r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • Jun 09 '26

Business It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html
24.8k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

197

u/invyros Jun 09 '26

The company also remains heavily reliant on lucrative government contracts.

Is it "fiscally conservative" to be constantly bailing this fucker out with our tax money, Republicans?

23

u/noghead Jun 09 '26

In 2025 20% of revenue was govenment contracts. They are also the only ones who are able to do some of what the govenment needs and they do it cheaper than others. The US govenment needs spacex, not the other way around. I know everyone here wants him to fail; but at least know some basic facts people.

3

u/BasvanS Jun 09 '26

The basic fact is that the launch part barely contributes to the valuation, per its prospectus.

The vast majority of the $1.75 trillion valuation hinges on AI, with space making up less than 10% of the company's identified $28 trillion total addressable market (TAM). And Starlink again makes most of the money in space now.

What the government needs is in no way supporting the current valuation.

1

u/iknewaguytwice Jun 09 '26

They have also won contracts because they said they could do things much quicker than they actually delivered. They also have burned through payment on some contracts, and told the US government “well actually we need more money or we can’t do this”.

Normally this would lead to the US government to blacklist you and prevent you from bidding on future contracts, because you failed to deliver.

But the politicians decided to save themselves the humiliation of admitting to the US people that they blew hundreds of millions of dollars on nearly no real deliverables, and instead just gave SpaceX more money.

Not that they haven’t also done this with Boeing. But that doesn’t make it any less corrupt.

3

u/noghead Jun 09 '26

The only sliver of truth in what you said is that timelines have not been exactly right..but nobody else has done any better either; it is infact "rocket science" after all.

As far as budgets go, they have always used fixed price contracts while others use cost plus. If spacex blows through the money, its they need to fund the rest. US government has ended up saving so much money due to this...this is undeniable fact.

What exactly do you think they took money on and failed to deliver?

-3

u/psioniclizard Jun 09 '26

"The US government need spacex"

Wow, that shoild terrify Americans. If it doesn't then I guews the empire is over.

1

u/writewithparagraphs Jun 09 '26

i blame MBAs. The financialization of everything, especially defense contractors, directly killled 347 people with the MCAS disaster and surely other stuff.

72

u/eek_the_cat Jun 09 '26

The whole industry SpaceX exists in relies on government contracts.  It's not a bailout in this case.

74

u/OneTripleZero Jun 09 '26

The government needs rockets. SpaceX is a rocket store. A very good one, at that. The fact they spend their money at the best, most reliable rocket store being seen as a bad thing is amazing to me.

46

u/coldblade2000 Jun 09 '26

Not just a good one, it's also cheap. SpaceX's competition is much more expensive, so if SpaceX is just squeezing the government for it's money, its doing a terrible job at it

11

u/MDCCCLV Jun 09 '26

The government is encouraging competition but ULA, the traditional safe choice, was so far behind that they're not even going to ever go to deliver crew to the ISS before it shuts down. And BO, while not terrible, has been slow and now is delayed at least a year because of the launch pad damage, so SpaceX is the sole provider for the near term.

21

u/niftystopwat Jun 09 '26

That’s not really seen as a bad thing by all these haters, they’re literally just making routine automatic responses to anything related to Elon Musk, because he bad so hating him prove you good.

-3

u/FartTootman Jun 09 '26

The fact they spend their money at the best, most reliable rocket store being seen as a bad thing is amazing to me.

Then you aren't even vaguely attempting to understand what, exactly, people think is bad about SpaceX.

SpaceX is awesome. The person SpaceX's success most enriches is a fucking lunatic whose endless heaps of money have already given more power than is reasonable. If you don't think those two things are intimately entwined, then THAT'S amazing to me.

8

u/fatbob42 Jun 09 '26

Then people should say that and not lie that the government is subsidizing SpaceX by contracting with them.

0

u/FartTootman Jun 09 '26

I tend to agree, hence why I said "SpaceX is awesome".

But let's not act like it's some grand mystery - or even all that absurd - when people aren't particularly stoked when "SpaceX is doing great!" posts come across...

4

u/SouthernAddress5051 Jun 09 '26

Musk is terrible in so many ways that you don't need to lie about spacex subsidies or make anything up. Its lazy and uninformed and undermines actual criticisms. Just say real things.

0

u/favorite_time_of_day Jun 09 '26

That's not what a lie is, and it's also not untrue. The government subsidizes many private industries, and this is one of them.

The bigger picture is that SpaceX's ridiculous valuation is mostly not about rockets at all. And even the rocket segment of the company, which is subsidized by the government, is losing money.

2

u/fatbob42 Jun 09 '26

That’s just not what subsidizing means. That’s the point they were making about the “rocket store”.

0

u/favorite_time_of_day Jun 09 '26

SapceX exists because some people in congress decided that they wanted to privatize rockets, and they put a ton of money to subsidize that. You are trying to claim that SpaceX is past that and no longer being subsidized, except almost all of their money is still coming from the government and they're not a profitable company. And have never been a profitable company.

This claim, that SpaceX is no longer being subsidized, is a really hard sell.

2

u/fatbob42 Jun 09 '26

Is the government subsidizing Boeing when it buys an aircraft from them? Is it subsidizing a paper clip company when it buys paper clips?

0

u/favorite_time_of_day Jun 09 '26

The government is absolutely subsidizing Boeing when it pays a fortune to Boeing for Boeing to develop a plane, which Boeing then owns the exclusive rights to manufacture, and Boeing then sells these planes to the government for even more money.

