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> towards sitting on the falcon 9 and launching to LEO. That would still leave them with many thousands of redundant employees. Falcon 9 is done and the produc
by yholio 8y ago
> towards sitting on the falcon 9 and launching to LEO.
That would still leave them with many thousands of redundant employees. Falcon 9 is done and the production is dropping due to reusability. Recently, they had a 3rd re-flight of the same core, which, coupled with the slowdown of the global launch market, means that in the next years they will need to produce a third to a half of the number of cores they used in 2017. The same for Merlin engines.
They basically fulfilled their mission and drastically reduced the cost of getting into orbit - which for the space industry is dominated by labor costs. Without a greatly increased demand, they can't justify keeping those people around.
And they can't roll all the Falcon production workforce towards BFR, Raptor and Starlink since those are still strongly R&D dominated projects and the skill set is incompatible. At the same time, they have hundreds of engineering positions open for those projects.
- sitkack 8y ago> they can't justify keeping those people around I would have put them on other Musk projects to keep them from going to the competition. SpaceX doesn't have a monopoly on low cost launch. The next place to figure out how to 3d print a tungsten titanium copper nickel chromium iron one piece rocket nozzle will also have that advantage.
- njarboe 8y agoIf Musk is really more interested in getting humanity into space as soon as possible then padding his already large bankroll, having some competition can really keep people and companies focused on making quick progress. I have heard him say he would like some more companies competing with SpaceX in interviews for just this reason and his actions seem to suggest he his main goal in life really is making humanity a multi-planet civilization. He also said that he joined Tesla to help jump start the electric car revolution by a decade and his total asset liquidation in 2008 to support Tesla and SpaceX seems to support that this attitude is not just some PR move, but who knows for sure.
- sitkack 8y agoThis is an interesting take, they weren't laid off, they graduated. The same thing is used to train a talent pool in a vendor eco system, hire contractors to build demo apps and integrations, but cycle them out after every project. All those people can now put Tech X on their resume. SpaceX definitely transformed the entire endeavor of space travel.
- yholio 8y agoMusk is incredibly stretched and has very nearly missed bankruptcy several times. It seems highly unlikely he can afford the largesse to hand over any business to his competitors. A SpaceX-2 without billions sunk in R&D could drastically undercut their launch prices and capture the lion's share of the market, without having any intention to go to Mars. This would be great for the launch market and access to LEO but would delay colonization. It's pretty clear Musk sees his for profit endeavors - Tesla, commercial and government launches, Starlink - as cash cows for a long term investment into something no one in the market is yet ready to finance. Until that changes and Mars becomes an interesting commercial proposition, Musk will ruthlessly pursue his business and leave nothing on the table, precisely to acquire the funds to bootstrap his vision.