For Starlink and SpaceX, I can probably understand the business model, considering the race to getting more satellites to orbit be it for surveying or in case of Starlink stable Internet anywhere. But anything beyond that, like data centers in space I just ridiculous. No way that their valuation is anywhere near what it is realistically.
I look at Starlink where currently about 6 spacecraft deorbit a week and need replacement as a huge operational cost. Many SpaceX launches are Starlink launches, it raises the question of whether this is a circular or self fulfilling industry.
An analysis from early 2025 showed that the median life expectancy of a 1st generation Starlink satellite was 5.3 years, though expected to improve in v2 and v3.
Beyond that, the solar lifecycle means that every 11 years the earth’s orbit expands increasing drag on low-orbit satellites (which brings them down) as well as bombarding them with more radiation (increasing the likelihood of failures).
Other sources I’ve found in searching for it give their median life-expectancy as being 5-7 years.
Land-based telecom operators don’t have to replace pretty much all of their transmission infrastructure - worse, in a costly to access location - more than once a decade.
Space-based tele-communications is more than proven as a viable business model, what’s nowhere near proven (or anywhere close to being mathematically demonstrable) is one single operator of those being worth more than many major land-based telecom operators each with many times the number of customers of that space-based telecoms business and providing much faster network access (somebody else gave Deutsche Telecomm as an example) put together.
(How exactly in terms of actual PHYSICS will Starlink deliver via radio waves to for example all 245 million European households - necessary to justify such valuations - a reliable 1Gbps connection for €10/month needed to to beat the land operators?)
SpaceX’s IPO valuation which itself is mostly anchored on Starlink, is totally unjustified and unjustifiable by fundamentals.
Its actually a great business model as they need to do actual test flights to build better rockets and instead of that being pure R&D expenses, its supplemented by launching Starlink satellites which generate their own revenue for the company.
Great theory, but the Falcon 9 is already a proven design and most of SpaceX’s R&D is going to the starship, which uses completely different engines and which has blown up or disintegrated just as much as its successfully gotten above the atmosphere. It’s also never actually completed an orbit or delivered a gram of anything to orbit.
Starlink is a useful tool to boost launch numbers precisely so investors think things are better than they actually are. Originally SpaceX burned through government and private investor money. Now that they’ve blown through the entire Artemis budget the interim director of nasa gave them through blatant corruption, and launched even more billion dollar fireworks using private investor money, they are desperately trying to convince the public for more fireworks funds.
Starlink is massively profitable, look at their balance sheets. It’s very simple, their users pay them a lot of money to access the internet. Far, far more than the launch costs to maintain the constellation.
Their defense launch business is also profitable, though I haven’t checked how much.
The Starship development and stupid acquisitions (xai) have been a money pit though.
I don’t think that’s quite true. (Happy to be proven wrong if somebody has better numbers than me.)
From what I can see the launch business generated $4.1 billion, but profits in that segment are negative because the $3 billion in Starship development costs are lumped in to that. The overall loss (-$600 million) would instantly turn into great profit if they decided to give up on Starship.
But for sure, xAi is a nightmare. Absolutely Elon trying to bail himself out again.
But basically it’s a subscription service which they can sell around most of the planet and compete with infrastructure heavy services (as in expensive to replace them). They also have a lot of enterprise customer usecases (like agriculture and construction) as well as cashcow government (army).
Their growth is actually massive compared to last year, and starlink itself is already profitable. Their economy gets better with the investment in the rocket tech. Starship will be able to lift 20x the amount of starlink than falcon 9, apparently also cheaper, while the next gen starlink sats will also be able to serve a lot more customers. That’ll drive their operating cost down, while allowing selling more.
(Just to be clear, spacex as a company is still hot garbage because of the bundling of x and xai and also probably the control structure giving musk all the power while not even holding majority stake, the above is just about starlink and the rocket tech.)
From this article from early 2025, we get a median life for Starlink satellites of 5.3 years, though expected to improve with newer versions of the satellites.
