A look into the finances of SpaceX • Hacker News Board

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#361

Post by panick21_ » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

mcpackieh wrote: post #244

jwells89 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The habitats which would supposedly be used for Mars colonization don't exist and aren't in development, so if you think Starship is a Mars rocket you should realize that it's a bridge to nowhere. I'm only an enthusiastic layman on the topic of spacefaring, but isn't the launch vehicle a critical variable when designing habitats for other planets? It doesn't seem practical to take anything much further than paper u…

If they don't start serious habitat development until Starship is ready, then, Starhip will be decades old by the time anybody is ready to make a Mars colony. Besides the structure of the habitats themselves, there a ton of technology that would need to be developed first. Life support equipment and systems, space suits, vehicles, any sort of plan to produce food. Nobody is seriously developing this stuff, you have a…

They are literally doing serious hab development for the moon mission right now.

There is work on suits, life support systems and lots of other things.

Your whole argument is basically 'its hard' and SpaceX doesnt have perfectly worked out plan to solve every single problem. Yeah no shit shirlock.

And Starship is a Mars rocket. Your evidence for that non existant. SpaceX has presented Mars entery and landing profiles. Refueling makes it perfect for Mars.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#362

Post by panick21_ » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

didibus wrote: post #33

mcpackieh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk of putting people on Mars is how they recruit young idealistic engineers. I think to understand what SpaceX is actually about you need to understand who Michael Griffin is and what he's all about. He went with Musk when he tried to buy an ICBM from Russia; he conceived of NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program and gave the contract to SpaceX, before SpaceX had ever put anything into orbit. Ditto the Commerc…

> During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia > In December 2008, with SpaceX again on the verge of bankruptcy, Griffin awarded SpaceX along with his own Orbital Sciences company each contracts with a combined value of $3.5 billion It's crazy how nepotism is still such an important aspect of success today. It's very likely had they never known each other, SpaceX would not e…

The contracts were not given out because of SpaceX issues. This program was ungoing and progressing threw the steps. SpaceX and Orbital were the deserving companies to get the contracts.

This is one of the most successful contract in history.

Griffin didnt invente COTS, that was anouter group that had been wanting to do a program like that and Griffin was just the administrator.

To you have actual evidence the Griffin as administrator actually overwrote the technical comities making these choices in order to help SpaceX.

If you dont have that evidence then you are just full of shit talking out of your ass.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#363

Post by panick21_ » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

mcpackieh wrote: post #51

didibus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia > In December 2008, with SpaceX again on the verge of bankruptcy, Griffin awarded SpaceX along with his own Orbital Sciences company each contracts with a combined value of $3.5 billion It's crazy how nepotism is still such an important aspect of success today. It's very likely had they never known each other, SpaceX would not e…

It's very likely that if Michael Griffin and Elon Musk had never met, Elon Musk would not be in the space business at all and Michael Griffin would have induced some other person to play the same role. Orbital Sciences and SpaceX both exist to make "proliferated" LEO constellations possible. He founded one and had his fingers all over the founding of the other. He's gone above and beyond to keep both these companies…

Ok mister smarty pants. How do you create a program for Mars colonialisation without first solving the problem of price to LEO launches.

You act as if there was some short cut around that. There isnt. So your argument just fundamentally doesnt work.

What would SpaceX invest in refueling if LEO is all they cared about?

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#364

Post by didibus » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #362

didibus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia > In December 2008, with SpaceX again on the verge of bankruptcy, Griffin awarded SpaceX along with his own Orbital Sciences company each contracts with a combined value of $3.5 billion It's crazy how nepotism is still such an important aspect of success today. It's very likely had they never known each other, SpaceX would not e…

The contracts were not given out because of SpaceX issues. This program was ungoing and progressing threw the steps. SpaceX and Orbital were the deserving companies to get the contracts. This is one of the most successful contract in history. Griffin didnt invente COTS, that was anouter group that had been wanting to do a program like that and Griffin was just the administrator. To you have actual evidence the Griffi…

I'm just quoting the linked Wikipedia article. So if it's inaccurate, my bad. That's all I read of the man.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#365

