What It Took For SpaceX To Become a Serious Space Company

An anonymous reader writes: The Atlantic has a nice profile of SpaceX's rise to prominence — how a private startup managed to successfully compete with industry giants like Boeing in just a decade of existence. "Regardless of its inspirations, the company was forced to adopt a prosaic initial goal: Make a rocket at least 10 times cheaper than is possible today. Until it can do that, neither flowers nor people can go to Mars with any economy. With rocket technology, Musk has said, "you're really left with one key parameter against which technology improvements must be judged, and that's cost." SpaceX currently charges $61.2 million per launch. Its cost-per-kilogram of cargo to low-earth orbit, $4,653, is far less than the $14,000 to $39,000 offered by its chief American competitor, the United Launch Alliance. Other providers often charge $250 to $400 million per launch; NASA pays Russia $70 million per astronaut to hitch a ride on its three-person Soyuz spacecraft. SpaceX's costs are still nowhere near low enough to change the economics of space as Musk and his investors envision, but they have a plan to do so (of which more later)."

Comments

Re:Easy! Fraud..

[msmonroe]

I heard it's the same for Space X, not one rocket has actually been launched.They are always in the design and testing phase! What a joke! It's all a scam and the FTC is going to shut him down soon!

just like all supervillians

[Thud457]

nah, he's just realized that Paypal's pissed off so many people that he'll have to escape to Mars.

Best Quote

[j33pn]

Quote from Hans Koenigsmann, early German SpaceX employee, "My German accent helps in presentations. When I say, ‘This will work,’ it is more convincing than other accents for some reason.”