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If it was anyone but SpaceX, this would be a company-ended disaster. Dozens of satellites ruined? That would be an impossible loss. For SpaceX it will be an mi

by mabbo 4y ago

If it was anyone but SpaceX, this would be a company-ended disaster. Dozens of satellites ruined? That would be an impossible loss. For SpaceX it will be an mildly expensive lesson.

throwntoday 4y ago
Agreed, they basically launch Starlink satellites for free as they can reuse launch vehicles other customers already paid off. Remains to be seen whether this is intentional or not. Given how a few of the satellites had a much sharper decay in orbit I would lean towards the latter. Doesn't seem to make sense that they would take them up only to bring them down again if they were setting them at a lower orbit.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mabbo 4y ago
  > they basically launch Starlink satellites for free as they can reuse launch vehicles other customers already paid off. Yes and no. First, their customers actually prefer to use previously-flown boosters now. Insurance premiums on launches are slightly higher for first flights because the booster is 'unproven'. But more importantly, there's still big costs involved. The entire second stage of the rocket is expensive to build and it's not reused. Refurbishing the boosters takes time, people, effort. Still cheaper than any of their competitors, and they get it "at cost", but we're still in the tens of millions range.
  - imron 4y ago
    > First, their customers actually prefer to use previously-flown boosters now This is hilarious, and also an incredible testament to the work SpaceX has done in moving the rocket industry forward.
    - 7e 4y ago
      All they had to do was lose a lot of money. Why didn’t anyone else think of that? I see in the article that SpaceX is proudly carrying on their tradition.
      - alsodumb 4y ago
        You learn from failures, and failures are expensive. I wouldn’t call SpaceX a money loser though.
      - Nevermark 4y ago
        The US, Russia, Europe and China have burned many multiples of SpaceX expenses to find their space programs obsolete. That is what losses look like. SpaceX spent a fraction of their development expenses, and now sells launch services profitably for a fraction of their costs. SpaceX has been a wealth generating dynamo. Raised estimated $9.9 Billion [1] Worth based on recent funding $127 Billion [2] NASA gave them a boost, with the result that NASA is going to save billions as they continue shifting launches to SpaceX. (Cancelling SLS would result in even more savings.) Any perception of overall economic "losses" for SpaceX, its investors, or its customer-partners, comes from incomplete accounting. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te... [2] https://spaceexplored.com/2022/05/23/how-much-is-spacex-worth/ https://spaceexplored.com/2022/05/23/how-much-is-spacex-wort...
  - barbegal 4y ago
    Do you have a source for the insurance premiums being higher? I really doubt that is true but Spacex may offer a discount for previously-flown boosters which acts as an incentive.
- ulfw 4y ago
  Do they manufacture them 'for free' too? Launches are never free. Cheaper maybe, but free is a vast overstatement of what SpaceX is doing.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    The satellites are a kind of solution to the queuing theory problem. Queues work better when a small proportion of the tasks are very high priority, and a large number of very low priority tasks are available to pack in around them.
- xoa 4y ago
  Not to pile on but as an addition to what others have said: >as they can reuse launch vehicles Falcon 9 is not fully reusable, "only" the first stage is. That was still an incredible accomplishment, and still saves a great deal of money because the first stage is the largest and has the most engines, which are one of the more complex and expensive parts of any rocket. However, the second stage is expended, so that's a fixed cost each time, IIRC estimates are around $9m. Even the fuel isn't nothing as other costs start to get brought down, F9 burns tens of thousands of gallons of RP-1 per launch and RP-1 isn't free either (probably at least $17/gal, so that's probably at least another