LEO

MegaWeinerFarts

we need a breakthrough that drastically reduces the cost to LEO. Granted resuable boosters is a big deal, but for a real space economy we need something better than chemical rockets

shadowalpha_ai

Many reasons. 1) Robots use way more memory than a lot of other devices do, and those are already being pumped out in crazy levels of production, about to get way way bigger. That demand is going nowhere anytime soon. 2) Orbital datacenters 3) Additional proliferation of AI driven devices, including consumer goods, local AI inference hubs attached to traditional internet infrastructure, LEO AI infrastructure 4) Chinese devices and parts are under intense scrutiny, and there's a good chance they'll be blocked from provisioning the US market. IMO it doesn't even matter if prices go down.

Any_Possible3003

Surprisingly it’s a lot more nuanced than 2 seconds of braindead pondering. For anyone that’s interested, there’s a few things that separate them from SpaceX or other competitors. 1). It was built on first principles for broadband direct to cell phones. Large phased arrays to compensate for the tiny antenna on cell phones. Current iteration are 2,400 sq. Ft compared to Starlinks 6 sq ft. Antenna array. I think v2 may be around 25 sq ft? They need starship to began launching those though. 2). Spectrum, ASTS will have lowband/midband and C-band layers. Starlink may eventually attempt to service Lowband but they will need larger arrays. Lowband spectrum penetrates much better through trees/windows etc. it’s an important piece of the puzzle. 3). Spectrum and partnerships. They go hand in hand, ASTS was just awarded 1 billion USD by the Japanese government to develop their sovereign shell through a JV with Rakuten. ASTS has access to a significant amount of spectrum through its MNO partnerships that a competitor could not just go out and buy. 4). Countries all over the world have been pretty forthcoming that they do not want a foreign company having control over their countries data. ASTS is bent pipe and all traffic is routed through carrier MNO network, Starlink is regenerative and all data is routed through them. This is a non starter for most of the world, which is why ASTS was the only company to apply for J-LEO in Japan. 5). Starlink also is a direct competitor with MNO’s in home broadband and have publicly stated their intent for a standalone mobile network, even if countries were done giving Starlink their data…MNO’s won’t be fine handing over their customers to a new competitor on a silver platter. ASTS has the better, 1st principles tech, and business model for d2c, IMO.

Unusual-Lie8889

Just remembered ASTS fanboys thinking the stock would be at 130+ after J-LEO contract and some morons bought at peak during overnight. I'm glad I could never reach this level of delusion.

jckorn85

I'm Aussie and I can tell you the government is mandating the Telcos they need to have LEO technology in their infrastructure. This is mainly for dead zone but emergency as well. Friend of mine works in the Telcos industry

Another_Smith_SC

Like the other guy said, the Japan J-LEO award is a huge benefit to AST and analysts haven't priced it in to their models yet.

IEgoLift-_-

**1.** “No broadband, the average user gets 0.1 to 1 Mbps.” Rigged denominator. You divide beam capacity by concurrently active users, not every possible user. DTC is intermittent supplemental coverage, someone in a dead zone making a call, not tens of thousands streaming at once in one beam. Every terrestrial network on Earth looks terrible under a simultaneous-worst-case denominator too. That scenario isn’t the service. The physics: throughput is Shannon-bound, and the driver is antenna gain. AST flies the largest commercial phased arrays ever built specifically to maximize gain to unmodified phones, which is why it closes a broadband link where small payloads close only a messaging link. And the proof is already public: \~98.9 Mbps demonstrated to an ordinary phone, plus voice and video calls across Rakuten, Vodafone, AT&T, and Verizon. The bear’s own worst case, one user in a beam, is exactly where AST shows broadband speed. **2.** “SpaceX targets 150 Mbps per user vs AST’s 200 per cell.” Three mismatches, each flattering SpaceX. Per-user vs per-cell manufactures a 1000x gap from mismatched units. Target vs demonstrated: 150 is a goal, not a result. MIMO vs non-MIMO: the 150 is a MIMO figure, while Starlink’s real-world DTC is non-MIMO at 2 to 3 Mbps (Musk claims \~5), and AST’s 98.9 is also non-MIMO. Match them, non-MIMO demonstrated to non-MIMO demonstrated, and it’s 98.9 versus 2 to 3, with MIMO headroom still in reserve. Correct all three and the conclusion flips. The strategy claim also misreads the model. AST sells through carriers, not to consumers against Starlink. Nobody picks “AST vs SpaceX,” they get satellite fill-in on their existing plan from whoever their carrier chose. And J-LEO just settled the sovereignty question where it counts: a G7 government picked AST over Starlink on exactly those grounds. Carriers and governments vote here, not shoppers. Same aperture physics, two consequences. Spectrum first. Low-band, sub-1 GHz, is the valuable stuff because long wavelengths penetrate buildings, terrain, and foliage where high bands get blocked. Serving it from orbit means forming tight, separated beams at low frequency, and beamwidth is set by aperture in wavelengths. At sub-1 GHz the wavelengths are long, so you need an enormous array to keep beams tight and non-interfering. SpaceX’s small payloads can’t: at low frequency their beams go broad and overlap, which locks them out of low-band and pushes them to higher bands that penetrate poorly. AST’s arrays are large enough to do it. Power second. Those same loose beams spill energy off-target, raising interference into terrestrial networks, and regulators cap interference. So SpaceX has to run reduced power to stay under the limit, which cuts throughput and coverage. It’s in the record: they petitioned the FCC for higher interference allowances and got a partial waiver, more than baseline but well short of what they asked for, and they operate under that ceiling. AST’s tight beams concentrate energy on target, so it runs full power without breaching the limit. So the aperture “cost” is actually two structural advantages a small-sat design can’t copy: AST uses the penetrating spectrum SpaceX can’t, and runs full power where SpaceX throttles. This isn’t abstract. J-LEO is a 700 MHz low-band program, which is why it fits AST and not Starlink. The low-band physics and the sovereignty win are the same fact. **4.** “They keep delaying, a delay is a delay.” Conceded: guidance has slipped about half a year, and that’s a fair knock at this market cap. But the cause decides the meaning. The delays are launch-driven, and the Blue Origin New Glenn failure is a launch-provider problem, not AST failing to build. Production is at BB37. The bottleneck is orbit access, not manufacturing, which is a very different thing from “the tech doesn’t work.” And the standard is applied selectively. SpaceX’s next-gen DTC has slipped hard and depends on Starship, which has its own public failures, so AST is arguably less exposed to an unproven vehicle than its main rival. RKLB’s Neutron has slipped repeatedly and takes none of this heat. Applied evenly, “no excuses” hits both harder than AST. And near-term it barely matters: upper-hemisphere coverage needs 45 to 60 satellites, production is at BB37, so that milestone lands even on the slipped timeline with years of room before J-LEO’s 2029 deadline. The delays hit the global ramp, not the coverage milestone the J-LEO award rests on. **5.** “Dilution is imminent, could reverse to sub-$20.” The balance sheet kills the framing. Cash north of $3 billion (about $3.5B at the last call, $3B being conservative), plus roughly $1 billion incoming from RAST to offset build costs. That’s not a company forced into an emergency raise, and the subsidy cuts net capex, so it means less dilution to build, not more. Conceded narrowly: capital-heavy firms raise over a long build, and some dilution should be modeled. But “imminent dilution, could crater to $20” describes a distressed, runway-short company, and $3B-plus in cash with $1B of subsidy incoming is the opposite. Dilution to fund a government-co-funded revenue asset from that position is not a desperate raise. And “a seller held it down for months” is just Rakuten’s orderly, pre-planned 10b5-1 sale, disclosed mechanical overhang, not proof the stock is controllable or the business weak. Volatility and a retail base are real. “Drops for no reason” is a claim about sentiment, not value. **6.** “Maxed-out satellites, one-trick pony, can’t improve.” Wrong on the facts. Block 2 BlueBirds are explicitly larger and higher-capacity, so the size ceiling is wrong for the roadmap. And improvement was never only about size: array design, beamforming, and spectrum efficiency all scale capacity, and AST’s onboard-processing roadmap targets roughly 2x spectral efficiency with no size change. “One-trick pony” cuts less than it sounds. AST is concentrated on the largest addressable market in wireless, direct-to-device for billions of existing phones, and focus on a huge TAM is a strategy, not a flaw. It’s also not single-product: the same constellation feeds defense and dual-use, IoT, and first-responder verticals. RKLB’s rockets and panels are real diversification, into smaller-TAM, different-margin businesses, so “diversified vs not” isn’t automatically a verdict either way. Different bets. **7.** The point the whole case misses: AST lets carriers kill money-losing towers. The “but can it stream video” framing misreads why carriers want AST. In many markets, operators are required to keep coverage in unprofitable rural and remote areas, running loss-making towers to meet the obligation. AST lets them meet it from space and retire the tower, turning a cost center into a satellite-served zone. That’s an opex and capex cut on top of new revenue, and it has nothing to do with per-user speed. It’s a core reason carriers sign, and part of why AST has demonstrated across Rakuten, Vodafone, AT&T, and Verizon. The bear grades AST as a consumer ISP. Its real customer is the carrier’s balance sheet. Bottom line. Points 4 and 5 are real risks worth modeling: execution timing and eventual dilution. The rest is the misinformation, the per-cell denominator trick, a SpaceX comparison that inverts once you match units, targets, and MIMO, the low-band and interference physics the bear skips, and roadmap errors. And the whole “must win consumer broadband or die” premise ignores that AST’s actual business, carrier obligation relief plus sovereign infrastructure like J-LEO, never depended on winning a streaming contest.

