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A look into the finances of SpaceX

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Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#371

Post by lamontcg »

boxed wrote: post #338
lamontcg wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SLS is about maintaining the ability of the US to build rocket engines like the RS-25 and those massive SRBs. The Government is worried about waking up some morning and China has leapfrogged us to the Moon and it'll take 20 years for us to institutionally remember how to get back there. And SpaceX has not yet demonstrated the ability to land humans on the Moon while NASA has. They're making sure that we can definitel…

Let's unpack that: > SLS is about maintaining the ability of the US to build rocket engines like the RS-25 and those massive SRBs ...but why? They're expensive and bad. Maybe the US SHOULD forget about them. > The Government is worried about waking up some morning and China has leapfrogged us to the Moon and it'll take 20 years for us to institutionally remember how to get back there. The SLS was indeed created back…

Starship is still entirely unproven.

There's a possible world where the cut corners and the Dear Moon mission winds up with the vehicle burning up on reentry or slamming itself into the ground, killing Tim Dodd and everyone on board, with the resultant investigation looking something like OceanGate.

SLS is big, dumb and stupid and has a LES and a capsule that lands via parachutes. If SpaceX fails as a company after some accident like that, the SLS will just continue to plod along.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#372

Post by 4gotunameagain »

panick21_ wrote: post #349
4gotunameagain wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Both are vehicles designed to take things into space for crying out loud! They have quite different fairing capacities, in a playfield that does not scale linearly. It is like saying that the Boeing 737 is cheaper than the 777, and we can compare them because they were both designed to fly people in the sky.

You can compare a 737 to 777 and if the 777 per person were 10x more expensive then airlines wouldnt use 777. Not sure why this is hard do unterstand.

Because things in space do not scale linearly, and sending 10x smaller sats is not the same as 1x 10 times larger sat. Some missions require larger fairing/lifting capacities.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#373

Post by georgeg23 »

nickpp wrote: post #347
georgeg23 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, the point is that the story of Elon taking personal financial risk with SpaceX is false. For Tesla, besides the huge DOE grant, he had SpaceX loan some of the excess government money to Tesla in the first few years to derisk his investment there as well.

Well putting half your fortune in a venture is literally taking significant personal financial risk. Besides that, there are plenty of firms taking government money but Elon actually delivered.

It was a risk free venture.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#374

Post by georgeg23 »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #366
georgeg23 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Actually Griffin's COTS government contract was awarded in 2005 (with half money up front), three years before Thiel first invested.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#375

Post by georgeg23 »

panick21_ wrote: post #359
georgeg23 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only person that has to lie is Musk. That's why SpaceX is run as an autocracy. Everyone else drinks the Mars Kool aid. People who have been around a while connect the dots. To be more precise, the company is run by the DoD with significant technical and financial assistance. Elon is the main conduit between those deep resource and the rest of the company. He regularly meets with all teams to ensure they are align…

Lol the DoD giving SpaceX assistance is hilarious claim. And the are run by DoD noless. Complete nonsense with no evidence.

Read the links and their citations before you jump to conclusions.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#376

Post by georgeg23 »

panick21_ wrote: post #360
mcpackieh wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's literally a theory about a conspiracy . That doesn't mean it isn't true. And Elon Musk saying he wants to create Mars colonies doesn't make it true, anymore than Howard Hughes saying he wanted to mine magnesium nodules off the ocean floor made that true. Look at Starship objectively. It's not a Mars rocket. That bellyflop through the atmosphere stunt won't work on Mars, and man-rating it even for operation…

You just shit on their ideas. They are hard problem and they are doing what they can to solve them. I tend to trust the people who have actually engineer such systems, have built hardware and have simulations. The claim that its all a conspiricy theory is simply not credible. Honestly just make yourself look ridicoulus.

Some of us worked for SpaceX for a decade.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#377

Post by kidme5 »

martin8412 wrote: post #370
panick21_ wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Musk offered the Chief Engineer title to Michael D. Griffin who is discussed elsewhere in this hackernews post. That was mentioned in Liftoff. Griffin basically felt he could pull more strings in Washington.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#378

Post by yazaddaruvala »

avmich wrote: post #298
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re missing the point. NASA and ULA like programs trained and built expert training to create those citizens. Being able to recruit them is a non-goal.

The missing is all yours :) . The citizens aren't the goal, the space achievements are. And that's where NASA and ULA were left in the past.

The only goal of any democratically elected government program is: improved citizens.

It is in the definition: “for the people”.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#379

Post by boxed »

lamontcg wrote: post #371
boxed wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's unpack that: > SLS is about maintaining the ability of the US to build rocket engines like the RS-25 and those massive SRBs ...but why? They're expensive and bad. Maybe the US SHOULD forget about them. > The Government is worried about waking up some morning and China has leapfrogged us to the Moon and it'll take 20 years for us to institutionally remember how to get back there. The SLS was indeed created back…

Starship is still entirely unproven. There's a possible world where the cut corners and the Dear Moon mission winds up with the vehicle burning up on reentry or slamming itself into the ground, killing Tim Dodd and everyone on board, with the resultant investigation looking something like OceanGate. SLS is big, dumb and stupid and has a LES and a capsule that lands via parachutes. If SpaceX fails as a company after s…

Yes, Starship is unproven. But Falcon Heavy is very real.

> If SpaceX fails as a company after some accident like [starship failing and killing people], the SLS will just continue to plod along.

Well.. yes. But note also that if SLS crashes and kills a bunch of astronauts it will certainly plod along too. That's what the Shuttle did. The difference being one of NASA/Boeing and SpaceX are accountable for killing astronauts, while the other is not.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#380

Post by anticensor »

toss1 wrote: post #159
ISL wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only because SLS has so far failed to qualify to launch a human. SLS was on the schedule to launch humans several years ago. However, failing to qualify means that NASA can NOT ask them to launch a human

Unless the Congress makes an act to force them ignore the certification status of SLS.
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