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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that SpaceX will not IPO until they reach Mars. And I think most of the value in what they’re developing is going to be extracted after that point rather than before.

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Even if we accept that SpaceX is going to Mars, wouldn't they want the IPO money to finance the Mars mission?

The goal of Starship is to make Mars missions significantly less capital intensive in the first place, and to make lift to orbit orders of magnitude less expensive. This is going to open up qualitatively different commercial markets that will bring tons of money into SpaceX. They don’t even need to make money off of Mars itself; it’s more that reaching Mars requires them to actually deliver on the other stuff.

Still need retail suckers to buy shares so the rich private select investors can cash out.

> IPO until they reach Mars

So when the massively tank their valuation by spending an insane amount of money with no potential of any meaningful return?

Why would a private/commercial company ever go to Mars?

A money seeking company might not want to go. But there likely will be co-op based groups that would go. Similar to this project that helped develop parts of Alaska at a time where it was considered to be nothing but snow and ice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanuska_Valley_Colony

https://www.nps.gov/teachers/classrooms/twhp-matanuska-colon...

All of these costs virtually peanuts compared to what a trip let a lone a colony on Mars would cost. It's inconceivable that any non-profit seeking non government organization/group could ever pool enough resources together for that (and if they could all of that energy/resources/money would be better spent on fixing more relevant problems back on earth)

Favorable labour laws (that is, a lack thereof)

Imagine the massive Tesla and SpaceX factory-sweatshops, cranking out cars and starships on a barren red planet.

It's a long flight home. We haven't had that kind of excuse for indentured servitude for centuries.

And at the bottom of a gravity well.

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