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Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

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Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#71

Post by StreamBright »

DennisP wrote: post #63

Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. B…

Living on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out how to re-create Earth's geomagnetic field and extend it around human buildings.

Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#72

Post by parsimo2010 »

I'd sat that you need to start small if you don't want to take on a bunch of investment money. A lot of magazine articles make it sound like anyone with $25k can get a cubesat launched, but it is clearly not that simple.

Martin Platt and the AmbaSat project have given me some insight on how much work it takes just to design and get approval for really simple satellites. They post regular updates to their Kickstarter page. I think you can see the updates even if you aren't a backer: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ambasat/ambasat-1-an-ed....

Perhaps you should get in touch with some space industry insiders that know the regulatory environment and know what rules can be broken and what can't. Then also get in touch with people that have worked on space equipment before, because space is a complicated domain.

Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#73

Post by justanotherhn »

onion2k wrote: post #38
trianglem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t spacex profitable? Starlink sounds like how someone would go about becoming a multi billionaire.

It may be profitable now , but don't forget that SpaceX has been going for 17 years, has raised well over a billion in VC funding to date, and Elon has put more than $100m of his own money in. SpaceX is in absolutely no way whatsoever a company that Elon bootstrapped.

Read this article and tell me this company was not bootstrapped by Elon. [0] Just because they went on to raise huge amounts of VC money doesn't mean anything. He was the one who took all that risk and nearly went bankrupt, not the VC's that now are about to reap the rewards. This is not to knock the VC money, those guys are awesome for believing in the mission.

[0] https://www.wired.com/2007/05/ff-space-musk

Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#74

Post by DennisP »

StreamBright wrote: post #71
DennisP wrote: post #63

Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. B…

Living on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out how to re-create Earth's geomagnetic field and extend it around human buildings.

Radiation on Mars is about the same as background radiation in Ramsar, Iran. Residents there have normal lifespans and cancer rates.

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/omg-space-is-f...

Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#75

Post by justanotherhn »

fastball wrote: post #42
soared wrote: post #11

You... don’t? There is a reason that Elon etc are the ones with bootstrapped space companies and very few others.

SpaceX has raised $3.2B in funding[0]... they are far from bootstrapped. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te...

They're not bootstrapped NOW. Say that in 2007 when they had the falcon 1. Obviously, they've gone on to raise money after showing that they can get into LEO.

Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#77

Post by bloopernova »

StreamBright wrote: post #71
DennisP wrote: post #63

Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. B…

Living on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out how to re-create Earth's geomagnetic field and extend it around human buildings.

I guess that depends on what end effect of the magnetic field we are trying to replicate.

If it's protection from radiation, then we have multiple avenues of research and action. We can use particular materials in our domed cities, we can build underground, and we could bioengineer plants and ourselves to better cope with radiation damage. We could even create a huge solar array or nuclear reactor in space and create enough of a magnetic field to deflect solar and extrasolar radiation. It's a difficult problem, for sure, but not an impossible one.

If it's depletion of the Martian atmosphere, then once we've added a whole bunch of material to it, the depletion happens over millions of years. So there's not a huge effect even in the 1000s of years timescale.

Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#78

Post by bloopernova »

DennisP wrote: post #63

Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. B…

That statement about the funding received by SpaceX via Starlink is a revelation to me. I hadn't thought that particular thing through.

According to a very cursory search, SpaceX's revenue in 2018 was around $2B. NASA's budget in 2018 was around $20B.

A tenfold increase in money flowing through a company would bring its own challenges, but assuming SpaceX navigates those OK then they'll be able to fund massive projects.

I wonder what the space exploration landscape would look like if all that happens? Would NASA focus on probes and research, launched from SpaceX vehicles? Thus leaving the launch business to SpaceX, who could concentrate on throwing as many humans out of the gravity well as possible?

Would $20B/year allow SpaceX to build bases on the Moon and Mars? I wonder if SpaceX would get into the asteroid mining business, mostly to prevent having to heavy lift quite so much stuff from the bottom of Earth's gravity well.

Exciting times! Hopefully this all happens in the next 40 years or so, I'm 45 now and would love to see humanity step out of the cradle for good.

Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#79

Post by haspok »

DennisP wrote: post #63

Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. B…

"That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale..."

Yeah, probably not in your lifetime, buddy: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/...

"NASA’s goal is to reduce the cost of getting to space to hundreds of dollars per pound within 25 years and tens of dollars per pound within 40 years."

Starting a business based on that _now_ seems to be a bit... premature :)

"...start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon."

Not in this century, unless there is a very high incentive for doing so (think: WW3 or something equally disruptive).

Re: Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a space company?

#80

Post by hef19898 »

growlist wrote: post #43
redis_mlc wrote: post #18

I've worked in aerospace and have been reading HN for over a decade. Here's some adult advice, for both the OP and HN in general. Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire. Objects are too far, and lift is now a commodity. (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) So if you really want a career in s…

> (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) I guess morale is low at Arianespace these days ;)

Why would it? Ariane 5 is still doing reasonably good and Ariane 6 seems promising too. SpaceX needs a ton of launches to make reusable rockets financially feasible so.
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