Swimming-Cupcake7041

Space internet/network, yes. Space AI/compute/storage, surely not. The cost and effort to put something in space and keep it there kills all margins compared to the same thing in a barn on ground. And then on top of that you have the radition/heat/cold problem. How can it even be justified? From a user point of view there's no benefit of having your stuff running in LEO compared to your closest DC. Or is there?

skunimatrix

Hell, I can barely get T-Mobile or ATT at the farms and they are 2 miles from an interstate.  STARLINK helped a lot and we used it in our airplanes until March when they put the speed limit in place.  If LEO has a decent general aviation offering we’ll ditch STARLINK in a second.  Right now we have the standby plan for traveling with the plane or down at the farms.  

CarpoLarpo

Not space junk while operational. Stuff in LEO naturally deorbits rather quickly (typically less than 10 years), so these constellations produce little-to-no space junk. Unless something blows up in orbit and scatter pieces of stuff everywhere, but that's besides the point since all spacecraft is susceptible to that.

Im_On_Reddit_At_Work

ASTS is a customer of whoever can launch, it's just that they're the largest sat ever deployed to LEO and stacked payloads are amongst the heaviest ever launched to LEO - atm SpaceX is the most reliable launcher. BONG once operational will launch more. ISRO and Vulcan are also there.

Im_On_Reddit_At_Work

> If it was so great everyone would have it. That's the thing, satellite cellular at the moment sucks. Only one that is decent is Starlink services that use dedicated hardware to receive satellite service and provide it to connected devices. Starlink direct to cellular barely does 2g and is unreliable. ASTS will offer 5g satellite cellular straight to unmodified phones, and is already partner with a lot of the global MNOs to hit the ground running once the constellation is up in LEO. No one is able to offer speeds close to ASTS on unmodified phones, they have the technical moat and the deals (including US/EU/Japan gov contracts) to be leader in the space.

tomgreen99200

Starlink and Amazon LEO are going after a different sector than ASTS. This is for home internet that requires an antenna. ASTS is cellphone broadband that doesn’t require an antenna and works with everyday phones.

tomgreen99200

That’s incorrect. Amazon LEO is like Starlink - home internet that requires an outdoor antenna. Has nothing to do with cellphones.

Weird-Cantaloupe-186

RKLB acquired IRDM giving RKLB more revenue. ASTS is doing a joint venture with Rakuten which makes them likely to get awarded the J-LEO contract.

