SpaceX Stock

EquityZen's Take: Elon Musk's Reusable Rocket Company

Space Exploration Technologies - aka SpaceX - designs, manufactures, and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. Led by Elon Musk, SpaceX is perhaps most well known for its reusable rockets.

In March 2017, SpaceX became the first company in the world to reuse a rocket that is sent to space. The ability to reuse rockets is paramount to the future accessibility of space. Otherwise, the costs will become prohibitively expensive. 

Musk likens the reusability of rockets to airplanes, noting that there are no rockets like that today, but that it will revolutionize access to space once that technology takes hold.

Most recently, there has been a wave of excitement around SpaceX regarding their satellite ambitions and Starlink internet project. In May 2019, CNBC reported that SpaceX’s valuation has increased to $33 billion on the back of a $536 million funding round.

Starlink is SpaceX’s experimental high-speed internet program that will leverage satellites to beam wireless broadband services back down to Earth. In May, SpaceX launched 60 experimental Starlink satellites and announced that they expect to start offering broadband services in 2020. In a clever marketing tactic and test of the system, Musk sent a test tweet via the Starlink terminal that he has at his house. The test was successful.

SpaceX competes with Blue Origin (founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos), United Launch Alliance (formed by aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin), Virgin Orbit (created by Richard Bronson of Virgin brand fame), and others like China and NASA. 

Clearly, space is not cheap, as evidenced by the biggest companies being backed by some of the richest people, companies, and governments in the world. But it remains a massive frontier of exploration, discovery, and opportunity.