111–120 of 397 posts
Its revenue will almost double again this year (2023) by looking at the number of launches[1]. Definitely the most exciting company Elon has (personal opinion) [1] https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#launchhistory-per-year
I mean twit-er-x is exciting, just in a more train wreck sort of way.
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…
It's ridiculous what amounts of money these ventures can siphon away in the US. See Uber, AirBNB, etc. I'm not saying they don't pay off, but these businesses literally choke most international competition. There are probably 1-2 countries in the world that can afford to keep running a business with losses at around $1bn per year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only person that has to lie is Musk. That's why SpaceX is run as an autocracy. Everyone else drinks the Mars Kool aid. People who have been around a while connect the dots. To be more precise, the company is run by the DoD with significant technical and financial assistance. Elon is the main conduit between those deep resource and the rest of the company. He regularly meets with all teams to ensure they are align…
can the internet please decide whether SpaceX is an autocracy, or if (as several media outlets put it) Elons companies succeeded in spite of him as opposed to because of him. both of these cannot be true at the same time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Talk of putting people on Mars is how they recruit young idealistic engineers. I think to understand what SpaceX is actually about you need to understand who Michael Griffin is and what he's all about. He went with Musk when he tried to buy an ICBM from Russia; he conceived of NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program and gave the contract to SpaceX, before SpaceX had ever put anything into orbit. Ditto the Commerc…
Yep, Griffin even shared the plenary talks with Musk when he gave the famous Mars Society announcement about going to Mars, https://marspedia.org/images/9/99/2001_TMS_Conv_Sched.pdf They were very close. Elon named his first born son Griffin. Mike Griffin is all about putting (eventually) hypersonic weapons in space and resurrecting Brilliant Pebbles. He was the early advocate for reusable launchers https://www.washi…
Isn't most of this Starlink, which is basically SpaceX self-dealing? Can someone point me to a breakdown of launches and customers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
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.
I don't have good intuition for how much of the bloat comes from a top-heavy organization, from grifting contractors, and from good old fashion boondoggles -- but I'd like to add to this pile of possibilities the possibility the categories are poorly drawn and that "things which NASA should be doing but shouldn't be classified under launch vehicles" are nevertheless classified under launch vehicles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ridiculous what amounts of money these ventures can siphon away in the US. See Uber, AirBNB, etc. I'm not saying they don't pay off, but these businesses literally choke most international competition. There are probably 1-2 countries in the world that can afford to keep running a business with losses at around $1bn per year.
$1b loss in the space industry is probably the smallest loss for any business in said industry in history. Every launch of the space shuttle was a few billion used up. There has been no completion here, because before SpaceX everyone else was launching 100M-1B+ of rocket that was never reused and other than the payload was a write off. It is always financed by government because there is typically a much larger gener…
Again, that's utterly unthinkable for Mercedes or Renault or Mitsubish or Samsung or...
They'd just go under because the rest of the world still has economic gravity, i.e. everything must come down in case of no profits.
Isn't most of this Starlink, which is basically SpaceX self-dealing? Can someone point me to a breakdown of launches and customers?
It appears somewhere around 60-70% of the launches are their own missions. This said nothing about costs though.
Still one company matching the rocket launches of the rest of the world is pretty impressive.
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…
Apples to oranges comparison. 400km to low earth orbit is not compatible to a 384400km trip to another gravity well.