Post by inemesitaffia » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

Panzer04 wrote: post #194

Laremere wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go work for them on a position that has equity as part of the compensation. Otherwise, I doubt it. Elon has been pretty vocal about regretting making Tesla public. Additionally SpaceX as a company is oriented around putting humans on mars. Until that happens, I expect a supermajority of ownership would be against the profit seeking motives that an IPO creates. Short of investing in them, you could look for companies…

Making Tesla public was clearly elons best ever decision lol. The moment it went ballistic in early 2020 made it well worthwhile - Tesla has access to an effectively unlimited pile of cash from public investors (and gave Elon more money than he could possibly hope for to invest in other pursuits)

Shares aren't cash for the company itself. For the owners, yes

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#366

Post by inemesitaffia » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

georgeg23 wrote: post #342

nickpp wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any source for this? Wikipedia says: "Musk provided half of his $180 million from PayPal stocks to the newly founded company"

And the government provided over $1B.. Search for the word 'excessive' https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist... Griffin is arguing against himself there in giving all that money-- covering his tail. The important part if you read the contracts is a majority of the money was awarded before SpaceX built any hardware, they just had to present plans and half the money was transferred. Elon never ri…

Musk ran out of money, got more from Thiel before getting that 1 billion. Some of us lived through this and remember the contract award for Falcon 9

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#367

Post by inemesitaffia » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 8:04 PM UTC

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #213

mgolawala wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The valuation of the company has little to do with the equation of how much profit has been made in the past. It is focused on the companies profit potential in the future. This has always been the case. Sears or Ford may have produced a ton more in profit than was, as you say, put into the company. But the current valuation is based on what profit the market believes it will produce in the future.

> > This has always been the case Musk is 50, already past his intellectual prime. Has been an entrepreneur (or at least he claims) ever since he was 20. If he hasn't delivered any profit in 30 years, it's clear that his business model is based on politics, subsidies and aggressive promotion to sell the stock and enrich himself as opposed to building something that improves the quality of life of the avg. citizen.

No profit in 30 years? You know people can count?

Are you one of these people who believe contracts/loans are subsidies?

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#368

Post by TMWNN » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 8:08 PM UTC

rewmie wrote: post #325

bryanlarsen wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Profit is the result of all operations, not just launches. For instance, starlink is a SpaceX company. Starlink is reported to be responsible for up to 40% of SpaceX's revenue. https://spacenews.com/starlink-may-account-for-up-to-40-of-s...

Irrelevant. Hollywood accounting works because a film studio can, by shifting expenses to a particular film from elsewhere in the company, always claim that the film is unprofitable; the overall revenue and profit/loss for the studio is unaffected.

The documents WSJ viewed are for SpaceX as a whole, not "SpaceX's launcher division". Even if the launcher division charged the Starlink division 9000 megazillion dollars per launch, that would be exactly balanced by the Starlink division having to book 9000 megazillion dollars of expense per launch.

Again, according to the documents WSJ viewed, SpaceX overall has achieved profitability. That's a major accomplishment given it being by far the lowest-cost launch provider in the world.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#369

Post by inemesitaffia » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 8:10 PM UTC

7e wrote: post #343

Elon's MO has always been to lose more money than competitors are willing to, then brag about how advanced they are compared to everyone else. New technologies are always unprofitable. There is no magic to what SpaceX has done, or is doing. Only a willingness to grift, sell, and spend. Losing money makes everything easy. Competitors don’t play that game.

Definitely Orwell.

Profits are indeed unprofitable

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#370

Post by martin8412 » Fri, Aug 18, 2023, 8:37 PM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #357

martin8412 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a title he has given himself. You can give yourself whatever title you want when you own the company. Doesn't mean anything at all.

Ok so who was the chief engineer on the falcon 1? Look you are just doing what everybody does who dislikes Musk. The reality is we have overwhelming evidence from many sources who have actual knowlage on the topic. Of course that does matter because a friend friends uncle has a sister at SpaceX who said something about how Musk was bad or whatever.

It's a title. It means fuck all. If you start a company, you can name yourself whatever. I'm the director of a company.

In the concrete case, Musk has NO credentials for being a chief engineer. He's a bachelor of arts in physics. Ironically a bachelor of science in economics. His main talent is extracting subsidies from the US government.