MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA HOW GOOD OF AN INVESTOR GOOGLE IS
6% OF SPACEX
14% OF ANTHROPIC
75% OF WAYMO
$900M INTO SPACEX IN 2015 →
NOW WORTH $115B
$13B INTO ANTHROPIC → NOW WORTH $140B
WAYMO JUST RAISED $16B AT A $126B VALUATION → GOOGLE’S STAKE WORTH ~$95B.
THOSE THREE BETS ALONE ARE WORTH OVER $350B AND THEY HAVE 100’S MORE SMALLER ONES $GOOGL
Can we debunk this nonsense?
Elon Musk was awarded (note: not given) cost-per-result contracts to perform a service for the US government. The total of those for SpaceX specifically is ~$22B, which includes repaid loans, state tax incentives, etc.
The deal was simple: put stuff into LEO at or below a set cost. If SpaceX does it below the set cost, SpaceX keeps the difference. If it doesn’t, the company is responsible for the overrun.
End result? SpaceX & Elon lowered the cost of getting 1 kg into LEO by 95-97% vs what NASA was paying previously.
And for the record, every other company around at the time was offered the same opportunity to bid on the contract - Musk/SpaceX just took it.
The handout narrative implies the taxpayer is the patron and SpaceX the dependent. The cost data shows the opposite: before SpaceX, NASA paid Russia’s Soyuz $80-86M per seat; SpaceX delivered at ~$55 million. SpaceX saved the US taxpayer $300M-$465M each year on that alone (the US sends 12-15 astronauts to space each year)
On the lunar lander, NASA estimated SpaceX’s fixed-price bid saved $20B-$30B vs the Boeing-preferred cost-plus approach.
So: SpaceX saved the US taxpayer more than the total value of contracts it earned on a single project, PLUS provided the US government with the requested services (put stuff in LEO) at the best possible price.
Elon Musk's companies employ roughly 170,000 people.
AOC drove Amazon out of New York, killing 40,000 jobs.
One creates. The other destroys.
They are not the same.
Elon Musk is not stealing from you.
Gavin Newsom is stealing from you.
Karen Bass is stealing from you.
Tim Walz is stealing from you.
Elizabeth Warren is stealing from you.
AOC is stealing from you.
Becoming wealthy does not make you evil.
The people who take from you, promising to fix problems and then enriching themselves while trying to get you to hate those they're taking the money from... are evil.
The article is totally false btw. You can add up every government incentive my companies have ever received and they amount to less than 2% of the value of SpaceX and Tesla!
And many of these incentives actually helped our competitors disproportionately to Tesla or SpaceX.
For example, when President Trump removed the $7500 tax credit for electric vehicles, Tesla sales actually INCREASED, because more buyers shifted from other EV makers to Tesla.
We are at **0.0115%** of our mission before Type I Civilization is completed.
On an astronomical scale, the bar chart barely registers against the Stone Age.
The mission continues.
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.@BernieSanders , it is a time to celebrate. @elonmusk has created enormous value for society by building @SpaceX, driving down the cost of rocket launches and creating a global satellite communication network that has brought high speed, low-cost internet and communication access to hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people along with critical advantages for our military and our nation’s defense.
SpaceX and its technologies will cause an acceleration in the growth of wages and wealth creation globally, including in some of the poorest communities in the U.S. and around the world.
Access to low-cost, high speed communications everywhere will allow children around the world to be educated, families to build businesses, and life-saving medical knowledge and care to be available everywhere.
SpaceX will materially bring down the cost of compute, advancing AI and humanity.
Meanwhile, 4,000 SpaceX employees yesterday became millionaires, including hourly wage employees who you claim you are trying to help.
The Elon Musks of the world drive growth, global GDP, and provide access to goods and services at lower cost that would otherwise not exist.
Elon’s nominal trillionaire status is due to his ownership of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, the Boring Company and his other initiatives that have brought new technologies that improve our everyday lives.
Elon is not sitting on a trillion dollar pile of cash, jewelry and gold. He is using his controlling stakes in his companies to advance mankind. Elon’s companies don’t pay dividends. They reinvest all of their capital to accelerate innovation and value creation.
Elon is working 24/7 for all of us. He deserves respect and appreciation, not smears.
Bernie, your socialism would never allow a SpaceX to be built. Socialism has only proven to impoverish mankind and lead to death and destruction.
We need to create the conditions for more SpaceXs to be built, not attack the great entrepreneurs who are helping to advance our country.
SpaceX is solving the biggest bottleneck in spaceflight
The COST
For decades, the average launch cost to low Earth orbit was around $18,500 per kg
Falcon 9 cut that to about $2,700 per kg - roughly an 85% reduction
Falcon Heavy pushed it closer to $1,400 per kg - roughly a 92% reduction
Now Starship is targeting a 99%+ cost reduction through full and rapid reusability
That is the real breakthrough
Every booster landing, every reflown rocket, every faster turnaround is directly attacking the economics of space
Lower cost per kg means more satellites, bigger payloads, orbital manufacturing, Moon missions, Mars missions, space stations, and eventually space-based industry
SpaceX is not just building rockets
It is making space usable at scale
Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.
AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.
“We'll have universal high income. We're basically just issuing money to people, and just because the output of Business Services will so far exceed the money supply, that effectively you have deflation, because deflation is just the ratio of the outputs of goods and services to the money supply.
If the rate of growth of goods and services exceeds the rate of growth of the money supply, which I predict will happen, then you will have deflation.”
- Elon Musk