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>> why have other people not done this A lot of big money is held by public companies who generally don't like these longshots. Elon talks about it all the tim
by icelancer 8y ago
>> why have other people not done this
A lot of big money is held by public companies who generally don't like these longshots. Elon talks about it all the time himself.
It also should be a rare thing; they're moonshots, after all. The intersection between "has billions to spare" and "is insane enough to try things like going to space" is not large.
- jaggederest 8y agoThe frustrating thing for me is not that they're not taking the risks, for sure. It's that the money is sloshing around in short term securities and cash-equivalents instead of being invested. It's pretty obvious that they can't find worthwhile ways to use the money, so either admit it and return it to shareholders or really take some big bites of fundamental world-changing R&D.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoI wouldn't call, say, SpaceX building the Falcon 9 as it exists today anything like a "moonshot". It didn't require an upfront cash injection of billions, and after getting out of the initial stage and into the viable business stage it's been generally cash flow positive. Tons of other orgs could have done the same thing with a comparatively modest investment. Again, this isn't moonshot territory, this is in the realm of crappy little startups doing crappy little questionably viable things who get a few hundred million in VC then mostly just fizzle out. There are a hojillion of those, and that's the scale of investment needed to start building a reusable rocket company. Nobody else is doing it not because it's exceptionally expensive, but rather because they don't know how.