are about to get real competition. If they wait until other firms have reusable vehicles, they will not get as high a valuation. They are cashing out now while the cashing out is good.
Private equity will only take you so far without giving up all your ownership. Going public now means keeping the majority stake and continuing to raise funding. You always want to wait to go public until you have maxed out private equity
This really shows how much Elon Musk has changed over the years. He’s gone from a man who deeply opposed taking his companies public due to the inherit flaws in doing so to a man who is now in support of it.
That being said, I’ll probably look at investing as I’m sure there’s some money to be made. But the whole humans to Mars goal will basically be tossed right out of the window.
To make money for the executives.
Elon needs to cash out. It is that simple
That trillion ain’t gonna pay itself
What kind of a question is that? Going public will get the private shareholders and exit and something between 300 and 1000% return on their investment.
Their starships are costing a fortune
He probably realized his spacefaring goals are unlikely in his lifetime. Might as well cash in.
Go public and enshitify space exploration 🙄
It is a bit surprising, for a space endeavor one of the benefits of staying private is freedom from FOIA and the ability to keep anything you want under lock and key
It seems like having a publicly traded entity would jeopardize a lot of the privilege that certain government agencies and private entities can employ
Interesting article and yet I don’t see any thoughtful answers here about why this might make sense for SpaceX. “Mmm Elon suck” isn’t a thoughtful answer. Maybe it’s true, but back it up with something other than cynical speculation.
Why? Because Tesla is wearing thin. No more or less complicated than that.
Money for mars would be my guess.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nte9s7d “Last usage”)|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/ntek0j4 “Last usage”)|European Space Agency|
|[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/ntekp83 “Last usage”)|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[FAR](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/ntee517 “Last usage”)|[Federal Aviation Regulations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations)|
|[FOIA](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/ntef2lc “Last usage”)|(US) [Freedom of Information Act](https://www.foia.gov/)|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/ntedy1l “Last usage”)|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[GTO](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/ntep9ts “Last usage”)|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/ntelbu5 “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/ntes4ow “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[RTG](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nteeoun “Last usage”)|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nteradq “Last usage”)|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nteh60i “Last usage”)|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nteradq “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[tanking](/r/Space/comments/1pjku62/stub/nteo899 “Last usage”)|Filling the tanks of a rocket stage|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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i Won’T bRinG Ai to nOt-TwiTteR iF I dON’t gEt mOneY eVEn ThoUgH i cAn’T COde!
A trillion more to add to the Tesler payout. And one more industry to short on will before that payday.
Musk has consistently sworn that he will never allow SpaceX to go public because he would lose control.
I think the change of mind is due to his entrance into the political realm. If SpaceX doesn’t go public and detach itself from Musk, next administration has the authority to react to Musk’s political activities by regulating SpaceX. FAA and subsequently the US president has absolute authority over airspace.
By going public the degree in which the next administration will be willing to punish SpaceX for Musk’s activities is somewhat mitigated.
they are at the point where the need the dumb money
I love space stocks but I hate Musk. This is genuinely a difficult two red buttons choice for me.
Before everyone realizes that Starship is the Cybertruck of rockets.
Once enough of the rich shareholders sell their stocks off to the public they’ll announce bad news. Stock prices take a dump. Panic selling ensues. Rich buy back stock for pennies on the dollar.
Just my guess.
*Looks at Boeing
Yeah, what could go wrong?
This is bad for mars city ambitions
This is very odd. Musk has resisted because he didn’t want what happaned with Tesla to happen with SpaceX. There must be some major cash on the line for him to change tunes like this.
TL/DR for those who don’t want to RTFA:
> Abhi Tripathi, a long-time SpaceX employee who is now director of mission operations at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, believes that once Musk realized Starlink satellites could be architected into a distributed network of data centers, the writing was on the wall.
think about that for a moment…
Musk not only understands robots and AI heavily rely on data centres, he also knows that SPACE EXPLORATION will **heavily rely on robots**
_he wants to surround the Earth with a giant space brain_
Because how else will Musk become a trillionaire?
Theory: SpaceX goes public, then a Musk ETF opens with basket including spaceX and Tesla. ETF causes Tesla stock to rise, resulting in Elon hitting his requirement to be given his $500b bonus resulting in becoming the first trillionaire on earth.
More money in someone’s pocket.
“Data centres in space………..started his own company, xAI, in 2023.”
So basically there’s a fair chance spaceX is going to go bankrupt trying to do AI in space because elon said something stupid and got sued in to buying twitter and is now trying to turn it in to xAI?
Timing. The market is poised to crash, and crash hard. This raises peak IPO money before the AI bubble crashes.