Again with the maintenace costs. So again, can you please explain why you think maintaining the fleet is going to be worse than intially launching the fleet?

So much wrong with the big fat juicy government contracts statement. First of all, the phrasing is just plain intellectually dishonest. You know damn well that SpaceX is charging the government less than other commercial providers. You wanna talk big fat juicy contracts? Go compare what ULA is charging for say a GPS satellite. ($214 million vs $143 million ish) You should thank your lucky stars SpaceX is being so evil.

Second, the government contracts certainly help the bottom line, but are not required for profitability. In terms of pure launch services, the government is providing about half their revenue - roughly 2 billion for third party launches and 2 billion for governent (split pretty even between NASA crew/cargo and military/intel). Again, those contracts are saving the government money over what ULA or Russia charges. On the Starlink side, the 8.7 billion from the consumer and commercial side dwarfs the 2.7 billion from StarShield.

Math gets fuzzy as while it easy to simply wipe all current government revenue from the SpaceX books, you have to get into serious guessimating to figure out how much of their expenses would go down if they lost all government contracts. And gets even more theoretical since SpaceX is absolutely financially bogged down with that massive xAI tumor Musk bolted onto their side. But very roughly if you strip off xAI numbers SpaceX with government is 3.8 billion operating income vs around 1.5 billion without.

Nope. There are brokerage penalties for retail investors trying to flip IPO stocks immediately but that varies by brokerages and applies to all IPOs - not a SpaceX specific policy. Insiders who had preIPO shares do have restriction. Traditionally preIPO insiders have been locked in for 180 days to avoid an immediate cashout SpaceX structured their lock in period to avoid a 180 day mass sell off by allowing a percentage to be sold at 70, 90, 105, 120 and 135 days. That is the only 120 day number I can find.

Musk, by the way, is not allowed to sell anything for a full year.

Nope, depends on the fund. S&P 500, nope. They have a year long seasoning rule and a requirement on profitability. Nasdaq-100, yes. They recently shrunk their requirements in order to attract SpaceX and OpenAI listings over other exchanges such as NYSE. Now only 15 days until they include SpaceX stock instead of, I think, December.

Corruption? *snort* Yeah, that horror of charging $71 million less to put a GPS into orbit than ULA. Space Force phase 3 is $5.9 billion to SpaceX for 28 missions. ULA $5.4 billion for only 19 missions. $74 million per mission cheaper going with SpaceX. Similarly massive savings for NASA having SpaceX do manned launches vs paying the Russians. I can stand more of this corruption.

Aren't we discussing the June 9th Landspace launch?

That launch did not fail on the way up. Its second stage successfully deployed two different direct to cell test satellites for two different providers. The failure came later - believed to be when it was about to start up for its reentry disposal burn.

Curious as to what number you are using for the Starlink altitude.

Their shells are in quite a wide range. Over the last year the bulk of the established satellites have been shifting lower and many of the new satellites (especially onces with direct to cell capability) are being deployed even lower than that. Those lower orbits measure decay time in weeks to months.

Oh no, did no one at SpaceX realize that Low Earth Orbit is not permanent and they will have to replace satellites over time?

They have already built a constellation of 10k. As some of the first ones are deorbiting, they are still launching new ones at a rate that the constellation is still growing. Yet somehow they are making money. With the recent S1 filing we have our best view into SpaceX finances. $11.4 billion in Starlink revenue. $4.4 billion in operating income. Even after accounting for massive capex that is the constellation they had somewhere around $2 freaking billion in free cash flow from their Starlink segment. It is a bloody cash cow while they are replacing deorbiting satellites and expanding. Will only get better when they if they ever reach the point where they are not expanding the constellation. Even more betters if they ever get Starship working operationally.

There is a monstrous gulf between keeping a piece of hardware running forever and replacing the hardware after a single use. You don't buy a new Accord after a single run to the grocery store.

There are three Falcon 9 boosters now over 30 launches. Ten over 20. No one think reusuability means you have to fly a booster past the point of economic sense. SpaceX is far from finding that limit.

I am literally laughing. The I hate Elon therefore I must hate on anything SpaceX does crowd are legendary for their inability to back up their statement and hiding behind shadow bans and blocklists. They hate facts. SpaceX fans are on every social platform loudly flying the flag. Hell, many are so enthusiastic about it a common thing is, "I hate SpaceX because their fanboys are everywhere." Saying they hide in their own communities is absurd.

How do you get to overwhelming majority are not paved? Even if you add in BLM and Forest Service access and estimates of private roads I can't get to majority much less overwhelming.

https://www.bts.gov/content/pu...
In the latest year, 2020, paved was 2.84 million and unpaved was 1.32 million Shows the US flipped from majority unpaved back in the late 70s.

https://highways.dot.gov/safet...
65% paved and 35% unpaved

Google AI summary
2.75 million paved and 1.36 million unpaved

Grok
2.94 million paved and 1.36 million unpaved

Forest Service, BLM and private have much higher ratios of unpaved, but are only measured by hundreds of thousands of miles and not millions. Not enough to swing the ratio even if you add them.