half mil). Refurbishment of course but also recovery ships, salaries, launch pad time, it all adds up. Yes by historic scales this is all pretty cheap and SpaceX is certainly large enough with enough cadence, revenue and profit to absorb losses fine, they very intentionally run hardware rich. In a careful manner it should be made clear, they aim to learn things, but they do push to find the edges of the envelope on occasion as well. But it's not remotely free. Don't forget, there is also the lost time and cost of the actual sat capacity, they do actively want these things and are pursuing a cut down while waiting for Starship for a reason. They need more network capacity for Starlink. Losing a bunch of V2 Minis is another pile of monthly revenue they won't be getting for a while longer. The Starship system will be a big step forward in all respects, the first rocket engineered from the ground up around economics. Fully reusable and more easily, cheap to construct, even the fuel is cheap. But even there they still have expensive things to be careful with, they've gotten more cautious recently because losing ground facilities in an explosion at this point would genuinely be very painful and set them back months which itself would represent major opportunity cost. And they can't simply spread things out because of the limits of the geography they're working with right now. It's all still rocket science. Pushing hard in a controlled manner is good, they've done incredibly putting together a system around that and it's paid off. But not being reckless, and major losses are still going to sting.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    At a much smaller and less costly scale than Starship, Stoke Space (Kent, WA) has a plan and has published CGI videos of a proposed fully reusable second stage. Along with something very similar to a Falcon 9 resuable first stage. Whether they are actually able to do it remains to be seen.
- ianburrell 4y ago
  It doesn't matter if SpaceX gets discounted cost from reused rockets and not taking profit, because SpaceX is losing out on money they could get from selling launch. There is backlog of payloads for Falcon 9 so there opportunity cost for internal launch. The effective cost for Starlink launch is the $67 million that others pay.
dgrin91 4y ago
I'm not sure I agree. These aren't satellites like the GPS satellites where each one cost hundreds of millions or billions to make, let alone launch. These are more akin to fancy cube sats where you can mass produce and make them (relatively) cheap. Still very expensive, but if a company was structured around building lots of these then this wouldn't be game ending.
- ugh123 4y ago
  I think it's more about the launch costs to get replacements back up there fast
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    One launch loss would not ruin most companies.
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      Unless you're virgin orbit
  - entropicgravity 4y ago
    Yes and for SpaceX their launch costs are particularly low as their boosters have been reused up to fifteen times.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Cube sat is a bit of an understatement of the size and complexity of these satellites. IIRC they are roughly the size of a small car (albeit only a few hundred kilograms).
  - _0ffh 4y ago
    Yeah, the comparison would be okay-ish for the old ones, which where about 1m^3 in volume, just big and flat instead of cubes. The new V2 are ~5x the weight @2k8 pounds, the V2 Mini ~3x @1k8 pounds.
Fatnino 4y ago
Losing a one-off sattelite is very expensive. Losing a handful of satellites that are produced by the thousands in a factory is not quite as big a setback as it may seem.
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  Finding out that there's a systematic issue with a new model that was overlooked until after launch might be, though. It does betray deficiencies in engineering and testing. Then there was that incident where they launched a batch into the wrong kind of space weather, the atmosphere had been heated up by a solar flare, and the ion engine couldn't overcome the increased drag from the temporarily increased density. It looks wasteful.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    It's hardware rich development.

