No one is perfect. He is a better CEO than 99.9% of them out there. Who do you think would be better?
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No one is perfect. He is a better CEO than 99.9% of them out there. Who do you think would be better?
Gwynne Shotwell is the only person I can think of off the top of my head. But I feel the two of them make a far better team vs either one on their own.
Nobody is going to suggest SpaceX could have gotten to where they are without Elon, and nobody is going to suggest there is anyone who can match the vision and drive of Elon as SpaceX moves forward.
That doesn't negate the fact that he's still a major risk to the future of SpaceX. Possibly even the majorest. He's not all together in the head.
Absolutely. I can guarantee you that if Gwynne decided to start up SpaceX, it would not be where it is today. And Gwynne has helped Elon a lot. How much? You'd have to interview a lot of people at SpaceX to figure that one out. And I don't think it is in Gwynne's best interest to open that can of worms. Elon does have an ego.
e-FTW
New electron smell
My thoughts exactly folks: impossible without Elon, but thank goodness for Gwynne (Tesla needs one of those)! Now, will her powers be enough as Elon keeps slipping farther into whatever this is?
Meanwhile, I may have signed the Sharepost NDA (recommend you do it to get answers to basic $ questions like the ones we all have) and may have gotten my intro email...
Meanwhile, I may have signed the Sharepost NDA (recommend you do it to get answers to basic $ questions like the ones we all have) and may have gotten my intro email...
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Has anyone investigated what public funds have the highest exposure to SpaceX? All I've found so far is a Ron Baron fund, BPTIX, which has around 5% SpaceX, main holding is Tesla at 36%.
I don't think Musk has slipped into anything. You can ascribe _everything_ he's written on COVID to a financial motive.
He's wrong a lot of the time on lots of things.
e-FTW
New electron smell
I chose/tried to avoid coming to that conclusion. But that comp package is quite massive...
e-FTW
New electron smell
So... cash-in that massive TSLA gain and move it to SpaceX? Am I crazy for thinking of doing that? Any gotchas tax-wise?
Asking for a friend...
Asking for a friend...
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Not a crazy idea. But be careful of SpaceX. I only see two upcoming events that will increase its stock price. One is the Starlink spin out in a year or two. That’ll be nice. The other is in ten to twenty years when and if SpaceX has routine missions to the moon and Mars. Until then SpaceX makes money from putting stuff into orbit for commercial and military customers. There is a true finite limit to that market. Oh, it’ll grow a bit fast than world GDP to be sure, but nothing like the crazy growth a car company currently capturing less than 1% of the global market can have. Realize that SpaceX is already the market leader in space launch. It has limited growth there.
Now maybe SpaceX will start building other satellites for other customers. That’ll be a nice business. Maybe it’ll start taking on more military contracts to build stuff. Lord knows they could do it more efficiently that the current government military contractors. But absent these things, SpaceX is just going to be a steady eddy company and not a wild growth company for quite a while.
Thoughts?
Xepa777
Banned
With Starlink alone SpaceX has crazy potential. They're severely underplaying customer base potential in order to avoid massive lobbying psuhback from traditional Telcos. In five years from now it will be clear that SpaceX is an existential threat to even the largest of providers, even if they can't capture NYC/LA.
And with Starship, the type of enabling capability that will come from that is something you can't easily model out. It's like how the iPhone redefined what a smartphone could do. We just know that by going several orders of magnitude cheaper to launch something in space, the infrastructure will enable so much more. Over a 10-15 year timespan, there's going to be crazy stuff that develops from that. #TrustTheProcess
SpaceX is a $37 billion market cap company. There's a strong argument to be made that by 2050 it will be one of the top 3 largest companies in the world. Very possible by 2040 even.
And with Starship, the type of enabling capability that will come from that is something you can't easily model out. It's like how the iPhone redefined what a smartphone could do. We just know that by going several orders of magnitude cheaper to launch something in space, the infrastructure will enable so much more. Over a 10-15 year timespan, there's going to be crazy stuff that develops from that. #TrustTheProcess
SpaceX is a $37 billion market cap company. There's a strong argument to be made that by 2050 it will be one of the top 3 largest companies in the world. Very possible by 2040 even.
Among other vertical endeavors, we know that SpaceX plans to use Starship for terrestrial transportation. That seems pie-in-the-sky now, but so did landing booster rockets, or selling the Model 3 for under $40k. Once the Covid crisis is over, there will be a pretty sizable market for hyper-fast intercontinental travel.
Elon's ambitions are anything but "steady eddy"!
Agreed that Starlink will be a significant player in providing internet service (or the pipe for internet service), but one cannot dismiss terrestrial service providers as the competition for users in traditionally low density regions heats up. Its not like Tesla vs the auto industry, where the established players have basically waited for Tesla to lay the EV groundwork while they leaned back on brand recognition/loyalty. There's basically no such thing in internet service--nobody cares where it comes from (other than maybe identifying the one place they don't want to get their service from is their current provider) and the connectivity establishment understands their product needs to keep up with cost-performance in a way that the auto stalwarts never could.
In any case, here are the potential threats I see to Starlink's business model:
1. There will always be a threshold of user density at which terrestrial providers can build out infrastructure to sell better+cheaper service than Starlink. Plus as both population and density increase over time and terrestrial providers find it profitable to expand further into traditionally rural areas, the potential starlink user base will continually shrink. Even the initially beneficial distribution of WFH workforces will eventually turn negative on Starlink.
