Before SpaceX is valued at 1.5 trillion dollars: how Musk survived the brink of collapse

Winter 2025 on Wall Street is hotter than ever. On December 13, Wall Street heard news that shook the financial ecosystem: SpaceX set a valuation at $800 billion in the latest funding round, with an IPO planned for 2026 and a target valuation reaching $1.5 trillion. If the forecast comes true, SpaceX will not only beat Saudi Aramco’s 2019 record but will become the largest IPO in history. For Musk, this marks a historic moment – he could become the world’s first trillionaire, along with his “super rocket.” However, to reach this point, Musk had to survive a period when everything could have collapsed.

The Moment on the Edge of the Abyss

Musk’s sensitive memory is tied to 2008. Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy, his marriage had ended, and SpaceX had funds only enough for one last launch. Then came the most painful moment – his childhood idols, Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, publicly expressed doubts about his rocket vision. Armstrong said directly: “You don’t understand what you don’t know.” These words made Musk cry in front of the camera. He didn’t cry when rockets exploded or when facing bankruptcy, but he wept recalling the words of his heroes.

The breakthrough came on September 28, 2008. Falcon 1 launched into the night, a fiery dragon illuminating the sea. After 9 minutes, when the engine shut down as planned, the payload entered its designated orbit. Turbulent applause erupted in the control center. SpaceX not only survived – it received a NASA contract worth $1.6 billion for twelve flights, providing an “elixir of life” for the company and Musk himself.

The Principle of First Principles

When engineers asked Musk why he insisted on reusing rockets, even though all experts said it was economically impossible, Musk responded in his characteristic way. He returned to basic physics, to cost mathematics. In 2001, analyzing expenses in Excel, he discovered that traditional space giants artificially inflated production costs by dozens of times. Every bolt cost hundreds of dollars – Musk asked: “How much does aluminum cost on the London Metal Exchange?”

This logic became the foundation of SpaceX. If costs are artificially inflated, they can be artificially reduced. Explosions followed, more failures, analysis, and more attempts. On December 21, 2015, history was made – Falcon 9 first placed 11 satellites into orbit, then its first stage returned to the launch site, landing vertically as in science fiction movies.

Steel Instead of Composites

The same principle applied to building Starship. Conventional wisdom dictated using expensive carbon fiber composites – lightweight but costly and difficult to process (135 dollars per kilogram). Musk returned to physics. Stainless steel 304, used for pots, costs $3 per kilogram and has a melting point of 1400°C. Carbon fiber requires heavy, expensive thermal insulation tiles; stainless steel becomes more durable at the low temperatures of liquid oxygen.

Considering the weight of the entire insulation system, a rocket made from ordinary steel weighs the same as one made from carbon fiber but costs 40 times less. This decision freed SpaceX from the need for precision clean rooms. They didn’t need sterile laboratories – a tent in the Texas wilderness, welders, and the logic: if it explodes, so be it, weld again tomorrow. Engineering at the highest level with cheap materials – this is the real competitive advantage.

Starlink: The True Money-Making Machine

Technological breakthroughs explain part of the valuation increase, but not all. SpaceX’s valuation rose from $1.3 billion in 2012 to $800 billion today, but it’s not rockets that drive this growth – it’s Starlink.

Before Starlink, SpaceX was known for spectacular images in the news: sometimes an explosion, sometimes a landing. Starlink changed everything. A constellation of thousands of satellites in low orbit transformed SpaceX into the world’s largest internet provider, turning “space” from a spectacle into infrastructure as fundamental as water or electricity.

By November 2025, Starlink served 7.65 million active subscribers, with the actual user base exceeding 24.5 million. The North American market accounts for 43% of subscriptions, while Korea and Southeast Asia make up 40% of new users. Wall Street valued SpaceX not for the frequency of rocket launches but for the recurring revenue from Starlink.

Projected revenue for SpaceX in 2025 will reach $15 billion, rising to $22-24 billion in 2026, with over 80% coming from Starlink. SpaceX has transformed from a space contractor to a global telecommunications giant with a monopolistic moat.

Fuel for Mars, Not for Yachts

When investors ask why Musk finally agrees to an IPO after years of opposition, the answer lies in the schedule. Within two years, Musk plans to have an uncrewed landing of Starship on Mars; within four years, humans will stand on the red planet; and within 20 years, a self-sustaining city on Mars with a fleet of 1,000 ships.

Musk has repeatedly stated: the only goal of accumulating wealth is to make humanity a “multi-planetary species”. From this perspective, $30 billion from the IPO is not a “profit exit” in the traditional sense, but an “interplanetary toll” collected from Earthlings.

Factory workers in Boca Chica and Hawthorne, who have slept on the floor with Musk during sleepless production nights, will become millionaires and billionaires. But for Musk, it’s just fueling the tanks. Hundreds of billions of dollars will become steel, oxygen, and fire that pave the long road to Mars – not yachts or mansions, but the interplanetary infrastructure Musk has envisioned for three decades.