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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Yes, when SpaceX gets added to the index, it's going to skyrocket for just that reason. The other reason why SpaceX stock is going to skyrocket is because of the "infinite potential". After all, Elon is going to be God-Emperor of Mars, and how much is a piece of that worth?

The OP knows this and wants a window to profit from this squeeze. For the general public index owners, the sooner it's added to the index the better, minimizing the time that traders can front run this squeeze ahead of them.

Perhaps better it's not added to the indices at all, but as long as it's inevitable, the sooner the better.

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Being added to the index is literally the only thing causing "the squeeze" according to this description though so how does that benefit either the author or the index holder?

If the stock was added to the index at a normal period then all the shares would be available.

The author wants to buy ahead of the indexes and benefit from the squeeze; he wants the normal rules of waiting a year before SpaceX is eligible to join the indexes to apply.

this is news.ycombinator.com

Do you think there's some super dominos that happens? If he's trying some combo pump-dump scheme, there's much better places.

Also, you provide zero counter to the punch, so what is your word worth any more?

It's substack, not ycombinator. The article is obviously not targeted at ycombinator.

And I don't think he's doing a pump and dump. He's just doing the very human act about ranting about things that affect him. His self-interest colors the piece.

How will a colony on Mars be profitable?

How many Earth dollars would you pay to go live on Mars?

Zero. The beauty of nature on Earth far exceeds anything of that on Mars.

Come on man, either we ship the unmentionables, or the billionaires get to live with their robot love slaves.

Obviously, you don't have enough imagination to keep Musk's ego based cost-proposition elvated.

SpaceX has always been a about convincing private industry to fund the militarization of space.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

Mars is a thin cover story to get the engineers to feed the War machine. "National security" / nuclear threat is a great excuse to get politicians to sell out the country.

How about we focus on global security?

I thought it was obvious that "God Emporeror of Mars" was a satirical answer. There are a whole bunch of new markets that cheap access to space open up. Like Bezos' dream of in-space manufacturing. Or Musk's dream of data centres in space. Or power gen in space. Or the "cis-lunar economy". Or space tourism. Or He3 on the moon. People will buy SpaceX stock for the potential, even if that potential is pretty much worthless and the chance of SpaceX capturing the gains rather than some other company is fairly low.

"National Security" is just one more in a big list.

No, those other "dreams" were either developed or refined by, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Advisory_Council_o... as pretexts to pursue a space militarization agenda. The history is clear but the New Space propaganda is being fed to the younger generation.

I wouldn’t really mind seeing the SpaceX IPO flop initially. The God Emperor of Mars has quite the ego.

However, I’m pretty sure the opposite will happen and the stock valuation will go past the moon to mars and beyond.

That seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. SpaceX is more important than whatever issue you disagree with Musk about. After graduating with a degree in aerospace engineering in the aughts, I switched to software because the practical alternatives were building missiles for Raytheon or going to GE and trying to figure out how to make gas turbines 1% more efficient. SpaceX jump-started a commercial aerospace industry that was utterly moribund as recently as when Hacker News started up.

Sorry to burst your bubble but SpaceX is Raytheon now. You should look at what they're doing with Starshield, SDA, Golden Dome, NRO, etc. The commercial stuff was small potato stepping stones made more palatable to engineers, but the pivot has already occured.

To be clear, I have great respect for military work. I used to work at a defense contractor. But in terms of building a career, it's a heavily regulated industry with little room for growth. SpaceX is doing defense work, but it has not pivoted to being merely a defense contractor. SpaceX's valuation is triple that of Raytheon and Lockheed put together. The market expects it to continue pushing forward on commercial space.

No, the market does not expect Musk to be mining Mars or selling Moon motels...

It expects Musk's connection with JD Vance and SDI insiders will give them the bulk of the $2-$4 trillion GD contract.

What’s your basis for saying that? It makes no sense. Even if Golden Dome was a trillion dollars, which it isn’t, that wouldn’t support a $1 trillion valuation. Defense contractors average around 10% profit. Raytheon got $24 billion in government contracts in 2023. Its revenue is about $90 billion, and its valuation is $277 billion.

Funding for Golden Dome was $24 billion in 2025 and 13 billion in 2026. Even if SpaceX got all that money, it wouldn’t move the needle on SpaceX’s valuation.

Traditional defense contractors have low profit margin because of the cost plus pricing on the contracts. They literally are only allowed to charge the cost they incur plus some fixed profit percentage. As such, they have incentive to drive up the costs, so that their profit, while low percentage, is on high base.

SpaceX wouldn’t need to so that. Companies like Anduril already are trying to win contracts on fixed price model, and if they succeed, they’ll have much higher profit margins than Raytheon et al.

The estimates that have Golden Dome at anything close to a trillion dollars are posited on the assumption that it will be much more expensive to build than the administration believes it will take. If it ends up as fixed price bids and costs less than people think, it will be well under $200 billion.

There are multiple estimates, including by Republican members of Congress and think-tanks that put it in the many trillions of dollars.

That's right.. and Golden Dome (which is definitely a mult-trillion dollar program if space based weapons are employed) has a bunch of convenient oligarch properties like built-in planned obsolescence with orbital decay that amplifies a launch monopoly.

> which is definitely a mult-trillion dollar program

The program already exists and you can see how much has been allocated to it.

Sure let's pretend the first year budget of the program represents its entire future.

Even still it is already 2.2% of the entire federal budget. Multiple estimates put the total Golden Dome cost in the $$ trillions.

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