Comment by lokar
17 days ago
How far out would you say that is? Have you sketched out the net present value calculation for an investment in spacex today based on that?
17 days ago
How far out would you say that is? Have you sketched out the net present value calculation for an investment in spacex today based on that?
> How far out would you say that is?
Really hard to say. Everyone who does space stuff talks with the same level of optimism as Musk but historically they deliver less.
But for what it's worth, I don't think Musk's going to reach Mars except in an urn, baring some surprise development in anti-aging medicine. Even though their progress is rapid by the standards of the industry, they are still slow in terms of natural human lifespan and his age.
> Have you sketched out the net present value calculation for an investment in spacex today based on that?
IMO, their market cap should be around $200bn at the moment. That's mostly Starlink, so if there's a Kessler cascade *or* if China makes a competitor that goes down to about $80-100bn
The long-term stuff about Mars or turning the moon into a factory for modular data centres is too far into the future to be worth considering.
That was my general impression. They did amazing work to totally change launch costs (with more on the way). But launch was a limited market. The low costs have and will grow it, and starlink will grow it, but not enough to justify this value.
In investing it's critical to think about things probabilistically, rather than trying to just guess the future. "Fooled by Randomness" is a great book on this. In a scenario like this it's especially critical, because in the case where Starship fully delivers and the next great frontier of humanity opens up, the upside potentially is practically infinite.
E.g. imagine in a bet you think there's a 99% chance of something being worth $1 and a 1% chance of it being worth $1 million. What's a fair price? It's a simple calculation - 0.99 * 1 + 0.01 * 1,000,000 = ~$10,000. That's you setting a price of $10k on something that you fully expect to be worth $1 99% of the time, and still coming out just fine.
So the actual debate should not be on 'guess the future' but rather on the odds of Starship delivering and estimating the impact this would have. And I think to many the answers are fairly easy - 'very nonzero' and 'very big.' It's akin to the NVidia/Apple stories, except in this case it's being somewhat priced into the market to begin with because it's somewhat more probable, and easier to foresee.
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