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And yeah, things have changed since then and who enabled those changes ? Progress is not function of time, if left to themselves, ULA , Arian et al, would ha

by acd10j 5y ago

*And yeah, things have changed since then* and who enabled those changes ? Progress is not function of time, if left to themselves, ULA , Arian et al, would have never let these launch costs go down. Even now Falcon 9 and Falcon heavy is capable of launching a very high orbits with quite good payload. Which will be further boosted by Star-ship.

hef19898 5y ago
Yep, we now find that there are enough launches to make, maybe, reusable rockets a profitable idea. These launches so are coming from SpaceX, are financed so far by VC money for a service that has yet to proof to be competitive and profitable. 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.
- nickik 5y ago
  > They are simply working at a place where they can benefit from expensive government launches, government development contracts and VC money. 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).

*And yeah, things have changed since then* and who enabled those changes ? Progress is not function of time, if left to themselves, ULA , Arian et al, would ha

by acd10j 5y ago

hef19898 5y ago

Yep, we now find that there are enough launches to make, maybe, reusable rockets a profitable idea. These launches so are coming from SpaceX, are financed so far by VC money for a service that has yet to proof to be competitive and profitable. 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.

nickik 5y ago
> They are simply working at a place where they can benefit from expensive government launches, government development contracts and VC money. 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).