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SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

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Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#111

Post by dylan604 »

rqtwteye wrote: post #79
nonethewiser wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the distinction but I wonder if it’s only useful because of the weird nature of previous rocket engineering efforts. Notably, NASA contracting out different components due to the quirks of being a government entity. SpaceX is much different than that but aren’t they rather similar to, say, car companies? I mean if SpaceX is a rocket factory company, isn’t Ford a car factory company? We just don’t include…

"I mean if SpaceX is a rocket factory company, isn’t Ford a car factory company? We just don’t include factory because it’s redundant. " I think you could call any company that tries to mass produce something a "X factory company" because from a certain scale on production and supply chains are where the real knowledge is. Apple could be called a "phone factory company".

>Apple could be called a "phone factory company".

Could it? It doesn't actually make them. It hires 3rd party companies for that. Where Ford owns/operates factories that produces their products. Unless I'm confused and Ford doesn't own their factories?

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#112

Post by bumby »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #105
bumby wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

98% wasn't a number I pulled out of thin air. It's hard to know exact figures, but there are some people who publicly track what they can. [1] From that source, SpaceX has about ~$5.515B in contracts. Of that, about $5.411B is from government contracts (military, NASA). That's about 98.1%. There's probably a good chance it's higher, if they have govt contracts that aren't allowed to be public knowledge for security r…

The other respondent brought up a good point regarding selection bias. A different way to approach the problem would be to look at total SpaceX launches by customer. This has its own problems, but might paint a better picture. When talking about funding in general, you also have to consider that SpaceX has significant non launch Equity funding to the tune of $10B, and that contracts can include potential future Reven…

Sure, I can acknowledge there is likely a selection bias based on public reporting. But I would push back that it skews the data by an order of magnitude as suggested. We'd likely see many, many more private launches compared to public for that to be true. Let's be super generous and say that Starlink brings in $1B in revenue; that still means govt funding accounts for 80% of their revenue.

And, yes, we can talk about different ways of accounting. But I wouldn't count the fickle or volatile ones like "potential future revenue" as better than measuring actual contracts. (This is what SpaceX is investing in with their own launches, to be fair, but that's different than actual revenue). People trying to raise capital are always talking about potential revenue and potential market share, but you'll get much more investor money if you have actual purchase orders.

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#113

Post by dylan604 »

robertoandred wrote: post #55
s1artibartfast wrote: post #9

Press releases from SpaceX have alluded to a possible launch date of 420, which I think would be hilariously on brand.

Musk companies are all so immature. I wouldn’t trust one with my life…

but you kind of have to at this point. can you guarantee that you are not going to be around a "FSD" operated Tesla?

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#114

Post by redox99 »

detritus wrote: post #80
elif wrote: post #43

I saw on their YouTube channel that they are tentatively targeting 4/20 to light it up :)

ughft. I mean: I smoke hashish, but honestly, Musk's adolescent little references like these are really trite and demeaning to the magnitude of what his companies are hoping to achieve. S3XY, poop emoji and 'Titter'. ughft, just stop already.

I actually enjoy a bit of silliness and things not being so serious

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#115

Post by panick21_ »

bumby wrote: post #85
Meegul wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX undoubtedly does have US government agencies as some of their biggest customers, but 98% must be a gross exaggeration. The Falcon 9/Heavy have made nearly all of their launch revenues, and from just perusing the lists [1][2] of all launches, the US government can't be more than some low double digit percentage. SpaceX does receive other funding as part of various NASA contracts, but that funding is also relate…

98% wasn't a number I pulled out of thin air. It's hard to know exact figures, but there are some people who publicly track what they can. [1] From that source, SpaceX has about ~$5.515B in contracts. Of that, about $5.411B is from government contracts (military, NASA). That's about 98.1%. There's probably a good chance it's higher, if they have govt contracts that aren't allowed to be public knowledge for security r…

Sorry but this is complete nonsense.

You can literally just go threw the list of their launches on Wikipedia an notice that nothing close to even 80% of them are for the government.

And that is outside of their Starship business, that is by now a large part of its revenue.

The numbers you present are ridicoulus, they have easily more money just from human space flight from Polaris and Axiom.

