141–150 of 154 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In India, decades after metric, many will only understand feet and inches for height, length etc.. Think it's the same in many Asian countries, though some have moved on. But miles has gone out of fashion. Pounds too..
Science progresses one funeral at a time.
Interesting that "...additional vehicle upgrades include a reusable fairing..." I wonder how they'll be implementing that since SpaceX gave up on recapturing fairings (seemingly too soon, but only from the POV of someone with no internal info).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_fairing_recovery_progra... > SpaceX performs some amount of cleaning and refurbishing before using the previously flown fairings on a subsequent flight. SpaceX has reflown fairing halves more than 300 times, with one being reflown for 34 times. They gave up on catching them in nets, because it turns out they're fine splashing directly into the water.
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You have no choice. It’s the largest and most profitable sector of your market. If you don’t compete in it, SpaceX can subsidize Falcon Heavy launches with their Falcon 9 launches to put you out of business. I’m honestly not sure what Starship is designed for either. Despite all the hype, it might bankrupt SpaceX. Or seems like the poster child for second system syndrome.
I strongly suspect they already have been pricing Falcon Heavy launches below cost, with the exception of national security launches. IIRC spaceX claims that falcon heavy has a lower cost per kilogram to orbit than Falcon 9. I also suspect that they are burning capital everywhere and their margins are extremely thin. The charitable assessment of that is that they are being like Amazon and they know what they are doin…
Starlink is making money hand over fist.
I think Blue Origin's biggest problem is they don't currently have a planned or real Falcon 9 competitor. These expected and incremental updates (to a years late system that still needs to be proven) are putting the payload capacity in the Falcon Heavy range and there's roughly 1 Falcon Heavy launch per year. There are over 100 Falcon 9 launches per year. Yes a bunch are Starlink so you can exclude those when estimat…
I think Blue Origin's biggest problem is they don't currently have a planned or real Falcon 9 competitor. These expected and incremental updates (to a years late system that still needs to be proven) are putting the payload capacity in the Falcon Heavy range and there's roughly 1 Falcon Heavy launch per year. There are over 100 Falcon 9 launches per year. Yes a bunch are Starlink so you can exclude those when estimat…
I assume they'll have figured out a deployment strategy for Project Kuiper where the unit economics works; there are advantages and disadvantages to launching more satellites, less frequently. SpaceX isn't that different in creating its own demand: the launch cadence of the Falcon 9 is so frequent mainly because they have a lot of their own satellites to launch. You can make money on infrequent launches of niche stuf…
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Not terribly familiar with the details, but Amazon kuiper has a contract with blue origin and other providers.
Sure, but Kuiper is launching on other rockets to meet an fcc deadline for using enough of their spectrum. They even launch on falcon 9. If other providers had the capacity to launch all of them, I'm sure falcon wouldn't be in the mix there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In India, decades after metric, many will only understand feet and inches for height, length etc.. Think it's the same in many Asian countries, though some have moved on. But miles has gone out of fashion. Pounds too..
Some of use in India don't even grok inches, miles, pounds, pints, ares or cubits. In fact, I haven't met anyone in the professional fields (science, engineering and medicine) who is comfortable with imperial or any other non-metric systems. Not even our parents are comfortable with them. It was a nightmare when we were faced with such units in public exams. That's an arcane skill that disappeared 3 or 4 generations…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In India, decades after metric, many will only understand feet and inches for height, length etc.. Think it's the same in many Asian countries, though some have moved on. But miles has gone out of fashion. Pounds too..
Some of use in India don't even grok inches, miles, pounds, pints, ares or cubits. In fact, I haven't met anyone in the professional fields (science, engineering and medicine) who is comfortable with imperial or any other non-metric systems. Not even our parents are comfortable with them. It was a nightmare when we were faced with such units in public exams. That's an arcane skill that disappeared 3 or 4 generations…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume they'll have figured out a deployment strategy for Project Kuiper where the unit economics works; there are advantages and disadvantages to launching more satellites, less frequently. SpaceX isn't that different in creating its own demand: the launch cadence of the Falcon 9 is so frequent mainly because they have a lot of their own satellites to launch. You can make money on infrequent launches of niche stuf…
Incorrect. Starship is predicated on the idea that reusing the second stage will let them lower the cost of launch another ten times and it won’t matter if you don’t fill Starship completely, it will still be the cheapest option.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly suspect they already have been pricing Falcon Heavy launches below cost, with the exception of national security launches. IIRC spaceX claims that falcon heavy has a lower cost per kilogram to orbit than Falcon 9. I also suspect that they are burning capital everywhere and their margins are extremely thin. The charitable assessment of that is that they are being like Amazon and they know what they are doin…
Your expectations are wrong, and we know that because being selected for HLS included letting NASA go over their books and determining the odds of success financial. Starlink is making money hand over fist.