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From Bankrupt to $150 Billion: How SpaceX Conquered an Industry
Launchpad Newsletter
July 16, 2024
Breaking Down the Business of Space for People on Earth
Welcome to the Launchpad Newsletter, your top source for political, economic, and social developments in the New Space Economy, built by real entrepreneurs shaping it.
Ready-for-launch into the insights of the most impactful industry of the 21st Century.
This Week’s Next-Gen Newsflash
🚀 SpaceX has just launched Turkey’s first satellite
🛰️ We finally know what caused that Russian satellite to explode near the ISS
đź’¸ U.S Spending bill directs NASA to clean up orbital debris
Today’s Subject of Space: How SpaceX Conquered the Launch Industry
In 2008, SpaceX nearly went bankrupt. Now, the company is considering a share sale that could value it at roughly $200 billion. Let’s break down the incredible rise of one of the most impactful companies of the 21st Century.
Although it is easy to remember the company’s many successes, looking back, SpaceX’s early history was defined by its failures.
“I messed up the first three launches,” CEO Elon Musk once recalled at a space conference in Adelaide, Australia. “The first three launches failed. That fourth launch worked. Or that would have been it for SpaceX. But fate liked us that day. So, the fourth launch worked.”
From there, the rest was history. A successful commercial rocket led to more contracts for a commercial spacecraft program in the form of Dragon. Suddenly, a private company had almost exclusive access to the ISS, launching cargo resupply missions, and people by 2020. NASA’s investment in buying commercial services had paid off many times over.
The many successes in such a capital intensive, heavily regulated, and incredibly risky field attracted both more contract value from the US government, and investor capital, rapidly pushing SpaceX’s valuation from a measly $28 billion in 2017 to nearly $180 billion in December 2023.
The flywheel only ever gained momentum, with hundreds of successful consecutive launches of reusable rockets, swift deployment of consumer-oriented satellite internet services, and the ongoing development of the world’s largest and most powerful rocket in the form of Starship.
All this, while still operating as a private company. And that has made SpaceX the largest valuation ever for an American private company.
With direct investment from the public and private sectors alike, SpaceX has captured the interests of diverse and powerful stakeholders committed to uncontested American access to space.
And the clients keep lining up, with the company’s Starlink internet services slated for a classified spinoff catered exclusively for the US Military’s strategic defense communications network.
16 years after nearly going bankrupt, SpaceX has dominated the global launch market by developing useful technologies no one else could compete with, in a high barrier-to-entry domain backed by government support, with diverse business units that provide synergistic effects within the company and aerospace industry at large.
And that has made SpaceX one of the most impactful industries of the 21st Century, worthy of the billions it now boasts.
State of the New Space Economy
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Top Space Creators to Follow in 2024
📸Instagram:All Around Science (442k followers)
đź‘”LinkedIn:G. Pettit (11k followers)
✖️ X:Curiosity Rover (4.2m followers)
📽️ TikTok:AstroKobi (2.7m followers)
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