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Falcon 9 is doing great, but Starlink appears to be eating through all their earnings and well into their cash reserves. Elon Musk has said "SpaceX needs to pa

Falcon 9 is doing great, but Starlink appears to be eating through all their earnings and well into their cash reserves. Elon Musk has said "SpaceX needs to pass through a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year or so to make Starlink financially viable. Every new satellite constellation in history has gone bankrupt. We hope to be the first that does not." (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1359024384200101888?)lang=en https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1359024384200101888?)lan... At this point their R&D spending on Starship and Starlink means they're running off constantly raising capital from investors (same as many other startups). When Starlink is generating decent income they're going to be an extremely profitable company, but they're not there yet.

belval 6y ago
SpaceX will not go bankrupt or have trouble raising money in the near future. Their ace in the hole is doing an IPO. With the current craze people would throw incredible amount of money at them. Talk to investors and everyone is bullish on SpaceX because they have a good moat, strong revenues and growth potential.
xoa 6y ago
To clarify, I wasn't saying they were fully self-funding, just giving some additional context to "not that expensive". Given that they have hordes of investors willing to throw money at them (and for decent reason for once), they'd be foolish to significantly slow bootstrapping through the more capex heavy part of the roadmap rather then doing multiple programs at once, particularly when said programs have real synergy. But if for some odd reason they had to go it alone, it's so cheap and F9 beats others so thoroughly that they probably actually could at this point, which is a wild thing to write about super heavy rocket R&D. It'd make everything take many years longer though, and they'd have to prioritize differently.
- someperson 6y ago
  I should also mention there is the Artemis HLS down-select coming up in a few weeks where the Lunar Starship should net SpaceX another $2 billion of funding (assuming they're selected). For those unfamiliar, here's a great overview of the Artemis HLS landing systems: https://youtu.be/WSg5UfFM7NY?t=47 https://youtu.be/WSg5UfFM7NY?t=47 A private company developing a Super Heavy Lift Mars/Moon rocket and streaming the monthly tests online. Very exciting times.
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mempko 6y ago
It's funny that everyone thinks PE is the only source of capital from SpaceX. SpaceX gets most of their income from the government including generous subsidies like those for Starlink. In fact, SpaceX would not exist without the governmental effort to create a private space industry which has pumped a LOT of money into SpaceX and competitors. But the conversation is always around investors and not about those who actually made this possible, the American tax payer.
- avmich 6y ago
  SpaceX does sell a solid chunk of their launches to US government departments, but those departments save on those launches quite a bit - so American taxpayer benefits there. It's true that SpaceX was helped by NASA after they got their first successful launches of Falcon-1, that help was important and allowed skipping Falcon-5. However that's the regular way American taxpayers - represented by those government departments - operate: they grow markets of new products and services, and then both benefit from new offerings and receive tax from them, while public has more chances for personal enrichment. In some sense, yes, it's American taxpayer who makes all that - including favorable legal environment - possible; on the other hand, investors are the standard way, the means how that is done. It's odd to see taxpayers and investors as completely opposing entities.

belval 6y ago

SpaceX will not go bankrupt or have trouble raising money in the near future. Their ace in the hole is doing an IPO. With the current craze people would throw incredible amount of money at them. Talk to investors and everyone is bullish on SpaceX because they have a good moat, strong revenues and growth potential.

xoa 6y ago

To clarify, I wasn't saying they were fully self-funding, just giving some additional context to "not that expensive". Given that they have hordes of investors willing to throw money at them (and for decent reason for once), they'd be foolish to significantly slow bootstrapping through the more capex heavy part of the roadmap rather then doing multiple programs at once, particularly when said programs have real synergy. But if for some odd reason they had to go it alone, it's so cheap and F9 beats others so thoroughly that they probably actually could at this point, which is a wild thing to write about super heavy rocket R&D. It'd make everything take many years longer though, and they'd have to prioritize differently.

someperson 6y ago
I should also mention there is the Artemis HLS down-select coming up in a few weeks where the Lunar Starship should net SpaceX another $2 billion of funding (assuming they're selected). For those unfamiliar, here's a great overview of the Artemis HLS landing systems: https://youtu.be/WSg5UfFM7NY?t=47 https://youtu.be/WSg5UfFM7NY?t=47 A private company developing a Super Heavy Lift Mars/Moon rocket and streaming the monthly tests online. Very exciting times.

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mempko 6y ago

It's funny that everyone thinks PE is the only source of capital from SpaceX. SpaceX gets most of their income from the government including generous subsidies like those for Starlink. In fact, SpaceX would not exist without the governmental effort to create a private space industry which has pumped a LOT of money into SpaceX and competitors. But the conversation is always around investors and not about those who actually made this possible, the American tax payer.

avmich 6y ago
SpaceX does sell a solid chunk of their launches to US government departments, but those departments save on those launches quite a bit - so American taxpayer benefits there. It's true that SpaceX was helped by NASA after they got their first successful launches of Falcon-1, that help was important and allowed skipping Falcon-5. However that's the regular way American taxpayers - represented by those government departments - operate: they grow markets of new products and services, and then both benefit from new offerings and receive tax from them, while public has more chances for personal enrichment. In some sense, yes, it's American taxpayer who makes all that - including favorable legal environment - possible; on the other hand, investors are the standard way, the means how that is done. It's odd to see taxpayers and investors as completely opposing entities.