Sure, but factor of 10 cheaper in a market that is tiny still isn't that much. Even if you assume a 10x market size increase, its still tiny.
> They also have the most advanced internet infrastructure in the world and are poised to replace legacy ISPs and even mobile carriers in the coming decade.
That's quite the claim. I believe Starlink is a great business, the largest sat business for a long while to come (unlike space datacenter) but even if you are, very, very bullish on it, its not enough to justify the price.
You basically need to believe that:
- Launch market to 10x and grow faster then it ever has for decades
- Starlink goes from already being amazing systematically crushing terrestrial competition.
- xAi wins the AI race (this is almost absurdly optimistic)
- AI data-center becoming a insanely thing (also absurdly optimistic)
And even then this is hard to justify. And I certaintly don't believe 3. or 4. And 1 is a stretch. And while I believe in Starlink continued growth, terrestrial infrastructure still has lots of advantages for cities, where most people actually live.
I fully expect Jevons paradox to hold for cheap kg to orbit. Spacex could be the monopoly transportation provider of the Solar Alliance. Yes that’s fanciful, but it illustrates the potential.
So we are now hypothesising fully-developed multi-planetary civilisations to justify an IPO price in 2026? By the same leap of logic Coca-Cola is worth 1 trillion times its current price since it's poised to be the galaxy's drink of choice. And I'm being reasonable with my estimate here, how many galaxies could we actually be talking about in potential?
Standard Oil is a ready counter point. The advent of the automobile greatly effected its success. And if one considers the value of children (Exxon, chevron, mobile,etc) after the supreme dissolved it in 1911, it was a tremendous value.
One can easily imagine a similar scenario for cheap kg to orbit.
Not really, because Standard Oil controlled pipelines, had deals with railroads and owned the overwhelming amount of refining capability and owned the supply as well.
SpaceX is ahead, but its only technology, and nothing in Falcon 9 or even Starship suggest that nobody else can replicated it.
SpaceX themselves realized that launch itself isn't a big enough business, so they went themselves after space based comms. For SpaceX to stay ahead they would need to be technologically ahead on every single technological advanced.
But with companies like Amazon and so on involved, SpaceX is nothing like Standard Oil that was already the biggest company. SpaceX can not defend its monopoly on launch or space comms.
> They also have the most advanced internet infrastructure in the world and are poised to replace legacy ISPs and even mobile carriers in the coming decade.
That's quite the claim. I believe Starlink is a great business, the largest sat business for a long while to come (unlike space datacenter) but even if you are, very, very bullish on it, its not enough to justify the price.
You basically need to believe that:
- Launch market to 10x and grow faster then it ever has for decades
- Starlink goes from already being amazing systematically crushing terrestrial competition.
- xAi wins the AI race (this is almost absurdly optimistic)
- AI data-center becoming a insanely thing (also absurdly optimistic)
And even then this is hard to justify. And I certaintly don't believe 3. or 4. And 1 is a stretch. And while I believe in Starlink continued growth, terrestrial infrastructure still has lots of advantages for cities, where most people actually live.