From other more broad analysis of the life expectancy of low orbit satellites we get that the solar cycle - which is 11 years - means that at its peak many more such satellites die due to the Earth’s athmosphere expanding (so the satellites are more impacted by athmospheric drag hence are less likely to manage to remain in orbit, which they do using engines which have limited propellant). This is in addition to normal hazards of space, such as failures due to solar activity.
So expect that even for the lastest generation, half-life of these satellites is between 5 to at best 11 years.
Deutsche Telekom does not have the capital costs of replacing half its network every 5 - 11 years.
I don’t disagree that even starlink is overvalued, my point was that it’s the only thing in spacex bringing in profit and why.
FWIW, their v3 satellite model is apparently a 10x bandwidth increase over v2 (although weights about 5x as much). At the moment they are so oversubscribed that they can charge a $1000 surcharge for people to just sign up in some areas, so there’s definitely demand. So given they’re already around 10 mill subscribers there is some growth to be had (although I agree it won’t be 100s of millions, maybe a few 10s - far from the 50+ multiplier on the valuation, even ignoring the other 2 money pits bundled in)
That being said, you’re entirely correct that fixing the on-ground infrastructure is a much better investment if the goal is good internet service and would deliver a better quality service for cheaper, but that is happening extremely slowly in most of the developed countries (e.g. UK has terrible internet infra as well), especially in rural areas. So for the next 10 years starlink doss have a large market because the ground infrastructure sucks, and it’s not “hype” to spend money on it for investors where’s space stuff is.
Yeah. Are they really expecting me to believe we can‘t have wide spread fiber that has fairly little maintenance costs but we can totally afford weekly space rocket launches to maintain Starlink? And Starlink is supposed to be an affordable option while still being profitable? Yeah, sure buddy. Totally doesn‘t sound like a hyperloop-esque pipe dream. /s
Reusable vehicles meant something like 1/20 the per-launch costs of the pre-existing competition? No matter what you want to pay to have put in space, the supplier who reuses equipment will have a huge advantage.
And starlink? Satellite internet access for remote properties used to have all the latency of a return trip to geostationary orbit. Starlink is a massive advantage compared to that.
Starlink is the part of spaceX making money. Selling a low latency global communications capability is a sound business model. The rocketry part is close to break even. I suspect it could do with a few more launches that weren’t starlink.
It’s xAI that’s tanking the whole thing. Without that SpaceX would be profitable. With it, it’s a trash stock.
I understand the business pretty well, my issue is where the money is coming from to pay for it the huge costs. It may be there are enough users to sustain it and at what point will it saturate and stagnate?
SpaceX’s annual capital expenditures quintupled in two years, hitting $20.7 billion in 2025, fueled by simultaneous Starship launch infrastructure and AI data center buildouts.
lol i’m not giving them money, how stupid would i be. the IPO is completely overvalued
i’m just saying, somehow they managed to make a spaceflight company profitable on its own (excluding political subsidies), which i believe is rare actually. boeing etc just do it because they get funding from NASA. i think it is fascinating how much money can be made with satellite internet.
anyways, i don’t like musk at all. we need more competition from europe and asia.
Never understood the business model for SpaceX and Starlink. Huge capital and operational costs without a clear understanding of who is paying for it.
For Starlink and SpaceX, I can probably understand the business model, considering the race to getting more satellites to orbit be it for surveying or in case of Starlink stable Internet anywhere. But anything beyond that, like data centers in space I just ridiculous. No way that their valuation is anywhere near what it is realistically.
I look at Starlink where currently about 6 spacecraft deorbit a week and need replacement as a huge operational cost. Many SpaceX launches are Starlink launches, it raises the question of whether this is a circular or self fulfilling industry.
As far as I understood, I always thought that they just used other people’s rockets to piggyback their own satellites to space basically for free
Haven’t heard that though you need a lot of other launches with space available….
That “for free” part is probably paid for by someone (invertors, rocket company, …)
An analysis from early 2025 showed that the median life expectancy of a 1st generation Starlink satellite was 5.3 years, though expected to improve in v2 and v3.
Beyond that, the solar lifecycle means that every 11 years the earth’s orbit expands increasing drag on low-orbit satellites (which brings them down) as well as bombarding them with more radiation (increasing the likelihood of failures).
