Eberhard and Tarpenning had filed incorporation paperwork and had a business plan and a high-level strategy. No physical prototype, but they had a few concepts coming together about how they might build a prototype that mostly involved licensing from AC Propulsion and Lotus and using off-the-shelf Li-ion batteries. Guess they did have something physical - they had bought some laptop battery cells to test performance in parallel and series wiring scenarios. They were up to a total of one employee.

The COTS batteries were the one idea that fully survived contact with reality. The Roadster used them. They had pivoted to making their own cells with COTS form factor but custom chemistry for the Model S and pivoted to their own proprietary form factor for the Model 3.

The Lotus partnership yielded some useful chassis bits - I have never found an estimate more than a single digit percent of the final chassis used Lotus components/designs.

The AC Propulsion drivetrain components proved totally not a fit and all of that part of the Roadster was redesigned from scratch and built in-house.

Musk had been on board for over two years before the first prototype was unveiled. Their first funding round prior to that unveiling had Musk personally providing $6.5 million of the $7.5 million raised. Round 2 had the Musk-to-others ratio being $9.0 million to $4 million. Was not until the third round that the ratio finally flipped at $14 million to $26 million.

Other than money, Musk pushed for aesthetic and structural changes to the licensed Lotus chassis. Had the body panels swapped to carbon fiber. Set the interior requirements in order to move away from a kit car vibe to a premium sports car feel. Won the debate with other founders to optimize the drivetrain for high- end sports car performance (which is amusing as the others were the ones who had sports car performance as part of their original plan but had since changed their minds when they found COTS was not going to cut it). A lot of these changes came because Musk actually would test drive their early tech integration prototypes. His biggest contribution was possibly bringing in employee number five, Straubel, who is considered a co-founder, was CTO for over a decade and is still on the board.

Just bought it is a gross simplification.

And 'likewise with his other accomplishments'. Disregarding all the other entities he has founded, tell more more of him just buying SpaceX and Starlink.

Bit of an acocunting misunderstanding there. There was a lot of guesswork when SpaceX was private about how their accounting worked and what, if anything, they were charging themselves internally for Starlink launches.

Now that they are pubic and the books are open, we see the answer is 'nothing' in this sense. Their is no arbitrary internal fee that makes it into their books the launches. They are running the business as an integrated entity with the rockets being a cost of business.

That 20% of revenue coming from the government is 20% of total revenue coming externally into SpaceX as a whole. The full pie is 61% Starlink customers, 21% government (NASA and the panoply of military/intel agencies) and 18% commercial launch.

I read that a lot. In any situation where costs to a business are going to increase.

There are three big pricing methods.
* cost plus Company decides their markup and adjusts prices to ensure that markup remains consistent.
* competitor Looks at what others are charging and adjust your own prices. Can vary according to how the company wants to be perceived.
* value How much is my customer willing to pay?

Value is the closest to of oft perceived view that businesses are universally squeezing every penny they can out of a consumer. In general only 15% to 25% of businesses work primarily under the value pricing model. 10% to 15% do so for goods, mostly in the luxury or very very specialized spaces while in services value pricing is up to 35% to 45%. Not surprising there is much variation based on factors relating to particular market segments. Additionally, companies that are considered as using one pricing model will often put a few thought cycles into the considerations of other models.

In this particular case, the pricing does have more a value component that it often does. The video game market is considered a luxury, is rather elastic and there are many competitors. Prices for video games are relatively consistent across studios. Base prices. In this market the cost plus can, and will, be expressed via bundling, increased shifts to subscriptions and the joys of additional pay to play and (is there a word for pay for cosmetics?). Or just plain quality cuts - no need for a cinematic there and let's just ship with two starting classes. That would likely negate Blizzard's moderately surprising pause in their slide out of the premium studio tier.

You really believe this or think that lying is justified because you are on the side of all that is good?

a) Tell me who Musk bought SpaceX from? Otherwise he really kinda sorta looks to be the one and only founder. Was curious so did some digging and found he didn't even take an outside investor until six years after he founded the company.

b) You know SpaceX has gone public and their books were opened for the prospectus and for each quarterly report? SpaceX is getting 20% of their revenue from government contracts. If you want to broaden focus, the best estimate I can find is that every Musk enterprise ever has benefitted from $38 billion in government money - that is tax credits, loans, direct contracts, credits to consumers for buying electric. Compare that with $650 billion in total estimated revenue. Care to do the 38/650 math and tell me if it is above fifty percent?

I note you do not link to the man's actual words, but instead to rants about his words where a long direct quote would be two words. In isolation. With no context. Surrounded by paragraphs making claims of his horribleness.

For those who care to read and decide for themselves:
https://world.hey.com/dhh/wolv...

Reminds me a lot of the Damore 'Google Manifesto'. Lots and lots of denunciation over claims of what it said and again, very small snippets circulated as evidence. Yet a whole lot of changed minds when you could get someone to actually read it. "Oh, that is all he said? Shit, I agree with him."

That's the facility that will be attached to the existing Starlink dish factory in Bastrop. That one will be optimized for satellite solar panel arrays. The big solar panel factory, 100GW.proposed, is in a different county. That is a nutty number. It very much would be the single largest plant int he world. Currently in permitting so will have to wait a year or two to see if dirt actually moves.

Yes, the original original poster was incorrect on the PCB factory. That Starlink dish factory is the largest PCB manufacturer in the United States. Dwarved by the monsters in Asia.

Barges? No. Years ago they bought and then sold a couple old oil exploration platforms. No current plans for ocean launches. I think the fury of that first full stack launch excavating their hardened heat resistent concrete like an M80 in a pile of flour disabused them of the idea.

Completely tapped out? That is an odd way of phrasing what he actually said.

In traditional business economics a tapped out market shows signs of stagnation and slowing growth. Instead SpaceX is seeing signs of accelerating user acquisistion. Since he first made the claim, SpaceX has grown from 10 million subscribers to 12 million.

Per customer revenue is down as SpaceX expands into the South American and African markets where they charge lower regional rates. Yet in a little over a year they have had a 60% increase in subscribers paying the full western price.

Physics, huh. Are those physics why adjusted for inflation costs per kilogram to LEO were very roughly $10k for decades. Then the first Falcon 9 expendable dropped that to $5k. Then modern versions of Falcon 9 with landing and resuse dropped that to $2.5k. Falcon Heavy? $1.5k. Starship is projected by the least optimistic space watchers to drop that under $1k per kilogram.

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.