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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)."
To compete in price against anyone you only need money. With enough money, you can set a price of $0.
The main question is "will they be able to recover the cost of that competence once they get the contracts?" and it's way too soon to know the answer to that.
It's like judging the acquisition of online "businesses". Nobody can prove the price was or wasn't right until the buyer makes that back as profit or doesn't.
Eh, PayPal was among the first revolutionary online-payment services that enabled the rapid expansion of e-commerce. What you know now as the "evil PayPal" is what happened after Ebay bought it.
I still can't believe it is legal, in so many ways. I mean, I don't think anybody could argue ebay is not a monopoly in the online auction space, and yet they are allowed to only permit their own payment service (so they take a percentage on top of their commission).
Then, they hold your money like a bank account and even extend credit, and yet, unlike banks, they can freeze your money with no explanation.
The PayPal situation boggles the mind, but it is not related to Musk's X.com/PayPal.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
find a battery charging station on Mars.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
How are they ripping people off?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Wake me when he DOES something,
You mean something other than obscene amounts of money, right? Like, end poverty. Or, cure ebola.
It took a ton of money and the vision of a leader looking more than 3 years into the future. Anyone with enough money and willingness to throw that money at a "problem" will be able to compete.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
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!
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).
Long extension cord?
That is all.
When SpaceX is launching prefabbed Bigelow habs every day, THEN their a serious space industry. When the alignment of mass production finally hits the space age and we're launching more habs than we can fill with people...
The main problem with space travel so far has been a combination of custom parts and lack of scale. Get a cheap, rugged design made with commodity parts and then run it mass production style and you can really bring the cost down.
You and I are both lucky ones, who have never had a problem with Paypal. Other people get caught in Paypal hell, where they freeze funds and simply never release them. (They don't have to - they aren't a bank!)
I'm not going to provide citations. Please use Google.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
You say it's easy. Then why don't you go and do something with your lives? I only wish we had a few more of people like this. Yes, he is rich, and he is planning to become even richer. At the same time, he is investing HIS money into something he believes in. Only hope he starts looking into things like hyperloop, and to make that financially viable.
At $4,653/kg to LEO it would cost rought 400K to push an average human to LEO which is significantly lower than what NASA pays the russians to do the exact same thing, hell they could make all their profit margins with massive room to spare by only charging NASA 1/10th what they pay Russia. Why is NASA wasting our money and boosting russias economy instead of doing this which would save massive amounts of money that could be spent otherways and would boost our local US economy by having the money re-enter circulation here.
Make a rocket at least 10 times cheaper than is possible today.
Hardly "prosaic"; Sounds pretty damn ambitious to me.
OK, they had access to some of the body of knowledge so expensively won by the Germans, USA, Russians et al, but they're still privately funded, developed in-house a working product that's much, much cheaper than the competition and employ nearly 4000 people.
Like Musk or not, he made it work so far.
The ebay/paypal double dipping is frustrating, and the money freezing risks are pretty sketchy, but for the most part, paypal is a useful and functional service. I have used it to buy and sell many things (both on and off ebay) without issue. I also use it to print postage for most things (their multi-order shipping thing is easier to use than any other site I have come across and I don't have to enter any new payment information since there is always a couple of bucks in my paypal account). I transfer any large amount of money back to my bank account right away, so I am not that worried about it being frozen.
If I were running an ebay business, I might be a little more concerned about the forced use of paypal, but at the end of the day, that is the price you pay for using their storefront service, having them market for you, and accessing the faith and trust of their customers vs trying to run your own online store. Sucks when something happens to your paypal account, but at the same time, half of your customers may only be comfortable dealing with you knowing that paypal can freeze your money if you don't deliver the item.
Bottles.
Anyone with enough money and willingness to throw that money at a "problem" will be able to compete.
Just because you throw lots of money at a problem doesn't mean you'll ever make a profit. If you cannot make a profit you will eventually go out of business. A bottomless (or effectively so) checkbook isn't necessarily enough. For example Microsoft may never make back all the money they invested in trying to make the Xbox competitive. Sure they "competed" but it was a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Yet another Musk fantasy with no hope of becoming reality. Wake me when he DOES something, rather than pie-in-the-sky fantasy.
What have you done that is so spectacular? Go ahead and dazzle us.
Elon Musk has founded several very influential companies, turning those industries upside down in the process. You actually think starting Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX is not impressive? If that doesn't impress you then you plainly don't understand what all that means. You don't have to like the guy but he's certainly earned a measure of respect for his accomplishments.
nah, he's just realized that Paypal's pissed off so many people that he'll have to escape to Mars.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They get all that done AND do all the technical documentation crap that other people pretend makes their components so expensive.