Other sources I’ve found in searching for it give their median life-expectancy as being 5-7 years.
Land-based telecom operators don’t have to replace pretty much all of their transmission infrastructure - worse, in a costly to access location - more than once a decade.
Space-based tele-communications is more than proven as a viable business model, what’s nowhere near proven (or anywhere close to being mathematically demonstrable) is one single operator of those being worth more than many major land-based telecom operators each with many times the number of customers of that space-based telecoms business and providing much faster network access (somebody else gave Deutsche Telecomm as an example) put together.
(How exactly in terms of actual PHYSICS will Starlink deliver via radio waves to for example all 245 million European households - necessary to justify such valuations - a reliable 1Gbps connection for €10/month needed to to beat the land operators?)
SpaceX’s IPO valuation which itself is mostly anchored on Starlink, is totally unjustified and unjustifiable by fundamentals.
Its actually a great business model as they need to do actual test flights to build better rockets and instead of that being pure R&D expenses, its supplemented by launching Starlink satellites which generate their own revenue for the company.
Great theory, but the Falcon 9 is already a proven design and most of SpaceX’s R&D is going to the starship, which uses completely different engines and which has blown up or disintegrated just as much as its successfully gotten above the atmosphere. It’s also never actually completed an orbit or delivered a gram of anything to orbit.
Starlink is a useful tool to boost launch numbers precisely so investors think things are better than they actually are. Originally SpaceX burned through government and private investor money. Now that they’ve blown through the entire Artemis budget the interim director of nasa gave them through blatant corruption, and launched even more billion dollar fireworks using private investor money, they are desperately trying to convince the public for more fireworks funds.
I suppose that it is that dependence upon Starlink to boost launch numbers makes me suspicious of the books. The whole thing just feels ponzie scheme.
Starlink is massively profitable, look at their balance sheets. It’s very simple, their users pay them a lot of money to access the internet. Far, far more than the launch costs to maintain the constellation.
Their defense launch business is also profitable, though I haven’t checked how much.
The Starship development and stupid acquisitions (xai) have been a money pit though.
Starlink is the only part of SpaceX operations that turns a profit.
Rocket launches do not, and xAi is a bottomless money pit just like every other AI venture.
I don’t think that’s quite true. (Happy to be proven wrong if somebody has better numbers than me.)
From what I can see the launch business generated $4.1 billion, but profits in that segment are negative because the $3 billion in Starship development costs are lumped in to that. The overall loss (-$600 million) would instantly turn into great profit if they decided to give up on Starship.
But for sure, xAi is a nightmare. Absolutely Elon trying to bail himself out again.
Generated 4.1 billion with a profit of how much?
And how much money did they get from the US government?
Lockheed Martin gets most of their money from the government and still manages to be profitable.
I don’t think Starlink includes their launch fees, leaving that on SpaceX side of the balance sheet. But I haven’t read details.
Stsrlink is about the only thing in the company pulling in solid revenue. There’s a good analysis on https://newspaceeconomy.ca/2026/05/30/what-is-starlinks-financial-performance
But basically it’s a subscription service which they can sell around most of the planet and compete with infrastructure heavy services (as in expensive to replace them). They also have a lot of enterprise customer usecases (like agriculture and construction) as well as cashcow government (army).
Their growth is actually massive compared to last year, and starlink itself is already profitable. Their economy gets better with the investment in the rocket tech. Starship will be able to lift 20x the amount of starlink than falcon 9, apparently also cheaper, while the next gen starlink sats will also be able to serve a lot more customers. That’ll drive their operating cost down, while allowing selling more.
(Just to be clear, spacex as a company is still hot garbage because of the bundling of x and xai and also probably the control structure giving musk all the power while not even holding majority stake, the above is just about starlink and the rocket tech.)
deleted by creator
It gets even worse.
From this article from early 2025, we get a median life for Starlink satellites of 5.3 years, though expected to improve with newer versions of the satellites.