By many years you mean 'last year'? 2019. 2020. 2021. 2022. 2023. VW took the overall title for EU EV sales from Tesla in 2024 with the combined sales of VW, Porsche, Audi, Skoda and Cupra. Was not until 2025 that VW had an individual model that sold better than a Tesla.

5000 terminals were sent to Ukraine at the opening of the invasion. 1,333 of that initial batch, and I think the shipping for all of them, were paid for by USAID with the remainder being a SpaceX donation. SpaceX donated ongoing service. I am not finding any references to USAID paying for service for the hardware they purchased. This initial batch of hardware and associated subscriptions rolled out February to April of 2022.

Separately, several European countries also started purchasing hardware and subscriptions to donate to Ukraine throughout 2022 and continuing today.

SpaceX did not ask for reimbursement for previous donations. They said in October of 2022 that they were not going to continue eating the operational costs indefinitely. They got backlash for this stance, so softened their position and continued to provide free service while negotiations to determine who was going to eat the costs were ongoing. June of 2023 is when the Pentagon and SpaceX signed a contract and SpaceX began to get compensation for continuing Starlink connectivity.

The Tongan prime minister said the subscription fees were waived during the emergency period,

"The Minister said SpaceX will provide free service during the emergency period until the undersea fiber-optic cable system is fully restored to serve the public." https://www.tesmanian.com/blog...

"Mr Sovaleni said Mr Musk set up a Starlink gateway station in Fiji and was donating 50 VSAT terminals and free capacity âoeduring the emergency periodâ." https://www.independent.co.uk/...

Do tell me more about their battery offerings.

For house scale backup systems there are some with lower dollar per KWh, but those are heavily weighted to enthusiast barebones systems that will require a lot of addons, labor and know how. If you are going to go with Enphase or Genrerac or another of the big all-in-wonder brands you'll be dropping more per KWh.

There are reasons to not go with Tesla. They don't make it really reasy to integrate with gear outside the Tesla ecosystem. Generator support blows. But in terms of overpriced? No.

No they did not.

Texas sent a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) to Protcor & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive. The exact wording of the CIDs is not public, but looks to be geared toward advertising and marketing materials.

Fluoride can be an unpleasant substance when taken beyond therapeutic does levels. The dose makes the poison and all that. Both the CDC and the American Dental Association call for reduced use of fluoride toothpaste for young children. Texas is looking to see how the companies are marketing their toothpaste to young children and their parents. Backdoor attack against fluoride in general? Most likely. Something that probably should be looked at no matter one's views on fluoride? I put that in the same most likely bucket. Either way, no Texas has not sued.

Your pain with sours would be my pain with IPAs. Many many markets are so dominated by not just IPAs themslves, but the perception that more IBUs makes for a better IPA has twisted so many other styles. Crack open the beer menu at a place bragging they have 32 taps and see 5 are set aside for the mass produced lagers, 14 IPAs, 4 ciders, 1 kombucha, 3 pale ales that might as well be IPAs, 1 red that forgot its malty roots, 1 imperial lager that tastes like Budweiser mixed with a medicinal vodka, a porter at 83 IBUs and two stouts. Guess I am having another hot summer day stout.

I miss the days when every craft brewery had a brown ale, a porter and a stout in regular rotation. Good quarter of them also tried their hand at a scottish.

So many of the IPAs rule crew could be served water mixed with Bitrex and would rave about it.

You do realize you do not do your causes any favors by imagining a different color of the sky and making wildly inaccurate statements out of thin air? It makes people to the left look like nutters. With Trump in office all you have to do is *not* look like nutters and you will do well. Is it that high of a bar to clear?

Googling gave me the names of locations in PA with reports of long voter delays in the last election. Gonna type them here and start googling their county leadership.

Chester 2D 1R
Luzerne 6R 5D
Bucks 2D 1R
Philadelphia hmm, all city government with no city city council is 14D and 3 Working Families Party
Montgomery 2D 1R

The billionaire money instead...bribed the voting machine distribution crews? Cause that is not an overwhelming list of conservative dominated governments. Hell, you have to be 73 years old to have been alive the last time Philadelphia had a Republican led government.

If you dig deeper, you find out this is not true. Almost every state, Pennsylvania included, leave it to individual counties to purchase, maintain and deploy voting machines. In PA the state is responsible for validating vendors and certifying particular voting systems for use in the state. State also does inspections on voting machines to ensure they have not been tampered with. The counties themselves actually pick which approved system to purchase, spend the money and enact the labor that allows voting. If a district had insufficient capabilities to handle voter turnout, then it is 100% on the district.

What limitations are left? Took them a while, but SpaceX finally has gotten their extending fairing into production to handle the larger physical sizes. They did their first vertical payload integration a couple years back. There were a couple of the DoD reference orbits that Heavy could not make in its first two flights, but those were sorted on flight 3.