That's really not that big a deal. Being AS9100 or ISO9000 registered basically involves documenting the stuff you already have to do anyway in order to run your organization well and then actually doing what you document. It's really not all that big a deal. It doesn't mean you produce a good or bad product - it simply means you say what you do and do what you say. Pretty much any company that wants to do business in aerospace is AS9100 certified just like almost every company that works in automotive is ISO9000 (or equivalent) registered.
Anyone who claims that ISO9000 means they produce a good product is either lying or doesn't understand what ISO9000 means. Same with any of the other quality standards.
>>"Make a rocket at least 10 times cheaper than is possible today."
Ughh! It isn't 10 times MORE of something, it's 1/10th as much of something!
Also, it's a monetary goal, not quality one. It isn't cheaper it's less expensive.
Does anyone really want to: "Make a rocket at most 1/10th the quality of what is possible today"?
That's often how people become rich: first you steal from the poor, then you steal from the rich.
Example: there's a guy in my neighborhood who ran one of those "cheque cashing businesses" for a while. People so poor and destitute they can't even get a bank account. So he charges them 15% or whatever, it doesn't matter because poor people can't afford lawyers and in any case it's hard to do legal research when you're hungry or too tired from a day at the warehouse. (A job where incidentally you need to bring your own workboots and gloves).
Then he just sits there for a few years with his "holdings company" while the money comes in and he pays no income tax...
When he got enough money he brought in a real estate agent and a development team into the same neighborhood and started evicting the working class people that rented there and put in fancy restaurants, upscale hair salons, tattoo parlours, you name it. All the useless shit people with too much money buy.
Here the people willingly go in to spend money.
Ta dah, he's set for life. University? Education? Hard work? No, no, and no.
Steal from the poor so you can steal from the rich.
I'd bet he also made sure that banks didn't have to offer bank accounts to "riskier" people (wait, I thought businesses were all about taking risks? Oh wait, YOU take the risk, they'll take the money! I get it!)
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Well, you heard wrong. SpaceX has launched satellites and delivered cargo to the International Space Station. And to find this out all you had to do was go to their website and click on "NEWS".
The real cost of any (liquid fueled) launch is in the vehicle, rather than the fuel. Thus, the ultimate goal of cheap spaceflight is to recover and reuse that launch vehicle. Whether you achieve that with an extremely elaborate multi-mode gas turbine engine on an SSTO spaceplane, or a traditional staged rocket whose boosters abort and return for a powered landing back at the launch facility, you get the same end result. The question simply becomes which one is cheaper to design and maintain.
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.”
You people and your slight differences disgust me! - Prof. Farnsworth
EBay is no more a monopoly than Google is in search.
Who ya going to believe? Honest, trustworthy msmonroe who would never steer you wrong or your lying eyes?
A SpaceX flyback first stage a) only resuse part of the rocket and b) has to be reintegrated with the rest of the rocket before launching again
Of course, you're ignoring that a) the first stage has most of the engines (and consequently most of cost savings) and b) SpaceX has been planning to fly the second stage back to the pad also
it seems without any further evidence that getting a Skylon prepared for reuse is simpler because you get the entire vehicle back just as it left.
Baseless assumption; you're looking exclusively at reintegration times when other factors could easily be dominant in this equation. How easy is it to clear Skylon's heat shield for another launch?
I doubt the future will be Falcon vs Skylon though. If Skylon proves viable, why wouldn't SpaceX just buy SABRE engines from reaction engines and make their own SSTO plane?
Ignoring the drawbacks of a lifting body design for a minute, why would SpaceX want to abandon their competitive edge to simply mimick a competitor? Your argument is as absurd as the suggestion that GM should stop making GM cars and instead start buying and assembling Honda parts. Even if you feel Hondas are better than GMs, how the fuck do you expect that business plan to work out?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
One big issue with Skylon is that it's an all-or-nothing deal. You can't send anything up until the whole thing's done. On the other hand, Falcon 9 Reusable is an adaptation from a conventional disposable rocket. The disposable version's already flying at a profit, contributing both money and experimental data towards the design of the reusable version.
Skylon doesn't need to replace its heat shield. It performs a shallow re-entry that means it doesn't need nearly the same level of thermal protection as the space shuttle. No massive inspection/replacement of tiles.
So... no ceramics, no ablatives... How does it stay intact during reentry?
As for the GM argument... well, I'm from the UK. We used to have our own GM, called British Leyland. You can't buy their cars anymore. Now we assemble Nissans. Importing Japanese parts and assembling them here proved to be a better business model.
Who is "we"? Are you saying British Leyland assembles and sells cars made of Nissan parts? Or that Nissan came to the UK? Because those are two very different things, and only one of them makes any sense.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I don't know that much about him other than as an investor, but the thing I have noticed about Elon Musk is that he does the homework. He works the numbers and if they don't add up he does something else. So although it seems to an outsider that he is doing something wild, he is actually keeping to a dry spreadsheet.