2. There will always be a global entry threshold for users that's a function of wealth (can someone actually afford internet service?) and politics (will a country actually permit service in their borders?). I expanded on this over in the starlink thread, but the TLDR is that there's a significant global population that doesn't qualify, and in the end a majority of the global Starlink users will be in the USA.
3. Next gen/mm wireless networks: Obviously there's plenty uncertainties with and plenty of work to do on that technology, but the bottom line is a similar story around user density. If a terrestrial service can last-mile wireless from a few towers that's going to be a game changer for providers that find hardwiring users too expensive. This has an additional threat if direct-to-device service turns into a reliable thing.
4. Perhaps counterintuitively, there's no current competition in space. OneWeb is restructuring and the tech was always going to be lagging Starlink, Telesat is years behind assuming they even remain a thing, and the establishment GEO internet services rely on technology that even in latest-and-greatest form (which is still conservative) is ~twice the capital of Starlink. (I did a hand-wavey cost normalization of the two in the starlink thread if you're interested). BUT, as the history of anything tells us, no advantage lasts forever. As more and more companies try to compete in the satellite internet space, each company is going to have to settle for a smaller piece of the pie and/or evolve their product in some differentiating way.
Just spitballing a potential disruptor to Starlink's otherwise massive disruption, many folks see GEO as 'dead'...but IMHO its actually ripe for opportunity. IMHO the above mentioned latest-and-greatest GEO internet satellite only normalizes to ~twice as costly as Starlink because nobody like SpaceX has ever tried to do GEO like SpaceX has done LEO. As a data point, SpaceX has figured out a way to reduce cost of a LEO satellite by over 2 orders of magnitude while also increasing capacity by more than 3 orders of magnitude (using Iridium Next...kind of the only relevant comparison that's in public domain). Obviously a big part of that comes from economies of scale, but if a GEO (or MEO) constellation could realize even a fraction of those gains on a new school vs old school GEO/MEO, that math very much checks out. Partner with a LEO network (OneWeb or someone new?) to handle the fraction of traffic that actually needs low latency and its a least plausible competition to Starlink.
That's not to say I think Starlink is doomed--far from it. Folks who know me know I'm very bullish on Elon's unparalleled genius and vision, and I firmly believe he's not going heavy into something that doesn't have a significant probability of success. I just happen to also be a little more realistic on how 'success' is defined. It's obvious that over the next few years as Starlink builds out their constellation they're going to have some pretty blue skies; In that same time, we'll learn which if any of the above threats turn into thunderheads...
We are excited at the prospect of becoming Starlink customers. To your point, our terrestrial cable and cellular companies could theoretically meet all of our wants/needs, but I don't see that happening to our satisfaction. Here's why we want Starlink service:
1. Service quality. Our cable provider is not always proactive at maintaining their extensive network, and congestion seems common. In our area, they essentially have a monopoly. I feel more confident in SpaceX's ability to maintain a network of satellites and ground stations!
2. Reliability. During power outages, which have become more frequent in California's mountains due to wildfire threats, our cable service only lasts a few hours following power shutdown. Never mind that we have Powerwalls and can keep our home going - our Internet service is dependent on feeble little batteries maintained by the cable company. This is quite solvable, but they don't seem to be in a hurry to put in "real" batteries, much less solar to charge them! The cell towers around here seem to have the same issue.
3. Portability. I'd like to be able to take a Starlink receiver with us into remote areas. This would include national park areas where people have lobbied against "encroachment" of cellular signals - if I want to do a few hours of work/investing during the middle of a long camping trip, that's my business!
If there's one common theme in the above, it's that terrestrial providers are subject to a multitude of complex local issues. Almost by definition, a satellite-based network should be above most of that. Starlink is quite complex, but not in a minutely local manner. Structurally, I think the Starlink approach is ideally suited to addressing the three "wants" listed above.
Totally understand, and they're legitimate points for wanting Starlink service over others. I think what many folks are missing in their fundamental analysis of terrestrial vs Starlink is that the former don't provide satisfactory service because they don't have to provide satisfactory service. Its not unlike the auto industry lagging on providing a legitimate EV to compete with Tesla because, at least up until M3 started taking off, it really was just a boutique product.
Its unfortunate and doesn't help your situation at all, but I'd gather that--especially in your neck of the woods--once a critical mass of people switch to starlink the terrestrial products will become much more attractive.
This one's a little more unclear. Here's my thoughts on that.
e-FTW
New electron smell
Definitely great data points and thoughts here!
Wondering if TSLA is really worth that much right now, and if a correction is on the way. Definitely room for growth with Y, Semi and Cybertruck though.
But one is also probably drawn to SpaceX because of rarity...
Wondering if TSLA is really worth that much right now, and if a correction is on the way. Definitely room for growth with Y, Semi and Cybertruck though.
But one is also probably drawn to SpaceX because of rarity...
e-FTW
New electron smell
Well, seems like a bunch of SpaceX and Tesla skeptics talking. Seems like a self proclaimed "market integrity" guy. His pinned tweet is that as a 22 year old analyst he reported on some Enron executive departure. Big whoop. Enron was a very rare corporate fraud. Sounds like a guy who sees Enrons all over the place. So take all info in that thread with a huge grain of salt.
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