Alymagy96

ASTS J-LEO 1 billion dollar contract confirmed this morning

lollipop999

ASTS awarded J-LEO https://preview.redd.it/940bmzrbedah1.jpeg?width=780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fb4fd885e46d70f7540d9cac54a77ec926bf7ded

Acceptable-Prune3943

So.. It’s officially official now. **ASTS HAS WON THAT $1B J-LEO CONTRACT FROM JAPANESE GOVERNMENT!!**

AcanthocephalaIcy571

It’s not too late to buy ASTS right now before news of it winning the J-LEO contract catches on

Confident_Insect_616

I'm just a poor, but the trades I made on VSAT last year bought me a car. Iridium is a trash service. Their voice service drops more calls than any other method I have ever touched while also being the most expensive. Data dates are tiny. Rocket Lab will need to completely overhaul the comms stack on this LEO constellation to be useful. If you want voice services through a satellite, do VoIP over Starlink. If you want data services, also use Starlink. Every other space-based ISP is only viable to enterprise customers who can afford the insane monthly cost and distribute usage of their carrier over a lot of end-users or to critical infrastructure.

Shdwrptr

Amazon LEO? Lmao. They’re like 5 years away from anything. StarLink and ASTS will be firmly owning the entire market before Amazon is doing anything. RKLB didn’t get enough spectrum from this deal to compete with D2C and definitely doesn’t have the cash to buy what they would really need. This is a IoT play for low bandwidth connectivity.

Any_Influence_8305

Buy it now. I got in at $4 and it's my highest conviction play, if you can't understand why a vertically integrated space company buying a LEO sat phone provider with its own patented and exclusive wavelength for comms with like 2+ billion customers who aren't regards like me, I'm talking government, freight, real job people. Anyways calls

Alymagy96

Apparently it’s leaked that ASTS won J LEO $1bn contract

Sanpaku

For over a year the scuttlebutt is that the Raptor engines have been underperforming thrust expectations, and the Starship 2nd stage is too heavy, both of which dramatically reduce tonnes to LEO. To compensate, the tests have pushed the Raptors beyond their spec, and this increases both failure risk and turnaround inspections. Still, if they can get it to work, its a useful system for lofting StarLinks to LEO. And still a terrible system for any missions beyond LEO.

quoala678

We should launch a Wendy’s into LEO

intheshoplife

Are you concerned about the compilation in the LEO satellite internet industry. Currently there are around 10 competitors coming up that will cut into starlinks market share. Then there is the risk of global conflict to the sat network. It makes it self a good target due to its capabilities on the battle field as we have seen in Ukraine. What is the likelihood that grock ends up being the ai that wins out over all the other options?

Firm_Eagle_6178

wait for J-LEO announcement before you sell CC's. That is the one catalyst that can happen in a week to bring volatility back to the upside

sentientshadeofgreen

I'm attacking the execution of a weak argument. Not much of an argument to attack to begin with, you're just flopping your credentials around like it makes your take stronger. How about the Mynaric acquisition affords RKLB the best lasercom IP for what will be a key component of a 4T TAM in telecom by 2030, a prime in the 1T space economy of 2030, protected by a vertically integrated physical moat in launch services? Layers 1-3 in telco are moving to orbit, the long-term money to be made in how that infrastructure gets in orbit and stays in orbit hasn't been priced in, there is unaccounted for latent demand because the economics of putting things in orbit has been so expensive. As the cost to put things in orbit decreases with competition, it's going to unlock significant spending to maximize speed and coverage which requires moving layers 1-3 to orbit. ASTS is a good D2D play with great IP, but RKLB's IP is postured to do *much* more than simply lob bullshit into LEO. 3/4 of their backlog is already space-system oriented which garners higher gross margin. I look at RKLB as what will be a 250B market cap ticker within a couple years on par with Lockheed Martin, because they are postured to compete in space better than the vast majority of other industrial participants. There is obvious execution risk, space is hard, but the upside is there even if it trades at a premium in traditional models.

Ctofaname

What are you talking about. The only company that spoke on mars was SpaceX and that wasn't their primary business anyways. But the remaining space industry was squarely focused on LEO and the Lunar surface providing Artemis support. It sounds like you have a gear to grind with Space X (which the stock absolutely sucks now that its weighed down by xAI) but that has nothing to do with the greater industry or even Space X the launch company.

Ctofaname

No one is focused on mars right now. Not even space x. The focus is LEO and the moon.

Prairie2Pacific

LEO constellations are profitable. Invest in them and whoever builds them. Everything else is vapor. EDIT:Not spacex, that shit needs to simmer down. 

Stunning-Variety-285

No they only go to LEO or Indian ocean exploding

Fenix42

I spent a few years working at a satalite ISP on the tech side. I worked with Inmarsat and Iridium. I built specialsed hardware / software for the IS. I left right as Starlink was comming on line, so I have 0 direct XP there. Both can do VOIP with no issue. There are already hand help voice only sat phone. There are also "sat sleeves" that are basically satalite modems in a phone case with a bluetooth connection. Tons of portable terminal options that range from tablet sized to vehicle mounted. Starlink is a LEO cluster like Iridium and has similar charterisitcs. The core issue with those is satalite life. LEO satalites degrade faster then stuff further out. Comming in closer is just going to speed that up. If Starlink + SpaceX can keep the price down for all of this, they have a shot at becoming a world dominating communication company.

Marston_vc

Idk what you’re talking about. SpaceX currently operates over 10,000 satellites in LEO and have been for some time now.

Knuckles_55

Trash? Literally the only company launching satellites into LEO, has billions in US government contracts locked up, an untapped Starlink market, etc, etc, etc. Yup it's trash.

PCjabber

Hughesnet and Viasat are [GEO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_satellite) satellite internet services, not [LEO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit) (like Starlink). Services that use the latter will always be lower-latency than the former, because of the huge distance from Earth to a GEO satellite (we still can't bend the rules of physics).

fmaz008

What about OneWeb? Sure they're B2B, but they have something like 600+ satelites on LEO. Amazon is also intend to enter the space.

MathW

Self landing/reusable rockets was a kind of next step evolution of traditional disposable rockets and the concept had been discussed for decades. Honestly, it was easier and more reliable to make disposable rockets and, before Starlink, there wasn't even really a ton of demand to be constantly launching stuff into LEO. Lunar hotels, space datacenters, colonies on Mars are not next step evolutions of existing tech. They are like 50 steps ahead of where we are today. We haven't even sent a single human to Mars, refueled a ship in orbit or built anything on the moon. We spent decades constructing the international space station. We usually have less than a dozen astronauts in orbit at any given time and we haven't even sent a single human to the moon in 50+ years. Like, the things mentioned in this post are barely connceptual in terms of the very first steps on how to accomplish them, not to mention an actual business case of making money if you could technically achieve it.

