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SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

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Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#42
post #40
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s now the whole market

Plus “building up” like Tesla which had many 10x multiples is kinda a different story than a company that started out in the Top 5 by market cap. Sure, there’s a limited float plus meme stock/hype/etc but still, steady growth which would lead to like a $20 trillion company in a few years? Since I’m assuming IPO investors are going to be comparing to the last decade’s history of the tech giants and wouldn’t be satisfi…

Yeah, with the public getting used to that level of growth I don’t know if we can back to something more stable and sustainable

Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#43
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go into more detail? You're clearly assigning costs to SpaceX that go beyond the invoice price.

Those costs are baked into the invoice price.

Sometimes you can buy cheaper than build.

Many launchers in several countries, SpaceX is the cheapest in its sector.

Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#44
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, absolutely. Of course it gets messy in reality. But theoretically there is no reason they couldn’t. If someone in a certain office snapped their fingers they could nationalize spacex for example and remove profitability requirements while preserving institutional knowledge and team structure. Just musk will no longer be the richest man on the planet.

When has NASA got even close to that number of dollar per kilo payload in its long history? AFAIK, never.

So what? I'm guessing spacex can be even lower dollar per kilo if they didn't have to make profit. That is my whole point. People are missing that point and going "well nasa doesn't have the talent blabla" that just misses this point entirely. Profit is a cost. You can never convince me profit is not a cost.

Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#45
post #33
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly because government today pays out the nose for contracted labor rates as doing anything in house has been blown apart by free market reaganists over the years.

The soviet union, the only non-capitalist country ever to have a technology comparable to ours, was really fucking inefficient. E.g. Soviets had 50% higher CO2 output per ton of steel than the U.S. due to poor energy efficiency.

There was a time when american steel was inefficiently made too.

Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#46
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It exists here too in small subsets of government. A parks dept that hires their own landscapers instead of contracting with a landscaping company is such an example of this utopia. A municipal power company with greatly reduced rates in comparison to a private utility. A university that runs its own prep kitchen facility over prepackaged GFS/cisco.

It's never existed in this industry.

So what? If you needed precedence for everything to happen, nothing new would ever happen.

Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#47
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, absolutely. Of course it gets messy in reality. But theoretically there is no reason they couldn’t. If someone in a certain office snapped their fingers they could nationalize spacex for example and remove profitability requirements while preserving institutional knowledge and team structure. Just musk will no longer be the richest man on the planet.

Practically, that's exactly what Chavez did. Where did that lead?

Not sure, you cited one of the most popular surnames in latin america.

Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#48
post #32
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, absolutely. Of course it gets messy in reality. But theoretically there is no reason they couldn’t. If someone in a certain office snapped their fingers they could nationalize spacex for example and remove profitability requirements while preserving institutional knowledge and team structure. Just musk will no longer be the richest man on the planet.

> Theoretically, absolutely. Of course it gets messy in reality That’s like saying “theoretically you could get to space by flapping your wings”—you just need to ignore inconvenient laws of physics. Economics describes forces of the real world, you cannot just wave them away.

This has nothing to do with my point and I think you know that.

Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#49
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those costs are baked into the invoice price.

Sometimes you can buy cheaper than build. Many launchers in several countries, SpaceX is the cheapest in its sector.

This is only true if spacex is losing money on everything they build. They aren't, so no, buying is not cheaper than building.

Re: SpaceX wins $1.6B Space Force contract for 18 Falcon 9 launches

#50
post #48
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Theoretically, absolutely. Of course it gets messy in reality That’s like saying “theoretically you could get to space by flapping your wings”—you just need to ignore inconvenient laws of physics. Economics describes forces of the real world, you cannot just wave them away.

This has nothing to do with my point and I think you know that.

Yes it does. You’re trying to draw an artificial distinction between what’s possible “theoretically” and “in practice” that depends on removing basic economic understandings from “theory.”
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