SpaceX is seeking a new round of financing, and musk is one step closer to his dream of Mars immigration. According to foreign media reports, SpaceX recently released an email to all employees, saying that it is seeking to raise a round of new financing of up to $1.725 billion at the price of $70 per share. After the 10:1 stock split in February this year, the value of SpaceX shares was $56 / share, which means that the company's valuation has increased by about 25% in four months.
After the completion of the new round of financing, the valuation of SpaceX will reach $127billion. In terms of the company's history, US $1.7 billion will also be the second largest amount of financing. Two years ago, in August 2020, the company had made a financing of US $1.9 billion. In addition, the amount of other 16 rounds of financing with statistics does not exceed US $1billion.
Judging from recent developments, this money is likely to be used for the Starship program and Starlink v2. However, whether the Starship can fly or not is still pending approval. SpaceX has already applied to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for launching a starship at Boca Chica launch site in Texas. The launch of such a behemoth has raised concerns about environmental impact assessment, and the approval has been delayed for four times.
The latest news is that the FAA will release the final assessment results on May 31. This will be the key to SpaceX's next milestone.
01 star chain + Rocket recovery technology, supporting a valuation of $100 billion
According to public statistics, this round of financing launched in May this year is already the 18th round of financing conducted by SpaceX since its establishment 20 years ago. If it is successfully completed as planned, spacex's total financing amount in the private equity market will reach US $9.6 billion
Photo source: in the first 13 years of Vision China, SpaceX mainly focused on product and technology research and development, did not start a large-scale commercial space company, and did not do much in the capital market.
The turning point occurred in 2015 The valuation of SpaceX, which has not been financed for five years, has increased more than 10 times in a very short time, from $973million to $12billion. This happened after Google brought in a $1billion financing. At the end of this year, Falcon 9 achieved its first orbit entry and recovery. The development of SpaceX has thus entered the next stage: Starlink, which aims to provide satellite Internet services, and manned spaceflight are in the making. These are all part of Musk's larger blueprint - the establishment of a Mars base, or a phase.
Also in 2015, SpaceX announced the Starlink program. Four years later, on May 24, 2019, the first batch of 60 star chains were sent into space by Falcon 9. The plan has completed the approval and technical verification stage and entered the implementation period. Satellite manufacturing, launching and operation have become another important business of SpaceX besides rocket launching.
Starting from 2019, the financing pace of space X has accelerated significantly. From once every 1-2 years before, it is accelerated to 2-3 times every year. In the year when the star chain began its normal launch, musk also announced his next goal: starship designed to immigrate to Mars**
The starship is 118 meters high and 9 meters wide. 37 parallel Raptor engines provide 7300 tons of thrust. Previously, the largest rocket successfully launched by SpaceX was the heavy Falcon (belonging to the Falcon 9 rocket series). It is powered by 27 Merlin engines with 64 tons of thrust. Unlike Falcon 9, which only achieves the recyclability of the sub stage and fairing, the Starship's goal is to be completely recyclable.
Going further into space requires more power. Even in the thrust of a single engine, the Raptor engine is twice that of the Merlin engine. The number of parallel engines has increased by 10, and the thrust has increased by 100 times. Compared with the money spent by starships, musk has just made a revenue collection in Starlink: the annual revenue from global Internet connection is about 1trillion yuan. It is estimated that SpaceX can obtain 3% of it, that is, 30billion dollars, or even 5%.
In 2020, SpaceX began to try Internet services after launching 900 satellites. Maybe I know that the quality of the network is insufficient. The name of the pilot service is "better than nothing beta". The service fee is $99 per month. You also need to subscribe to the $499 Starlink suite. The device consists of a router and a dish shaped receiving antenna.
"As you can see from the title, we are trying to lower your initial expectations," SpaceX wrote in an email sent to users in North America to book service information. "It is expected that in the next few months, the data transmission speed will range from 50mb/s to 150mb/s, and the delay time will range from 20ms to 40ms. There will be a short period of complete lack of connection."