Thefrayedends

I'm told; * They've reduced the cost of space transport by an order of magnitude -- Not True. * They have guaranteed and permanent government contracts -- Not True. * The LEO satellites essentially evaporate on re-entry and don't produce any pollution -- Not True. * P/E being negative doesn't mean anything! -- Not True. * Giving them a monopoly will further reduce the cost of space transport because it allows them to further hyperscale! -- Also Not True. Fundamentals and Due Diligence are for losers.

hypernsansa

What are you smoking? Have you forgotten how musk cut off Ukraine from starlink? Unless you pollute LEO with you own satellites, the risk is not mitigated whatsoever.

Next_Instruction_528

SpaceX's dominance isn't one thing — it's a compounding stack of advantages that has widened into a structural moat most of the aerospace industry still hasn't reckoned with honestly. --- **Vertical integration at a scale no one else attempted** The traditional aerospace model outsources everything. Lockheed, Boeing, ULA — they're essentially systems integrators sitting atop enormous supplier webs. SpaceX manufactures roughly 70-80% of its hardware in-house: engines, avionics, composite structures, the grid fins, the software stack. This means iteration cycles that would take a traditional contractor 18 months happen in weeks. When they identify a failure mode, they own the fix. No supplier negotiation, no contractual change orders, no IP walls between subsystems. The Merlin engine was designed and built internally from near-scratch. So was Raptor — an engine running full-flow staged combustion, a thermodynamic cycle so demanding that the Soviets abandoned it and no Western engine had ever achieved it before Raptor flew. --- **Reusability as a genuine paradigm shift, not a PR talking point** Before Falcon 9, the industry consensus — backed by actual engineers at NASA and ULA — was that reusable rockets were theoretically possible but economically dubious because refurbishment costs would eat the savings. SpaceX proved that wrong by actually doing it, iterating until the refurbishment cost dropped to near-trivial. Falcon 9 boosters have now flown 20+ times routinely. The economics are transformative: an expendable Falcon 9 launch was already cheaper than a Delta IV Medium. A reused booster on a reused fairing compresses that further. ULA's Vulcan, Ariane 6, and ISRO's current generation are still partially or fully expendable. SpaceX is essentially operating on a different cost curve entirely. --- **Raptor and Starship represent a genuine generational leap** Raptor is the highest chamber-pressure engine ever flown — running above 300 bar, full-flow staged combustion, methane-fueled. The performance ceiling is substantially higher than Merlin, Vulcan's BE-4, or RS-25. Methalox was also a deliberate long-game bet: methane is producible on Mars via Sabatier reaction from CO₂ and subsurface ice, which makes Starship the first rocket architecture designed with interplanetary self-sufficiency as a first-order constraint rather than an afterthought. Starship itself, if it reaches operational status, makes everything else in development look incremental. 100+ metric tons to LEO fully reusable — compared to Falcon Heavy's ~64t expendable — changes the economics of what you can deploy to orbit. Large space stations, point-to-point Earth transport, genuine Mars missions without orbital assembly: these stop being multi-decade fantasies and become near-term engineering problems. --- **Cadence as competitive moat** In 2023, SpaceX conducted more orbital launches than every other nation and company on Earth combined. Launch cadence matters because every flight is a data point. Their telemetry and failure analysis pipeline is running at a rate that compresses learning timelines by an order of magnitude versus any competitor. When Starship had its first integrated flight test failures, SpaceX iterated faster between attempts than NASA takes to convene review boards. The "move fast" ethos is real but it's backed by the vertical integration — they can actually implement the changes they identify. **Institutional culture as structural advantage** This is harder to quantify but real. SpaceX recruits from the tail of the engineering distribution and runs on a culture of extreme ownership and rapid iteration that traditional aerospace contractors — constrained by cost-plus government contracts that actively disincentivize efficiency — literally cannot replicate without structural reform. Cost-plus contracting rewards complexity and delays; fixed-price contracts reward speed and cost control. SpaceX built its culture around the latter before it was mandatory. The talent density compounds the technical advantages.

Spleenface

I agree fully fledged starship will be cheaper per kilo to LEO, but the calculations people are doing to arrive at the 95% figure are using current costs of a Falcon heavy launch with a purported payload that has only ever been achieved with starship.

TendstobeRight85

The aerospace industry is massive, with nearly all of the vendors making products that need a ride to space. There are very very few launch vendors, but satellites are literally made on college campuses as school projects. And Space X is far and away the largest ride to get to space. Low earth orbit at least, which is where the vast majority of satellites end up. Space X has a platform that has massively lowered the cost per pound to launch, through their reusable rockets. Making it the choice for anyone wanting to get to space on a budget. And at this point, they have the track record for safe launches that they can largely guarantee delivery at costs far lower than any competitor, and do it orders of magnitude faster. As I said earlier, most other launch platforms do a few to a dozen launches per year. Space X is doing well over a hundred per year. Statistically, if youre going to LEO, youre gonna go on a Space X Falcon 9.

Flipslips

Just an interesting tidbit: the mass simulators on the recent starship flight ended up around 45t, which is the heaviest payload anyone has flown since I believe the 90s. It was just a few hundred m short of LEO, and it had several engines out.

SeanStock

We'll have the first data centers in space this year and thousands by the end of 2028. Every major government on Earth will want a private StarShield style constellation. There appetite for LEO is just getting started. And the US 100% will colonize the moon in the near future.

Spleenface

Calling it 95% savings is super misleading. The point of comparison for the non-crew rated Falcon Heavy should not be the crew-rated space shuttle, it should be contemporary rockets like Soyuz, or if you want to factor in sovereignty, then maybe Delta IV. It's also worth noting that while Falcon Heavy's claimed mass to LEO is 65T in non-reusable and ~50T in reusable, AFAIK no launch with anything CLOSE to that load has ever actually taken place, but it still seems like those are the numbers people are using to calculate these costs.

