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Notes -
Starship bet update
A few years ago I made a series of bets about Starship making it to orbit with other posters, last rounded up here:
The last one is a real nail-biter. When I heard about the SpaceX IPO I first thought it's time to call it a day. My model for my predictions about Elon was that he has a hype-compulsion, making wilder and wilder promises to get money out of investors, and as it becomes clear he won't be able to reach the hyped up goal, at some point they will get fed up with him. So when the news of the $85.7 billion came out, I figured that even if I do win, it will be on a technicality - maybe they won't pull it off by end of this year, but this sort of money will surely be enough to get them over whatever humps they run into on the road.... Then again maybe not! It also turned out that they have $41.3 billion in accumulated losses since their founding, and have burned $4.3 billion on AI in Q1 2026 alone, so maybe I will lose on a technicality instead, where they will indeed get to orbit by end of year, but will be dragged down by the unprofitable parts of the company.
I now believe that such a "loss on a technicality" is a pretty likely outcome, precisely because of the IPO. Like I said last year, if my bet was with Elon, he probably could have ordered the damn rocket to be put in orbit, just to prove a point, and while I'm lucky enough to have made my bet with internet randos instead, the IPO changes the dynamics such that he will be very tempted to do such things just to prove a point. Currently 95% of SpaceX stock held by insiders is locked up and it will be gradually released over the course of the year. Stonks are largely guided by hype, hype is generated with media articles (such as "SpaceX makes history with Starship orbital launch!!!11"), so while a frivolous orbital launch would make little sense before, it could make a lot of sense now. There's already talk of Starship 14 being orbital, and I fully expect them to schedule it just before one of these unlock dates.
That said, it's not over until it's over! Just because they might want to do it, doesn't mean they'll pull it off. This whole bet is starting to feel like an episode of Wacky Races.
I believe that SpaceX is extremely undervalued. At a minimum, SpaceX is going to form a core part of the next generation of American hegemony as military tech is put in space. In a medium case SpaceX is going to create a multi-trillion dollar space economy around telecommunications, computing, and satellite sensors at a scale previously unimaginable. In a maximum case...
The general tendency of SpaceX is that Elon wildly overpromises impossible deadlines that he fails to meet, and he still ends up years ahead of what everyone else in the industry thought was even remotely possible. For this reason I don't consider it dispositive that SpaceX misses all its deadlines and you've won all your bets.
The best argument against SpaceX, I believe, is that Elon likes to double down on his bets and he is going to continue to risk the entirety of SpaceX to reach the next run on his ladder. He could always fail and the whole thing comes crashing down. But at this point SpaceX has created a potential multi-trillion dollar space economy and I think the upside is so enormous that SpaceX is now too big to fail.
What I mean by "upside" is: Elon's new cheap orbital economics are going to fundamentally change the entire global economy. I think it's more than a question of the American military wanting to put spy satellites in space and therefore keeping SpaceX on a perma-subsidy that scuppers their downside. I think that SpaceX is unlocking huge, real productive economic value. Starlink provides internet access in remote and expensive locations that can't be serviced by traditional cables and landlines -- mining operations in the darkest jungles, oil rigs, planes. Continuous satellite imagery is going to unlock huge economic value in real world productive terms -- weather forecasts, crop yield measurements, infrastructure maintenance. How much is a better weather forecast worth? How much is continuous monitoring of an Atlantic hurricane worth over sporadic discontinuous images? How much was the shift from photos to video worth?
SpaceX is going to create a global nervous system of bandwidth and sensors and feed. This is more than simply putting better research telescopes in orbit and redirecting government monies based on taxing the productive earthbound economy. I think what SpaceX has already produced represents trillions of dollars in real wealth. Valued still at just one trillion -- a sale!
I think there’s also a good chance it turns into an East India Company situation where SpaceX is the only entity in the world with access to Mars and Luna.
Difficult to see how that happens for the moon given that at this point China, India, and Japan have landed on the moon.
Small probes are irrelevant next to ~100 tons of soft-landed payloads.
Indeed. Of course, SpaceX's tonnage delivered to the moon to date is 0, lagging the space programs mentioned above.
Wrong, Falcon 9 has delivered several lunar missions. Disregarding even missions to lunar orbit:
1,000 kgThis is enough to put SpaceX above every nation except China (barely) and the USSR, with just Falcon 9/Heavy.
I mean, it landed, but I thought we were discussing soft landings rather than impacting the surface at a high rate of speed.
Same deal.
Counting only successful landings we're at 3600 kg. Chandrayaan-3 had a launch mass of 3900 kg, so SpaceX is only exceeding Japan.
I admit I was mistaken about 0, but copy pasting AI slop in response doesn't inspire confidence.
Those landing failures had nothing to do with SpaceX. They delivered the payloads to the correct insertion velocity, so the SpaceX portion of the mission was successful.
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