TL;DR the French stifle innovation; SpaceX as a public entity can only go down; Kudos to Eric&Stephen, Scott Manley, Karl Bode, and Atlas. Because we all stand on the shoulders of others.

E

Not TL;DR:
Interesting note on French corporations with negative shareholder equity: If the US had some regulations many innovations and innovators which used debt financing would never have given us commercial space ventures. Neither would Amazon.com exist today as more than a hollow shell of a bookseller. Shortsighted government strategies that only take effect AFTER shareholders are in the red are useless.

Datacenters in space is a nonstarter. Scott Manley has an excellent discussion [YT] of the space part of this (which includes lack of cooling and power). The big piece that the "Big Datacenter" cheerleaders ignore is that datacenters need connectivity. The world's cheapest datacenter in western Nevada that buys unregulated California power is still nowhere near a "grid" of nationwide fiber-optic circuits. It will fail. Space has no fiber-optic connectivity to Earth's network, and LEO bandwidth won't cut it. Karl Bode has written about this many times [techdirt.com].

SpaceX just sold "a bill of goods" to the unsuspecting public for the purpose of paying off earlier investors. That's how f&f, angels, seed, series A, round 1 (etc.) investors get paid. It is a pyramid scheme but not unlawful because it lacks incentie on child and grandchild profits shared with parent and granparent investors. That's how it's done n the US, Nikei, Forex, etc., but not France.

SpaceX has two fantastic ideas. 1) Colonize Mars, now becoming robots on the moon. [Futurama did it]. 2) Datacenters in space (see Manley, Bode, and my comments referenced above). That's not "fantastic" as in "freakin' awsome," but fantastic as in "of a fantasy nature." As they are unable to deliver and timelines slip their public valuation will continue to tumble. As the famous saying goes "The market is gullible, but not stupid."

On a personal note, I'm glad you guys got some time off. Eric, always a joy to see your interviews in the media. I feel like one of the really knowledgeable people without a stock to hustle got airtime, and you are a creditable and eloquent presenter. [Stephen, haven't seen you yet, but there's time!]

If you ever add surveys, I'd love it, and I'm not a participation wh... hound.

Have a great weekend.

Ehud in Tucson