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A look into the finances of SpaceX

wsj.com

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Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#71

Post by dahfizz »

mrguyorama wrote: post #55
cypress66 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falcon isn't really comparable to the SLS, but yes the SLS is awful cost wise. Starship will almost surely be between one and two orders of magnitude cheaper per launch vs SLS.

And NASA will probably be very happy to use such a cheap system once they are convinced it meets their reliability standards. The point of SLS IMO is to keep a backup option if SpaceX has some horrific, unpredicted setback or design problem. Surely people understand redundancy in aerospace right?

You are giving members of congress way too much credit. They don't care about the moon one bit, SLS is just a jobs program

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#72

Post by orwin »

justrealist wrote: post #27
hef19898 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on, they have an evaliation of 150 billion , more than 30x the revenue?

That's pretty modest for a company with 100% y/y growth on revenue already in the billions.

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 will

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#73

Post by nordsieck »

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…

> some pretty-reasonable estimates put the total cost of NASA's "Space Launch System" at ~$5B per individual launch.

SLS is bad, but it's not quite that bad.

A full launch of SLS + Orion is ~4.1B. A launch of SLS without Orion (a theoretical cargo mission) is "just" ~$2.8B.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#74

Post by sidewndr46 »

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…

The SLS is designed to reach political goals, not financial targets.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#75

Post by Un1corn »

DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #60
bilekas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah.. it's a strange guilty pleasure to see all the changes i view as stupid, to perform as badly in the real world.

Most of the changes seem to be great to me. Long form video. Longer posts. Revenue sharing. Great changes so far

I think most people focus on bringing back far-right people to the platform, making the application inaccessible to logged out users and the failed attempts at Twitter Premium or whatever it's being called.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#76

Post by wenc »

mrguyorama wrote: post #63
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…

>Elon has been pretty vocal about regretting making Tesla public That's laughable, because without making Tesla public he wouldn't be able to live the superstar uber rich lifestyle he thinks he deserves. Pretty much everything he has personally is owed to Tesla public valuation.

You missed those years when TSLA was being shorted and when it was ok the brink of going under. It’s easy to hate but going public is two edged sword.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#77

Post by georgeg23 »

samr71 wrote: post #59
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…

This has elements of truth but is a conspiracy theory the way you describe it. If you listen to Musk, or listen to people who work for Musk, or the people who work for those people, they all say that the point of SpaceX is to enable human colonization of Mars. It's not just a marketing strategy to acquire talent (unless you think they're all lying -- hence the conspiracy aspect. Now, to do that, they'll need to scrat…

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 aligned with "higher purposes".

To be even more precise, Elon is a front-man for a right-wing multi-decade program in American hegemony and actualizing it's crowning achievement--the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Re: A look into the finances of SpaceX

#80

Post by justrealist »

orwin wrote: post #72
justrealist wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty modest for a company with 100% y/y growth on revenue already in the billions.

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!

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