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A look into the finances of SpaceX

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Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#271

Post by wddkcs »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #169
wddkcs wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is pricing in future growth. You can say the market is incorrectly evaluating the potential return, but it's hard to argue that Tesla and SpaceX aren't going to cash in on that potential. How else should the market be treating companies with obvious high growth potential?

It is very possible, even probable, that Tesla's glory days are already behind it. Their margin are contracting, and it's actually probable they will loose money in Q3, Q4 this year. They don't have any significant advantage on competition anymore, and China's competition is already well ahead Tesla. Elon himself suggested Tesla is worthless as a 'car making company' and it's value will come from solving autonomy wit…

I've heard these same talking points for the past eight years.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#272

Post by Veedrac »

alemanek wrote: post #256
HWR_14 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ~$5billion per launch includes a lot of amortized R&D and other costs that you are not counting in the 61 successful Falcon launches. It may be that the Falcon launchers are significantly cheaper, but the accounting methods are too different to just compare numbers.

Your right that figure isn’t accounting for the $23.8 billion cost of the program so far. That $5billion per launch figure is based on an optimistic number of SLS launches which haven’t happened yet. SLS and Orion are dead ends. I wish them well and I am huge space geek but that program is just a gigantic waste. I wish we could take that budget and use it for unmanned missions or public/private space station partners…

$5B (2023: $4.7B) is actually the current yearly run rate for SLS+Orion+EGS. Thus, $5B is what the marginal launch cost would be if SLS was launching yearly, excluding $54B to-date costs of the three. Even NASA's official projections (which are always optimistic) don't show yearly launches, but if unreasonably optimistic numbers still make the point, why quibble over the details?

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#273

Post by goodbyesf »

tomp wrote: post #151
losteric wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gwynne Shotwell deserves all the thanks, she's brilliant

I mean, not all the credit. She might be brilliant, but she's worked other space jobs before. So clearly whatever company Musk has created, has allowed her to actually showcase her brilliance. CEO sets the vision. Without vision, even perfect execution is pointless.

> CEO sets the vision. Without vision, even perfect execution is pointless.

The chairman of the board on behalf of the shareholders sets the vision. The CEO along with the other C-suite executives executes the vision. But in this case, both the chairman, ceo, cto, founder and majority voting shareholder is elon musk. So you are ultimately right.

You can tell the elon-hate has gone insane when they can't bring themselves to give elon any credit for spacex.

Besides, even if gynne shotwell deserves all the credit for spacex's success, elon deserves credit for hiring her in the first place so elon wins again.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#274

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

runnerup wrote: post #239
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Neither has Ferrari or Rolex but that doesn't make them failures In fact Rolex, Ferrari, Fender etc. aren't valued at 680 billions. They are valued like status symbol companies . Again like Tiffany & CO. As they should be, Musk convinced people that Tesla will deliver 'Standard Oil-esque type quality of life jump in the life of the avg. citizen. Instead it's just a Ferrari made in Silicon Valley. When people will…

I don’t know what you want us all to agree on here. It sounds like GP disputed you setting the bar at “should have improved the lives of most Americans”. That did seem like an unreasonable bar to judge companies by. It’s not super controversial that Tesla is likely overvalued, but shareholders generally still have a reasonable expectation of upside on new shares purchased so they continue to buy. I’d hope most of the…

> > I just disputed you setting the bar at “should have improved the lives of most Americans”. That seemed like an unreasonable bar to judge companies by, to me.

No, for a company that has reached the status of top 5 most valuable it isn't unreasonable to ask for concrete quality of life improvement for most people.

Moderna and BioNtech aren't even in the top500 and yet delivered quality of life on a global scale by de-facto ending the Covid pandemic

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#275

Post by fnordpiglet »

oblio wrote: post #103
bell-cot wrote: post #35

From Reuters... > In 2022, revenue doubled to $4.6 billion, helping the company reduce its loss last year to $559 million from $968 million, the WSJ reported. > The company reported about $5.2 billion in total expenses for 2022, up from $3.3 billion the year earlier, according to the report. That $5.2B of expenses got 61 successful, production Falcon rocket launches in 2022. Vs. some pretty-reasonable estimates put t…

It's ridiculous what amounts of money these ventures can siphon away in the US. See Uber, AirBNB, etc. I'm not saying they don't pay off, but these businesses literally choke most international competition. There are probably 1-2 countries in the world that can afford to keep running a business with losses at around $1bn per year.