From other more broad analysis of the life expectancy of low orbit satellites we get that the solar cycle - which is 11 years - means that at its peak many more such satellites die due to the Earth’s athmosphere expanding (so the satellites are more impacted by athmospheric drag hence are less likely to manage to remain in orbit, which they do using engines which have limited propellant). This is in addition to normal hazards of space, such as failures due to solar activity.
So expect that even for the lastest generation, half-life of these satellites is between 5 to at best 11 years.
Deutsche Telekom does not have the capital costs of replacing half its network every 5 - 11 years.
I don’t disagree that even starlink is overvalued, my point was that it’s the only thing in spacex bringing in profit and why.
FWIW, their v3 satellite model is apparently a 10x bandwidth increase over v2 (although weights about 5x as much). At the moment they are so oversubscribed that they can charge a $1000 surcharge for people to just sign up in some areas, so there’s definitely demand. So given they’re already around 10 mill subscribers there is some growth to be had (although I agree it won’t be 100s of millions, maybe a few 10s - far from the 50+ multiplier on the valuation, even ignoring the other 2 money pits bundled in)
That being said, you’re entirely correct that fixing the on-ground infrastructure is a much better investment if the goal is good internet service and would deliver a better quality service for cheaper, but that is happening extremely slowly in most of the developed countries (e.g. UK has terrible internet infra as well), especially in rural areas. So for the next 10 years starlink doss have a large market because the ground infrastructure sucks, and it’s not “hype” to spend money on it for investors where’s space stuff is.
Yeah. Are they really expecting me to believe we can‘t have wide spread fiber that has fairly little maintenance costs but we can totally afford weekly space rocket launches to maintain Starlink? And Starlink is supposed to be an affordable option while still being profitable? Yeah, sure buddy. Totally doesn‘t sound like a hyperloop-esque pipe dream. /s
Reusable vehicles meant something like 1/20 the per-launch costs of the pre-existing competition? No matter what you want to pay to have put in space, the supplier who reuses equipment will have a huge advantage.
And starlink? Satellite internet access for remote properties used to have all the latency of a return trip to geostationary orbit. Starlink is a massive advantage compared to that.
Starlink is the part of spaceX making money. Selling a low latency global communications capability is a sound business model. The rocketry part is close to break even. I suspect it could do with a few more launches that weren’t starlink.
It’s xAI that’s tanking the whole thing. Without that SpaceX would be profitable. With it, it’s a trash stock.
the business model today is to sell satellite internet
in rural areas, satellite internet is cheaper than cable internet if the distance to the nearest town is large enough.
I understand the business pretty well, my issue is where the money is coming from to pay for it the huge costs. It may be there are enough users to sustain it and at what point will it saturate and stagnate?
the market will saturate for sure but they charge each month so they keep making revenue nevertheless
yeah, and they’ve made billions off of it.
at this rate, it’ll only take a century or two to scratch the dent on the enormous costs!
have you actually looked at the numbers of cost and revenue, or are you just talking out of your ass?
reuters: SpaceX generated about $8 billion in profit on $15 billion to $16 billion of revenue last year
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/spacex-generated-about-8-billion-profit-last-year-ahead-ipo-sources-say-2026-01-30/
SpaceX’s annual capital expenditures quintupled in two years, hitting $20.7 billion in 2025, fueled by simultaneous Starship launch infrastructure and AI data center buildouts.
https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/eye-watering-sum-spacex-spent-124427519.html
but that debt # includes stopgap loans before the IPO
https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2026-04-23/exclusive-spacex-refinanced-debt-with-stopgap-20-billion-loan-before-ipo-filing
costs will only go up from here, so by all means, give musko some of your money. what could go wrong?
lol i’m not giving them money, how stupid would i be. the IPO is completely overvalued
i’m just saying, somehow they managed to make a spaceflight company profitable on its own (excluding political subsidies), which i believe is rare actually. boeing etc just do it because they get funding from NASA. i think it is fascinating how much money can be made with satellite internet.
anyways, i don’t like musk at all. we need more competition from europe and asia.
https://www.matteast.io/spacex-escape-velocity.html
Business model: people apparently like supporting Nazis with no real vision.