How Can I Buy SpaceX Stock Today
SpaceX is winning the latest space race, the race to become the first privately held company to deliver supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), the Moon, and eventually Mars. SpaceX is short for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk. His immediate goal was to reduce the cost of space transportation. Musk has done that and a lot more. SpaceX currently has a market valuation of approximately $74 billion.
THERE'S NO STOCK TO BUY BUT YOU CAN INVEST (INDIRECTLY) IN SPACEX
The public success of SpaceX has created a huge amount of investor interest in the company. The bad news for investors is that an IPO isn't on the horizon for SpaceX. The company has enjoyed great success in raising funds following a harrowing start in the space business. Musk and his automobile company, Tesla, were on the brink of bankruptcy until SpaceX had successful rocket launches. Since then, the company has generated billions in fundraising and has been awarded billions more in contracts. In 2017, SpaceX owned 45% of the world's commercial launch market.
There are two publicly held entities that own a piece of SpaceX. These are your ticket to indirect ownership of SpaceX. The first is Google. It received a piece of SpaceX because of a 2015 investment. The second is a Scottish trust, the Baillie Gifford Trusts. Baillie Gifford has two trusts with SpaceX stock, Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, which is traded on the London Exchange, and Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust. Because SpaceX is privately held there's no guarantee these entities have or have not sold their shares back to SpaceX.
WHAT HAS SPACEX ACTUALLY DONE?
Quite a lot. Many believe the company's biggest success has been the development of a reusable booster rocket. In 2015, SpaceX had the first successful landing and recovery of a Falcon 9 first stage rocket booster. The boosters land at sea on a specially designed barge, using vertical take-off and vertical propulsive landing technology. Reusable boosters have been a big part of Musk's goal to reduce the cost of space flight.
SpaceX has a laundry list of firsts for private companies. Here are a few: first to launch a spacecraft into orbit, the first company to autonomously dock a craft with the ISS, first to launch humans into space, first reused booster for a national security mission. There are a dozen more.
WHAT IS SPACEX PLANNING?
SpaceX will continue to service the ISS and any replacement space station. The big plans are for Mars. That's the Starship project, which is a super-heavy lift launch system with reusable first and second stage boosters and a reusable space vehicle. This is the system that is expected to put astronauts back on the Moon and then on to Mars.
Closer to home there is the Starlink satellite system. This would consist of over 4,000 linked satellites to provide Internet service across the Earth. SpaceX would use its position as an Internet provider to increase cash flow and help fund Musk's goal of a Mars colony.
