SpaceX’s Orbital Data Center Dream Gets a Reality Check as CME Unleashes a New Short-Selling Weapon
Published on 07/28/2026 at 13:11 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The clash over SpaceX’s most audacious growth bet is escalating just as the stock careens toward its lowest point since listing. On one side, geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan is calling orbital data centers a physical impossibility. On the other, NASA chief Jared Isaacman is telling investors never to bet against a well-capitalized Elon Musk. The timing couldn’t be worse: the shares have shed nearly a third of their value in a month, and the CME Group just handed short sellers a fresh arsenal.
SpaceX stock slid another 2.74 percent on Tuesday to €97.22, brushing within striking distance of the €95.55 52-week low set just a day earlier. The 30-day decline now stands at 32.36 percent, and from the June peak of €194.46, the market capitalization has effectively been cut in half. A relative strength index of 31.9 signals oversold territory, while annualized 30-day volatility of 64 percent underscores just how turbulent trading has been since the Nasdaq debut.
The debate over orbital computing centers — a centerpiece of SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO prospectus — has turned into a public slugfest. Zeihan, in a video that has ricocheted across social media, crunched the numbers and found them wanting. A single gigawatt-capacity data center in orbit, he argues, would require roughly 500 Starship launches just for assembly. The radiation shielding needed to protect high-performance chips would alone weigh about 20 million pounds. “There are so many levels of stupidity here,” Zeihan said, accusing the company of treating its investors as naive. Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie puts the total price tag for a one-gigawatt orbital facility at around $170 billion — roughly triple the cost of an equivalent earthbound installation. Even the prediction market Kalshi assigns only a 14 percent probability that a one-megawatt orbital data center will be operational by January 2029, despite the 2028 target in the IPO prospectus. By 2035, the odds climb to just 39 percent. SpaceX itself acknowledges in the risk factors of its own filing that the necessary technology “partly does not yet exist.”
Isaacman fired back on the “Moonshot” podcast, arguing that the AI race is “extremely healthy” for NASA and that if Musk and SpaceX are betting on orbital data centers, there is no reason to assume failure. “Never bet against an extremely well-capitalized Elon,” he said, adding that SpaceX engineers under Musk’s leadership have left “no doubt” the concept will become reality. Patrick Bowen, co-founder and CEO of Neurophos — a photonic chip startup backed by Bill Gates — sees no single technical obstacle that can’t be overcome, though he flags maintenance, reliability, and lifetime system costs as open questions.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
The controversy lands at a fragile moment for the stock. Short sellers have already piled in: by mid-July, nearly half of the free float was out on loan. Borrowable shares have become so scarce that building new classic short positions is increasingly difficult. Enter the CME Group. On Monday, it launched physically settled single-stock futures on 55 U.S. names, including SpaceX, alongside micro contracts on 22 tickers. A standard contract represents 100 shares; a micro contract represents 10. The minimum margin for unsecured positions is 15 percent of notional value, translating to maximum leverage of roughly 6.7 times. Trading runs on the Globex platform from Sunday evening through Friday afternoon with only a one-hour maintenance break. CME’s Tim McCourt said the product lets market participants express views or hedge volatility without buying the underlying stock directly.
Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys noted that retail brokers are hailing the launch as the biggest growth driver of the year in the retail segment, with more than 35 broker partners ready at the starting line. Retail investors have already poured over $500 million into leveraged and inverse ETFs tied to SpaceX.
The real stress test arrives August 4. That day, SpaceX releases its first quarterly report as a publicly traded company. Analysts expect revenue of roughly $6.9 billion and a per-share loss between $0.22 and $0.28. The same day, a lock-up agreement expires, freeing approximately 911.6 million insider shares for trading. For a stock already among the most volatile new entrants on Wall Street, the combination of an earnings debut and a potential flood of newly tradable shares could produce the most punishing week since listing.
SpaceX at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Morgan Stanley, for its part, reaffirmed its “Overweight” rating and $300 price target after Starship Flight 13, noting that all 33 Raptor engines ignited cleanly, stage separation succeeded, 20 Starlink V3 satellites deployed, and an engine relit in space. The booster landing, however, drew criticism: only about five of 13 engines fired during the final landing burn.
The orbital data center debate, the CME futures launch, the lock-up expiration, and the first earnings report are converging into a single, high-stakes moment. Whether the skeptics or the true believers are right about the technology may take years to settle. Whether the stock can weather the next two weeks is a question that will be answered much sooner.
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