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There's reason to be skeptical of that. I think their most recent profitable quarter (maybe their only profitable quarter?) was with a profit margin of ~3%. Gr

There's reason to be skeptical of that. I think their most recent profitable quarter (maybe their only profitable quarter?) was with a profit margin of ~3%. Granted maybe there's some marginal benefits, eg launching n+1 rockets is cheaper per rocket than launching n rockets

Nevermark 3y ago
SpaceX puts a lot money into research and development, and build out of infrastructure for future use. So if the company is breaking even, then its manufacturing & launch business must have good margins. Which means, self launched rockets cost SpaceX noticeably less than their commercial pricing.
- mavhc 3y ago
  SpaceX posted a Q1 2023 profit of $55 million on $1.5 billion in revenue And the spend about $2 billion on Starship per year. So $6 billion in, $2 billion on Starship, $4 billion in other costs. In 2022 they launched 61 times, which is $65 million per launch on average, they charge $67 million per launch. They got $2 billion from NASA for 2022. In 2022 they launched 3 crewed missions, 2 for NASA and 1 private.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    They don't charge for their own launches.
    - hnben 3y ago
      when they spend a launch on their own stuff, they lose out on opportunity cost
      - madarco 3y ago
        no because there are not enough clients
    - mavhc 3y ago
      They got $4 billion from Starlink users, that should cover it
panick21_ 3y ago
Not really questionable. They are building Starship, Starship infrastructure, new factories for Starlink, upgrading existing factories, designing new Starlink version, deploying Starlink ground infrastructure, selling Starlink terminals at negative mergin, at a are developing Raptor v3 and commissioning the factory for it. And of course most of those launches are for Starlink so they don't really produce profit. And while they raised a lot of money, it isn't actually that much. If they had 0 or negative margin on launches the company wouldn't be nearly sustainable. That they made any profit at all is a damn miracle. > Granted maybe there's some marginal benefits, eg launching n+1 rockets is cheaper per rocket than launching n rockets There very clearly is. Every launch company has talked about this. The fixed cost for infrastructure, boats, launch teams and so on is absolutely huge. That is why so many New Space companies bet their company on launching often. At the same time SpaceX is now recovering fairing on almost all launches. Landings have been perfect. Development is done. And Fixed cost are distributed over a whole lot of launches. They can now fly the newer cores 15-20 times. The Upper Stage is the biggest cost, people estimate it between 5-15M. And then 10-20M in fixed cost, labor and recovery hardware amortisation. I think it can't really be more then 35M, I would guess less.

Nevermark 3y ago

SpaceX puts a lot money into research and development, and build out of infrastructure for future use. So if the company is breaking even, then its manufacturing & launch business must have good margins. Which means, self launched rockets cost SpaceX noticeably less than their commercial pricing.

mavhc 3y ago
SpaceX posted a Q1 2023 profit of $55 million on $1.5 billion in revenue And the spend about $2 billion on Starship per year. So $6 billion in, $2 billion on Starship, $4 billion in other costs. In 2022 they launched 61 times, which is $65 million per launch on average, they charge $67 million per launch. They got $2 billion from NASA for 2022. In 2022 they launched 3 crewed missions, 2 for NASA and 1 private.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  They don't charge for their own launches.
  - hnben 3y ago
    when they spend a launch on their own stuff, they lose out on opportunity cost
    - madarco 3y ago
      no because there are not enough clients
  - mavhc 3y ago
    They got $4 billion from Starlink users, that should cover it

panick21_ 3y ago

Not really questionable. They are building Starship, Starship infrastructure, new factories for Starlink, upgrading existing factories, designing new Starlink version, deploying Starlink ground infrastructure, selling Starlink terminals at negative mergin, at a are developing Raptor v3 and commissioning the factory for it. And of course most of those launches are for Starlink so they don't really produce profit. And while they raised a lot of money, it isn't actually that much. If they had 0 or negative margin on launches the company wouldn't be nearly sustainable. That they made any profit at all is a damn miracle. > Granted maybe there's some marginal benefits, eg launching n+1 rockets is cheaper per rocket than launching n rockets There very clearly is. Every launch company has talked about this. The fixed cost for infrastructure, boats, launch teams and so on is absolutely huge. That is why so many New Space companies bet their company on launching often. At the same time SpaceX is now recovering fairing on almost all launches. Landings have been perfect. Development is done. And Fixed cost are distributed over a whole lot of launches. They can now fly the newer cores 15-20 times. The Upper Stage is the biggest cost, people estimate it between 5-15M. And then 10-20M in fixed cost, labor and recovery hardware amortisation. I think it can't really be more then 35M, I would guess less.