Justthetip74

Because theres no way in hell Blue Origin is getting back up this year. Late 2027 is optimistic. They also chose ULAs Vulcan as their backup which uses Blue Origins engines (which is more than likely why it blew up) and they were already grounded because of Northrups shitty engines. So now the world has 1 launch provider and they're going to be competing against Amazon LEO to buy out starlink launches. ASTS if fucked because they made regarded decision to not contract the most reliable and cost effective rocket ever made to put all their eggs in Bezos basket and he fucked them soooo hard

Justthetip74

The only competition for rocket launches are Blue Origin and ULA. Bezos blew up his launch pad and rocket so they won't be launching anything for 2 years. They also oost their rocket certification they would've got that mission. ULA's Vulcan was already grounded because of Northrups shitty engine but they also use Blue Origins engine and thats probably what made it blow up so they have to go thru both engines. They won't launch for a year. Everyone is trying and failing to build a Falcon 9 competitor and SpaceX is quickly making Falcon 9 obsolete Amazon LEO was going to be competition for starlink but Bezos blew up his rocket and exclusively contracted Blue Origin and ULA so that's now 2 more years away. Meanwhile every airline is getting starlink, every tanker, every long haul trucker, every emergency responder worldwide will be getting it. Same with ASTS. Ai companies worked primarily on software and ran out of data centeres. Spacex is really good at building things fast. They went balls out building data centers. Now SpaceX can rent collosus 1 to Google and Anthropic for $2.2b/mo and use collosus 2. Collosus 3 is coming online later this year and they can rent out collosus 2. It'll probably be cheaper to just rent compute from SpaceX than build your own. Especially if the figure out the Ai satellites Elon is besties with Jensen from NVDIA so hes getting tons of chips and building Terrafab to build their own chips.

Pelvis-Wrestly

Dont be tarded and dont be impatient. The buying frenzy will settle next week or maybe next month, the buyers remorse from retail tards will set in, the exit liquidity will be taken, this thing will shit the bed and settle at its real valuation, THEN we buy. It IS going to Mars, but its gonna be a while. Honestly Starlink is the bigger play than LEO access. The next gen Iphone will access it directly, which is gonna gut all the land based cell providers and put all that juicy subscription money in SpaceX's pockets.

livinginahologram

> The difference between any NASA tech and Blue Origin is that SpaceX is able to reuse boosters quickly with only days turn-around. So what ? What's the point of a rapid turnaround if the economics don't work out? > H3 is definitely cool, but suffers from being underpowered (can only lift 35k lbs to LEO, Falcon 9 does 50k) and again, they are at least 5 years away from getting any sort of rapid reusable vehicle. I don't think they are aiming at reusability if they can achieve cheeper launches with a non reusable rocket. We will see how the economics play out, their press releases seem to indicate that. > SpaceX quite literally has zero competition for at minimum 5 years. By then, Starship will have taken over all the Falcon 9 flights, and any competitor is back to square one. That's wishful thinking. SpaceX has been down stepping the milestones for Starship at every launch. They are lagging behind every contract made with NASA and Starship development has been burning cash like hell. I wouldn't say it's been successful..... They still have yet to prove the Starship is a viable platform (the latest explosions indicate otherwise) and after develop the rest of the logistics for any of their wishful missions (planet exploration, etc..) and on top of all that make it a profitable business. Yeah, I don't drink the coolaid. SpaceX managed to make Dragon6 cheaper than competition for institutional clients but that still doesn't make it a profitable business.

Flipslips

The difference between any NASA tech and Blue Origin is that SpaceX is able to reuse boosters quickly with only days turn-around. Blue Origin has a good start but it will take years for them to scale to the speed and frequency of spacex. Falcon 9 is likely to be retired before Ariane NEXT even flies (if it does at all). The Honda rocket was like 20 feet tall and only went a few hundred m up in the air. It was a scale model, not an operational vehicle. H3 is definitely cool, but suffers from being underpowered (can only lift 35k lbs to LEO, Falcon 9 does 50k) and again, they are at least 5 years away from getting any sort of rapid reusable vehicle.

mustafar0111

I've seen a bunch of different estimates which all land all over the place. It really depends who you want to believe. In terms of government. Military sat comms, "Starshield". There is no real alternative available even to governments right now that would provide the same bandwidth and latency. That will only get worse as well as the worlds militaries get more and more dependent on real time data links. Ukraine's military would not even be functional without Starlink right now. SpaceX can obviously also launch the governments other military and spy sats. In terms of commercial telecom the big jump will be the V2 Starlink sats and beyond which are much larger and provide massively more bandwidth which supports a much larger customer base while also providing more bandwidth at the same time. The orbital sats all have a lifespan regardless of who puts them up because of their orbital tracks (you can't keep them up forever in LEO because of the drag from the atmosphere). If they get the price down further they'll be competing with home internet providers, data on vehicles and the cell phones when they are able to connect. Depending on the country Starlink maybe cheaper than the domestic telecom providers for data (Canada). I can't comment on the orbital data centers until I see one working. I'm betting on the future growth. One things most companies fuck up today is not investing enough into R&D. SpaceX will burn crazy amounts of cash for future tech that won't pay out until 10-15 years down the road.

_freckles__

SPACE X should start doing space hotels that offer sex, then space wendies, basically whole ecosystem in LEO, first step for stars

Ok_Marsupial1403

The LEO rockets work great. The capital rockets are either rarely used or don't work yet. SpaceX will make more headway than  any of the other companies will, but clarify. The rockets that work great are penultimate to starship which hasn't been 100% figured out yet.

modifiedcar

I think Direct-to-Device technology will be bigger in the future. Using LEO satellites for communication anywhere in the world is a cool feature.

AstroPedastro

Just wait until Russia - Ukraine stops and there is a drop in revenue for Starlink. It is expensive to maintain because it requires X satelites in LEO to be replenished. Smaller client base but still huge cost is a big risk.

Qs9bxNKZ

Aim for mars and only make it to the moon. Not bad. Aim for the moon and only make it into LEO (low earth orbit, not cops) like starlink and it’s still a win.

peanutsademoji

I literally work at a company making edge computers with AI that are in LEO, sorry buddy.

Dirk_Breakiron

Exactly, for LEO missions at least. These have all been meant as tests for that system to ultimately prepare for a catch, but since that involves a flyover of many populated areas it's super high stakes, so they need to be 100% certain everything is going to go right before making an attempt. Noted this before but it is worth saying that moon and mars missions will come in way faster, so that may / almost certainly will require way more overcome

Dirk_Breakiron

I'm not sure I follow - I'm saying it *does* reach orbital velocity so it does experience everything it would from a LEO orbital return (interplanetary is much faster and a different beast).

notorious_basket

Yes they are heavy but launch costs are expected to decrease from $2,000/kg to LEO to $200. So if you hold those bags getting them into orbit should get cheaper.

