
SpaceX raises $1.9B - tosh
https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/18/spacex-raises-1-9-billion-in-largest-funding-found-to-date/
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renewiltord
I wish I, just a guy, could invest in companies like this with no vote stake.
I believe in the company and the leadership and I'd like a stake in it and to
provide money but I know that if I have the ability to put money in so will
all the guys who want an opinion.

It reminds me of Kickstarter. I really enjoyed it because I spend $100 now and
then for someone to take a shot at building something. If they fail, so be it.
If I get scammed, so be it. I explicitly don't want refunds so that the guys
can take a risk. But then other people get involved and they have these high
expectations and it ruins everything because then I can't get to the guys who
are doing risky things. The way I do it is I fire the money into the ether and
then months maybe years later I get an email saying "Sorry, we couldn't do it"
or "Where do you want us to ship to?"

i.e. I want an escape hatch for investing and for consumer purchases as well.
If the government would let me take a cheap online exam that allows me to
exempt myself, I'd love that.

~~~
war1025
> I wish I, just a guy, could invest in companies like this with no vote
> stake.

How is this different from just buying stock?

Or are you referring to companies specifically that aren't public?

~~~
bpodgursky
It's not public, and no companies issue non-voting shares. It's not even clear
they would be allowed by the SEC.

~~~
cookingrobot
Google (Alphabet) has two different stocks you can buy, one of which doesn’t
have voting rights. [https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052615/whats-
differ...](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052615/whats-difference-
between-googles-goog-and-googl-stock-tickers.asp)

~~~
bpodgursky
Oh, that's a good point, I forgot about those... despite owning quite a few
non-voting shares of GOOG.

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purpleidea
Honest question, why do they need so much money? If their rockets are really
re-usable, and with all these launches they've been doing, they should have
tons of cash...

~~~
btilly
They are generating lots of money with current launches, but are designing a
next generation rocket. Rocket programs are expensive.

The best comparison for the rocket that Musk is building for Mars is to SLS.
Per [https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/nasas-sls-moon-rocket-
is-2...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/nasas-sls-moon-rocket-is-2-years-
behind-and-billions-over-budget-internal-report-
finds/#:~:text=As%20the%20report%20states%3A%20%E2%80%9COverall,order%20to%20get%20this%20funding)
we've spent over $17 billion on the SLS program so far, and it probably isn't
as far along as Musk's SuperHeavy/Starship is.

Admittedly Musk is doing his rocket development for cheaper. A lot cheaper.
But the baseline for what rocket development "should" cost is more than SpaceX
has received in revenue, total, through all of its history. (Not profit,
revenue. Nobody knows what its profit margin is. But given that SpaceX
routinely launches at prices below what its competitors can afford, they
probably aren't rich.)

~~~
black6
> we've spent over $17 billion on the SLS program so far, and it probably
> isn't as far along as Musk's SuperHeavy/Starship is.

There is a nearly complete SLS core stage awaiting testing at Stennis Space
Center. How far along is Starship?

[https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/08/sls-green-run-
verify...](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/08/sls-green-run-verify-core-
stage/)

~~~
btilly
From your article, they haven't even put fuel in the SLS core stage to see if
it leaks. Their promised timeline is based on the expectation that there will
be no major snags on the way to actually sending it into orbit. I'm not aware
that any orbital rocket program has ever been that lucky. I'm therefore
dubious that everything will go according to their plan.

By comparison, a full-sized prototype of Starship managed to launch and land
again a few weeks ago. (Though on one engine, and not on all 6 for the final
model.) As of June, they still considered it possible that they would get to
orbit this year. (See [https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-orbital-
launch-deb...](https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-orbital-launch-
debut-2020/) for confirmation.) I consider that unduly optimistic, but
certainly would take an even money bet that they get into orbit in under a
year.

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purple_ferret
Elon Musk will be the first trillionaire. Dare I say, the first
quadrillionaire.

~~~
vidanay
And he will quite likely die with less than $100 cash to his name.

~~~
the-dude
Please explain.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Elon never sells stock. He borrows from the bank to support his lifestyle, and
to exercise his stock options. He has _billions_ of dollars in debt using his
stock as collateral.

~~~
danpalmer
That’s what the Enron CEO did, and his finances came crashing down with the
company’s share price.

~~~
runawaybottle
But Enron CEO was running a scam.

~~~
danpalmer
I'd recommend the book "The Smartest Guys in the Room", it goes into detail
about the financial engineering. Yes it was decided in the end that it was
fraudulent, but it took a while for that to become clear. Technically, much of
what they did wasn't illegal and it wasn't even obvious at the time whether it
was smart or stupid.

For me the most interesting part was the culture, and assumption that they
couldn't fail. Because of this Ken Lay (CEO) continued to leverage himself
personally against the Enron share price again and again. When told to
diversify with other investments, rather than sell Enron shares and buy
others, he instead took out loans against his Enron shares to buy others. He
was in effect trying to "have his cake and eat it too". Ultimately once the
Enron share price fell enough, it caused the whole house of cards to come
crashing down as contract after contract, both for Lay and Enron, triggered
pay-out conditions, and they all ended up bankrupt.

I hope this doesn't end badly for Musk, but he should probably be diversified
enough to protect himself against Tesla's share price declining, and it will
be interesting when SpaceX gets to an IPO, whether his personal leverage may
affect whether he chooses to take it public or at what price.

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meddlepal
SpaceX feels like the next "big thing"... question is when does it IPO. Even
if the Mars stuff never pans out they can be a very successful business in
telecommunication infra.

~~~
walkingolof
I hope it never IPO's, it is too important to be public for now. Worst case
scenario is that it IPO and McKinsey comes in to "streamline" the company ...

~~~
andys627
Surely Musk would retain control of the board like he has with Tesla

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wtsnz
Where do I wire the money?

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firebaze
If there's one billionaire on the world I'd have no second thoughts about it's
Elon Musk. I know I'll probably regret having said that in 20-30 years :)

Honestly, if there's one person on this planet which is furthering human
future it's Elon Musk and his vision to have human habitats on other planets.

Facing climate change, wars, overpopulation etc.pp, if we had at least one
other place other than earth - as hostile as it may be - and we start to
sustain life there, all life on earth would suddenly be only one bet out of
two (or more).

~~~
heimatau
You had me until 'facing...overpopulation'. To boot, Elon Musk has talked
about this [1].

We are not facing overpopulation. Population is contracting currently and will
continue for at least a few decades.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s_4VnXHF64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s_4VnXHF64)

~~~
snarf21
Respectfully, I'd argue we are already overpopulated. The contraction will
take a while to really take hold. Eventually we will no longer be
overpopulated. I just don't think the Earth can sustainably support more than
2 billion people. But it will take quite a long time for us to fall that far
and it will come with other issues. Additionally, it will take far longer for
the oceans and atmosphere to recover but it eventually will.

I also don't understand how we think we'd do better on Mars than on Earth. We
have near infinite resources and advantages here and we trashed it. We have
none of those on Mars.

~~~
mschuster91
> I just don't think the Earth can sustainably support more than 2 billion
> people.

Of course Earth can sustainably support way more people than that. The problem
is waste. The US alone loses 30-40% of the food it produces, worldwide it's
something to ~1/3rd.

~~~
bserge
Centralized food and energy production (and other things tbh, but these two
stand out) is certainly a lot cheaper, but it's obvious it was not the right
move.

If everyone had to maintain their local food/energy production at the county,
neighbourhood or even household level, there would be much less waste and more
responsibility (something a lot of people need).

Fewer out of season products means less waste and pollution, as well.

