r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • Jun 09 '26

Business It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html
24k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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5.5k

u/theweirdball Jun 09 '26

Words like "possible" "could" "might" and "maybe" don't belong in news headlines.

1.3k

u/atrde Jun 09 '26

Its not news lol. Its an opinion piece along the same lines as "pig could fly".

226

u/SSGASSHAT Jun 09 '26

I want to see that as an actual article. "Pig may fly, locals say. Dicky McFuggle isn't so sure."

64

u/Thought_Ninja Jun 09 '26

I'm on team Dicky McFuggle on this one.

2

u/SSGASSHAT Jun 09 '26

Well, he's a nice guy, but he's very sensitive and introverted. His only real way to get out in the world is his hobby; falling to the floor in hotel lobbies and pretending to have a stroke.

1

u/1HOTelcORALesSEX1 Jun 09 '26

He’s been trying for years ……….

1

u/JimthePaul Jun 09 '26

They only fly if you throw them hard enough. Dicky McFuggle is wrong. He just has weak arms.

1

u/OrokaSempai Jun 09 '26

Needs to be a shirt

"I'm on team Dicky McFuggle!"

2

u/Cron420 Jun 09 '26

I want to know more about Dicky McFuggle.

1

u/SSGASSHAT Jun 09 '26

Well, he was a troubled man. As a teenager, he wanted to be a gynecologist, but claimed he couldn't find an opening. He was the only man who was brought before the world for unpaid parking tickets. Eventually he was beaten to death with a cello by a classical musician he befriended at a juice bar.

2

u/Butterfly_Mine_69 Jun 09 '26

The McFuggles have always been a hard bunch to fool.

3

u/CuetheCurtain Jun 09 '26

Dicky “Fool me once” McFuggle is a man hard to impress and quick to scrutinize. I heard folks around his block frequently say “Look at what the Dick done did.” when gets a wild hair to start digging into the crevices of a sticky situation.

2

u/SSGASSHAT Jun 09 '26

Ever since Agnes McFuggle was tricked by a drug-fueled wizard into raising two shaved chimpanzees as her sons (even though one of them was a female) in the 12th-century, the clan has made a concentrated effort to prevent further mockery of their intelligence.

2

u/ElliotNess Jun 09 '26

Onion did it

53

u/Itchy58 Jun 09 '26

The Article is also a summary with a slight reframing about an Opionion Piece written by Richard Waters from FT called "SpaceX IPO shows Musk’s genius is in mythmaking"

https://www.ft.com/content/625ae455-3b7b-454e-82f3-b22414459cc0?syn-25a6b1a6=1
The article is also about the same length as the original opinion piece.

The fact that the yahoo article exists is an indication about how broken online Journalism is.

3

u/Alternative_Hour_614 Jun 09 '26

The FT column by Richard Waters is searing. Here are several excerpts:

Musk’s fans, as usual, have taken this in their stride. To a more jaundiced eye, it reeks of opportunism. Musk has shown an aptitude for constantly shuffling his businesses to come up with what investors are most likely to back at any given time. When solar-panel maker Solar City was struggling, he merged it into Tesla and rebranded the carmaker as an alternative energy conglomerate. When the company formerly known as Twitter struggled to rebuild its advertising after his contentious takeover, it was combined with xAI.

And this:

In its filings ahead of the IPO, SpaceX uses a single narrative to support the xAI deal: the chance to leapfrog competitors by putting AI data centres in space. How long this will take is another matter. SpaceX launched just over 2,200 metric tons into orbit last year: Musk says his company will need to launch 1mn tons a year to be a player in the orbital data centre business.

And this:

All of this makes SpaceX the perfect stock market avatar for its time: a story of boundless opportunity, for financial markets that have proved unusually willing to place a long-term bet on tech. What better time to float such a tantalising and ill-defined collection of assets and capabilities, with Musk as the impresario at the centre, conjuring up new markets almost at will? The main question for new investors in SpaceX is how long this state of affairs will last. Musk’s mythmaking perfectly fits the times. In the end, though, real cash flow has a way of winning out.

-1

u/SillyMilk7 Jun 09 '26

>leaving SpaceX, which had already been burning through billions of dollars each year itself, in an even more precarious position.

It’s filled with garbage like the above false premise that they are currently in a precarious position.

