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I'm no Musk fan but this > If he had never pursued reusability he would have made far, far more money from his launch business. Strikes me as short term thin

I'm no Musk fan but this > If he had never pursued reusability he would have made far, far more money from his launch business. Strikes me as short term thinking and not true, also. The plan is to sell tickets at $400,000 each to get to Mars. There doesn't seem to be any way to achieve that without reusability. The money to be made from founding the first Mars colony supplied with reusable rockets completely dwarfs some random launch provider on Earth. SpaceX never was and never will be a simple launch provider. If that is your lens then you are missing the company goals of 1M people living on Mars.

mrjangles 5y ago
First, no one denies that reusability is still not profitable. This includes Musk himself and heads of all the other rocket companies who have all made it clear they aren't pursing it because these is simply no business case for it. At best maybe recovering the fairings or engines could be profitable for now. > The plan is to sell tickets at $400,000 each to get to Mars. His Starship is set to hold 40 people on the trip to mars. That would mean he earns 16 million per Starship sent to mars. Each Starship takes about 8 launches to fully fuel. He currently sells 1 regular launch for 50 million each, so your numbers just don't add up. This isn't a money making scheme. In fact, Musk would be the first person to admit he isn't trying to make money by sending people to Mars. This is his passion project. In fact, the whole reason he created his Starlink business was to pay for his efforts to colonize Mars.
- fogof 5y ago
  > First, no one denies that reusability is still not profitable. This includes Musk himself and heads of all the other rocket companies who have all made it clear they aren't pursing it because these is simply no business case for it. What? Here is "Musk himself" saying in a tweet that Falcon 9 only needs to be reusable 3 times to make sense economically. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144?s=20
  - mrjangles 5y ago
    Oh ok, thanks for that. The last I had heard was that it would take 10 launches to break even. It seems spaceX has been working very hard making refurbishing the boosters cheaper and cheaper over the last few years.
- kolinko 5y ago
  With reusability he can get down to as low as 2mil per launch. So even with 8 launches for refuelling, this is the correct ballpark.
- panick21 5y ago
  > First, no one denies that reusability is still not profitable. This includes Musk himself and heads of all the other rocket companies who have all made it clear they aren't pursing it because these is simply no business case for it. It makes no sense for them because they can't offer a low enough price and otherwise create payloads in order to achieve a flight rate. ULA simply only has one costumer, the US military and very occasionally NASA. They have never really competition in the private market or ever tried to generate their own payloads to increase flight rate. Arianespace is a incredibly bureaucratic organization where everything has to go threw a political process. It cost them 4 billion to create a pretty average quality large rocket and doing re-usability for them would take 1-2 decades and another 10 billion. The idea that it is not profitable or more generally wroth it for SpaceX is crazy. SpaceX has mentioned many times that even only using the rockets 2 times already makes sense for them. They are getting 10 reuses out of the Block 5 rockets. The idea that it was not worth the investment is frankly speaking laughable. Without re-usability things like Starlink would simply not be possible in the first place. > He currently sells 1 regular launch for 50 million each, so your numbers just don't add up. This isn't a money making scheme. While I agree that Mars travel is not a money making scheme, those 50 million includes a huge margin and another huge cost for the second stage. If you assume almost no margin and you assume a equally reusable upper stage, far less operational cost, no fairing recovery cost, less refurbishment cost and so on you can get the number way lower then the current Falcon 9 price. Depending on flight rate cost in the low millions are approachable for LEO launches. There are other opportunities, dedicate tanker Starship should reduce the number refueling required. Next generation Raptor 2 versions and new ally for the Starship should eventually make it possible deliver a 250 tons reusable. Meaning you can potentially do 4 refueling flights, not 8. The pure business case for Mars colony still doesn't add up but low enough to make a Mars bases together with NASA totally feasible.
kamray23 5y ago
That ticket price is very, very optimistic. With it's 1200 t of fuel, the starship eats 240 t of methane and 960 t of oxygen. The price for methane is around 80 cents per litre, 240 t is 520 m^3 ish, so thats $420 000. Oxygen on the other hand seems to cost $10.6/kg, giving you a number of $12 000 000. Rounds out to 12 million per a single fueling. If the Starship carries 40 people that's just enough to bring the fuel cost of the LEO -> Mars trip down to $300 000. The first trip to space must cost the same amount in Starship fuel only so that's at least $600 000 per person in fuel. And this is all ignoring the Super Heavy, which will probably raise the cost over a million, in fuel alone.
- tigershark 5y ago
  Generating liquid oxygen is two orders of magnitude cheaper, making it way cheaper than methane.
- __m 5y ago
  Plus there isn’t enough space for 40 people, real number will probably be below 20
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
iab 5y ago
What it is intended to be, and what it will be, will differ greatly. 1M people living on Mars is utter fiction.

