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

341–350 of 397 posts

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#341

Post by 4gotunameagain »

HumanReadable wrote: post #330
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…

Of course the Falcon can be compared to the SLS. Both are vehicles designed to take things into space for crying out loud! The figures are easy to compare as well. Just include these factors in your comparison! Even if we don't know exactly what those factors are, we can make a ballpark estimate the total difference and add that as a percentage to spaceX's final figure. The idea that things can't be compared because…

>Both are vehicles designed to take things into space for crying out loud!

They have quite different fairing capacities, in a playfield that does not scale linearly.

It is like saying that the Boeing 737 is cheaper than the 777, and we can compare them because they were both designed to fly people in the sky.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#342

Post by georgeg23 »

nickpp wrote: post #337
georgeg23 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually SpaceX was 85% government funded according to the guy who gave him the money, Michael D. Griffin. This was front-loaded. Private money was never at risk.

Any source for this? Wikipedia says: "Musk provided half of his $180 million from PayPal stocks to the newly founded company"

And the government provided over $1B..

Search for the word 'excessive' https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist...

Griffin is arguing against himself there in giving all that money-- covering his tail. The important part if you read the contracts is a majority of the money was awarded before SpaceX built any hardware, they just had to present plans and half the money was transferred. Elon never risked his own money as all the costs were covered up front and if they failed they would only lose the other half of the contract.

Elon was very scrappy and cheap in the initial builds because he didn't want to risk his own cash.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#343

Post by 7e »

Elon's MO has always been to lose more money than competitors are willing to, then brag about how advanced they are compared to everyone else. New technologies are always unprofitable. There is no magic to what SpaceX has done, or is doing. Only a willingness to grift, sell, and spend.

Losing money makes everything easy. Competitors don’t play that game.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#344

Post by Fordec »

avhon1 wrote: post #245
Fordec wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other news it cost me $1500 to do a year of grocery shopping trips while it cost $1500 for one transatlantic return trip holiday. Apples to oranges comparison. 400km to low earth orbit is not compatible to a 384400km trip to another gravity well.

Distance is almost completely irrelevant for comparing launch vehicles. Also, Falcon 9 has delivered multiple payloads to lunar orbit. Examples are ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 1, SpaceIL's Beresheet, and South Korea's Danuri. In interplanetary space, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test was launched on a Falcon 9.

Beresheet: 1,300 lbs

Danuri: 1,495 lbs

Hakuto-R: 2,200 lbs

DART: 1,340 lbs

Artemis 2: 112,000 lbs

Even by your examples there remains a 10,000% to 5,000% fold scale difference. And SpaceX agrees with this. This difference in scale is why they are working on Starship.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#345

Post by nickpp »

georgeg23 wrote: post #342
nickpp wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any source for this? Wikipedia says: "Musk provided half of his $180 million from PayPal stocks to the newly founded company"

And the government provided over $1B.. Search for the word 'excessive' https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist... Griffin is arguing against himself there in giving all that money-- covering his tail. The important part if you read the contracts is a majority of the money was awarded before SpaceX built any hardware, they just had to present plans and half the money was transferred. Elon never ri…

So the government wanted the services and was willing to take some risk paying in advance that SpaceX couldn’t deliver? Smart and successful bet in this case, but I guess they tried that with other companies as well and those didn’t deliver?!

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#346

Post by georgeg23 »

nickpp wrote: post #345
georgeg23 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the government provided over $1B.. Search for the word 'excessive' https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist... Griffin is arguing against himself there in giving all that money-- covering his tail. The important part if you read the contracts is a majority of the money was awarded before SpaceX built any hardware, they just had to present plans and half the money was transferred. Elon never ri…

So the government wanted the services and was willing to take some risk paying in advance that SpaceX couldn’t deliver? Smart and successful bet in this case, but I guess they tried that with other companies as well and those didn’t deliver?!

Agree, the point is that the story of Elon taking personal financial risk with SpaceX is false.

For Tesla, besides the huge DOE grant, he had SpaceX loan some of the excess government money to Tesla in the first few years to derisk his investment there as well.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#347

Post by nickpp »

georgeg23 wrote: post #346
nickpp wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the government wanted the services and was willing to take some risk paying in advance that SpaceX couldn’t deliver? Smart and successful bet in this case, but I guess they tried that with other companies as well and those didn’t deliver?!

Agree, the point is that the story of Elon taking personal financial risk with SpaceX is false. For Tesla, besides the huge DOE grant, he had SpaceX loan some of the excess government money to Tesla in the first few years to derisk his investment there as well.

Well putting half your fortune in a venture is literally taking significant personal financial risk.

Besides that, there are plenty of firms taking government money but Elon actually delivered.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#348

Post by angiosperm »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #310
angiosperm wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint: Starship cans are comically inadequate to support a martian colony. They might be just adequate to maintain a lunar outpost -- if they turn out to work at all. We don't even know if humans can survive, long-term, in 0.3g; zero g, anyway, is right out. Life in centrifuges on Mars would be even less fun than in cans. If some follow-on vehicle were ever developed adequate to support a martian colony, and lunar gra…

Support a colony, as in bringing supplies? How could any rocket that can deliver several tons be inadequate for that?

Maybe look into how many launches are needed to loft fuel to send just one can to Mars. And, how many passengers, realistically, fit in a can on a 9-month (note, not 6-month) trip, with supplies for the trip. Hint, not 100, and not 20. Hopefully the supplies needed to survive there are in other cans already there. Literally nothing there is worth exporting except maybe reality TV; not cans, and not even just engines taken off the cans. Never mind homesick colonists.

Pressure suits for everybody on board might be crammed in, but more likely just two or three to use collecting more from cargo ships already landed.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#349

Post by panick21_ »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #341
HumanReadable wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the Falcon can be compared to the SLS. Both are vehicles designed to take things into space for crying out loud! The figures are easy to compare as well. Just include these factors in your comparison! Even if we don't know exactly what those factors are, we can make a ballpark estimate the total difference and add that as a percentage to spaceX's final figure. The idea that things can't be compared because…

>Both are vehicles designed to take things into space for crying out loud! They have quite different fairing capacities, in a playfield that does not scale linearly. It is like saying that the Boeing 737 is cheaper than the 777, and we can compare them because they were both designed to fly people in the sky.

You can compare a 737 to 777 and if the 777 per person were 10x more expensive then airlines wouldnt use 777. Not sure why this is hard do unterstand.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#350

Post by panick21_ »

reso wrote: post #328
nordsieck wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I don't know why you're so obsessed with cost. The only thing that matters when it comes to commercial providers is price. And SpaceX, (as far as I can tell) stands alone among the medium-heavy lift providers by providing a price directly on their website. Of course, fo…

Cost is more important than price in the long run because it tells us whether SpaceX has made genuine efficiency and technology developments that allow their prices to be long-term viable. Any one can sell a service at a loss, but you eventually run out of VC or saudi bucks to make up the difference, and then you have to jack your prices up again.

Anybody who spends even 10min actually thinking about this topic realizes that the idea that SpaceX subsudizes Falcon 9 launches to get price below cost is complete nonsense.

Its just a convieniant attack on SpaceX because they are private. It has no bases in reality.

Post reply on HN