by mabbo 4y ago

If it was anyone but SpaceX, this would be a company-ended disaster. Dozens of satellites ruined? That would be an impossible loss. For SpaceX it will be an mildly expensive lesson.

throwntoday 4y ago

Agreed, they basically launch Starlink satellites for free as they can reuse launch vehicles other customers already paid off. Remains to be seen whether this is intentional or not. Given how a few of the satellites had a much sharper decay in orbit I would lean towards the latter. Doesn't seem to make sense that they would take them up only to bring them down again if they were setting them at a lower orbit.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mabbo 4y ago
> they basically launch Starlink satellites for free as they can reuse launch vehicles other customers already paid off. Yes and no. First, their customers actually prefer to use previously-flown boosters now. Insurance premiums on launches are slightly higher for first flights because the booster is 'unproven'. But more importantly, there's still big costs involved. The entire second stage of the rocket is expensive to build and it's not reused. Refurbishing the boosters takes time, people, effort. Still cheaper than any of their competitors, and they get it "at cost", but we're still in the tens of millions range.
- imron 4y ago
  > First, their customers actually prefer to use previously-flown boosters now This is hilarious, and also an incredible testament to the work SpaceX has done in moving the rocket industry forward.
  - 7e 4y ago
    All they had to do was lose a lot of money. Why didn’t anyone else think of that? I see in the article that SpaceX is proudly carrying on their tradition.
    - alsodumb 4y ago
      You learn from failures, and failures are expensive. I wouldn’t call SpaceX a money loser though.
    - Nevermark 4y ago
      The US, Russia, Europe and China have burned many multiples of SpaceX expenses to find their space programs obsolete. That is what losses look like. SpaceX spent a fraction of their development expenses, and now sells launch services profitably for a fraction of their costs. SpaceX has been a wealth generating dynamo. Raised estimated $9.9 Billion [1] Worth based on recent funding $127 Billion [2] NASA gave them a boost, with the result that NASA is going to save billions as they continue shifting launches to SpaceX. (Cancelling SLS would result in even more savings.) Any perception of overall economic "losses" for SpaceX, its investors, or its customer-partners, comes from incomplete accounting. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-te... [2] https://spaceexplored.com/2022/05/23/how-much-is-spacex-worth/ https://spaceexplored.com/2022/05/23/how-much-is-spacex-wort...
- barbegal 4y ago
  Do you have a source for the insurance premiums being higher? I really doubt that is true but Spacex may offer a discount for previously-flown boosters which acts as an incentive.
ulfw 4y ago
Do they manufacture them 'for free' too? Launches are never free. Cheaper maybe, but free is a vast overstatement of what SpaceX is doing.
- hinkley 4y ago
  The satellites are a kind of solution to the queuing theory problem. Queues work better when a small proportion of the tasks are very high priority, and a large number of very low priority tasks are available to pack in around them.
xoa 4y ago
Not to pile on but as an addition to what others have said: >as they can reuse launch vehicles Falcon 9 is not fully reusable, "only" the first stage is. That was still an incredible accomplishment, and still saves a great deal of money because the first stage is the largest and has the most engines, which are one of the more complex and expensive parts of any rocket. However, the second stage is expended, so that's a fixed cost each time, IIRC estimates are around $9m. Even the fuel isn't nothing as other costs start to get brought down, F9 burns tens of thousands of gallons of RP-1 per launch and RP-1 isn't free either (probably at least $17/gal, so that's probably at least another half mil). Refurbishment of course but also recovery ships, salaries, launch pad time, it all adds up. Yes by historic scales this is all pretty cheap and SpaceX is certainly large enough with enough cadence, revenue and profit to absorb losses fine, they very intentionally run hardware rich. In a careful manner it should be made clear, they aim to learn things, but they do push to find the edges of the envelope on occasion as well. But it's not remotely free. Don't forget, there is also the lost time and cost of the actual sat capacity, they do actively want these things and are pursuing a cut down while waiting for Starship for a reason. They need more network capacity for Starlink. Losing a bunch of V2 Minis is another pile of monthly revenue they won't be getting for a while longer. The Starship system will be a big step forward in all respects, the first rocket engineered from the ground up around economics. Fully reusable and more easily, cheap to construct, even the fuel is cheap. But even there they still have expensive things to be careful with, they've gotten more cautious recently because losing ground facilities in an explosion at this point would genuinely be very painful and set them back months which itself would represent major opportunity cost. And they can't simply spread things out because of the limits of the geography they're working with right now. It's all still rocket science. Pushing hard in a controlled manner is good, they've done incredibly putting together a system around that and it's paid off. But not being reckless, and major losses are still going to sting.
- walrus01 4y ago
  At a much smaller and less costly scale than Starship, Stoke Space (Kent, WA) has a plan and has published CGI videos of a proposed fully reusable second stage. Along with something very similar to a Falcon 9 resuable first stage. Whether they are actually able to do it remains to be seen.
ianburrell 4y ago
It doesn't matter if SpaceX gets discounted cost from reused rockets and not taking profit, because SpaceX is losing out on money they could get from selling launch. There is backlog of payloads for Falcon 9 so there opportunity cost for internal launch. The effective cost for Starlink launch is the $67 million that others pay.

dgrin91 4y ago

I'm not sure I agree. These aren't satellites like the GPS satellites where each one cost hundreds of millions or billions to make, let alone launch. These are more akin to fancy cube sats where you can mass produce and make them (relatively) cheap. Still very expensive, but if a company was structured around building lots of these then this wouldn't be game ending.

ugh123 4y ago
I think it's more about the launch costs to get replacements back up there fast
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  One launch loss would not ruin most companies.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    Unless you're virgin orbit
- entropicgravity 4y ago
  Yes and for SpaceX their launch costs are particularly low as their boosters have been reused up to fifteen times.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
Cube sat is a bit of an understatement of the size and complexity of these satellites. IIRC they are roughly the size of a small car (albeit only a few hundred kilograms).
- _0ffh 4y ago
  Yeah, the comparison would be okay-ish for the old ones, which where about 1m^3 in volume, just big and flat instead of cubes. The new V2 are ~5x the weight @2k8 pounds, the V2 Mini ~3x @1k8 pounds.

Fatnino 4y ago

Losing a one-off sattelite is very expensive. Losing a handful of satellites that are produced by the thousands in a factory is not quite as big a setback as it may seem.

HarryHirsch 4y ago
Finding out that there's a systematic issue with a new model that was overlooked until after launch might be, though. It does betray deficiencies in engineering and testing. Then there was that incident where they launched a batch into the wrong kind of space weather, the atmosphere had been heated up by a solar flare, and the ion engine couldn't overcome the increased drag from the temporarily increased density. It looks wasteful.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  It's hardware rich development.