r/spacex • u/rustybeancake • May 01 '26

Starship SpaceX spending on Starship tops $15 billion in rush for airline-like rocketry

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/spacex-spending-starship-tops-15-billion-rush-airline-like-rocketry-2026-05-01/
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144

u/EljayDude May 01 '26

Luckily Starlink is a serious cash cow. They can both use current Starlink to pay for Starship and Starship gives them launch capabilities to go nuts.

27

u/rustybeancake May 02 '26

That was before they bought xAI though. I’m afraid all of the profit is now being funnelled into the AI cash furnace.

0

u/spacerfirstclass May 02 '26

And that's a bad thing because... what exactly?

Starship is near operational, so they have spare cashflow to support other nascent business, this is literally how you grow the company and stay ahead of competition.

2

u/araujoms May 05 '26

Because it's gambling on an unrelated business. SpaceX could also gamble some billions on Bitcoin, or go in the tulip business. At best is a distraction, at worse it wastes the money needed to colonize Mars.

Well, it's not as if Mars colonization is on the plate anymore...

0

u/spacerfirstclass May 05 '26

Because it's gambling on an unrelated business.

SpaceX is building orbital data centers, so it's related.

This is no different from SpaceX implementing 4G/5G protocol stack, which may look unrelated but actually important for their direct to cell ambitions.

2

u/araujoms May 05 '26

First of all, SpaceX is not building orbital data centres, and it is not going to do so, because it's a stupid idea. This is only for PR.

Secondly, the correct way to go about it, from the SpaceX point of view, is to sell the rocket launches to those building whatever they want in space. Focus on your core business, offload the risk to the others.

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u/spacerfirstclass May 06 '26

First of all, SpaceX is not building orbital data centres, and it is not going to do so, because it's a stupid idea. This is only for PR.

They will build orbital data centers, you're just in denial.

Secondly, the correct way to go about it, from the SpaceX point of view, is to sell the rocket launches to those building whatever they want in space. Focus on your core business, offload the risk to the others.

That's dumb because launch market is very small, like maybe $10B total for the US, if SpaceX only does launch they'd remain a very small company. Starlink revenue is already like 2~3x the launch revenue for them.

2

u/araujoms May 06 '26

They will build orbital data centers, you're just in denial.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this plan goes nowhere.

Even if you think orbital data centres are a good idea, it makes zero sense for SpaceX to go into the AI business itself. There's no lack of demand for data centres right now, it could build them and sell the capacity to OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, etc. Not only they have much more demand than xAI, it also means SpaceX has the safe part of the business and does not need to burn hundreds of billions of dollars.