SpaceX $500 Million Fundraising and First 75 Starlink Satellites

SpaceX finished raising $273 million and has now starting raising another $500 million according to Prime Unicorn Index and the Wall Street Journal.

This will be at $204 per share and a $29 billion valuation. Before 2015, SpaceX shares were below $10 per share.

The SpaceX Super Heavy Starship and the Starlink satellite constellation are capital intensive efforts.

SpaceX should be launching new versions of the Starlink satellites that will be simplified operational versions. The first 75 Starlink satellites and their six ground stations will be a nearly full-fidelity second prototype.

SpaceX needs to launch 2200 Starlink satellites over the next five years. They need to place half of the 4400 satellites in their FCC filing to comply with the FCC.

SpaceX should start launching the prototype Starlink satellite constellation starting in May.

SOURCES – Prime Unicorn, Teslarati, SpaceX FCC submission, Twitter
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

28 thoughts on “SpaceX $500 Million Fundraising and First 75 Starlink Satellites”

  1. Yeah, I’m not holding my breath.

    Radical new mixtures of organic compounds isn’t out of the question though, even without life.

  2. Pretty easy to control a space business so long as it has a physical presence on Earth or trades with Earth or does banking with Earth.

  3. Well yeah but whoever is actually operating Zuckerbot 0.7 on a day to day basis is the true face of evil.

  4. And the next step for them is to have de facto controlled territory.

    That is very hard to happen on Earth, but not on space.

    While nation states won’t accept mega-corps as new official nations without some important power struggle, that could eventually happen because traditional nation states will be mostly unable to stop companies from doing whatever they want in the places they themselves built and control.

    Most space stations won’t be public facilities, but private ones owned by mega-corporations, and they will control who they allow to enter and inhabit them, with Earth and very few other places becoming true public spaces for the unwanted to find shelter on, in case they don’t fit in the corporate space nations.

    There won’t be many refugees, bums and homeless in the space settlements, neither dangerous criminals. Not being useful or desirable will probably mean never getting in, or if you become useless, it will mean exile to Earth. Or death, if the space nations become more self-determining.

    Yeah, nations will be buyers of services in the new space market, and they will project coercion methods (weapons) into space. So any private space settlements will officially belong to a nation at first. And nations will insert regulations for those outside of the usefulness for the corporations (what do you do with orphans, the elderly?)

    But the highly selective nature of the demographics in space swill create strong feelings of separation and belonging to something else.

  5. We are transitioning from the era of Nation-States to Corporate-States. Some corporations are so powerful that they now negotiate with cities, US states, and even countries. They are at least on the level of feudal nobility, who enjoyed immunity from most taxes and crimes.

  6. Unless there’s (still?) life there, I don’t see any spices or drugs coming out of Mars.

    Though I expect they’ll rapidly develop their own distinct cuisine, and end up exporting it.

  7. Nah, Larry Page. Sure, Oracle is evil, but it’s retail evil. Google is evil on a wholesale level, it might have started out honest, but has become the sort of scheme that a Bond villain would hatch.

  8. I would not write off the big Koreans either. Hyundai/Kia has taken billions in market share from the Japanese, and done so by fighting them on the same grounds where they looked strongest: value for money in cheap urban cars.

  9. Centuries before European settlement started chasing mining, they were chasing something else.

    Spices and drugs.

    So that’s what we need to find on Mars.

  10. His great success with SpaceX is because his competition is bloated, lacking in innovation, and protected by government cronies. Musk’s talent for publicity cuts through the crony shield. I think the Boring company will duplicate SpaceX’s success for the same reasons. I can’t wait to see if I’m right.
    These two companies have a much less competitive market to penetrate than Tesla’s. In addition to government supported dinosaurs like GM, there are Toyota, and Honda that worship quality, and live to innovate. There are no tougher competitors than these two corporations.

  11. I think of space as undeveloped real estate. The western US was originally a desert wasteland. Now it has Las Vegas, Phoenix, and solar farms.

    Viewed from that standpoint, typically the first thing you do is mining – silver and gold in the case of the American west. Space can follow the same path – mining first, then services for the miners, energy infrastructure, farms, etc.

  12. Larry Ellison is the Bond villain. First, Oracle is evil. Next, he wears black and has a goatee. He has a superyacht *and* a volcanic island (Lanai, one of the Hawaiian chain). All he needs is a Persian cat and he’s set.

    Musk and Bezos are both fundamentally trying to help humanity by opening up space. Amazon just happens to be how Bezos is paying for it.

  13. Yeah, he made that mistake with Tesla and now wishes he could take it back … “funding secured!”

    Crowd sourced maybe but IPO definitely not.

  14. He should open his fund raisings to the public. People will buy. It could be a true people space program.

  15. Psst Elon… ask Bezos’ Ex for some $$$.

    “Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold in space.”

  16. In the long term, E. Musk biggest merit will be acknowledging what was needed to open the frontier and open it.

    While many of the basic requirements for a permanent human presence in space have been known for decades, a lot of others were neglected because they weren’t within the confines of a bureaucratic mindset and its goals.

    Things like the need of reliable, redundant and cheap communications. NASA has needed to contact many far away places in the past, but they were pursuing a few probes per decade, not thinking about hundreds of satellites and space drones, or people over there. Therefore a expensive solution (the Deep Space Network) that worked well for a few probes and missions was enough.

    Someone with another mindset had to come and think about what you needed to make a business there, and how to make it financially viable here. Thus the idea of Starlink was born.

    The same with the other missing parts of the great enterprise of moving humans to another planet, which are already being thought as companies providing solutions on Earth, like transportation (Tesla EVs) and construction (boring company).

    The guy is not the only one with such vision. There are others that will bring other missing parts. But he’s in position to bring the most important parts, which are the spaceships that can take us there.

  17. I concur. Everything Musk has built so far is something he needs to get to Mars and live. Rockets, tunneling equipment, planet spanning communication satellites and electric vehicles are all needed there and have many mundane uses here on planet dirt (hat tip: GG). Whether or not Musk finally makes it there himself is now beside the point. His impact on space travel will be felt for generations.

  18. This is why Elon Musk wins. He inspires early investors with a grand vision, then creates value through the mundane.

    SpaceX is branded as a way to go to Mars. It makes money through launch services and may makes lots of money by providing a better satellite internet service.

    The Boring company is probably the same. The grand vision of international Hyperloops may never happen. We might get local underground toll roads or shuttle services. Their first real income streams will probably be something like better tunnels for water and electric utilities.

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