SpaceX has a solid track record, extremely profound technical achievements, and very compelling goals (interplanetary humanity!). I think less cynicism would go a long way, unless you're leading your own rocket company that outperforms SpaceX in these regards.
They have a marked history of missing deadlines and budget over runs. Least we forget they promised cheap international travel via rocket, without any safety mechanisms, that takes 40 minutes to get around the world, to start being operational next year.
There has been no space exploration program without missed deadlines and budget overruns.
Lots of space exploration projects have gone completely sideways.
In contrast, SpaceX has made advancements at an incredible rate and on a tighter budget than any comparable program. If there even is a comparable program any more!
China is moving fast, but far behind SpaceX at this point.
Russia's capabilities have stalled.
NASA's capabilities have dramatically regressed. Their current promises are for a rocket that costs something on the order of $1 billion per launch. That's a promise many would laud them for breaking!
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
-- Theadore Roosevelt
Edit: sentence structure
That kind of unnecessarily inflammatory language distracts from serious discussion of criticisms.
I think the vast majority of SpaceX fans would agree there are valid criticisms of Elon Musk. A couple of obvious ones: (a) his timelines are usually overly optimistic – he delivers a lot, but he very often delivers it later (sometimes even a lot later) than he initially said he would; (b) sometimes he speaks off-the-cuff too much (especially on Twitter) and ends up saying things he (very likely) later regrets saying (such as the 'pedo guy' episode, or the 'taking Tesla private' episode)
No, they did not. The earliest date anyone put on that was Shotwell, who in 2018 said "within 10 years". So the deadline to miss is 2028.
I don't think that's particularly realistic either, at least for humans, but let's not invent even more wild estimates than what SpaceX puts out.
Honestly really confused, Starlink hasn't been that behind the deadlines and the Space X launches have brought down space launch costs so not sure what exactly you're talking about.
The ESA analysis was perfectly correct, for the launch rates they were projecting. Since then, SpaceX has unveiled plans and started filling out a constellation of 42000 satellites. That rather increased launch rates, to the point where SpaceX launched more than half of all the mass to orbit last year. If they stick to their schedule, they will launch 75% this year.
This changes the math of how profitable reuse is.
Let's say your gadget costs 100,000 and only sells 50,000 per year. So, someone can say it doesn't make sense to try to do the capital investment to build a factory that churns out cheap gadgets that only cost 35,000 - because the market is only 50,000 per year. That wouldn't be a good analysis. Of course, the market size is different if the price point is different.
Satellites are expensive partly because launches are expensive. For example, you can't easily launch another satellite if your old one fails, so you spend a lot of money trying to make sure your satellite is very reliable.
Now, there are new satellite manufactures doing them in a more agile way, using as much off the shelf components as possible. They sell the data on the internet. Your satellite project doesn't last twenty years like it would with NASA or ESA or the militaries. More likely only a few, and you iterate a lot, making upgrades to successive satellites, meaning more revenue with every, better, satellite.
Typically these companies use shared launches (many satellites from different companies on the same launch), managed by a launch aggregator. They use vehicles like the Indian PSLV.
Source: Finnish Satellite Workshop, attended a few times. https://spaceworkshop.fi/
It has been known since the 60's that if launch rates go way up, the cost per launch can be made to go way down. It has been known since the 90's that there is market for a massive internet constellation, but it won't be profitable at current launch prices. Neither problem could be solved, because they depended on each other, and required massive, tens-of-billions-of-dollars level of investment. You can't really spend big money to make a very efficient launch system that is not suitable for current market and hope that customers will come. And you cannot really spend big money to build the infrastructure to turn out satellites like cars when the launch costs would still sink the whole project.
SpaceX managed to collect enough private funding, that they could do tackle both problems at the same time. If they succeed, they will be the most profitable aerospace company the world has ever seen. Which is probably why they have so little trouble raising the funding.
And whether Starlink is actually profitable, after SpaceX moved that question on to them, can be further pushed out by raising VC money for Starlink.
This plays on so many levels, every VC pumped start-up plays this with so many markets and competitors. Maybe money really is to cheap and plenty full in general since 2008.
The difference is that self-driving taxis is very clearly in the far future, with major technical and regulatory hurdles, whereas Starlink, while still in the beta, now has tens of thousands of paying customers in a dozen countries, and more are added constantly. Given that the user terminals work, the satellites work, and they seem to be executing well in scaling the system, it's very hard to see a future where it won't be wildly profitable.
Even without Starlink SpaceX would have done re-usability. The claim that they are linked is simply not correct.
SpaceX was totally convinced of re-usability and said it was a huge benefit to them before Starlink. All the leaders of SpaceX said this public-ally, Elon, Shotwell, Mueller and Königsman.