SelfUnmadeMan

Starlink's entire business model is not even indefinitely sustainable... everyone whose opinion matters on the subject seems to agree that the Kessler Syndrome is an ever increasingly likely outcome given how cavalier we have become with satellite traffic. Nobody can say for sure how likely it will be within a given time frame, but someday in the not-too-distant future, LEO satellites may become a complete nonstarter. What keeps Elon afloat after that?

Dirk_Breakiron

>but faster Minor correction here - terrestrial fiber does have higher bandwidth, but from a physics perspective low earth orbit satellites should be faster (lower latency) theoretically. This is because 1) it's a more direct path: ~150km up and then a mostly straight line by laser link vs. a more meandering path on the ground. And 2) light through fiber is ~30% slower than light through a vacuum. Right now actual experienced latency is similar but eventually LEO constellations should be the fastest, especially over longer distances (say coast to coast or especially between continents).

mmmfritz

Its nice to have some paramiters, but we dont get all of them. The 95x revenue one is enough for anyone with half a brain. If they can reduce the cost of space travel by 100x then good for them. It's more likely these rockets will have to be rebuilt sooner than that. Maybe one day you or I can buy a trip to LEO.

japan_eq_nerd

Imagine this: China launches 28,000 satellites, Kessler Syndrome kicks in, and SpaceX investors get to watch their money streak across the sky like shooting stars. That's not just a joke — it's an unpriced tail risk. China's 2007 ASAT test alone generated 3,000+ debris fragments. At 50,000+ satellites in LEO, a cascade event makes every revenue projection in that DCF model permanently moot. Meanwhile Japan's NEC quietly demonstrated inter-satellite **optical** communication at 1.8 Gbps in January 2025 — post-radio infrastructure that doesn't care how crowded LEO gets. The physics doesn't care about the IPO price.

Ender_D

Kessler Syndrome doesn’t really happen in the low LEO orbits that these satellites are in. It would only be a couple years if a big chain did somehow happen.

atrde

I would expect you to understand... with all of these qualifications... that Kessler syndrome cant happen in LEO where SpaceX operates.

AsheDigital

You think the by far most launched rocket, the rocket that's generated the by far most revenue, at the cheapest $ to orbit, which is the only semi-reuseable LEO rocket in steady operation, is a scam? Oh, they also operate the fastest and cheapest satellite internet ever provided. You really so that fucking regarded you that's all a scam?

xxxxxxxsandos

LEO satellites degrade orbit? Oh my god you might win the Nobel bro!

NiceWeather4Leather

You’re also talking opinion as fact buddy. So far they launch satellites into LEO (something already done) slightly cheaper than anyone else (not exactly the world’s most transformative company there).

jeddy3205

When orbital refueling is a thing, capacity to LEO is all that matters.

atrde

Ok but part of what is baked in here is Space is a relatively new industry but not one that for now seems to have a cap (hopefully). I don't really see Space as being in the same bubble categories of Gambling or Weed there is a vast untapped market both in LEO and future exploration. Also SpaceX is so far ahead of the other companies its like current Meta battling with MySpace so if you do believe there is a future in Space its a no brainer stock.

kellven

The market for LEO launch systems is fairly small. SpaceX's largest customer is them selves in star link, which its self is only able t capture a small part of the ISP market. SpaceX BY ITS SELF is interesting as an IPO, its a fucking death trap with X and Xai bolted to the side of it.

Icy_Jelly_315

Starlink gonna have cut throat competition and basic market is the 3rd world pour. LEO gonna get kesslerised anyway. Mars: 1. Go to Mars 2. ?? 3. Profit. Quadrillion dollar asteroids cost 1 quadrillion and 1 dollar to bring to earth and then the price of whatever they made of crashes because that's supply and demand for you

asdf_lord

LEO is still in a out 90% of earths gravity.

jb_1699

obvious but today is/was NBIS, don’t forget my boy LEO dropped $2.4B on it

PalpitationDapper345

Here's my take on this that makes me bullish in the long term (this isn't for day traders, and I'm not some kind of investment guru but my feelings on this are less investment related and more outlook related) I'm looking at the environment that we're in. I'm not sure how many people are following NASA and their LEO economy push. There is a massive, government-led initiative/effort to push for deep space exploration capabilities. It's a multi-stage plan that has been in the works for *decades*. The Artemis missions are stepping stones to space capabilities by humanity. In order to support a moon base, you really do need an actual space economy, and launch capabilities are square 0 to getting that. GPS, weather, space station infrastrucutre, soon to be data centers, moon-based logistics - all of it requires launch capabilities. SpaceX is the utter, total undisputed leader in this space. If you understand NASA's staged plans to get to Mars, this starts to paint a better picture. A moon base requires orbital support. A space station - Gateway - will provide that logistical orbital support as not just a hub for moon logistics but also as a "base camp" as it were to deep space exploration to Mars. Gateway represents the next phase in human space exploration and it is *intentionally designed* to work with private sector space companies to make it happen. NASA knows that government is too efficient to make this stuff happen. We *need* the private sector to get costs down, and that's already happening by orders of magnitude. Just ask yourself this: Will humanity stop advancing? The benefits of space and space exploration on science alone have changed our lives to the nth degree but most people aren't aware of it. Advances in materials science, medical science, propulsion technology, mechanics, bla bla bla bla have been myriad. People are out here acting like we're just going to stop pushing the boundaries of science. We're not. I personally don't really see any path forward for humanity that *doesn't* involve moving off-planet. In that case, getting in on SpaceX - as a buy-and-hold long term position - seems like if you were to have been a seed-round investor when the wright brothers were getting laughed at. I personally am not looking at the company's financials as the only factor here. I'm looking at their undisputed engineering prowess, and the world that is unfolding that, for the most part, seems to be invisible to most people.

