Check out this great tweet on Elon's $2m/launch:
https://x.com/Tim_X94/status/1864279927014740327"As an auditor I review public company financial statements. These financial statements are prepared in Rocket Lab's case based on US GAAP. Adjacent to US GAAP figures companies also provide NON GAAP disclosures for informative purposes. Formally these are not audited, but auditors sanity check them anyway.
Since Adam and Pete are CEO and CFO of a public company, each time they give you a number in interviews / press releases etc., they will be based on US GAAP and if explicitly stated NON-GAAP basis.
Why is this relevant Tim?
Well if Adam and/or Pete give you a number, that number will includes ALL the (estimated) costs in accordance with US GAAP for what it takes to build something. In this case Adam/Pete on numerous ocassions told investors roughly the following:
We aim to have 50% gross margins on Neutron with a similar flight cadence as Electron. Electron has 50% gross margins at roughly 20 annual flights. Adam specifically also said they will probably arrive there even sooner with Neutron since its first stage + fairings reusable and Electron till this date is expendable.
With a $55 million sticker price and a 50% gross margin, the cost of sales under US GAAP will rougly in the $25-30 million ballpark based on a cadence of 20 flights. NOTE: If Neutron launches more then 20 times per year, cost of sales are going to even drop lower to the point where the build costs rougly resemble those of Falcon 9.
But for now let's keep it simple (20+ flights is the bull case scenario) and let's go with the 20 flights base scenario. In this case it costs between $25-$30 million to build/operate one Neutron rocket. Under US GAAP the main cost components to operate a rocket launch include:
Per flight:
> Fuel costs for the rocket
> Fee to the launch range
> Seperation system
Per build: (allocated based on the number of annual launches)
> Material costs for building the rocket
> Salaries for the factory employee hours
> Machine hour costs
> Depreciation for factory buildings
> Transportation costs
Per launch facility (allocated based on the number of annual launches)
> Depreciation for launch infrastructure
> Salaries for the launch staff
> Security for the launch range etc.
SPB and Adam also said many times, that the per flight costs including material costs to build the rocket are only a FRACTION of the total cost of running a rocket program. The real costs are the fixed ones relating to factories, facilities, employees, depreciation etc (mainly the launch facility and build mentioned in the paragraph above) AKA the JOKE ADAM RUNS IS WE RAISE MONEY TO POUR CONCRETE. Why does he make that joke? Well more then 80% of the total rocket program cost are not related to the LAUNCH VEHICLE ITSELF
Now let's go over to our friends at SpaceX. Remember SpaceX is a private company and in the US there are zero reporting requirements for private companies nor obligations for CEO to quote US GAAP approved figures. Instead since Elon is not bound to any of these regulations, unlike at Tesla for all his SpaceX endavours he employs something what I will going forward refer to as Elon GAAP.
The most important rule of Elon GAAP is that there are NO accounting rules.
Let me illustrate that with this example:
Elon was quoted on multiple occassions about what Starship would cost to build. Basically he said it is the long term goal for a Starship launch is to cost $10 million. This $10 million figure is based on the following assumptions:
> A Starship is fully reusable and will assume aircraft like operations.
> It takes no refurb between flights between each vehicle, similar like an aircraft. In order for that to happen the heatshield tile issue will need to get solved, but ok let's go with his narrative.
As such if you assume the above Elon then says that the only costs for each flight that you will have mainly relates to fuel costs and if you build 100s-1000s of Starships each build will not cost a lot. Elon estimates this to be $10 million per flight.
Caveat are we really comparing a 20 flight Neutron cadence with a 1000 flight Starship cadence?
Yep we are which is totally insane it itself and non apples to apples comparison, but let's go with the leading narrative on X.
So what your finfluencers and SpaceX fanboys on X do is they compare the Starship $10 million number to Rocket Lab's $25-$30 million number and conclude Rocket Lab's Neutron is way to expensive to build and will run out of business long term.
Why is this not correct then Tim?
Well thats because we are comparing Adam's US GAAP cost to launch with Elon's Elon GAAP cost to launch. Its not an apples to apples comparison.
Why?
Because under Elon GAAP you only have to account for direct rocket material and fuel costs and don't have to account for these costs:
Per flight:
> Fee to the launch range (assuming a Cape launch)
> Seperation system
Per build: (allocated based on the number of annual launches)
> Salaries for the factory employee hours
> Machine hour costs
> Depreciation for factory buildings
> Transportation costs
Per launch facility (allocated based on the number of annual launches)
> Depreciation for launch infrastructure
> Salaries for the launch staff
> Security for the launch range etc.
Why you don't have to account for these costs Tim?
Well you see, under Elon GAAP all the employees and suppliers work for free and buildings and launch infrastructure remains in perfect condition and never has to be replaced.
Well Tim Elon GAAP must be wonderful right?
Yes, it truely is an amazing place.
Especially since a large part of the costs of running a rocket program are not directly related to the rocket itself AKA the largest part of the costs are not included in Elon's 10 million number)
After Adam read this he is probably also going to apply Elon GAAP for the Rocket Lab financial statements. This means he just has to account for material and fuel costs for each Neutron launch and can leave everything else out. Under Elon GAAP a Neutron rocket launch will the same or less then $10 million (assuming a 20 Neutron cadence and 1000 Starship cadence), because Neutron is a significantly smaller vehicle then Starship and as such way cheaper to fill. This is partly offset by fact that the second stage is expendable for Neutron.
So the conclusion of this accounting rant is:
No matter the GAAP (US GAAP or Elon GAAP) Neutron will almost always be cheaper to operate then Starship on a dedicated ride basis. You just have to do an apples to apples comparison. Sure Starship will be the king of price per kg, but Neutron is not in the price per kg business, but in the DEDICATED RIDES BUSINESS. For other this will become more obvious in the years to come, when Neutron will ramp cadence well above 20 flights per year.
Why?
Because Starship is a significantly larger vehicle and rocket program costs don't scale LINEAR, they grow EXPENONENTIALLY with the size of the vehicle. How else can the entire Starship program cost $10 billion (Payload estimate) versus Neutron $300 million?
Also Starship is optimized to go to Mars, Neutron is optimized to require minimal infrastructure (no launch tower and other optimizations due to vehicle size.
Remember infrastructure is the largest cost of a rocket program. SPB is very smart and exactly knows what he is doing. So don't let yourself get fooled by finfluencers and fanboys.
Next time you see someone quoting Elon GAAP for rockets, you can refer this post :)
Full disclosure: I love Elon, as a Tesla shareholder, I just don't like Elon GAAP "