Multiple analysts and cost estimations have also indicated that their savings are quite large.
Yet I guess some people rather believe everybody in SpaceX is simply laying and all these analysts are wrong because they rather believe the competitors of SpaceX.
Can you prove that they were 'perfectly correct'.
In my opinion historically ESA cost estimations have been utterly terrible. And those estimations were based on technology and cost available to ESA.
In fact literally all the leaders of SpaceX, not just Musk, basically said this analysis is wrong.
Even at 12 launches per year, SpaceX would have wanted to to re-usability.
Hell of a citation needed moment.
The ESA study referenced by OP, I am unable to find it again came to that conclusion years ago. The main reason was limited number of launches. Now SpaceX is raising money to launch Starlink in their own reusable rockets, increasing the number commercial low orbit launches.
So yes, they deserve some scrutiny over that.
I wouldn't trust their cost analysis. ULA did the same type of analysis as well. Funny how the failing competition is convinced that its the wrong move.
Unlike Arianespace, SpaceX is not a jobs-program. SpaceX is happy if they don't have to have so many people in the production at all times, as they have many other things that need to be worked on. Arianespace is the opposite, they get money to produce jobs, if they have to reduce production because of re-usability then politicians would get angry.
Also funny how ESA is investing 100s of million into re-usability right now and is planning their next rocket to be re-usable.
And at the same time basically all upcoming new launch companies like RocketLab and Relativity have re-usability as a big part of their strategy. Its as if they know that without re-usability they have no chance in hell of competing.
I would love to see SpaceX financials, without them all we are left with is advertised launch costs, Musks Tweets, money raised and financials from the competition. That is like calculating airline costs and profitability based on Spirits quarterly figures and Ryan Airs special offerings between Dublin and some provincial German airport.
Because of solid boosters and hydrogen first stage, the first stage for their rocket reaches a far higher speed then SpaceX first stage does. And that makes it much harder to recover, and much more costly.
SpaceX regularly recovers boosters for GEO missions and soon even moon missions, because it doesn't matter so much for them, the profile of the first stage is not all that different.
If the Falcon 9 can't handle it, they rather use the Falcon Heavy and land that, rather then throw away a Falcon 9 core. Only in the most extreme situation, would Falcon Heavy drop its core booster. SpaceX has 1 mission on its books that will require the Falcon Heavy booster to expand its core. The side booster would still land in this case.
So SpaceX has 100+ launches on its manifest right now and of all those a single launch is planned to not fully reuse its first stage.
> I would love to see SpaceX financials
Your not the only one. We have lots of different analysis that have been done and most put marginal internal cost for a SpaceX mission to 20-30 million. And SpaceX sells launches for 60M, with extra cost depending on what costumers ask for.
I am not saying SpaceX isn't impressive, because it is. They are simply working at a place where they can benefit from expensive government launches, government development contracts and VC money. Remove VC money, money the competition will never get, and the competitive landscape is totally different. As I said, you see the same situation with a lot of other start ups as well. And quite honestly, I don't like that some companies can strong arm competition by not having to be profitable.
And before anyone brings up Amazon, they were profitable and cash positive for the most part of there existence.
SpaceX had far less government launches then ULA for most of its history. Not to mention extra subsidies and launch readiness contracts. And not to mention that their rockets were all developed thanks to military money. Just recently ULA got another 1 billion for the Vulcan development when SpaceX got nothing.
Arianespace never in its history paid for development of rockets or a single major rocket component. Even the 4 billion for the Ariane 6 doesn't pay for the solid or liquid engines, those have been in development for years and sometimes decades and were planned for Ariane 5 upgrades already.
You act as if SpaceX profits from government while all other providers are small corner shops when in reality received less direct subsidies.
You are basically just repeating the nonsense story that all the government launch providers are pushing because SpaceX is beating them and they don't know how to compete other then propaganda and increase lobbying for more money.
> Remove VC money, money the competition will never get, and the competitive landscape is totally different.
They will never get VC money because they haven't proven to be technically excellent, can build cheap sats and launch cheaply. VC don't give money to SpaceX for no reason, you act like VC simply love SpaceX because they have a cool name or something.
Arianespace had a massive leadership in space for 15-20 years and failed to evolve their rocket or technology and failed to use their internal launch capacity to do interesting things in space. And that is why they don't get VC money.
ULA was never interested in commercial launch. They didn't even compete with Arianespace, before SpaceX US share of commercial launch was basically 0%. ULA is monopoly created by the military to do military launch reliably, no matter the price. That is how the operated for 15+ years before SpaceX forced them to lower prices.
> And quite honestly, I don't like that some companies can strong arm competition by not having to be profitable.
They can 'strong arm' competition because they have far cheaper launches and they use those to gain leadership in another field. The launches however are not enough, SpaceX is also building sats like nobody has ever done in history before. Not to mention terminals also.
