The bond market’s assessment also jibes with SpaceX’s stock. It’s a profitless, non-dividend-paying, one-person-controlled, empire-building project trading at more than 100 times sales, about 30 times the valuation of the S&P 500 Index. That’s the very definition of a junk stock.
Original link: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-02/spacex-is-junk-that-s-what-the-bond-market-says
I read somewhere that, if reusable rockets were all ok today, spacex needs some 450 launched just to get back to zero compared to Ariane 6 because of the massive costs.
So yeah “reusable” (I would like to know how reusable they actually are/how much they cost to reuse) is great and all but not yet economically viable it seems.
I work in the aerospace industry, mainly to satellites these days but I’ve worked in launch in the past and have plenty of friends who have as well.
That 450 figure is probably all of Falcon 9s development which has gone through several design iteration cycles. Industry rumors point to a new Falcon 9 booster being around $50 to build and a million or two to refurbish on average. The re-use is saving them a significant amount, but the upfront design cost was just so stupid high.
It’s also worth noting that Starlink supposedly launches at near cost meaning little profit for each of those, but then SpaceX turns around and prices Falcon 9 close to Atlas V for government contracts (90-150m total price so probably 60m profit) and gouges people on Transporter (they’re almost certainly pulling in 150-200m on each of those)
It’s honestly not the rocket business that is the problem. Yeah, it’s risky, but it’s actually ambitious and starlink makes money. So, they have a money making product that could actually fund development of a real reusable rocket.
The actual problem is the AI money pit they slapped on to the side. The amount of money XAI spends is so insane it’s like 80% of the whole capex. Which most people dont realize because it’s still called spacex, but in reality the whole space business has become the side project for an AI company burning money at an unprecedented rate.
But but … you can hear people cheering maniacally every time one of their rockets comes back to land! It must be a legit company.
Falcon 9/Heavy has already shown that reusability is feasable. Their rocket business is not making money because of the development costs if Starship. But Starship is also incredibly ambitious compared to other rocketry programs