This result was inevitable the monent that the government decided to outsource their space exploration/scientific endeavors to a private company.
You don’t need to be Cassandra to be able to recognize 100% predictable outcomes.
SpaceX needs NASA contacts now now than ever. The jerk’s AI business has been shoved into SpaceX, and that’s a money burning machine. Should NASA take one too many contracts away from SpaceX, the huge red numbers will come out.
I think this is the right take.
SpaceX may believe they’ve discovered a business model without NASA, but when the bubble pops they’ll be singing a different tune.
This is also a good reason to not nationalize spaceX as so many in this thread are calling for. I don’t want to be financially responsible for the AI mess they’re investing in now. Let them eat those losses.
The only reason I’ve been critical of NASA is because of their over reliance on that shit heel musk
Revoke launch licenses until NASA gets what they need. Export ban on company and tech. Nationalize launch assets if absolutely necessary. Or at least threaten these things. SpaceX needs starlink, the kind of AI revenue they’d otherwise need is never going to materialize. Force them to play ball.
Yeah that’ll happen. I’ll just stay standing while holding my breath until it does.
All of these are rational national plans, if only the administration is rational and working on national interests.
If it was built with public money, it should be appropriated to public use.
They generally weren’t given money.
They won contracts and provided services. They did it almost entirely with fixed base price contracts as well. None of the cost plus, which was typical in space, and leans more into handouts as people intentionally try to milk the government by going over.
Its like if the US government buys billions of pieces of paper a year from paper suppliers and you expect them to own the paper companies that sell them the paper because they took government money for a sale. Many even own their own mills, but thats now a government mill since the government bought their paper.
This analogy falls apart in several ways. The majority of all funding for SpaceX comes from the government. This isn’t like a paper company that has massive contracts outside of the government. Furthermore a paper company is a dime a dozen and probably not a national security issue like the sole provided of needed launches.
Governments would probably never need to take over a mundane company like paper producer, but they most certainly would need to take over a critical supplier of national security needed services because it is run by a space Nazi.
Doesn’t really matter if the government is the main source that gets it off the ground.
Maybe a upstart paper company was able to snag a contract and they could undercut existing companies because they found an abandoned mill that they got for pennies on the dollar.
National security is definitely an issue, but again nothing to do with how it was built. Thats entirely outside how something is funded.
Edit: just to clarify the majority of all early funding. Today its starlink, government money isnt the main thing now.
The majority of all funding for SpaceX comes from the government.
Well that’s kind of the definition of “funding”. What other funding would there be? If you mean revenue or income, I think that would be possible, but that claim could use a citation.
I believe SpaceX is funded through a combination of private equity investment, US government contracts, starlink revenue, and fee contracts with the ISS and HLS.
I can see your point with the technicality of the word funding. I was definitely using it as a catch all for all their revenue streams.
Ok, that sounds about right.
And with all that in mind, I do think government funding is a significant part of their total income, but I would be very surprised if it made up for more than say 20%. I’m trying to keep in mind that less than 5% of their launches are actually for NASA. And honestly, being a telecom/ISP has been a lucrative racket from day one with the bell telephone company. (So I’m willing to bet that starlink is their cash cow)
You are correct, Starlink accounts for about 55% ($4,290 million out of $7,814 million) of their revenue. A closer examination reveals government contracts, not consumers, is the fastest growing market from 25% to 40% over the course of one year (2024 to 2025) of total Starlink revenue.
Sure, those are all things the government could do in a world where this wasn’t the intended outcome.
NASA is being fed to SpaceX like a prime rib.
Musk also desperately needs that starlink revenue to continue until he can merge Tesla and SpaceX to cover for dropping Tesla sales.
And who will make these restrictions? Until someone shoots trump, that’s not going to happen. Hopefully it happens soon.
This is some Borderlands megacorporation bullshit I tell ya.
Fuck anything musk related.
