as an engineer doing non-hardware engineering, it is always satisfying to watch SpaceX succeed from afar.
SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
201–210 of 303 posts
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would be far more correct to say "Mr. Musk faces potential competition from another billionaire." Though ULA is buying engines from BO.
ULA isn't buying anything from BO. They have an option to if BO makes far more progress.
Everybody knows that BO is basically in. They string along the other engine to reassure the military.
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you expect it to turn up in 3 minutes, be clean and responsible and cost half of what it used to? I sometimes feel as if people who criticize Uber didn't ever use taxi services in the pre-Uber times.
I don't know where you live, but here in Berlin taxis come quickly, are clean, and you pay what the meter states. I never had trouble with a driver. They could be cheaper, but I don't think that lowering prices by increasing competition is revolutionary.
Uber is not really cheaper, they are just burning their investors cash to project the illusion. When a) that runs out and b) they have to pay the same fees and taxes and follow the same regulations as other taxi companies, the true cost will be revealed
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
T̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶i̶c̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶l̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶F̶a̶l̶c̶o̶n̶'̶s̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶u̶s̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶K̶á̶r̶m̶á̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶.̶ However, as it is apparent from the size in the second picture, Falcon needs much, much more thrust to help put things to orbit. Going to space is kind of easy, the hard part is staying there.
Falcon 9's first stage certainly reaches and (fairly greatly) exceeds the Kármán line in RTLS boostback, as the graphic shows. Even in an ASDS landing, it exceeds the Kármán line. I think the typical apogee is around 120-130 km. Stage sep happens below the line, however.
Having played several hundred hours of KSP I can confirm you shouldn't underestimate momentum. It's amazing that it's even possible. I think the number I've heard is if the earth's gravity was something like 10% stronger this wouldn't be feasible.
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#205Bezos is coming .. already $1B a year from Amazon stock. And Amazon is more successful every year.
I am very curious how things will go.
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#206Thinking about it a bit more, I don't believe that Blue Origin and SpaceX are competitors. In a sense yes, but they will not fight for customers. I believe there is very much demand for their services.
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#207Bezos is coming .. already $1B a year from Amazon stock. And Amazon is more successful every year. I am very curious how things will go.
The liberal backlash against Amazon is also coming.
I have nothing against Musk in particular except that every one of his companies runs off of government largesse one way or another--SpaceX is pretty cool, though, I give him that.
We shouldn't succumb to cults of personality.
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#208> Mr. Musk faces competition from another billionaire. Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, aims to send tourists and supplies into space. Is that line even close to true? Last I heard Blue Origin was years away from revenue and far behind SpaceX in terms of capability and manufacturing.
This interview with Tom Mueller (CTO of SpaceX) suggests that competitors have had to go back to the drawing board after seeing SpaceX accomplish wrt their low cost systems. https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/6b043z/tom_mueller_... That rocket is going to be the real game-changer. I would say that the Falcon 9 is evolutionary, you know, a reusable rocket that greatly reduces the cost of access to space. Maybe w…
The ULA will be able to get by for a while on their record of having gone 100+ launches without a failure. As long as SpaceX keeps innovating there's the chance they'll make a mistake. So for an expensive enough satellite you'll probably want to go with ULA. But for the majority of the launch market SpaceX is certainly the best deal.
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are not failing, then you are not trying enough new things. Amazon has been successful a lot, a LOT more often than they have failed.
I think that is probably false. They have way more failures than successes, but the successes far outpace the losses in output.
Amazon phone, lol.
Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you describe is exactly how you come to dominate retail business and become monopoly power online. Amazon's reference point is Wal-Mart. They are in ever expanding price cutting small margin business. Another good comparison in Microsoft in 80's and 90's. MS dominated over IBM, Apple and others several decades with sup-par product everybody hated by attacking and destroying potential competitors, not by improvin…
> They are in ever expanding price cutting small margin business. If you sink all of your profits into expansion, then on the books you made zero profit. If you made zero profit, you pay zero taxes. This is a common tactic with farmers. They use this year's returns to buy next year's supplies. If amazon stopped growing and suddenly reaped their profits, there would be a big tax bill to go with it.
There's a middle ground: don't grow as much, and pay some taxes. Not saying it's optimal (for any party, or on any axis), but it's not like there's just this binary choice of "growth consumes all profit" and "don't grow at all."