SpaceX public listing makes history

Way back on July 20, 1969, the United States made history when astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon and, with great drama, verbally confirmed the historic event back to earth.

Now Elon Musk and SpaceX have achieved a somewhat comparable milestone.

On June 12, the much-anticipated and highly-hyped initial public offering of SpaceX proved a success of stratospheric proportions. The stock quickly rose 19 percent. Musk has become the first trillionaire in history.

Make that the first trillionaire on earth. Musk is anxious not only to explore other planets but also populate them. There is no doubt that he is a visionary, in multiple meanings of that term. When he talks, we should pay attention – though not necessarily agree.

SpaceX quickly became the sixth most valuable publicly listed company, boasting a capitalization of $2.1 trillion. Shares began trading at $150, 11 percent above the initial public offering price of $135, The share price at the end of the first trading day was $160.95.

Significantly, the five companies with greater initial value than SpaceX are all concentrated in technology. They are Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft and Amazon. Each has enormous market capitalization. Nvidia represents the bleeding edge of development in Artificial Intelligence (AI), which represents an ongoing revolution that is simultaneously fluid, fascinating and frightening – and a magnet for gigantic amounts of investment money.

As a symbol of this awe and impact, on June 12, the famous Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball in New York was hoisted high and glowed red, the color of the planet Mars. Musk is known as a forceful advocate for establishing human communities on the red planet.

In October 2024, SpaceX made history by successfully launching and recovering the largest rocket ever made, the Starship Super Heavy. The enormous booster was also recovered in a spectacular feat of engineering.

On the morning of June 4, 2022, Blue Origin transported a group of five passengers to the edge of space, 62 miles above the earth. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin and Amazon, is one of a number of business entrepreneurs pursuing ventures in space, once the exclusive province of governments.

Space-related businesses are growing rapidly. In April 2021, NASA announced that SpaceX will construct a lunar lander to take astronauts to the moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

President John F. Kennedy made a dramatic pledge in 1961 to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade — and return him safely to earth, he carefully added.

Kennedy fostered a strong foundation of business-government partnership in space exploration through legislation on communication satellites in 1962.

We often recognize Kennedy's role in launching the initial moon project, but his leadership in furthering global satellite-based communications and business investment in space is often neglected

The Kennedy administration largely continued a course set by the Eisenhower administration. The Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) was a public-private partnership, not a government agency, and later became a private company.

Controversy followed, with angry protests about welfare for big business. Reflecting party dynamics of the time, conservative populist Southerners and Western Democrats were outraged. Alleged favoritism to big business was extremely controversial in the wake of the Great Depression.

Nonetheless, Congress approved the creation of COMSAT. This in turn led to growing space-related activity involving a vast array of firms.

Thank you, President Kennedy, for far-sighted leadership.

Arthur I. Cyr (acyr@carthage.edu) is author of “After the Cold War” (NYU and Palgrave/Macmillan) and other books.