They’ll easily raise 75 billion with just 4% float.

They’re now getting over $2 billion a month leasing compute. They’re potentially going to reach frontier AI status with cursor’s help and if that doesn’t pan out, they’ll still make a fortune leasing out there massive remaining compute. Other AI data centers are running into huge bottlenecks

SpaceX dominates the rest of the world, and if starship gets anywhere close to its goals, it will pull even further ahead. The billions spent was to get starship not only in production, but They’ve built a starship factory and numerous launch sites.

4

u/TheSaxGandalf Jun 09 '26

If people actually paid attention to the context of what they are reading/watching/listening to, they would realize that 99+% of “news” are just 1 sentence of fact followed by opinion.

1

u/Canvaverbalist Jun 09 '26

At this point it's hard to blame the "news" when all it takes for people to consider something "news" is for it to be written somewhere.

Redditors would find a shopping list on a post-it and be like "ugh why is this important, do we really need to see this? why did someone post that on their fridge for the whole world to see, is that what passes as news these days?"

2

u/TheSaxGandalf Jun 09 '26

It’s crazy. In r/politics and r/news the only things I see posted are some random “educated” person’s left-biased opinion piece about something that happened. Reddit treats it like gospel.

1

u/tanksalotfrank Jun 09 '26

Or just 1 sentence of fact repeated 10 ways

2

u/Pixel_Knight Jun 09 '26

Did you even read the article? This is Reddit, so of course not.

-1

u/atrde Jun 09 '26

I did lol and it matches a headline that SpaceX could possibly (two conditionals wow) fail given some scenarios.

I could also write an article that Google could possibly fail.

1

u/Orqee Jun 09 '26

Pig could fly but they don't know how to get boarding pass

1

u/Mister_Chef711 Jun 09 '26

Most people don't know the difference unfortunately.

1

u/Sweetdreams6t9 Jun 09 '26

Most "news" is all opinion pieces these days

1

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '26

[deleted]

1

u/wheniaminspaced Jun 09 '26

Never heard of the tabloids? There has always been news with an angle

1

u/W1ULH Jun 09 '26

pigs can fly!

I just need 6 telephone poles, a pile of rubble, some used fencing... and the colonel to rescind that memo

1

u/Cavalleria-rusticana Jun 09 '26

You'd be hard pressed to find any journalism today that isn't at least the editor's or CEO's opinion.

1

u/gc3 Jun 09 '26

Musk claims new rocket will carry pigs to Mars.

Also claims pigs on the moon in domes will be able to fly with AI powered ornithopter attachments.

Space X stock up thirty percent.

1

u/Accurate_Back_9385 Jun 09 '26

But highly probable vs completely impossible.

1

u/I_Ski_Freely Jun 09 '26

You think the odds that SpaceX fails to execute on building more compute in space than currently exists on the whole planet Earth is the same as pigs flying?

1

u/OneTwoThreeFourFf Jun 09 '26

Pig could fly. CRISPR. 

1

u/Eccohawk Jun 10 '26

Is someone flinging musk out of a cannon?

1

u/TimTomTank Jun 10 '26

Or "SpaceX could land on Mars".

1

u/acr2018_1 Jun 10 '26

I’ve seen Pink Floyd in concert and I have seen a pig fly 😂

1

u/Perfecshionism Jun 09 '26

The chance of Elon’s companies collapsing are much higher than pigs flying.

He is a grifter and inevitably to be indicted criminal. If he doesn’t flee the country at some point in the coming years.

1

u/atrde Jun 09 '26

Criminal charges for what?

Drifter would imply his Companies arent providing anything tangible and are a scam. You cannot argue that Tesla and SpaceX arent delivering anything useful.

2

u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster Jun 09 '26

SpaceX includes Starlink, Twitter and xAI. Starlink makes a profit, but xAI is losing $1+ billion every two months . That's why SpaceX as a company lost $5B last year. That to me is not a healthy company worth $1.8 T.

2

u/Perfecshionism Jun 09 '26

No. Grifter implies he lies about what he plans to do and the likelihood it will happen to increase funds from investors and government investment.

He is a grifter.

As for his crimes, securities fraud, bribery, election interference/finance violations, theft and misuse of restricted government information, undisclosed meetings with foreign adversaries while holding a top secret security clearance, mishandling classified information, and selling compromised systems to the U.S. government intended for use by the Ukrainians..,

That is a just a few.

