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Falcon’s costs are a fiction. SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support and uses facilities built by the military and NASA. It’s not a like for like compa

Falcon’s costs are a fiction. SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support and uses facilities built by the military and NASA. It’s not a like for like comparison especially give SpaceX keeping its books private and giving no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost. Given Musks history of creative accounting quoting their PR numbers, the ones they pitch congress, as facts is naive in the extreme.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support and uses facilities built by the military and NASA So does ArianeSpace [1]. (It’s majority owned by the French state. EDIT: It’s not.) > no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost Refurb rates and turnaround times for Falcon 9 first stages are publicly documented [2]. Refurb costs are more opaque, but they’d have to be multiples of what SpaceX charges to approach Ariane 6’s cost projections. Ariane 6 is obsolete on arrival; ArianeSpace’s CEO admitted as much in asking the ESA to fund a reusable heavy booster like Falcon Heavy [3]. [1] https://www.space.com/europe-ariane-6-rocket-debut-launch https://www.space.com/europe-ariane-6-rocket-debut-launch [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b... [3] https://www.illdefined.space/arianespace-the-only-fish-in-the/ https://www.illdefined.space/arianespace-the-only-fish-in-th...
- ddalex 2y ago
  If I would be begging for new development money from the parent org after just launching a new product, I would also say that the new product is obsolete and we need to work on a replacement ASAP... especially in a pork-barrel org
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > I would also say that the new product is obsolete and we need to work on a replacement ASAP Sure. See the rest of the article. Everyone else has been saying the same for a decade. Note that the reusable heavy launcher he’s pitching is still aiming to deliver in a decade what SpaceX can do today. It’s not a strategic option, it’s a jobs programme.
    - ddalex 2y ago
      It is a strategic option because should SpaceX suddenly say no to launches, you have a backup. An expensive backup, but it's there. If ESA has 100 payloads, it can just book 90 of them on SpaceX and the mandated 10 of ArianeSpace (to keep the political pork happy), and lose only 10% efficiency (considering Ariane flight is twice as expensive as SpaceX). The problem is that ESA has no scalable payload economy, nobody has a good reason yet to launch that much mass. SpaceX is its own customer with Starlink for scalable launches, but ESA or NASA will not deliver 100 sattelites per year.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > should SpaceX suddenly say no to launches, you have a backup. An expensive backup, but it's there It's not a functional back-up. Not for any commercial use case relevant outside the military. If all you want is a back-up for military launches, the Ariane 5ME was a better, cheaper option that could have bridged the gap to a competitive reusable [1]. The billions of dollars wasted on Ariane 6 would have put Europe into the running for a competitive launch vehicle in the 2030s. Instead, we have Arianespace's CEO pitching another boondoggle to ensure Europe has a Falcon Heavy by the 2030s. So yes, having 10% launch capability is better than zero. But that 10% could have been bought for much cheaper. And saying 90% of your space industry is subject to foreign control versus 100% is a bit milquetoast, particularly when the alternative would have been R&D to bring that down to e.g. 50%. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5#Ariane_5_ME https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5#Ariane_5_ME
  - 627467 2y ago
    that's a marginal improvement in attitude than previous Arianespace leaders: > "Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket which we can use ten times—we would build exactly one rocket per year. That makes no sense. I cannot tell my teams: 'Goodbye, see you next year!'" https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-frustrated-with-spacex-for-driving-down-launch-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-f...
    - sgu999 2y ago
      They must have poached him from the consumer electronics industry... Thanks for sharing this ridiculous statement. I remember one of the execs of ArianeSpace or ESA just a couple years ago stating on radio with much confidence that SpaceX would never manage to reuse a rocket.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  > So does ArianeSpace [1]. (It’s majority owned by the French state.) True, but the EU has tight rules about government subsidies (TFEU art. 107-109) which don't have equivalent in the US. > Ariane 6 is obsolete on arrival; ArianeSpace’s CEO admitted as much in asking the ESA to fund a reusable heavy booster like Falcon Heavy [3]. This is true though.
  - Cipater 2y ago
    >True, but the EU has tight rules about government subsidies (TFEU art. 107-109) which don't have equivalent in the US. ESA member states contributed €2.815 billion for the development of Ariane 6. Industry contributed €400 million. Additionally, the member states have agreed to subsidize the Ariane 6 to the tune of €340 million annually.
    - Angostura 2y ago
      Where does SpaceX get its development funding from?
      - yokem55 2y ago
        They've had multiple private VC rounds. They also have had several milestone based development contracts from the government to develop capabilities (iss cargo and crew mainly) while charging the government less to do that dev work then their competitors bid.
        basementcat 2y ago
        Several of the investment rounds included participation from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Several of the investment rounds included participation from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm Not a significant source of capital. NASA COTS was Hawthorne’s public-money shot in the arm.
