51–60 of 77 posts
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Until all those sats re-enter, burn up and pollute the upper atmosphere
Wasn't there debate around their aluminium frame reacting with the upper atmosphere? The ozone layer maybe? 4 or 5 years of lifetime for literal tons of satellites is definitely not sustainable
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The fuel costs about half a million. Beyond that it's mostly people's times and materials they have stockpiled for economies of scale. I would guess the lost satellites cost a bit more to manufacture that to launch in a reused Falcon 9.
The fairings alone add another million. The whole upper stage is not re-used at all.
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Launch way more, and I'd imagine the sweet spot for the amount of fuel each satellite gets to shift up considerably: with a launch the size of starship they can saturate the orbits reasonably reachable from that launch for decades (spares remain in higher orbits with less drag I think) and giving one satellite more fuel is cheaper than deploying two satellites with less fuel each. And achieve far more than twice the…
Until all those sats re-enter, burn up and pollute the upper atmosphere
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SpaceX puts a lot money into research and development, and build out of infrastructure for future use. So if the company is breaking even, then its manufacturing & launch business must have good margins. Which means, self launched rockets cost SpaceX noticeably less than their commercial pricing.
SpaceX posted a Q1 2023 profit of $55 million on $1.5 billion in revenue And the spend about $2 billion on Starship per year. So $6 billion in, $2 billion on Starship, $4 billion in other costs. In 2022 they launched 61 times, which is $65 million per launch on average, they charge $67 million per launch. They got $2 billion from NASA for 2022. In 2022 they launched 3 crewed missions, 2 for NASA and 1 private.
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With 22.8 tonnes per Falcon 9 launch, and 50 of those per year? That's 1140 tonnes /year of new debris in the upper atmosphere, a 21% increase. I'd say that is quite a significant change.
Almost none of it hits the earth. They burn up in the atmosphere.
Lost $250M using the advertised launch price of $67M for Falcon 9 , which of course is way higher than what it actually costs SpaceX.
There's reason to be skeptical of that. I think their most recent profitable quarter (maybe their only profitable quarter?) was with a profit margin of ~3%. Granted maybe there's some marginal benefits, eg launching n+1 rockets is cheaper per rocket than launching n rockets
And while they raised a lot of money, it isn't actually that much. If they had 0 or negative margin on launches the company wouldn't be nearly sustainable.
That they made any profit at all is a damn miracle.
> Granted maybe there's some marginal benefits, eg launching n+1 rockets is cheaper per rocket than launching n rockets
There very clearly is. Every launch company has talked about this. The fixed cost for infrastructure, boats, launch teams and so on is absolutely huge. That is why so many New Space companies bet their company on launching often.
At the same time SpaceX is now recovering fairing on almost all launches. Landings have been perfect. Development is done. And Fixed cost are distributed over a whole lot of launches. They can now fly the newer cores 15-20 times.
The Upper Stage is the biggest cost, people estimate it between 5-15M. And then 10-20M in fixed cost, labor and recovery hardware amortisation. I think it can't really be more then 35M, I would guess less.
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SpaceX posted a Q1 2023 profit of $55 million on $1.5 billion in revenue And the spend about $2 billion on Starship per year. So $6 billion in, $2 billion on Starship, $4 billion in other costs. In 2022 they launched 61 times, which is $65 million per launch on average, they charge $67 million per launch. They got $2 billion from NASA for 2022. In 2022 they launched 3 crewed missions, 2 for NASA and 1 private.
They don't charge for their own launches.
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> Seems to me like the long term viability of Starlink (if it's not already profitable) will be assured if Starship meets its goals. They'll be able to launch way more satellites at once, for less per launch, and with faster turnaround. This is just wishful thinking without any data backing it up.
Starship is substantially bigger than falcon 9, with significant more mass to orbit capability. And runs on a cheaper propellant. Also Elon has publicly stated starlink s long term viability requires starship. Which data are you looking for?
Starship is part of economic equation (or just a diversion when it comes to starlink, as they were suppose to go bankrupt already if starship wasn’t flying biweekly last year, and people didn’t cancel their holiday plans to report to work, according to the Musk himself), but saying that it solves the profitability of the business, is like saying that low price of fuel solves profitability of the logistics business.
Is this intentional? Is it just happening for newly launched satellites?
If you read the article you can answer both of your questions. The Sun has no intentions, and solar flares don't choose cohorts of satellites.