I think it’s more an issue of funding tbh. If nasa had the same funding then maybe it wouldn’t be reliant on private sector for this goal. Tbh I think it would be better if federal Nasa wasn’t as reliant on the private sector



Right, but you can’t lose them without an alternative in the pipeline

Everyone is playing up SpaceX, X(then Twitter), Boring company, and Tesla because Elon said he wanted to make an "everything application" and merge all 4 of those companies into "one".

Right now SpaceX is valued at a pre-ipo valuation of anywhere between $150-200 billion. When compared to Jeff Bezos "Blue Origin" or Richard Bransons "Virgin Galactic" the only difference is that SpaceX earned some government contracts(Due to their "reusable self landing rockets" but these contracts are similar to the "green tax credit" subsidies Tesla got when they were not profitable but "going green" which was a big push by the Obama administration. Tesla just like Solar City/Solyndra were hemorrhaging money but still got help from the government.

I personally don't think the whole "self-driving" thing is any much more of hype then "artificial intelligence". Most modern cars even older ones have "drive assist" / "cruise control". These things are already "baked in" to the current valuation of Tesla. They want to remove "gas combustion engines" which is a staple of American freedom. Being able to get on the highway and go anywhere is a privilege many take for granted. If we allow all cars to become electric and "on the grid" so to speak the government could basically shut off your car if you didn't pay your car insurance bill. I've already seen the Mercedes/BMW's that come with heated seats but if you don't PAY monthly for them they REMOTELY shut them off. This is a slippery slope and the idea that we could go "all electric" is pure delusion.

Steve Jobs was a hype man but he did it in a subtle and inviting way that Elon Musk just can't. He doesn't have the charisma but he is "good" I'll give em that.

Apple tends to release a car by 2026 that is "self driving on the highway" but "person driven" anywhere else. They are priced at 100k(similar to what the first Tesla's cost). But you'll be able to connect your I-Phone and the car will be seamless electronically speaking.

Fully autonomous vehicles have hit major roadblocks because they've already killed people. The only benefit like I mentioned with the government backing it is that it would give them MORE control over you the driver.

Stock market itself is at the end of a bull run that wasn't even suppose to happen. Everyone was forecasting a recession this year. I sold my Tesla shares years ago and moved a decent chunk into semiconductors(AMD,TSM,NVIDIA) and Apple.

Big investors have notoriously shorted Tesla because it can't continue to sell electric vehicles at a faster pace then other automakers can create their own electric vehicles and saturate the market.

I'm more likely to spend 100k on an all electric Porche, Mercedes, BMW because they are sexier on the outside and the inside hands down.

If you were to have bought into Tesla when it was back down just above 100 just this year you'd have doubled your money so I'd stay put unless you have 25-50k to put directly into Tesla shares. It'll never be above $1,000/share again imo but the stock market is unpredictable.

Hey thx for the post

I agree with you on X totally, a dumpster fire is a compliment. As a former Tesla long I cringed when the deal went through. Won’t spend much time here. He wanted to create an all in one super app and only has managed to lose users and ad sponsorship. It is however a small valuation when compared to the total picture

Spacex is at the mercy of the US government, but that will only be the case for as long as there isn’t a competitor, which for the moment is the case.

Now coming to Tesla, there are two camps
Overpriced car company
Underpriced tech company

We can make worthwhile arguments for both. The quality of Tesla has always been extremely suspect, especially when compared to European counterparts. Even lucid and rivian are better built cars. But the idea is they are just cheap data collecting drones for an AI company yet to climax

I truly don’t know which side to lean on.

Like you I have been playing AI in other ways, cloud, cyber security, and semis mostly.

Do not even get me started on subscription based European features. Breaks my soul. Recently German has been my thing and haven’t made the ev switch yet but that annoys me to no end

Looking at Tesla, what tech prospects do they actually have? They don't make their own batteries. Their car self driving AI is massively behind the other big players. Nothing on the robots so far.

So what's the actual bull case for a Tesla tech valuation?

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Dec 9 2023 06:44pm

The bull case is the army of drones getting increasingly cheaper for the public to buy. That data will accumulate even if Tesla cannot use it properly. If they can use it and develop AI self driving then that’s bull case to fruition, but even without it that self driving data still has value.

Who's funding each?

For NASA it's the government. For SpaceX it's private investors which may have a few motivations but I would argue profit-seeking is one of the bigger ones. Ultimately though it's still indirectly funded primarily by government contracts though. So funding sources ultimately come from the same well. The private-public partnership is a superior one though.

The beauty of capitalism is it made clear that when private profit seeking interests are aligned with public ones, that's one of the better ways to implement change, climate change, EVs, etc. pretty much prove this. The profit aspect in private is a better regulator of performance because there's clear incentive to succeed there. Those don't exist in governments to the same extent so you end up with wasting more money and are way less efficient.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Dec 9 2023 06:59pm

So actually had to look it up and I was wrong earlier

Spacex only has received 15 odd billion of government funds (since 2003), and is valued at around 150-175 billion

In contrast nasa has received 15-25 billion annually since 2003 and in total ~600billion since inception of nasa

So spacex is certainly profitable at this time without federal assistance it’s safe to say

I hear what you’re saying about private -public relationship. I would look at the military for a better example of practice because you have multiple weapons companies in business with the US. Regarding space launches, there really doesn’t seem to be another private partner.

But maybe that’s not the US govs or spacex fault that blue origin and the like were fails

Hate to break it to you, but we're poised to absolutely smash through all of the climate change threshholds with no sign of stopping. I'd pick a better example, like banning CFCs to stop the ozone hole forcing companies to research alternative referigerants.



SpaceX being valued at a certain amount doesn't mean they are profitable. SpaceX also sends up private satellites and sells Starlink, but is burning through investor cash and government grants at a pretty alarming rate.

We know SpaceX isn't profitable because they've had to continually raise more investor money to keep the lights on.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Dec 9 2023 07:52pm

When I try to look it up I am just seeing alleged profitability q1 2023 of 55 million, but can’t find any specific report

Regardless, this isn’t the hill I’m dying on, and self admittedly I don’t know a lot about their finances. I was under the impression majority of funding was US contract but that doesn’t seem to be the case

Profitability is not a good way to value this anyways and misses the point. They have IP. If they go public you would have a lot of investor interest. What’s interesting about their potential future business is its so capital intensive and high IP that it would become a natural monopoly. Kind of like with Boeing & Airbus with planes but even worse because there’s really no one else that builds rockets commercially.it’s not as if joe shmoes in a garage will boot strap a few billion to build rocket tech.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Dec 9 2023 08:22pm