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#116

Post by dylan604 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #33
neals wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two big take-aways from this video: - Half the size of the statue of liberty is it's base. Not that tall as a statue. - Seadragon, of which I'd never heard. 1) 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)

I think it is highly unfair to compare concepts to actual built rockets, might as well just include the Enterprise from Star Trek as well at that point.

sure, why not? i'd be willing to bet that most people don't truly appreciate the size of the Enterprise

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#117

Post by panick21_ »

bumby wrote: post #98
Meegul wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That source only lists contracts where the price is known or can be reasonably estimated. Naturally, US government entities which have a semi-public bidding process are much easier to obtain a price estimate from. There's a large amount of foreign government contracts and private commercial contracts that are omitted from that list. Just from 2020 alone, SkySats 16-21, ANASIS-II, SXRS-1, SAOCOM 1B, GNOMES 1, Tybak-01…

Hell, SpaceX is private so we have limited information across all domains. I acknowledged in my first post that accurate numbers are hard to come by. But we have to work with what information we have. Foreign govts would still be govt money; many of those you listed are still public projects. Do you have estimates for those other private launches? If not, it's just speculation. Based on the information we have, it se…

> But we have to work with what information we have.

No sorry, if you know the numbers you have are clearly bias and wrong then you don't need to work with them.

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#118

Post by alfiopuglisi »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #108
avmich wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SLS gave tons of experience, of all kinds imaginable. Like, supercomputers used to calculate aerodynamics, heat-protecting tiles, landing and pacifying procedures, to name some less known. It was definitely not money wasted, even though more than 14 people gave their lives to the program.

> was definitely not money wasted Sorry, it was absolutely wasted. We could have predictably achieved those benefits for less and quicker, with tens of billions to spare.

Maybe avmich is thinking of the STS (the Space Shuttle)

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#119

Post by bumby »

panick21_ wrote: post #115
bumby wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

98% wasn't a number I pulled out of thin air. It's hard to know exact figures, but there are some people who publicly track what they can. [1] From that source, SpaceX has about ~$5.515B in contracts. Of that, about $5.411B is from government contracts (military, NASA). That's about 98.1%. There's probably a good chance it's higher, if they have govt contracts that aren't allowed to be public knowledge for security r…

Sorry but this is complete nonsense. You can literally just go threw the list of their launches on Wikipedia an notice that nothing close to even 80% of them are for the government. And that is outside of their Starship business, that is by now a large part of its revenue. The numbers you present are ridicoulus, they have easily more money just from human space flight from Polaris and Axiom.

The bulk of their own launches are for their own infrastructure. That doesn't bring revenue at the launch date. They aren't paying themselves to launch their equipment; it's an investment in future revenue. Even looking at optimistic projections for 2023 Starlink revenue puts would still mean govt contracts dwarf Starlink revenue by 4:1.

>And that is outside of their Starship business, that is by now a large part of its revenue.

Starship is bringing in investment money, not revenue that I'm aware of. I don't know what revenue it would be bringing without actual launches. Maybe I'm wrong and you can correct me here, but I think you are conflating some business aspects.

Now if you're saying that the private money will be a bigger factor in the future, I agree. That's the whole idea behind govt money being used to foster along nascent industries: the govt props them up early until a viable private enterprise can exist later.

Re: SpaceX closing in on first Starship Super Heavy launch

#120

Post by credit_guy »

bane wrote: post #70

If they can pull this off I think we may enter an age with a clear "Before super heavy reusable launch" and "after". It's mind boggling how much stuff a Starship will be able to chuck into space and come down and then do it again and again. Consider this, the military is starting to explore the idea of moving heavy military equipment anywhere in the world within 90 minutes using this kind of capability. International…

> the military is starting to explore the idea of moving heavy military equipment

The killer app for the military is missile defense. Currently the US has about 4 dozen ground based midcourse interceptors. Each costs more than $100 million and carries one single exo-atmospheric kill vehicle capable of destroying one single incoming threat. The kill vehicle weights 64 kg.

A single starship could carry more than 1000 kill vehicles. A dozen or two starships on standby could carry enough kill vehicles to defend not only against all current intercontinental ballistic missiles, but against all that Russia, China and North Korea could conceivably build in a decade.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoatmospheric_Kill_Vehicle

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