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SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#261

Post by ranman »

loeg wrote: post #4

> Mr. Musk faces competition from another billionaire. Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, aims to send tourists and supplies into space. Is that line even close to true? Last I heard Blue Origin was years away from revenue and far behind SpaceX in terms of capability and manufacturing.

I worked for SpaceX but now I work for Bezos. I definitely think BO is years away... but not a decade. I don't think they'll compete for the same payloads at first but eventually they will. Bezos has significantly more money to dump into this problem than Elon.

There are plenty of other reasons, beyond the money, I don't think it will be that long before BO really starts to compete.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#262

Post by anth1988 »

narrator wrote: post #76
EduardoBautista wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has a load of terrible products. Even their store is getting worse and worse. The fire phone was a complete flop. Amazon cloud drive and music are not at all at the same level as their competitors. Google Home is looking as though it's going to surpass the Echo. Amazon is successful because they are fine with taking losses, only just recently making a small amount of profit compared to their scale.

Amazon can fail a lot because money for private companies is a lot more expensive and harder to get than for public companies. Musk is playing on hard mode because he wants to retain control.

blue origin is private.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#263

Post by EGreg »

trevyn wrote: post #225
EGreg wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on this? Are you saying with a 10% higher gravity we wouldn't be able to escape Earth's field with any amount of thrust? What?

Possibly not able to carry enough chemical fuel to lift the fuel into space and return and do a controlled landing without refueling? That seems more plausible. Fuel is heavy, and most of it is spent on... lifting fuel.

But the way the rocket works is creating a continuous explosion behind it. The propellant explodes, pushing the rocket. It's not just the rocket equation, but the explosion from a central point BEHIND the rocket that pushes it further.

Having a nuclear explosion for example behind the rocket would surely be enough to push it into space... even on Jupiter.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#264

Post by adventured »

nabla9 wrote: post #165
EduardoBautista wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has a load of terrible products. Even their store is getting worse and worse. The fire phone was a complete flop. Amazon cloud drive and music are not at all at the same level as their competitors. Google Home is looking as though it's going to surpass the Echo. Amazon is successful because they are fine with taking losses, only just recently making a small amount of profit compared to their scale.

What you describe is exactly how you come to dominate retail business and become monopoly power online. Amazon's reference point is Wal-Mart. They are in ever expanding price cutting small margin business. Another good comparison in Microsoft in 80's and 90's. MS dominated over IBM, Apple and others several decades with sup-par product everybody hated by attacking and destroying potential competitors, not by improvin…

That doesn't align with the actual history at all. One of the extremely well known, defining characteristics of Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s, was releasing a weak product that they then improved substantially over several versions. Your premise is they didn't improve products as a means to conquer, when that's exactly how Windows took its market share after a horrible initial release that flopped: it got a lot better; ditto for plenty of other examples such as IE vs Netscape.

It applies to at least: MSDOS, Windows, Office and most of its products, Internet Explorer, SQL Server

In fact it was so well known that's how things worked, it was a saying that they only finally got things right by version three.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#265

Post by adventured »

valuearb wrote: post #234
sidlls wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of SpaceX's current success is attributable to government funded research and experiments (the entire space program for the last several decades) and government funding (currently) that Musk is taking advantage of. They don't have more mishaps because the innovations they're undertaking are small relative to the existing body of research and experiment, and built on a solid foundation that already e…

The vast majority of government research for space launches was done by the Nazis. Everyone has access to that and NASAs research, yet... SpaceX is currently launching space shuttle sized payloads for a price that is over 40 times less than the shuttle, and less than half the cost of other private competitors, and at a cadence none of them have ever achieved. Re-use is the key launch technology of the future and its…

> The vast majority of government research for space launches was done by the Nazis

The extreme majority of government research for space launches has occurred since 1950. The extraordinary resources put into the US space program, including the research necessary, makes the Nazi efforts look hilariously trivial by comparison.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#266

Post by adventured »

ranman wrote: post #261
loeg wrote: post #4

> Mr. Musk faces competition from another billionaire. Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, aims to send tourists and supplies into space. Is that line even close to true? Last I heard Blue Origin was years away from revenue and far behind SpaceX in terms of capability and manufacturing.