cuteman

So, that's the bet on SpaceX, right? It's a casino not a sure thing inevitability. A lot of this sounds like sci-fi, but it's not that far off from the realllyyyyy impossible stuff that is 15-25 years away. You think it's 15, someone else thinks it's 5, someone else thinks its 21. Global telecom is pretty doable and easy, they're basically already doing it and ramping scale currently. Here are the next generalized milestones (roughly) Starship & Lunar Development (2026–2028) * Starship V3 Rollout: Introduction and testing of the Version 3 Starship, aiming for significantly increased payload capacity, thrust, and rapid, shortened fuel-loading phases. * Orbital Fuel Transfer: Mastering complex LEO (Low Earth Orbit) propellant depot docking and transfer, which is an absolute prerequisite for deep-space and heavy lunar missions. * Artemis III & IV: Partnering with NASA for the Artemis program, with an uncrewed Starship test and a targeted crewed lunar south pole landing. Mars Exploration Program (2026–2030s) * Uncrewed Mars Missions (2026): Launching uncrewed Starships to Mars—potentially carrying Tesla Optimus humanoid robots—to test deep-space transit and entry, descent, and landing (EDL) capabilities. * Crewed Mars Flights (Late 2020s–2029): If the 2026 autonomous test landings and LEO refueling objectives are successful, SpaceX plans to launch its first crewed interplanetary missions to Mars. * Interplanetary Fleet Scaling (2030s): Scaling to roughly 100 missions during the 2030/31 Mars transfer window, building toward a self-sustaining city over the following two decades. Space-Based Computing & Starlink (2028–Beyond) * Space Data Centers: Deploying large-scale swarms of satellites equipped with high-performance GPUs, powered by solar arrays, designed to handle orbital AI compute as early as 2028. * Direct-to-Device: Expanding the Starlink constellation to provide continuous cellular, internet, and messaging capabilities globally, bypassing traditional ground infrastructure The TAM on Global telecom alone is $2 - 2.5T so they could absorb a huge amount of that off the bat. Launches for other private companies will be large because they'll be able to do so many of them. Military/Gov love the idea of having advantages no one else has so they'll be paying dearly as welll. So by 2028 they'll be able to launch data centers at scale and I bet you'll see quite a bit going up 2026-2028. I dunno, doesn't feel that unrealistic in 5 years, we'll know how possible it is in 2-3 years but in less than 10 it could be the new reality. Have you looked at the energy production expansion in 5-10 years? It's worth a few trillion not counting increases in domestic/residential electricity and water consumption that has everyone so pissed Starship + V3 size arrays make a lot of crazy things possible. ISS required 40-50 trips to get assembled (42 just for hardware) across 13 years of projects/launches largely constrained by launches. Imagine being able to do 2-4 starship launches in 6-12 months for 1/20th the price and the hardware makes an ROI

Mattholomeu

I very large amount of the more immediate market for business in space is for putting satellites up into LEO. This has been emphasized by US congress and a bunch of other countries. Companies like ULA or NASA are not really optimized for LEO. So there is a large and immediate business need for people to meet this demand. SpaceX and Blue Origin can't keep up. RKLB caters to LEO and will \*on a long enough timeline\* have Neutron which was built exactly for this demand. LUNR may one day be very profitable, but is catered towards research missions. The military, observation companies, telecom, etc don't yet have a business need to put something on the moon when compared to how many of those entities would like a satellite in LEO. Also LUNR has failed a few important missions, so i think people are waiting to see them redeem themselves before drinking the koolaid again.

Prairie2Pacific

The monopoly is starting to crack, tho. There are competing LEO constellations this year and more rocket companies. I'm not betting against the guy, he somehow bends reality, but he's losing his competitive advantages. 

Waverun

Data centers in space make a lot more sense especially in LEO. They can scale up a lot quicker and don’t have to get land for it or go through the red tape. They also can manage cooling a lot better, and can get energy pretty free through solar. Putting them on the moon this soon is a stretch.

turbopepsi

There is a massive arms raise to have LEO ISP capabilities. I'm talking thousands of satellites planned to launch in the next couple of years. SpaceX isn't the only one in this game. Amazon is coming after them.

Easy-End-2852

Why is that worth money? Dispersing LEO satellite grids is one thing. Maybe mining on the moon or asteroids? By the time we do that we will likely have other businesses and nations leading the charge. I’m just not seeing the revenue.

1ess_than_zer0

They’re in LEO numb nuts.

0o0o0o0o0o0z

Ya, but w/o SL, there is not even a reason for SpaceX, but some nebulous bullshit: datacenters, LEO, Moonbase, Mars, etc... I mean, at the end of the day, it's a giant Ponzi scheme... built on vaporware. But that doesn't mean people can't make a shitton of money on derivatives of that stock, like Tesla. As I said, the stock is the product, and all these techbros wanna get as much as they can before they jam out to Europe, New Zealand, or Argentina and build their doomsday fort or whatever.

1ess_than_zer0

Bro you don’t even know if ASTS sats are GEO or LEO and you’re trying to tell me why SpaceX is better than ASTS. Gtfo of here. Go doom somewhere else.

Mdiasrodrigu

As a Eutelsat shareholder I really wasn’t expecting the pump SpaceX gave to the stock, but at the price SpaceX is aiming for it’s fair to give a better price to the 2nd biggest LEO option in the market. 4€ is nothing

DefinitionOfAsleep

Amazon/Blue Origin are already trying to get SpaceX barred from launching that many, since it essentially locks out LEO for any other operator.

Blackout38

Heat can be dissipated in space, the ISS and satellites already do that. They just need to be large relative to the compute. Not an impossible problem at all. Land isn’t the expensive part right now but it’s only going up in place data centers would go. Same with energy infrastructure costs, permitting timelines, regulations, and unpopularity. With starship the launch costs drop substantially further. They won’t need crews, they’ll have to be designed for zero maintenance similar to how the Starlink satalites are already designed. Like we send tech into space all the time that doesn’t require a human be present. No one is on Mars fixing the Mars Rovers for example, it’s just software updates. Deorbiting would work just like the Starlink satalites where they can design for that in timelines, use thrusters to control, and largely follow planned obsoletion like Starlink. And if they just fail, it takes 5 years to fall out of orbit naturally with the right LEO altitudes. There’s plenty of solar up there but they can easily just use nuclear like most of the other equipment we put in space. It’s actually more reliable outside of the earths atmosphere where there is not human inference. The only real problems for them to solve are cooling and power density but it’s not like those are impossible like you think. And all of this is build on the rocket backbone of the company that they’ve already built a playbook around for Starlink. In fact, the first data centers for AI training and compute are already up there and were launched last December and January by SpaceX for different companies Starcloud backed by NVIDIA and Axiom Space. But again they used SpaceX to send them up there because no one else can do it as cheaply.