Someone who didn't do this might have tried a newer whiz-bang battery technology for Tesla. Or maybe fuel cells. Instead he stuck with "boring" old Li-Ion battery technology because he found a way to make the numbers work. And if that technology improves over what it can do today so much the better.
Maybe someone here more knowledgable than I am about what SpaceX is doing can say if he has done the same thing there. From the article it seems like SpaceX has managed to apply technology to get the price-point he thought was necessary. That suggests to me that Elon did his homework many years ago and did it right.
from Paul Spudis, "the Potemkin Village “commercial space program” is trotted out to demonstrate that we are accomplishing something."
http://www.spudislunarresource...
Well at least Elon had some hardware built instead of just PPTs. But some argue commercial space companies, "To be fair, probably about 25% of New Space does have some minimal substance, but over the past decade the clear majority of them have never amount to anything beyond a press conference where they make grandiose promises and then beg for money from investors and NASA."
mfwright@batnet.com
No, when you have no choice because the system is rigged against you from the start, it's stealing.
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Could you emulate his "success"? Of course not.
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Banks don't offer bank accounts to people with bad credit, they have bad credit because they can't get a bank account... Help the people get a bank account, or charge 15% off every transaction?
I think the answer tells a lot about you as a person, and us as a creature.
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That's only a rumor. Are you sure it wasn't drawn in windows paint, printed out, then taped together, then re-scanned into windows to appear like a launch? They can do some amazing things on these here computers.
The 15% from a poor person's paycheck. Do you have to pay a 15% service fee on your paycheck?
Read it again slower if it helps.
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"They consent to the fee when they choose to cash the check at the place that tells them up-front that there's a fee for cashing the check."
That's my whole point, there is no choice.
" banks don't deny accounts to people for having bad credit."
Banks vary depending in jurisdiction.
" you also described establishing businesses as "stealing from the rich""
What do you call a 250$ shave? Or a 50$ salad?? It's consensual theft, both parties know it's not worth that amount.
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"there are ways to get a bank account regardless"
Which I believe I addressed here "people can't afford lawyers and in any case it's hard to do legal research when you're hungry or too tired from a day at the warehouse."
There's a whole ecosystem of systemic poverty that psychopaths can exploit.
Say, why don't you open a business to help people open bank accounts for 14% of their paycheck? Should be simple and very ethical, right?
I love it when well-fed, well-rested, well-educated people pontificate about what poor people should do...
Eh, who cares, let's screw them over some more. I've got a perfectly legal business to run here, it's not like the poor didn't have the same chances you and I got, eh? ;)
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Um logic fallacy much? Following that logic, nobody would have a bank account. People are not born with a bank account, so with that logic, they could not get any. In almost all cases where people don't have a bank account is because they have bad credit based on the plain fact that they failed to pay their dues. When you have no prior debt your credit score is plainly not so abysmal that you will not get a bank account; they won't give you a large credit though.
"You will now continue the shrieking tantrum you have been throwing"
Hmmm....
"You will attempt to mask your impotent rage behind a facade of affected amusement, and you will continue to fail miserably."
Hmmmm....
"I did not do that"
You sure did: "They consent to the fee when they choose to cash the check"
They're not choosing. That's my whole point. They *have* no choice. That's the stealing part.
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"That's not your point at all, because there is a choice. There are multiple choices."
There aren't.
"So what you're saying is that it's not in any way impossible to get a bank account on account of being "too poor"."
Sure, because they first thing a warehouse worker does on payday Friday is fly over to a place where the laws are different... What universe are you in?
"Expensive. But that's entirely different than being "stealing"."
Maybe there's a better word for it, but the whole idea is that we in the West are a post-industrial society, and the best way to make money is to become a middleman to questionable transactions like 15% cheque cashing, or make money off the other rentiers.
Both transactions produce nothing, yet transfer money up. Theft.
"A product or service is worth what its purchaser is willing to pay for it. "
If there's no choice, there's no will. A warehouse worker who can't get a bank account and has to use a sketchy place isn't going to be able to just magically go to a jurisdiction that favors him...
You have continuously wiggled your way out of the truth by using ridiculous counter-examples that apply to no poor person. You will continue to hide your obvious psychopathy and lack of empathy by pretending to be this intellectually rigorous debater when you're just a cunt.
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Referring to the goal as prosaic isn't a good usage of the word. Used correctly, the header would have been something like: "...began with a prosaic declaration: Make a rocket at least 10 times cheaper than is possible today." Nothing about the initial goal is prosaic; it is the way Elon Musk described it in his manifesto for SpaceX that was blunt and matter of fact.