I worked for SpaceX but now I work for Bezos. I definitely think BO is years away... but not a decade. I don't think they'll compete for the same payloads at first but eventually they will. Bezos has significantly more money to dump into this problem than Elon. There are plenty of other reasons, beyond the money, I don't think it will be that long before BO really starts to compete.

That one is pretty straight-forward. They'll start to really compete when New Glenn is ready.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#267

Post by sidlls »

MattRix wrote: post #252
sidlls wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're a private company the same way any company that is effectively funded by government contract is. Technically it's true, but they haven't demonstrated actual viability in the private market (much less profitability). And the achievements you note have little or nothing to do with their status as a private company and almost everything to do with taking advantage of government research from the past half-centur…

Maybe you missed the part about it being 1/40th the cost.

No, I did not:

> the achievements you note have little or nothing to do with their status as a private company and almost everything to do with taking advantage of government research from the past half-century

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#268

Post by njarboe »

ForHackernews wrote: post #173
le-mark wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BE-4 is an impressive engine [1], at 550,000 lbs of thrust it's about 1/3 of a Saturn F1[2], and it's stage combustion lox/methane. Blue Origin is building some impressive hardware. What's interesting to me is the dichotomy between Musk and Bezos vision for humanity in the Solar System. Musk is Mars focused almost exclusively. Bezos has talked about space habitats (O'neil cylinders for example [3]) as how he thin…

He's not Mars-focused anymore. Recently admitted that was a pipe dream: https://www.wired.com/story/spacexs-mars-plans-hit-a-pothole... (Conveniently enough, right after NASA came out and admitted they didn't have funding for a real Mars mission)

Of course Musk is still Mars focused. That is the goal of what he and the people working at SpaceX are doing. If you watch the source video[1] for the Wired piece (journalists aren't selected for truth telling), you can see Musk controlling the impulse to call NASA a do-nothing, scaredy pants organization. He explicitly states that people going to Mars will not be "safety first" people (implying NASA people are). Musk would love to use rockets to land the Dragons back on Earth but getting them to pass NASA safety tests is too difficult to be worth it with his current understanding of propulsive landing. He and his team have recently determined that there is not as much overlap in the design of a rocket landing Dragon that would land on Earth and the ones they would use for Mars as they originally thought. As Earth Dragon development does not support much of the Mars efforts, they will just go with parachuted Dragon for NASA approved Earth landing and design Red Dragon with more customization for Mars only landing (and liftoff?).

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqvBhhTtUm4

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#269

Post by sidlls »

simonh wrote: post #260
sidlls wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of SpaceX's current success is attributable to government funded research and experiments (the entire space program for the last several decades) and government funding (currently) that Musk is taking advantage of. They don't have more mishaps because the innovations they're undertaking are small relative to the existing body of research and experiment, and built on a solid foundation that already e…

You are quite right that the space launch industry and the technology it uses wouldn't exist without government research and funding. That's perfectly true. But it's also true that without Musk there would currently be no prospect of significant rocket component reuse for another generation. Rocket launch costs would be double or triple what they currently are. It also seems very likely now that within my lifetime we…

I'd argue that Musk, using the facade of "Private Market Hero", has made government spending on research in this area palatable enough (again) to make progress. Sure, he's a key personality, but it's not like he's accomplishing these things outside of the context of being heavily funded and guided by the government.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#270

Post by gozur88 »

taneq wrote: post #32
gozur88 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. That's the entire point of a corporation.

Sure, but on what timeframe? That's why small family businesses are some of the longest enduring - because their owners want them to generate earnings indefinitely. Investors who buy shares are often looking for much shorter term gains (1-5 years) and will put pressure on the board to sacrifice long term viability for a short term boost in share price.

It's not that simple, though. The value of a company's stock is based on future earnings. If the company starts eating the proverbial seed corn you may get more profits disbursed, temporarily, but the value of the stock will go down to reflect the loss of future earnings. There's no free lunch, even for investors.
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