mrjangles 5y ago

First, no one denies that reusability is still not profitable. This includes Musk himself and heads of all the other rocket companies who have all made it clear they aren't pursing it because these is simply no business case for it. At best maybe recovering the fairings or engines could be profitable for now. > The plan is to sell tickets at $400,000 each to get to Mars. His Starship is set to hold 40 people on the trip to mars. That would mean he earns 16 million per Starship sent to mars. Each Starship takes about 8 launches to fully fuel. He currently sells 1 regular launch for 50 million each, so your numbers just don't add up. This isn't a money making scheme. In fact, Musk would be the first person to admit he isn't trying to make money by sending people to Mars. This is his passion project. In fact, the whole reason he created his Starlink business was to pay for his efforts to colonize Mars.

fogof 5y ago
> First, no one denies that reusability is still not profitable. This includes Musk himself and heads of all the other rocket companies who have all made it clear they aren't pursing it because these is simply no business case for it. What? Here is "Musk himself" saying in a tweet that Falcon 9 only needs to be reusable 3 times to make sense economically. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144?s=20
- mrjangles 5y ago
  Oh ok, thanks for that. The last I had heard was that it would take 10 launches to break even. It seems spaceX has been working very hard making refurbishing the boosters cheaper and cheaper over the last few years.
kolinko 5y ago
With reusability he can get down to as low as 2mil per launch. So even with 8 launches for refuelling, this is the correct ballpark.
panick21 5y ago
> First, no one denies that reusability is still not profitable. This includes Musk himself and heads of all the other rocket companies who have all made it clear they aren't pursing it because these is simply no business case for it. It makes no sense for them because they can't offer a low enough price and otherwise create payloads in order to achieve a flight rate. ULA simply only has one costumer, the US military and very occasionally NASA. They have never really competition in the private market or ever tried to generate their own payloads to increase flight rate. Arianespace is a incredibly bureaucratic organization where everything has to go threw a political process. It cost them 4 billion to create a pretty average quality large rocket and doing re-usability for them would take 1-2 decades and another 10 billion. The idea that it is not profitable or more generally wroth it for SpaceX is crazy. SpaceX has mentioned many times that even only using the rockets 2 times already makes sense for them. They are getting 10 reuses out of the Block 5 rockets. The idea that it was not worth the investment is frankly speaking laughable. Without re-usability things like Starlink would simply not be possible in the first place. > He currently sells 1 regular launch for 50 million each, so your numbers just don't add up. This isn't a money making scheme. While I agree that Mars travel is not a money making scheme, those 50 million includes a huge margin and another huge cost for the second stage. If you assume almost no margin and you assume a equally reusable upper stage, far less operational cost, no fairing recovery cost, less refurbishment cost and so on you can get the number way lower then the current Falcon 9 price. Depending on flight rate cost in the low millions are approachable for LEO launches. There are other opportunities, dedicate tanker Starship should reduce the number refueling required. Next generation Raptor 2 versions and new ally for the Starship should eventually make it possible deliver a 250 tons reusable. Meaning you can potentially do 4 refueling flights, not 8. The pure business case for Mars colony still doesn't add up but low enough to make a Mars bases together with NASA totally feasible.

kamray23 5y ago

That ticket price is very, very optimistic. With it's 1200 t of fuel, the starship eats 240 t of methane and 960 t of oxygen. The price for methane is around 80 cents per litre, 240 t is 520 m^3 ish, so thats $420 000. Oxygen on the other hand seems to cost $10.6/kg, giving you a number of $12 000 000. Rounds out to 12 million per a single fueling. If the Starship carries 40 people that's just enough to bring the fuel cost of the LEO -> Mars trip down to $300 000. The first trip to space must cost the same amount in Starship fuel only so that's at least $600 000 per person in fuel. And this is all ignoring the Super Heavy, which will probably raise the cost over a million, in fuel alone.

tigershark 5y ago
Generating liquid oxygen is two orders of magnitude cheaper, making it way cheaper than methane.
__m 5y ago
Plus there isn’t enough space for 40 people, real number will probably be below 20

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

iab 5y ago

What it is intended to be, and what it will be, will differ greatly. 1M people living on Mars is utter fiction.