Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A look into the finances of SpaceX

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 397 posts

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#81

Post by oivey »

pfdietz wrote: post #64
oivey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d probably have to figure out on orbit manufacturing, then, so I don’t think that is at all clear.

On-orbit assembly, the demonstration of which was the single actual real accomplishment of the Space Station program. And yet NASA just threw that in the garbage. If we can't do something as simple as assemble modules in space, exactly what sort of future do you imagine is waiting for us in space?

Maybe they used that experience decide that it would be cheaper to just build a huge rocket? The ISS also had the benefit of the shuttle, while US flights to LEO were in turmoil when the SLS was funded. It also wasn’t clear in hindsight how completely and utterly inept Boeing was and how effective SpaceX was going to be.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#83

Post by bell-cot »

jve wrote: post #65
bell-cot wrote: post #35

From Reuters... > In 2022, revenue doubled to $4.6 billion, helping the company reduce its loss last year to $559 million from $968 million, the WSJ reported. > The company reported about $5.2 billion in total expenses for 2022, up from $3.3 billion the year earlier, according to the report. That $5.2B of expenses got 61 successful, production Falcon rocket launches in 2022. Vs. some pretty-reasonable estimates put t…

Part of those expenses are probably building starlink and starship r&d. I suspect F9 no longer has significant r&d expenses. I wonder if your NASA figure also includes first launch, that may include r&d?! Because for a single launch, when you substract r&d or even spread out across all planned launches - can't be that high... I'm just for comparing apples to apples not apples to oranges.

Brief, if almost 4-year-old article:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-does-not-deny-t...

The ~$5B figure is in the final para. And that still sounds like it excludes ground systems and Orion development costs. (Plus ~4 more years of ever-growing bloat, obviously.)

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#84

Post by [deleted] »

pavon wrote: post #18

Those numbers are pretty remarkable given how much money they are pouring into developing Starship and expanding Starlink right now. Over half of their launches have been for Starlink, and yet they are close to turning a profit on revenue from the other half and Starlink subscriptions.

[deleted]

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#86

Post by bell-cot »

bell-cot wrote: post #35

From Reuters... > In 2022, revenue doubled to $4.6 billion, helping the company reduce its loss last year to $559 million from $968 million, the WSJ reported. > The company reported about $5.2 billion in total expenses for 2022, up from $3.3 billion the year earlier, according to the report. That $5.2B of expenses got 61 successful, production Falcon rocket launches in 2022. Vs. some pretty-reasonable estimates put t…

FWIW, here's a fairly deep (and charitable) article on the SLS by Eric Berger -

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/the-sls-rocket-is-th...

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#88

Post by nordsieck »

bell-cot wrote: post #83
jve wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of those expenses are probably building starlink and starship r&d. I suspect F9 no longer has significant r&d expenses. I wonder if your NASA figure also includes first launch, that may include r&d?! Because for a single launch, when you substract r&d or even spread out across all planned launches - can't be that high... I'm just for comparing apples to apples not apples to oranges.

Brief, if almost 4-year-old article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-does-not-deny-t... The ~$5B figure is in the final para. And that still sounds like it excludes ground systems and Orion development costs. (Plus ~4 more years of ever-growing bloat, obviously.)

> The ~$5B figure is in the final para. And that still sounds like it excludes ground systems and Orion development costs. (Plus ~4 more years of ever-growing bloat, obviously.)

There is a much more official and up to date figure:

> We project the cost to fly a single SLS/Orion system through at least Artemis IV to be $4.1 billion per launch at a cadence of approximately one mission per year.

https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-22-003.pdf

From what I understand, that number does include ground systems.

For what it's worth, NASA leadership continues to contest this value, although they refuse to publicly give their own value.

To be fair to you, the $4.1B figure does not include development costs. I don't think there's an agreed upon way to include them, so everyone just mentions them separately. And they are quite... large.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#89

Post by bespokedevelopr »

dahfizz wrote: post #71
mrguyorama wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And NASA will probably be very happy to use such a cheap system once they are convinced it meets their reliability standards. The point of SLS IMO is to keep a backup option if SpaceX has some horrific, unpredicted setback or design problem. Surely people understand redundancy in aerospace right?

You are giving members of congress way too much credit. They don't care about the moon one bit, SLS is just a jobs program

A jobs program just for their districts. A key distinction.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#90

Post by chasd00 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #63
Laremere wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go work for them on a position that has equity as part of the compensation. Otherwise, I doubt it. Elon has been pretty vocal about regretting making Tesla public. Additionally SpaceX as a company is oriented around putting humans on mars. Until that happens, I expect a supermajority of ownership would be against the profit seeking motives that an IPO creates. Short of investing in them, you could look for companies…

>Elon has been pretty vocal about regretting making Tesla public That's laughable, because without making Tesla public he wouldn't be able to live the superstar uber rich lifestyle he thinks he deserves. Pretty much everything he has personally is owed to Tesla public valuation.

> superstar uber rich lifestyle

to be fair that lifestyle was enabled for the rest of his life in the paypal days. i don't think anything he does now is driven by getting a new car or eating at a fancier restaurant. He's been able to have as luxurious lifestyle as possible for a long time.

Post reply on HN