In 2021, users in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom began to experience star chain services. Although the transmission speed reaches 150mb/s, weather conditions will make the signal unstable. When the summer heat wave strikes, the network will be interrupted due to overheating. Some users have to use "physical cooling" to spray equipment with water pipes in the garden before they can restart. Gwynne shotwell, President of SpaceX, also responded that the company "needs to take many measures to stabilize the network".
When the scale effect does not occur, Starlink is still expanding users at a loss. The price of the first generation Starlink kit is $499 and the production cost is $3000. In March, 2022, Starlink launched the latest version of the suite. The basic version of the suite costs $599 and the monthly network fee is $110. If you want to enjoy better network speed (150 and 500mbps), the price of the upgraded version is $2500, and the monthly network fee is $500.
Musk of the upgraded Starlink suite is very aware of the risks of the Starlink project. He has repeatedly pointed out that every previous low earth orbit broadband satellite network has gone bankrupt. He once disclosed the idea of letting Starlink go public alone, but in 2021, he also said: "it will be very painful to go public before the star chain revenue can be reasonably predicted for at least a few years. SpaceX needs to overcome the huge gap of negative cash flow in the next year or so to make Starlink financially feasible."
Oneweb, Starlink's rival, is in crisis. Impacted by the epidemic, oneweb entered the bankruptcy protection process in 2020. Finally, the British Indian mobile network operator Bharti global provided us $1billion, and resumed operation after acquisition. Oneweb successfully launched another 36 satellites in december2020, bringing the number of on orbit satellites of the company to 110. At present, all of them are in normal operation.
Iridium CEO Matthew J. Desch said that companies such as SpaceX and Amazon "launched a competition, but no one can be 100% sure whether there is a large enough market."
02 starship and Starlink V2
SpaceX did not disclose much about the purpose of the raised funds in its email, but it is certain that the billions of dollars raised by SpaceX in the past two years will be mainly used for two capital intensive projects: starship and Starlink**
Today, SpaceX has sent 46 batches of satellite chains, an Internet composed of more than 2500 satellites in total, providing services to 400000 users. The company also announced that Starlink V2, with the Starship as the transport power, plans to launch 30000 satellites.
For musk, who wants to make mankind a multi planet species, starship has always been the highest priority in his mind.
Starship in Texas in 2020, SpaceX successfully sent two astronauts to the international space station through the Dragon spacecraft, creating the history of manned space flight in the United States. A week later, musk wrote in a letter to all employees: in addition to reducing the return risk of dragon spacecraft, please make StarCraft the first priority of SpaceX.
SpaceX wrote in an introduction document that "the second generation system is designed to complement the first generation star chain that SpaceX is currently deploying." "Although the original constellation provided unprecedented capacity for satellite systems, the demand for more broadband continues to grow, and the demand for user connections has never been more important."
Up to now, the second generation star chain plan has not been approved. SpaceX needs to prove to NASA and other departments that the large-scale satellite co-existence in orbit is safe and controllable, and there will be no collision with other spacecraft, collision between satellites and other accidents.
Another challenge for the second generation star chain system is transportation capacity
In an interview with the "daily astronaut" this spring, musk said that the biggest challenge for the Starship at present is to go into orbit, which is also the only vehicle that can carry the second-generation satellite chain. Each Starlink of the second generation is 7 meters long and weighs 1.25 tons (each Starlink of the first generation weighs 227kg). The amount of data processed is one order of magnitude higher than that of the first generation. When asked how many starlinks there are in the sky, musk did not directly answer this question, but said that the key lies in the number of satellites available in orbit.
At present, the Starship has been launched into orbit and is waiting for the EIA results of FAA. The environmental review will begin in november2020. From the end of 2021, FAA has postponed the release of results for four times, from December 31 to May 31. Musk said in a public speech in February this year that the focus of the current work is to put the Starship into orbit. "We don't know much about the FAA," he said. "We've got some rough indications and may get approval in March."
Musk's goal is to reduce the cost of the Starship as much as possible. "It is completely fast and reusable, like a plane", which is difficult on earth and relatively easy on Mars. Mars has only about 37% of earth's gravity and 1% of its atmospheric density. "The key to making man a multi planetary creature is a fully reusable rocket." He said.
Source: everday astronaut