Osiolke

I imagined more a kessler syndrome like scenario where the Chinese would render low earth orbit unusable for a couple years until the debris fell down, but yeah I didnt take into account that China also has a lot of assets on LEO that wouldn't be worth sacrificing

throwaway7q8e

Now calculate what the fraction of LEO that would be covered by several football fields worth of solar arrays is. Hint, it is small. Yes, these things are large, no that doesn't mean it is impossible. In fact, the sheer size and volume of these things required is precisely why Redwire will print money.

VQV37

SpaceX only provides LEO services thus far. There was a time where they werent even able to do that. Let's come back to this conversation in three years so who will be eating their words.

ThatMovieShow

You clearly don't the history very well lol. The reason private space exists at all is because back in the late 80s good ol' Ronnie Regan created legislation which prevented NASA from taking commercial contracts and also forced NASA to rent out their manufacturing and launch facilities at cost price to private space industry. It was part of his plan to push it into privatisation. Today the main reason why NASA contracts spaceX is because spaceX launches at a loss to gain market share and crowd out new competition (it's in their S1 document) which makes it cheaper for NASA to use spaceX for the time being. But spaceX is only reliable for LEO launches up to a certain cargo limit (falcon9). SpaceX does not have a single rocket capable of carrying a higher cargo limit than falcon9 and has literally no rockets capable of leaving earth orbit - NASA does. Whatever complaints you might have about NASA it has a moon capable rocket, spaceX does not. So right now in terms of moon launch NASA has no competition in the usa. In terms of moon capable human rated launch it has no competition on the planet. SpaceX is literally decades behind nasa in terms of achievement and this is while also being hampered and tied up by various political interests that don't affect private space at all.

mycroftitswd

ATAI - psychedelic antidepressant. Because I've seen really serious depression devastate someone, and I've never had a bad trip, so what could go erong. LODE - recycling silver out of old solar panels Because silver is expensive, digging mines is tedious, might as well mine solar panels. Eutelsat - LEO satellites that compete (barely) with Starlink. Because Elon doesn't own it and the Europeans are bound to get it together eventually.

ShrugsforHugs

Isn't SLS already capable of 100 tons to LEO?

lambda-legend

A 100% reusable launch vehicle capable of moving 100 tons of cargo to LEO? That alone is revolutionary. The fact that it's so durable that with orbital refueling it can go to other planets takes that to the extreme. And orbital refueling is something that can be made very cheap long term once asteroid mining begins

stirrainlate

First, I think SpaceX is a terrible investment at anywhere near the ipo valuation. But if I had to give a bullish scenario: Assume there is no AI bubble pop and xAI is a big player in a powerful oligopoly, and starship works sooner rather than later, and adults in the room steer away from the Mars boondoggle and concentrate on lobbing tons upon tons of satellites into LEO, and we don’t have a massive recession/stagflation. Then this would be interesting.

BoppoTheClown

I'm strongly considering it. But then again, I sold my rocketlab stocks at around 40. Almost no valuation metrics justify current pricing. Even if you think of things in terms of forward P/S, Neutron ramp will only happen so quickly (1->3->5->N), and who knows how much demand there will really be? Additionally, with this kind of valuation, new entrants will come in to the medium launch market, and existing players will be incentivized to invest more. If yeeting kgs into LEO at a relatively low $/kg becomes a commodity capability, then the already-meh launch margins will sink even more?

Flaky-Bug-9676

I personally will be buying day 1. Its simply FOMO, I expect substantial gains in the early days. Definatly taking profits right away haha. I do feel it will drop like a rock after week 1 though because the valuation is ridiculous. Most people are going to be buying for the flashy rockets, but fail to realize that Launch services really are not that amazing financially. The real beneficiaries of lowered launch cost will be satellite companies, ASTS, PL, Amazon LEO, Starlink, etc. Yes I know starlink is part of SpaceX, in fact. It is over half of spacex's rev. I do think this is a generational company. its so hard to value a company creating a completly new industry, but at these levels. Ill wait for my main position for a pull back. So im going to try and scalp the fomo.

EscapeHistorical178

I know everyone is salivating over the SPCX ticker dropping on June 12th, but if you actually read the S-1 instead of just looking at the rocket emojis, you’d see this is setting up to be a legendary bag-holding operation. They are targeting a $1.75 Trillion valuation. But the math on their three "pillars" is completely detached from reality. Here is the actual DD on why this narrative is lame and massively overplayed: 3. The Starlink "SaaS" Delusion....Wall Street is trying to price Starlink like a high-margin software subscription business. It’s not. It’s a permanent, multi-billion-dollar capital expenditure treadmill. These Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites only last about 5 years before their orbits decay and they literally burn up in the atmosphere. SpaceX isn't just building a network once; they are forced to manufacture and launch metal into space forever just to maintain the subscribers they already have. 2. The Pentagon Ceiling....Bulls keep screaming about "unlimited government space contracts!" Yes, being a defense prime gives you a stable floor, but the government doesn't hand out tech-monopoly multiples. The military uses strict cost-plus contracts with hard caps on profit margins to protect taxpayers. You can build a solid, bulletproof business doing that (look at Lockheed or Northrop), but you cannot mathematically justify a $1.75T valuation selling hardware to the Pentagon. The growth ceiling is concrete. 3. The "Orbital AI" Cash Incinerator....This is the most ridiculous part of the filing. They posted a **$4.28 billion net loss** in Q1 2026 alone, mostly to fund the xAI merger. The marketing narrative is "solar-powered orbital data centers" to solve the energy grid bottleneck. Here’s a basic physics lesson: space is a vacuum. Down here, we use massive amounts of chilled water and air to keep AI servers from melting. In space, you have to rely entirely on radiative cooling, which is insanely inefficient. If you pack thousands of next-gen GPUs into a tin can in orbit, they will melt themselves. This isn't a visionary infrastructure play—it’s a cash pit. **TL;DR:** You are paying a $1.75T premium for a telecom company where the towers constantly fall out of the sky, a defense contractor with capped margins, and an AI project that defies the laws of thermodynamics. Let the early insiders cash out on day one. Do not touch this until the lockup period expires in December.