I think many governments with state industry routinely run massive deficits in those state industries, and as an extension, state funded industries. Space is such an industry.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#276

Post by bryanlarsen »

objektif wrote: post #265
nordsieck wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not possible to do a fair comparison of launch costs between Falcon 9 and other platforms without knowing the true cost of Falcon 9 launches. I don't know why you're so obsessed with cost. The only thing that matters when it comes to commercial providers is price. And SpaceX, (as far as I can tell) stands alone among the medium-heavy lift providers by providing a price directly on their website. Of course, fo…

Price is not a good metric here you can subsidize your pricing to hell if you have budget. Elon loves to do this btw.

The headline is that SpaceX is profitable, so they're not pricing below cost.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#277

Post by nordsieck »

objektif wrote: post #265
nordsieck wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not possible to do a fair comparison of launch costs between Falcon 9 and other platforms without knowing the true cost of Falcon 9 launches. I don't know why you're so obsessed with cost. The only thing that matters when it comes to commercial providers is price. And SpaceX, (as far as I can tell) stands alone among the medium-heavy lift providers by providing a price directly on their website. Of course, fo…

Price is not a good metric here you can subsidize your pricing to hell if you have budget. Elon loves to do this btw.

> Price is not a good metric here you can subsidize your pricing to hell if you have budget.

1. As far as I know, no one has presented any evidence that SpaceX sells Falcon 9/H launches for less than cost. ArianeSpace used to really talk up this point, but even they've mostly given up.

2. I'm not really sure why it matters. If SpaceX can sell for less than cost at their current volume, well... good for the tax payers - we're getting a deal.

> Elon loves to do this btw.

Really? I thought Tesla was known for it's high margins? I don't think any of Elon's other businesses are public.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#278

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

ISL wrote: post #148
resolutebat wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At time of writing, it's the opposite: Falcon is launching humans into space on a regular basis, something SLS has entirely failed to do to date.

SLS hasn't yet been asked to launch a human.

From Wikipedia:

> The SLS was created by an act of Congress in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, Public Law 111–267, in which NASA was directed to create a system for launching payloads and crew into space that would replace the capabilities lost with the retirement of the Space Shuttle.

SLS was "asked" 13 years ago to launch humans, and we are still waiting for that to happen.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#279

Post by orwin »

justrealist wrote: post #80
orwin wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can only capture the demand for orbital launch. The Russia aggression in 2022 helped a lot, as SpaceX took 'free' market share, and their superior (or rather, inferior) costs gave them the majority of commercial launches from every country except Russia/China, and they will also probably get most Nasa and US allies (except EU) launches. I'll say they will cap at 8-10B revenue (+inflation). But this year, SpaceX…

Using the market size at $2700/kg to LEO to size the market is ridiculous when they are working on trying to get it to $100/kg to LEO. If the only launch vehicle was the SLS, the market size would be $0. That's not meaningful!

Why would you compare it to Sls, that makes no sense. SLS is meant to replace Saturn 5 launchers, no? It will have like max 20 launches.

The market size is limited, because, well, why would you send stuff up there? GPS, telco, science (iss). I guess if you make it cheap enough, high class hostels? (doubt it, and you have to have human rated spacecraft).

Until space mining is a thing, and in that case you should rather invest in mining companies, the market size is limited.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#280

Post by bryanlarsen »

fooker wrote: post #93
stetrain wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the primary goal is sustainable payloads to the moon. I think Congress considers this a secondary goal over funding and jobs being directed at their states.

> funding and jobs being directed at their states. This is more important than it seems on the surface and is often a good thing. You want to train and preserve local expertise with heavy industries. That ensures generations of successful companies rejuvenating your economy as opposed to relying on federal handouts.

It's a good thing during down times. But now is not down times. Experienced, qualified space & rocket engineers are in high demand. Employing them to do useless make-work means they aren't available to work on rockets and space systems that will actually be useful in the future.
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