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A look into the finances of SpaceX

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Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#141

Post by misiti3780 »

htss2013 wrote: post #140

Isn't it amazing that you can become the richest person in the world by building companies that lose money? By lose money I mean all money ever put into the company versus profits made. The idea of creating a profitless company that somehow makes you personally rich used to be thought of as a fluke. Yes it's possible but it shouldn't happen and aside from extreme luck it won't. Something has changed. Losing money and…

Tesla doesnt lose money. It has been profitable for the past 14 quarters in a row. SpaceX clearly could be profitable if it wanted to be, and it clearly will be in the future. It will probably be very profitable.

Most tech companies lose money before they make money. Amazon lost a shitload of money before it started turning a profit, now Jeff Bezos is the 2nd richest person in the world.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#142

Post by angiosperm »

jjoonathan wrote: post #117
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.

I overheard some high-temperature semiconductor guys ("how do you build chips that work on venus / in engine blades / etc") at a NASA facility talking about budgets in a way that suggested a substantial part of their funding came from the launch vehicle budget. 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 --…

"High-temperature semiconductor" sounds like an xkcd panel.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#143

Post by rogerkirkness »

misiti3780 wrote: post #141
htss2013 wrote: post #140

Isn't it amazing that you can become the richest person in the world by building companies that lose money? By lose money I mean all money ever put into the company versus profits made. The idea of creating a profitless company that somehow makes you personally rich used to be thought of as a fluke. Yes it's possible but it shouldn't happen and aside from extreme luck it won't. Something has changed. Losing money and…

Tesla doesnt lose money. It has been profitable for the past 14 quarters in a row. SpaceX clearly could be profitable if it wanted to be, and it clearly will be in the future. It will probably be very profitable. Most tech companies lose money before they make money. Amazon lost a shitload of money before it started turning a profit, now Jeff Bezos is the 2nd richest person in the world.

Tesla accumulated surplus/deficit (e.g. lifetime net consumption of cash) is much higher than it's lifetime gross burn ($6B) so it's definitely in material value creation territory.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#144

Post by mcpackieh »

samr71 wrote: post #59
mcpackieh wrote: post #21

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…

This has elements of truth but is a conspiracy theory the way you describe it. If you listen to Musk, or listen to people who work for Musk, or the people who work for those people, they all say that the point of SpaceX is to enable human colonization of Mars. It's not just a marketing strategy to acquire talent (unless you think they're all lying -- hence the conspiracy aspect. Now, to do that, they'll need to scrat…

Yes, it's literally a theory about a conspiracy. That doesn't mean it isn't true. And Elon Musk saying he wants to create Mars colonies doesn't make it true, anymore than Howard Hughes saying he wanted to mine magnesium nodules off the ocean floor made that true.

Look at Starship objectively. It's not a Mars rocket. That bellyflop through the atmosphere stunt won't work on Mars, and man-rating it even for operation around Earth is extremely dubious. The habitats which would supposedly be used for Mars colonization don't exist and aren't in development, so if you think Starship is a Mars rocket you should realize that it's a bridge to nowhere. Starship is being developed to launch tons of satellites cheap. It makes a lot of sense for that and it makes zero sense for Mars colonization.

Given the weight of the circumstantial evidence, particularly the entirety of Michael Griffin's career and role in SpaceX's existence, it is more reasonable to assume they're lying about Mars than to assume Mars is the true motivation. Your prior for Elon Musk lying about anything should be through the roof anyway.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#145

Post by reso »

nordsieck wrote: post #130
reso wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't compare falcon to SLS because Falcon cannot do what SLS does. You can't compare SpaceX's figures to NASA because NASA has many, many more reporting obligations than SpaceX. Every report on Falcon 9 costs has made this mistake forever. SpaceX does not release their full costs. What numbers we have for them are PR releases. Meanwhile, NASA's budgets are public and comprehensive, and they have legal parameters…

> Every report on Falcon 9 costs has made this mistake forever. SpaceX does not release their full costs. Not really relevant. The correct metric to make the comparison on is the fully amortized cost to the government per launch. The government doesn't pay for SpaceX's facilities or development - all of those costs are rolled into the launch price. But that's not true of SLS.

It is not possible to do a fair comparison of launch costs between Falcon 9 and other platforms without knowing the true cost of Falcon 9 launches.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#146

Post by georgeg23 »

htss2013 wrote: post #140

Isn't it amazing that you can become the richest person in the world by building companies that lose money? By lose money I mean all money ever put into the company versus profits made. The idea of creating a profitless company that somehow makes you personally rich used to be thought of as a fluke. Yes it's possible but it shouldn't happen and aside from extreme luck it won't. Something has changed. Losing money and…

Yes SpaceX loses money, but it doesn't matter because it's a nationally strategic company. It's valuation makes sense given the Griffin discussion below.

https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=37166675

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#147

Post by dabeeeenster »

htss2013 wrote: post #140

Isn't it amazing that you can become the richest person in the world by building companies that lose money? By lose money I mean all money ever put into the company versus profits made. The idea of creating a profitless company that somehow makes you personally rich used to be thought of as a fluke. Yes it's possible but it shouldn't happen and aside from extreme luck it won't. Something has changed. Losing money and…

Not sure why this is being upvoted. They are launching mass into space at between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude lower cost than anyone else. The R+D costs on that is insane. And they are almost profitable.

I 100% agree that du-jour saas companies raising 300MM on limited revenue is one thing, but this is not the same.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#148

Post by ISL »

resolutebat wrote: post #126
reso wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't compare falcon to SLS because Falcon cannot do what SLS does. You can't compare SpaceX's figures to NASA because NASA has many, many more reporting obligations than SpaceX. Every report on Falcon 9 costs has made this mistake forever. SpaceX does not release their full costs. What numbers we have for them are PR releases. Meanwhile, NASA's budgets are public and comprehensive, and they have legal parameters…

At time of writing, it's the opposite: Falcon is launching humans into space on a regular basis, something SLS has entirely failed to do to date.

SLS hasn't yet been asked to launch a human.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#149

Post by justrealist »

Someone wrote: post #137
justrealist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine any reasonable way to book it as revenue.

As oldgradstudent said: it depends on the exact corporate structure. Move Starlink into a separate entity, have SpaceX build satellites and perform launches for them, and it becomes SpaceX revenue (and Starlink costs) Have SpaceX rent out those satellites to Starlink, and the picture changes again.

Yes, but they haven't spun Starlink out into a separate entity.
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