4 ms·

I've been on a bit of an Apollo kick lately, and reading some of the history of the American space program in the 1960s and 1970s was depressing. Those people

I've been on a bit of an Apollo kick lately, and reading some of the history of the American space program in the 1960s and 1970s was depressing. Those people were tapped into something bordering on divine. It was depressing until I realized: SpaceX is absolutely carrying that spirit. Remember when all the experts said it was impossible to ever land their first stage? And then that it was impossible to ever make that economical? And then remember when Elon teased Starship (back then it was called BFR) and all the naysaying that went along with that? They've just kept going. Just an absolutely break-neck pace. Falcon heavy was barely supposed to even work, and now it's not even news when they launch one. edit: ha! I think there's actually a falcon heavy launch tonight!

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
halyconWays 3y ago
First they laugh at you, etc.
itsoktocry 3y ago
>And then that it was impossible to ever make that economical? This one is yet to be determined, isn't it?
- thepasswordis 3y ago
  SpaceX is a private company so you're right, we can't know. But it would seem pretty foolish for SpaceX to be continually reusing rockets this much if that cost them extra money? (I mean extra vs building new ones)
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  We won't know for sure unless SpaceX goes public, but leaks suggest the marginal cost of a reusable F9 launch is below $20M and the sticker price is $67M, and that goes up fast if you want vertical integration etc.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Not really. SpaceX survived before they raised a lot of money for Starship and Starlink. They didn't have a lot of money and at that point they couldn't really sell at a loss. Their programs, Commercial Cargo cost them more then expected. And Commercial Crew wasn't anywhere close to making money. SpaceX sold launches at around 60-70 million $ and that made it profitable. Once the proved out reuse, they were able to get investors. My contention is that unless they could actually show reuse they could have never raised they amount of money they did, it wouldn't make sense. Another way of thinking about it is, what based on basic principles is the cost of building these things. Various people have estimated this stuff. 20-30 million $ for the first stage with engines, 5-15 million $ for the second stage, 6 million $. Probably 20-30% overhead for operations and fixed cost. Now things are different. The first stages are going on 20 reuses. The second stage is now being mass produced pretty significant volume, so price goes. Fairing are reused also. You have the same size operations team that is far more efficient. A team that used to do 10 launch now does 50 launches. Moving to automated range safety is one big such optimization. The launch pad utilization is far higher. So most people who look at this come out for with a marginal cost of about 15-20 million $ per launch. You can be conservative and say 30 million but it hard to come up with reason why it should be so high. At the same time they are still selling launches at 65 million. And in addition to that, they have many special launches that are likely earn them more, DoD launches, NASA launches, Crew launches and Falcon Heavy launches. So I think it really, really hard to argue that SpaceX core business isn't very profitable. You would basically have to claim that first stages get totally rebuilt from the ground up and all engines replaced. But we have very good evidence that this isn't the case. Now of course that doesn't mean SpaceX is profitable, as thanks to the re-usability success, they invested heavily in Starship and Starlink. And those are of course unprofitable investments for now. Starlink is starting to turn around, but Starship is quite a bit away from that. What can maybe be argued is that if you only had say 10 launches a year, re-usability wouldn't be worth it for various reason.
crotho 3y ago
[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

halyconWays 3y ago

First they laugh at you, etc.

itsoktocry 3y ago

>And then that it was impossible to ever make that economical? This one is yet to be determined, isn't it?

thepasswordis 3y ago
SpaceX is a private company so you're right, we can't know. But it would seem pretty foolish for SpaceX to be continually reusing rockets this much if that cost them extra money? (I mean extra vs building new ones)
sebzim4500 3y ago
We won't know for sure unless SpaceX goes public, but leaks suggest the marginal cost of a reusable F9 launch is below $20M and the sticker price is $67M, and that goes up fast if you want vertical integration etc.
panick21_ 3y ago
Not really. SpaceX survived before they raised a lot of money for Starship and Starlink. They didn't have a lot of money and at that point they couldn't really sell at a loss. Their programs, Commercial Cargo cost them more then expected. And Commercial Crew wasn't anywhere close to making money. SpaceX sold launches at around 60-70 million $ and that made it profitable. Once the proved out reuse, they were able to get investors. My contention is that unless they could actually show reuse they could have never raised they amount of money they did, it wouldn't make sense. Another way of thinking about it is, what based on basic principles is the cost of building these things. Various people have estimated this stuff. 20-30 million $ for the first stage with engines, 5-15 million $ for the second stage, 6 million $. Probably 20-30% overhead for operations and fixed cost. Now things are different. The first stages are going on 20 reuses. The second stage is now being mass produced pretty significant volume, so price goes. Fairing are reused also. You have the same size operations team that is far more efficient. A team that used to do 10 launch now does 50 launches. Moving to automated range safety is one big such optimization. The launch pad utilization is far higher. So most people who look at this come out for with a marginal cost of about 15-20 million $ per launch. You can be conservative and say 30 million but it hard to come up with reason why it should be so high. At the same time they are still selling launches at 65 million. And in addition to that, they have many special launches that are likely earn them more, DoD launches, NASA launches, Crew launches and Falcon Heavy launches. So I think it really, really hard to argue that SpaceX core business isn't very profitable. You would basically have to claim that first stages get totally rebuilt from the ground up and all engines replaced. But we have very good evidence that this isn't the case. Now of course that doesn't mean SpaceX is profitable, as thanks to the re-usability success, they invested heavily in Starship and Starlink. And those are of course unprofitable investments for now. Starlink is starting to turn around, but Starship is quite a bit away from that. What can maybe be argued is that if you only had say 10 launches a year, re-usability wouldn't be worth it for various reason.

crotho 3y ago

[dead]