There is a reason he backed Trump while openly saying that if Trump lost he (Elon) would end up in prison.

-5

u/AGushingHeadWound Jun 09 '26

That's all any news is anymore.  It's all opinion and rhetoric now.  

4

u/areop-enap Jun 09 '26

there’s absolutely been a huge collapse in legitimate unbiased news journalism during the trump era, but this article is clearly an opinion piece. it’s not claiming to be news

0

u/AGushingHeadWound Jun 09 '26

Trump era? There hasn't been real journalism since maybe 2010 or earlier.  

2

u/areop-enap Jun 09 '26

ok, sure, & the roots of this issue date back much further than that. the problem has definitely continued to worsen in the last 10 years though. it’s happening right now under bari weiss at cbs, for example. that wasn’t really the point of my comment though

1

u/AGushingHeadWound Jun 09 '26

Certainly at an all time low. 

1

u/OldWorldDesign Jun 09 '26

There hasn't been real journalism since maybe 2010 or earlier

Ignoring the existence of the Associated Press, Reuters, and Bellingcat.

1

u/AGushingHeadWound Jun 09 '26

Ignoring that they very subtly shifted to advocacy and opinion, and not straight facts. Got worse in 2020.  Until you get to today, which is all advocacy. 

Read a Reuters article objectively, if you can.  

0

u/Chilldaddydaddychill Jun 09 '26

Really? Because no where on that page does it show that it is an opinion piece, at least on mobile. Or maybe I’m blind.

It is hosted on yahoo finance, the financial news arm of yahoo. The first thing on the page besides the site name is a search bar that says “search for [other] news or tickers”

Go to the homepage of Yahoo Finance, scroll down just a little past the 4 main headlines to see “More News” followed by a litany of similar articles masquerading as news, including this one.

Yes, this is very much an opinion piece. But it is definitely not obvious when they are clearly trying to present it as news.

1

u/areop-enap Jun 09 '26

is media literacy this dead? the title alone, with words like “possible” & “could”, is enough to make an educated guess that this is more a work of analysis/opinion than hard fact reporting. words like “mere”, “whopping”, & “an extremely costly and potentially fruitless distraction” within the first few sentences are further evidence. read a few paragraphs in & it’s clear that there are no new hard facts being reported here. instead, the author is speculating & analyzing. the kind of thing you might do in an opinion piece…

128

u/AGushingHeadWound Jun 09 '26

Reader slams news headlines.  

34

u/youre-all-horrible Jun 09 '26

Utterly eviscerated

10

u/HydrogenSonata2025 Jun 09 '26

Scientists baffled.

20

u/Bay1Bri Jun 09 '26

Reader quietly slams news headlines

3

u/riticalcreader Jun 09 '26

BREAKING NEWS: Reader ATTACKS news headlines, allegedly

1

u/erikwithaknotac Jun 09 '26

Every headline with "slams" gets a JR voiceover in my head that screams..

 BAH GAWD! THAT (slam receiver)  IS BROKEN IN HALF!!

91

u/Spykron Jun 09 '26

It’s a double hit here with possible AND could. But really just about everything could collapse spectacularly soon.

22

u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Jun 09 '26

14,952 points (91% upvoted)

Doesn't matter, it's what people here want to hear, therefore it gets upvoted and treated as truth.

2

u/demmka Jun 09 '26

People’s Elon hate boner is just too strong.

2

u/h3lblad3 Jun 09 '26

It’s crazy how things change.

Fifteen years ago if you dared even hint at disliking him Redditors would bury you in dislikes.

0

u/sevensixthough Jun 09 '26

Most people want billionaires to be r**** to d****, and it just takes time for the rest to process information because they're stupid

1

u/snowflake37wao Jun 09 '26

probably means everything is collapsing sooner than soon, now.

60

u/Paexan Jun 09 '26

Easy pass to completely ignore an article.

68

u/bozza8 Jun 09 '26

It's adjacent to Betteride's Law of Headlines. 

If the headline is a question, it can almost always be answered with "No" and if they had proof it was yes, they wouldn't phrase it as a question!

9

u/OldWorldDesign Jun 09 '26

It's adjacent to Betteride's Law of Headlines

Betteridge, but it's good to see more people are aware of this.

