The SpaceX IPO - and a cold and snowy night
By Greg Evans
The woods crunched and moaned as the wind swept through the brittle pines. Five inches of snow had already fallen - a heavy wet snow that made the tree limbs sag uncomfortably before freezing solid, like deformed ghostly arms. Kneeling on the precipice of the hearth, crumpling paper and stuffing it under the grate, I felt a draft on the floor that seemed to stop and fill the space around me. I stuffed more and more paper, kindling, and three logs. I needed to get the fire going. I could see hints of my breath. The logs were somewhat damp. There was a leak in my woodshed that somehow seemed to moisten every single log. Two cords. It didn’t seem possible. If they didn’t light it would make for a long and frigid night. Thankfully, there were extra blankets stored under the bed.
The wind rattled the 80-year old cabin windows. There is no place on earth I’d rather be than right here, right now, struggling to build a fire, alone in the woods on a mountain, snow trying to bury us, ice forming sheets on the lonely country road making travel back to civilization impossible, plummeting temperatures, and only 25-year books of old matches.
It was the coldest night we’d had this year so far. If the pipes didn’t freeze over night it would be a miracle. Pipes that carried water from the Artesian well in the ground 15 yards from the cabin to the spigots and toilet by way of hydrostatic pressure.
I light the paper. It’s old and slightly yellowing. It catches and glows brightly giving off the most welcoming warmth a man could feel. But dimmed quickly and started to ember. White smoke filled the firebox and was sucked up into the chimney. The wood was still too damp. I should have had wood here drying for months. But I used it all and had become complacent and ran out. It was a foolish thing to do. I was too experienced for winter cabin living to make such a mistake. Always have a backup plan for, in case, the shed leaks.
I looked out the window at the frozen landscape. The lights of Albany and Troy are too far away to be seen. Nothing but darkness.
It was still and haunting. I imagined I was on another planet, a lone surviving astronaut. What planet I was on, was anyone’s good guess. Lost in space, like NASA pilot Joseph “Coop” Cooper, or Mark Watney in The Martian. Only I was there for real, one of the early SpaceX expeditions into the unknown, taking off from a SpaceX data center in the direction of Mars. If we somehow travel faster than the speed of light we can look back into the past while exploring the future and continuing to live in the present, all
At the same time. A few differential calculus equations and 67. Game changer. Space becomes our oyster. Or so it was supposed to play out. It didn’t. We crashed. I survived. Now the true test of survival begins. This weird planet has oxygen and snow and trees. There is a cabin here in the woods with old newspapers. Did I go through a wormhole? Hunched before a fireplace trying to light damp wood. Days later I learn that SpaceX is working toward an IPO. Did I see the future?
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is in talks with investment banks on the way to possibly the largest IPO in history, in 2026?
Investors large and small are excited, but most of them won’t benefit all that much from it unless they invest a few hundred dump trucks worth of cash and maybe get lucky.
The wizards behind the curtain will get super rich, but not you. But it isn’t the money that interests me about this IPO. It’s what the company plans to do with the $30 plus billion it generates.
Space is still the greatest undiscovered frontier. It is an endless abyss of mystery, intrigue, untapped and still unregulated resources, and potential for wealth accumulation incomprehensible to the average company man and woman, toiling away for an hourly wage or salary (taxed to hell and back) and a 401k (heavily taxed).
If modern “civilized” humans ever stumbled upon an unknown planet with intelligent functioning life, similar to the Native Americans if the recent past, with unlimited resources to be had, would we, modern humans, conquer it and claim it as our own or recognize it is somebody else’s land and voluntarily leave, thus leaving them alone.
There is not a chance in hell that modern humans would willfully abandon a planet full of resources and leave the creatures unharmed. Never in a million years.
SpaceX will be the first real substantial exploration of space since the astronauts were photographed back in 1969…
If all the money is put toward space pursuits and discoveries, what is the main goal. It has to be money-related. What money is there to be made in space? Harnessing energy? Like a mill in a creek? Like a wind turbine or waterfall? For maybe solely for immortality, like Christopher Columbus? What can SpaceX learn from Columbus’s mistakes? History repeats itself and it is in the process of repeating itself again.
George Bernard Shaw once said, “If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.”
Has the human being ever learned from experience? I finally get the kindling and one side of a log to catch. Slowly the wood will dry out and I will have a nice raging fire for a while, here in the shelter on my isolated and frozen planet.
The most interested I’d be regarding SpaceX’s space program is figuring out a way to travel faster than the speed of light. The cynical side of me says that unless they can make boat loads of money doing it, they wouldn’t bother even if it could change the way we see history, being that we could get a real time glimpse into the past at various intervals going back as far as we care to speed forward.
The optimistic side of me thinks they’d try to figure out how simply to see if it was possible.
Luckily for me, I picked up a package of German imported brats which are a treat cooked over a raging fire, paired with some Becherovka. The living room was heating enough. I usually slept out on the porch or in the backroom. Tonight I’d just stay in the living room and stoke the fire throughout the night, read Jack London short stories and hope it snowed some more. I don’t think Jack London would have cared about the SpaceX IPO.