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> They're already the world's cheapest launch provider by a significant margin, and currently the only human-rated private launch company. True. But the market

by qayxc 5y ago

> They're already the world's cheapest launch provider by a significant margin, and currently the only human-rated private launch company. True. But the market is tiny. There have been 114 orbital rocket launches in 2020 [0], 25 of which were SpaceX F9 flights and 14 of them were Starlink deployment missions. This means that currently, SpaceX is its own best customer with more than half of their launches being used to deploy their infrastructure. As far as commercial crewed missions are concerned, there has been one so far with at least two further missions in the pipeline for the next 12 months. Even if I'm being generous and grant them two private crewed missions per year, that's not exactly a multi-billion dollar business. Considering that Boeing isn't just in the space launch business but also is the second part of the global commercial jet duopoly besides Airbus and is a major defence contractor as well, I'd think that the valuation contains a lot of... optimism? As it stands Starlink loses money with each customer for the ground equipment. Starship isn't flying yet and realistically speaking, the future of Starlink depends on that system to both work and be significantly cheaper than F9. There's a lot of if's riding on that valuation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_spaceflight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_spaceflight

grecy 5y ago
> True. But the market is tiny Keep in mind the market for automobiles was tiny before the automated production of the Model T, and the market for the personal computer was also tiny before Apple invented it. Let's not even talk about the smartphone market.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  > the market for automobiles was tiny before the automated production of the Model T I think that's a false analogy. Automobiles are a lower-latency, cheaper to operate, cleaner, faster substitute for the horse and cart, which many people already had and many more desired. There was a big market and it had high price elasticity of demand. The analogy here would be for hypersonic point-to-point travel over large distances on the Earth. It's not at all clear how big or elastic the latent demand for that would be. It is clear that dumping a lot of water vapor in the stratosphere would have climatic consequences.
nexuist 5y ago
> Even if I'm being generous and grant them two private crewed missions per year, that's not exactly a multi-billion dollar business. Didn't each shuttle cost several billion dollars to refurnish in between launches? There will certainly be a market for this if SpaceX is capable of meeting the demand, especially in the near future as the ISS ages and the international community begins to build and man the next generation of space stations.
- qayxc 5y ago
  > Didn't each shuttle cost several billion dollars to refurnish in between launches? No. The launch costs of the Space Shuttle include infrastructure and development cost. Original cost projections were based on up to 50 launches per year. With an actual launch cadence of just ~3 launches per year, accumulated costs skyrocketed when distributed over all launches. Another factor was the heat shielding, which didn't meet the requirements for fast inspection and maintenance due to its flawed design - a flaw that was addressed by Soviet Buran by the way. It remains to be seen whether SpaceX manages to get around this problem in their latest design. > There will certainly be a market for this [...] and the international community begins to build and man the next generation of space stations. Plural even? That's a bold assumption. Every commercial venture relies on incentives. There's currently only very little incentive to build crewed space stations. There are basically only three major applications that ware known to benefit from micro-g environments: optronics manufacturing, growing natural organs, and tourism. The first two have the same problem in that it only works out if mass production can be achieved. Otherwise getting raw materials to- and finished products back down from orbit is way too expensive for it to be economically feasible. Tourism cannot be a mass market either. It's not just the price that makes it a very exclusive niche market, but also the medical requirements. William Shatner for example might be able to survive a suborbital hop with Bezos' space dildo, but wouldn't pass the medical exam for a full blown orbital flight, no matter how much money he'd pay. Another factor for the tourism industry is maintenance and staffing. Even with 3 month crew rotations, the costs for just staffing a space station would be quite substantial. For reference, the crew-to-passenger ratio of luxury cruise ships is between 1.3 and ~4 [0]. Tourist space stations would be in that category, too for various reasons so I'd expect similar ratios there. [0] https://www.aboutluxurycruising.com/understanding-crew-to-passenger-ratio/ https://www.aboutluxurycruising.com/understanding-crew-to-pa...

by qayxc 5y ago

grecy 5y ago

> True. But the market is tiny Keep in mind the market for automobiles was tiny before the automated production of the Model T, and the market for the personal computer was also tiny before Apple invented it. Let's not even talk about the smartphone market.

tuatoru 5y ago
> the market for automobiles was tiny before the automated production of the Model T I think that's a false analogy. Automobiles are a lower-latency, cheaper to operate, cleaner, faster substitute for the horse and cart, which many people already had and many more desired. There was a big market and it had high price elasticity of demand. The analogy here would be for hypersonic point-to-point travel over large distances on the Earth. It's not at all clear how big or elastic the latent demand for that would be. It is clear that dumping a lot of water vapor in the stratosphere would have climatic consequences.

nexuist 5y ago

> Even if I'm being generous and grant them two private crewed missions per year, that's not exactly a multi-billion dollar business. Didn't each shuttle cost several billion dollars to refurnish in between launches? There will certainly be a market for this if SpaceX is capable of meeting the demand, especially in the near future as the ISS ages and the international community begins to build and man the next generation of space stations.

qayxc 5y ago
> Didn't each shuttle cost several billion dollars to refurnish in between launches? No. The launch costs of the Space Shuttle include infrastructure and development cost. Original cost projections were based on up to 50 launches per year. With an actual launch cadence of just ~3 launches per year, accumulated costs skyrocketed when distributed over all launches. Another factor was the heat shielding, which didn't meet the requirements for fast inspection and maintenance due to its flawed design - a flaw that was addressed by Soviet Buran by the way. It remains to be seen whether SpaceX manages to get around this problem in their latest design. > There will certainly be a market for this [...] and the international community begins to build and man the next generation of space stations. Plural even? That's a bold assumption. Every commercial venture relies on incentives. There's currently only very little incentive to build crewed space stations. There are basically only three major applications that ware known to benefit from micro-g environments: optronics manufacturing, growing natural organs, and tourism. The first two have the same problem in that it only works out if mass production can be achieved. Otherwise getting raw materials to- and finished products back down from orbit is way too expensive for it to be economically feasible. Tourism cannot be a mass market either. It's not just the price that makes it a very exclusive niche market, but also the medical requirements. William Shatner for example might be able to survive a suborbital hop with Bezos' space dildo, but wouldn't pass the medical exam for a full blown orbital flight, no matter how much money he'd pay. Another factor for the tourism industry is maintenance and staffing. Even with 3 month crew rotations, the costs for just staffing a space station would be quite substantial. For reference, the crew-to-passenger ratio of luxury cruise ships is between 1.3 and ~4 [0]. Tourist space stations would be in that category, too for various reasons so I'd expect similar ratios there. [0] https://www.aboutluxurycruising.com/understanding-crew-to-passenger-ratio/ https://www.aboutluxurycruising.com/understanding-crew-to-pa...