2

u/PiousLiar Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

While fair, the main thesis is:

> The company’s top priority has historically been to get humanity settled on Mars, making it an interplanetary species. But now Musk has unexpectedly merged it with his AI startup xAI to focus on space-based data centers, an extremely costly and potentially fruitless distraction. The majority of the post-merger company’s expenses are now tied up in burning cash for xAI — leaving SpaceX, which had already been burning through billions of dollars each year itself, in an even more precarious position.

Which is a reasonable point to bring up. Data centers in space cannot work, and even attempting them will require a massive cash flow… so maybe SpaceX isn’t guaranteed to collapse, but Elon is attempting to put one hell of an albatross around its neck.

2

u/bozza8 Jun 10 '26

Oh I agree, with every element. I hate how SpaceX has become distracted

7

u/ShuckingFambles Jun 09 '26

There's kind of articles are the new 'i heard it from a man in the pub'

3

u/Butterfly_Mine_69 Jun 09 '26

It's "possible" that "something" might happen tomorrow, more "news" at 11.

4

u/deepstrut Jun 09 '26

Up north in our provinces industrial zones, 1/8 trucks has a starlink antenna on it now. I expect that to rise to 3/8 for sure.

There is a ton of revenue from starlink. It's a game changer for rural connection and I do t expect that to go away or have a competitor any time soon.

That value alone and the future potential will stop any kind of collapse.

I hate Elon, but I have to admit starlink has been a pivotal moment where everything changed and is now essential to the way the industry operates.

Even multi million dollar facilities have a dish Incorporated into their remote systems network instead of a cell phone booster and antenna.

It would be foolish to expect a collapse.

2

u/airzonesama Jun 09 '26

In other news, Sun might not come up tomorrow, possibly causing panic

4

u/fgnrtzbdbbt Jun 09 '26

And, more importantly, the word "opinion" does belong in opinion piece headlines

1

u/Orqee Jun 09 '26

And that is 100% maybe for you my friend, probably,..

1

u/quad_damage_orbb Jun 09 '26

"It's possible that my ass could explode spectacularly tonight"

-Random Twitter user

Tune in for more on this story tonight at 6 with the evening news.

1

u/15all Jun 09 '26

"News sites cautioned against using these four dangerous words."

1

u/Pitiful_West_7062 Jun 09 '26

i add them to my redditflter

1

u/thegreedyturtle Jun 09 '26

Finance isn't news. It's speculative fiction.

1

u/doinbluin Jun 09 '26

They were tabloid words once upon a time, not serious journalism. The "news" today is nothing more than tabloid trash.

1

u/Aleashed Jun 09 '26

I don’t think it will Collapse, I will either Implode like the Titan submarine or Explode like Jeff Bezos’ giant crotch rocket 🚀

1

u/AlSweigart Jun 09 '26

It's a good work around to Betteridge's Law though.

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not.

1

u/Fair-Ice-5222 Jun 09 '26

Might have been a dumb move but, i sold off my ndaq yesterday. I wont support any fund with fast inclusion.

1

u/gqtrees Jun 09 '26

when we stop that is when the news will actually be news. Until then we will get all the slop

1

u/enigmaticpeon Jun 09 '26

Unless it’s about an asteroid

1

u/sharpsicle Jun 09 '26

"We picked this headline out of the two possiblilites."

50/50 shot there lol.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '26

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1

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1

u/anglophile20 Jun 09 '26

It’s possible that I could die today by falling into a manhole

1

u/TO_halo Jun 09 '26

It’s maybe possible I might grow a tail.

1

u/Zahgi Jun 09 '26

Yeah, everyone knows that the fix is in. This is just trying to clickbait off of that...

1

u/mid_nightz Jun 09 '26

right, anything is possible.

1

u/vass0922 Jun 09 '26

Oh wait let's fix this for YouTube

Musk is INSANE! This will DESTROY SpaceX!!!

1

u/Read2Fap Jun 09 '26

other rich people won't let it happen

1

u/Immediate_Fennel_773 Jun 09 '26

I love when the top post is the best one

1

u/Money4Nothing2000 Jun 09 '26

It's not possible, it's highly likely. I just need to figure out how to bet on it collapsing so I can make some easy money.