All the tech bros were constantly looking down on ESA, Arianespace and Ariane 6. Demanding that this perfectly good but slightly more costly platform should be thrown away and that Europe should make itself completely dependent on SpaceX+Russia instead. ESA and EU did not. Surely SpaceX would have gladly launched Iris2, the sovereign strategic alternative to Starlink. Right? Right?!
Before SpaceX it was the ULA doing ALL launches. This is nothing new. Launch is expensive, and no one wants to pay the barrier to entry.
Exactly. NASA bankrolled SpaceX to break the ULA monopoly, and now they are also funding Blue Origin to break the SpaceX monopoly. Rinse and repeat forever.
Great article. Evil billionaire monopolizes the space launch industry with help from the Federal Government, could be alternate headline…It also sounds like a made for TV movie from the 80/90’s. So is NASA going do anything about it or are they really hoping that New Glen comes online rapidly to provide an alternate? There are several satellite companies, like AST Space mobile, that are also waiting to hitch a ride that seem to be cast to the side now with the recent change at Spacex to focus solely on Starship and stand down their workshorse F9.
So what I’m seeing here is an interesting situation. The main thing that seems to be an issue is that they’re ramping down the falcon 9 before people were really ready for that. That leaves all the people who were expecting that launch service to continue (Including NASA), stuck at the moment, possibly without a viable alternative. Luckily, while they may not be taking new contracts now, the article says they are still fulfilling the ones they have, so that’s good.
So yes, leaving people without a launch provider sucks for sure. But the fact that they’re shutting down falcon also demonstrates that SpaceX is expecting to be able to offer starship launches very soon. Remember, if they can’t put anything into space, they don’t really have a business at all. So this really does suggest that at least they think starship can totally replace falcon and that it’s almost ready.
Isn’t commercial space ventures great? They can set launches to “out of service” delaying or cancelling research and/or ISS/LEO resupply.
SpaceX and Starlink should have to be broken up. xAI’s purchase by SpaceX never should have been allowed. The contracts for NASA should have always required ownership of the investments made and the amount of rented tech never should have been allowed critical mass. Starlink should have been allowed a monopolistic ownership of its spots in space and should have been for forced to create an open interoperability standard from the jump.
The fact that “SI” is how SpaceX is talking about those AI projects shows they are very much still a government contractor even in this phase, just looking at different pots of money. Contracts that Musk’s massive ties to corruption should be viewed as last resort, at least until they cut him out of the company (while he is charged and tried for his corruption).
In the long run that makes sense. In the short term, they’re linked. SpaceX doesn’t have contracts to fill every launch, so they fill in the extra space with Starlilnk launches. Starlink doesn’t exist without SpaceX.
Starlink needing a subsidy for launches is only because they are operating as a monopoly. Competitors get flights just fine without it
Imprison Musk for treason and nationalize spaceX
That sounds very communist. US doesn’t nationalize companies. US wages war against countries known for doing that (right now it’s Iran).
And yet, the govt owns 10% of Intel stocks.
nationalize as in purchase? or steal?
when countries nationalize a company they actually purchase it.
so you want the government to pay Elon literal trillions, for what exactly?
prioritize health care, housing and reducing inflation, ignore shitty people in orbit for now.
What an interesting twist of logic. SpaceX is three companies in a trenchcoat and laughably overvalued. Even by their own hilariously optimistic IPO documentation, the rocketry company represented a very small portion of the overall value. So sure, pay for the rocketry part. Now let’s see how Starlink fares (literally) without a build-in government floated launch platform. It’s okay though, because xAI will be worth $22,000,000,000,000 any day now.
Pay him? Fucking imprison him for his DOGE crimes alone, then seize his assets and utilize them for the national good.
Nationalize Space X after all these pedophiles are in prison, lol.
So nationalize spacex, and never outsource key capabilities again.
And Elon is more like an Edison than a Tesla so there will be no inter-agency co-operation for sure.
