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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

I'm unclear why you don't think it's a scam, because "he is a great financial engineer" seems awfully close to admitting that and then the "platform vehicle for everything else coming through the pipeline" seems to be the clincher that it is indeed a scam.

For example, he's talking about data centers in space as the "everything else coming through the pipeline" and space data centers are an obvious engineering boondoggle, but sound cool to people that don't know anything about data center design or the challenges of space engineering (ie heat rejection)

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I think you're collapsing a few different concepts together. Calling something a scam implied intentional deception about the underlying business. I don't think that's the same as selling an extremely optimistic vision at a valuation I personally think is unjustifiable.

Plenty of companies have traded at prices that assumed almost everythign would go right. Most of those expectations eventually proved wrong but that doesn't retroactively make them scams.

If the argument is that space data centers or some of these future initiatives are technically unrealistic, then criticize those ideas on their merits. If they're impossible or economically irrational, the market will eventually price that in, even if it takes a long time horizon.

The space data centers are intentional deception.

Are you telling me that you believe the nobody at SpaceX has run the numbers and shown the richest person in the world that according to the known laws of physics each data center will have to have MANY ACRES of radiator?

Fuck, even Grok would have told him this.

The SpaceX IPO was intentional deception - no doubt.

I realize you are passionate about this topic and maybe I am just not in that same bucket. I could take it or leave it. The valuation is absurd, the TAM is wild and I have no faith in the underlying business being able to grow that fast. Forward looking statements are rarely a scam no matter how silly they sound.

You may be passionate enough to say intentional deception no doubt. I would argue I am happy to let the market figure it out. It may take a while but eventually over a long enough horizon it should figure it out.

I apologize for mistaking your 17+ comments in here for passion.

>Calling something a scam implied intentional deception about the underlying business

SPCX says their TAM is $29 Trillion, an intentionally deceptive number. Anything they say about Mars is an intentional deception, at least until they develop a lander or a habitat or select one (1) astronaut for this.

There is a difference in wearing rose colored glasses and saying wild shit to deceive people.

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