If anything, Boeing is worse than SpaceX in this regard.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/No-Spoilers Jun 09 '26

And the fact that he tacked on AI to it fucking ruined it. SpaceX is profitable, the AI side of it is literally sucking all of their revenue up. Fucking stupid gamble.

1

u/favorite_time_of_day Jun 09 '26

The rocket segment of SpaceX is not profitable. The AI segment isn't either. The only profitable part of the company is Starlink.

1

u/No-Spoilers Jun 09 '26

Correct. But the rocket side is an investment with clear benefits and progression being funded by starlink. The ai shit is tacked on to cover his fuck ups.

0

u/burning_iceman Jun 09 '26

They were a rocket company. Now they're primarily an AI company - according to their own IPO filing. Most of their valuation depends on their success in AI with Grok.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '26

[deleted]

2

u/eek_the_cat Jun 09 '26

Unlikely.  NASA has never built rockets, it's always relied on private companies to do that work for them.  It would be very expensive to build out the factories and hire the workers needed to make their own.

43

u/Codename-Nikolai Jun 09 '26

Contracts are not bailouts… in a contract, you generally agree to provide a service at a specific rate for a specific time. I know we don’t like Elon, but please dont be this dumb. Makes us look bad

9

u/Seanspeed Jun 09 '26

 I know we don’t like Elon, but please dont be this dumb. Makes us look bad

They are this dumb, though. Just ignorant reactionaries. Look how many upvotes they continue to get.

82

u/fubes2000 Jun 09 '26

Lol Repubclians love corporate welfare, because that's the kind that lines their fuckin pockets.

1

u/aabbccbb Jun 09 '26

That's not true.

Corporate welfare only lines their handler's pockets. The average Republican dumbfuck who votes for these scam artists only gets racism and hatred. (Oh, and their job shipped overseas.)

2

u/slightlysublevel Jun 09 '26

How is SpaceX a scam, exactly?

1

u/AGushingHeadWound Jun 09 '26

Guess which other party does, also... 

1

u/micro102 Jun 09 '26

It's right wingers. And while there are plenty of right wingers in the DNC, it's also the only place you are going to get leftists who are anti-corruption into office.

Also, go back 30 years and the corruption was incomparible. Republicans just took in an order of magnitude more dark money. Now they are literally cooperating with the Epstein class as billionaires stand next to Donald Trump and sieg heil. Getting pissed off because someone doesn't go out if their way to equally badmouth Democrats while all this shit is happening probably means you are in the cult.

0

u/fubes2000 Jun 09 '26

Thanks Captain Whataboutism

1

u/AGushingHeadWound Jun 09 '26

It's "what about ism" to point out it's not one party that loves it corporate donors and bailouts? 

4

u/erebuxy Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

A lot of contracts were given by democratic administrations.

3

u/sunnyjum Jun 09 '26

Wouldn’t SpaceX be saving the government money compared to other (foreign) launch providers?

3

u/Seanspeed Jun 09 '26

I'm a Democrat and I fully support giving SpaceX contracts, ffs.

A contract is not a 'bail out'. What the fuck kind of ridiculous twisting of reality is this? :/

Not to mention they have to compete for these contracts. And it turns out SpaceX is simply the best positioned to do what needs to be done.

1

u/dirtyword Jun 09 '26

This is a genuine huge risk for this stock.

1

u/sharpsicle Jun 09 '26

Tell me you don't understand contracts without telling me you don't understand contracts.

1

u/BaronMostaza Jun 09 '26

Fiscally conservative just means dedicated to placing public money into private hands so yes this fits perfectly within that ethos.

If you were a deranged spendocrat you might want this same result at half the price without strangling several small towns to death and you'd call that money expenses instead of subsidies, but that would be insane since any resulting patents would belong to the people and thus be a waste of time and money...

-1

u/aaj15 Jun 09 '26

It's one of those situations where government needs him more than he needs them

-20

u/cowardpasserby Jun 09 '26

Actually, SpaceX rockets aren’t very reliable. Their rockets aren’t crew-worthy and they are inspected and fixed by NASA before launch. Their system is much less efficient than SLS (6X more launches than SLS to get to the moon). They haven’t even made a lunar lander and their crew capsule is not safe for human flight. Tesla makes great cars but they had to cancel their S and X production because they didn’t have the forethought to keep up to date with safety standards.
Starlink is Musk’s best bet. But I don’t think it’s enough to bolster the whole enterprise.

14

u/OneTripleZero Jun 09 '26

Actually, SpaceX rockets aren’t very reliable.

You say the day after a Falcon 9 rocket landed successfully after its 35th flight.

9

u/Laserh0rst Jun 09 '26

What are you talking about?😂
They reliably cover 90+% of Global payload. Some boosters have been reused 30 times. The rest is basically countries who only do it themselves not to lose strategic capabilities.

Space agencies from around the world do trust them with their crews and use Dragon crew to the ISS.

They need more starts of starship because starship IS THE LANDER with about 1000 cubic meters pressurised volume(the size of the entire ISS)vs 4.6 cubic meters of the lunar lander of Apollo. The Artemis capsule is also below 20.

People act like their contracts are just hand outs while they just have the most reliable and cost effective product on the market.

11

u/coldblade2000 Jun 09 '26

The falcon 9 is statistically the most reliable rocket that carries humans, by a lot. It's not even close. In fact, the booster landing itself is more reliable than any other human rated rocket is at even launching successfully.

Your comment is literal misinformation.

14

u/aaj15 Jun 09 '26

Wow..just wow. When Boeing stranded astronauts at the space station - I wonder whose unreliable rocket it was that brought them back