SpaceX has been profitable since like 2008 with their launch business. It seems like you operate under a fundamentally false premise. Even without Starlink re-usability would have been worth it for SpaceX. It gave their launch business very high margin and guaranteed them leadership in space launch for a decade or more.
Most of this re-usability btw was done when SpaceX barley received any military contracts yet and they had not received money for human space flight from NASA either. It also took quite a long time for SpaceX to be allowed to launch highest class NASA payloads.
All this was done by SpaceX (including engines) for far less money then Arianespace received as a blank check for Ariane 6 development (excluding engines).
I think we can just sit back and see how SpaceX do, ask ourselves were reusable rockets necessary for that, and it will be enough.
If SpaceX dominate planetary internet, get to the moon, or get to Mars, I reckon we can probably say it was a good call.
It's a credit to HN's contrarianism that the idea of reusable rockets is bad for business, but at some point you have to give in to reality. Perhaps Airbus should start scrapping their planes after every flight to boost their income.
They're going to wind up being the sole provider of internet services to the US military in a couple of years at minimum.
If and when Kuiper actually becomes a real thing, or oneweb (the UK government investment and ownership stake is encouraging, there), I don't see them sole sourcing to starlink either.
But all I can say is that I'm glad my 401k doesn't include any geostationary operators in it.
Starlink has far greater capability than Oneweb, simply due to having a much bigger constellation. Oneweb can't compete with Starlink in terms of constellation size, because unlike SpaceX they don't own their own launch vehicles.
What is the motivation for having a second-source to Starlink – technical, economic, political? If it is political, Oneweb may have the disadvantage of being a UK-headquartered company not a US-headquartered one, so that gives the US military a political reason to prefer Starlink (on top of its technical advantages). Unless the US is particularly interested to gain the UK government's favour – and the Biden administration doesn't appear to be particularly interested in that
OTOH, Oneweb has a good chance of getting the UK government and military's business, being UK-headquartered and partially UK-government owned. But the US government/military is a higher value customer than the UK government/military – the US military's annual budget is over 16 times that of the UK's.
I think Project Kuiper being US-owned has a greater chance of getting US military business. But they haven't launched anything yet, and it isn't clear when they are going to start. Their launch costs are likely to be higher than SpaceX's, and SpaceX has a big head-start in the market, which put them at a disadvantage.
It is also highly possible that oneweb may sell the equivalent of a geostationary SCPC 1:1 transponder lease, or an o3b dedicated-capacity circuit, which might not be something that would be technically feasible with starlink. If you're coming from an environment of geostationary looking at $1200 per Mbps per month, anything looks good by comparison.
Sure the investors are willing to invest so much money into a failing company at a high evaluation because they are such idiots?
> Note that there's a very small world-wide market for satellite launches, which won't pay for the above.
They are raising money for Starlink, not sat launching.
> The reusable feature of SpaceX is a business mistake, as noted by both ULA and ESA.
ESA is spending 100s of million researching re-usability and developing reusable engines, their next rocket after Ariane 6 will be reusable. Arianespace has already admitted that Ariane 6 is not competitive and have asked Europe to force all domestic launches onto Ariane 6.
ULA is military created monopoly all their rockets were built with government money and in their whole existence they were utterly non-competitive in the international launch market. Taking their word for what is the right way to compete in the international rocket market is like taking sex advice from a priest.
Fact is, ULA doesn't know how to create a re-usable rocket and the parent companies don't want to invest the money to figure it out.
> Elon Musk is a welfare queen, as all of his businesses rely on govt. handouts and rebates.
Also wrong.
It used to their claim to fame was 'we launch on time reliably'. The 'we launch on time' is now no longer true, they had lots of issue with that recently. Arianespace had such issues too, Ariane 5 was actually grounded for most of last year.
SpaceX is a far more reliable on time to launch by now.
SpaceX has insurance cost as low or lower and they are certified for all military and NASA payloads. Including bieng certified for humans before Atlas 5 was.
In terms of reliability the newest version of Falcon 9 that has the human rating is rapidly approaching 100 flights and never had a failure. Even if you account for all Falcon 9 launches, their reliability is still very good.
Atlas 5 recently had a shutdown of the first stage engine and only because the 2nd stage was overpowered it was able to barley compensate. Had the payload been just a little heavier it would have been a launch failure.
Arianespace also had reliability issues, they recently launched a payload somewhat in the wrong direction because they had the wrong software on the rocket.
Note that there's a very small world-wide market for satellite launches, which won't pay for the above. The reusable feature of SpaceX is a business mistake, as noted by both ULA and ESA.
Elon Musk is a welfare queen, as all of his businesses rely on govt. handouts and rebates.