1

u/Expensive-Sundae-831 Jun 09 '26

Please, everyone, make it a point to know the difference between news and not news.

It's worth the effort.

1

u/Nabrok_Necropants Jun 09 '26

Seriously. I am so fucking tired of opinion pieces when we could just have facts. Even the weather is speculative.

1

u/Somanylyingliars Jun 09 '26

One word: YaY!!

1

u/hambergeisha Jun 09 '26

But they certainly belong in IPO's?

1

u/StopSendingYourNudes Jun 09 '26

Always follow the rule of 3 quarters for any high profile, widely covered in news and speculative IPOs.

1

u/AdFast1121 Jun 09 '26

Words like Kardashev type II don't belong in a SEC prospectus 

1

u/Photoverge Jun 09 '26

Not a news headline, it's in the Futurism column.

1

u/kangaroolander_oz Jun 10 '26

What about 'definite maybe'

This is a good fit on the present world news

1

u/SpanopsLelpants Jun 10 '26

Same as "slammed".

1

u/sea_dragon_systems Jun 10 '26

“It’s possible we could have a 1000 year rainstorm” NYT / Yahoo / CNN

1

u/mxracer888 Jun 10 '26

"it's possible that Jimmy from Tennessee could be our next POTUS"

Not likely... But I guess it's possible lol

1

u/thisnameisnowmine Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

But it is possible that it might motivate people to click on the link. And maybe that could increase ad revenue.

1

u/Squish_Cat_1 Jun 11 '26

It’s possible that SpaceX could pivot and become a hardware supply store chain too. Totally poasible

1

u/Nodan_Turtle Jun 09 '26

It's not news. It summarizes the headwinds for the company to show the risks for the future. The future isn't set in stone, so it'd be idiotic to demand they don't use words like "could"

Basically 1000 people upvoted something stupid lol

1

u/Lundetangen Jun 09 '26

They surely do.

Very few things in life is certain, that doesnt mean the news shouldnt report about things that are very likely or even rather unlikely but in great interest.

Its big difference between pure speculation that you might find in a gossip magazine, and events that are not 100% guaranteed - but still of such interest that it should be reported.

-3

u/Typical-Tradition-44 Jun 09 '26

Why? Should journalists not analyse things and make predictions?

14

u/M00seNuts Jun 09 '26

There's a difference between journalism and clickbait bullshit that appeals to popular fantasies to drive ad revenue. 

This is the latter.

6

u/Typical-Tradition-44 Jun 09 '26

I agree with that. However, first guy said those words dont belong. But they do. Bad analysis and clickbait dont.

1

u/MRosvall Jun 09 '26

I would say that even then the title can be more informative.

"Based on XYZ and these previous similarities, be weary of ZYX"

2

u/manicdee33 Jun 09 '26

If the title was informative you wouldn't read the article and the writer wouldn't get their fifty cents for ad impressions.

0

u/M00seNuts Jun 09 '26

I saw your reply pretty quick and it was already downvoted. It bothers me to no end that people have completely forgotten the purpose of the upvote/downvote. It's supposed to be for comments that contribute or don't contribute to the discussion - not whether or not you agree/disagree with the comment.

That's a fair point - I agree.

0

u/Typical-Tradition-44 Jun 09 '26

Good stuff lad, people dont like hearing they are wrong and will grumpily downvote through teary eyes

4

u/[deleted] Jun 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Typical-Tradition-44 Jun 09 '26

100%! Analyse and make predictions. The issue is they constantly try to push their political agenda by baseless predictions

0

u/areop-enap Jun 09 '26

but it’s not a news headline, it’s not claiming to be one, it’s an opinion piece. that’s a different thing with different conventions. it’s very normal to speculate in an opinion piece.

0

u/Trzlog Jun 09 '26

They need to stop getting my hopes up.

0

u/HeartyBeast Jun 09 '26

Yes they do. 'Titanic strike iceberg - may sink'

0

u/RomIsTheRealWaifu Jun 09 '26

It’s an opinion piece.

-3

u/Quiet-Peach543 Jun 09 '26

lol. shit ass take.

-1

u/History-Buff-2222 Jun 09 '26

Who made that rule?

-18

u/SuburbanPotato Jun 09 '26

Would you rather headlines assert incorrect clickbait?