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A comment on SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce by adventured on Friday January 11, 2019 @08:31PM (#18888879)
It's because projections for large launch demand are softer for the next few years than had previously been expected. It was thought that that weakness would give way and demand would perk back up. This layoff is happening because that's no longer expected to happen and they're not going to need the staff to match a much greater launch rate.

What does it mean? It more or less officially confirms that Starlink is the only way they can finance the plans for Mars and BFR. There isn't going to be a huge uptick in launches in the coming years, such that that will be enough to dent their capital requirements. Musk has been attempting to finance some of SpaceX's capital demands with debt recently to avoid further diluting his stake, because it risks pushing him below a controlling interest. It's very questionable whether he'll be able to hold the line on that if the launch rate is going to remain fairly stagnant versus 2018.

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Re:SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce by Robotbeat on Friday January 11, 2019 @11:51PM (#18889723)
I suspect that Starlink is, in fact, a significant CAUSE of the softening of GTO launch demand. All this LEO megaconstellations will be providing many of the same services as these long-lived, expensive geosynchronous birds, so the business case for them becomes much less certain.

If Starlink, OneWeb, etc were cancelled tomorrow, it's likely GTO launch demand would pick back up significantly.

Starlink is both the cause of and solution to this problem.

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Re:SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce by azernik on Saturday January 12, 2019 @05:20AM (#18890585)
It's a game theory problem - even if Starlink wasn't happening, OneWeb would be going ahead anyway. So if the GEO satellite operators are going to be running scared anyway, SpaceX might as well get its own entrant into the market.
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Re:SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce by someperson on Saturday January 12, 2019 @06:52AM (#18890818)
I don't think this argument holds up to analysis. According to the OneWeb and Starlink Wikipedia pages:

1. May 2014: OneWeb (formerly 'WorldVu') receives its initial $500 million in funding [1]

2. January 2015: SpaceX's satellite constellation is announced. [2]

3. December 2016: OneWeb receives an extra $1.2 billion from SoftBank and existing investors [3]

4. March 2017: Blue Origin signs OneWeb as a customer [4]

If SpaceX was a neutral transport provider, there's little reason that OneWeb would have chosen Blue Origin over SpaceX. Blue Origin is probably offering very low prices, but SpaceX arguably could match them.

[1] https://spacenews.com/40736google-backed-global-broadband-ve...

[2] http://old.seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/20254807...

[3] http://fortune.com/2016/12/19/softbank-oneweb/

[4] https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-gets-oneweb-as-second-new-...

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Re:SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce by azernik on Saturday January 12, 2019 @07:02AM (#18890850)
I meant - no reason not to get that market share in the small-comsat market.

As to why do it themselves as opposed to just be a provider to OneWeb, I think this is a sneaky way to do some price discrimination - SpaceX, like everyone else, may have some spare launch capacity, so having an internal (hopefully-profitable) project to soak up that demand rather than cratering launch prices may be worth it.

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