- deleted 2y ago
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- qwytw 2y ago
  > It’s majority owned by the French state Is that really true? I thought it was owned 50:50 by Safran and Airbus which are both publicly traded companies. ~25% of Airbus is owned by France, Germany and Spain. France owes ~11% of Safran. So France seems to own only ~10% of ArianeSpace
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    You’re correct—thank you. I missed CNES transferring its shares to Safran [1]. [1] https://www.arianespace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Corporate-brochure-EN-Feb2016.pdf https://www.arianespace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Corpo...
deleted 2y ago
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Xixi 2y ago
Ariane 6 is quite heavily subsidized, with ArianeGroup getting €340M per year to operate it [1]. With an expected 10 launches per year, that's about €34M/launch. But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter: Europe needs to be able to put its own military satellites (or anything else critical) up there. Military satellites sold to third party countries also won't launch themselves... [1] https://europeanspaceflight.com/arianegroup-to-receive-e340m-per-year-to-operate-ariane-6/ https://europeanspaceflight.com/arianegroup-to-receive-e340m...
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >Ariane 6 is quite heavily subsidized All major aerospace companies and projects are heavily subsidized in every country otherwise they would never survive or even be born. Like how much profit did NASA make over its lifetime?
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    NASA is a government agency though, so it doesn't have profit generation as its target. And that's fine, neither does the US army or any other government branch except for the tax office.
  - ambicapter 2y ago
    Right? At a certain point, governments are the only entities that can afford to send things to space. "Highly-subsidized" here just means "government is 99% of company's market base".
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      That certain point is in the past. Today, all sorts of private entities send things into space. As launch gets cheaper, private activities in space will dominate, if they don't already.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  > But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter: Europe needs to be able to put its own military satellites (or anything else critical) up there. Military satellites sold to third party countries also won't launch themselves... I'm very surprised the EU and the USA and SpaceX didn't work out a deal to buy a certain number of F9's to be launched and operated from the EU. The EU would pay a (vey high) price to buy outright the rockets, and would agree not to develop a competing rocket design in the next 20 yrs.
hoseja 2y ago
Massive taxpayer support for such frivolous projects as the first and only global broadband (battlefield capable) communication system and the only working american human-rated launcher, both for quarter the cost the next guy would like to charge. Truly, shameless leeches.
Cipater 2y ago
>SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support Ariane 6 was funded by European taxpayers to the tune of €2.815 billion. >and uses facilities built by the military and NASA. Ariane is launched from the Guiana Space Centre which is owned and operated by the ESA. Since you haven't familiarised yourself with the topic, ESA is the European Space Agency and is owned by 22 European governments. In addition, the member states of the ESA will subsidize the rocket for up to €340 million annually in return for an 11% discount on launches.
panick21_ 2y ago
Lol, how delusional. ArianeGroup literally just got 5 billion $ plus use of lots of tax payer subsidized infrastructure. That is 4 billion $ more then SpaceX ever got for development of Falcon 9. Falcon 9 got an old shitty broken down launch sites they had rebuild, ArianeGroup got a whole new built launch site for free. But feel free to live in fantasy land. > It’s not a like for like comparison especially give SpaceX keeping its books private and giving no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost. Actual smart people and analyist firms have done a lot of work on this. And literally every single expert on the topic disagrees with you. Its literally impossible to assume SpaceX is not saving money, because it would be insane for them to do 100+ launches if they couldn't do as cheaply as they claim. > Given Musks history of creative accounting quoting their PR numbers, the ones they pitch congress, as facts is naive in the extreme. No idea what you are talking about. All SpaceX contracts with the government a fixed cost. What they actually cost doesn't matter, if SpaceX can't deliver, they pay it themselves. If the were constantly offering prices cheaper then they can do things for, they wouldn't exist. Its amazing the brain power it takes to believe that SpaceX is losing money on launches, losing money on development contracts, and is developing Starlink and Starship and is losing money on Starlink operations. But somehow they still exist because 'mmhhh they raised money'. Problem is we know how much money SpaceX raised, you can look it up. And we know what they get paid for their government contract. Their money raising isn't that crazy, in fact, its hard to believe that they have enough to work on Starlink and Starship at the same time. Other companies have spent far, more on things that are far less impressive. But somehow they did both at the same time while also developing human launch. Increasing launch rates. And taking on a number of other fixed price development contracts. And somehow they still exist. Anybody who actually studies these numbers come to the same conclusion. And those simply don't agree with you. Go and actually try to build a model and do the numbers yourself. You will prove yourself wrong. But of course you wont do that, because you were already to lazy to look up what all the space analysts already concluded. Better just keep repeating those anti-Musk talking points you found on twitter from people who wouldn't know what side of a rocket points up.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  > Problem is we know how much money SpaceX raised If they wanted to raise money without it becoming public, they could do so easily - for example using directors loans. A better way to guess their expenses is to look at how many employees they have. Lets call it 15,000. Lets put average pay at $150k/year after overheads and taxes. 96 launches in 2023. That puts the salary cost per launch at $23M/launch. It's a very rough figure because obviously some rocket parts are purchased, there are other overheads, and there are other revenues and costs from starlink etc.
ekianjo 2y ago
do you imagine the ESAs some kind of private actor? its paid by the taxpayers whether it makes money or not
jve 2y ago
> It’s not a like for like comparison especially give SpaceX keeping its books private and giving no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost. Elon in some interview was stating that Falcon architecture limits reusability to particular amount days so it is not _rapidly_ reusable in comparison to having Starship being catched by tower/reused rapidly. However mentioning merely days - that is surely pretty reusable and makes economical sense. https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=pK-tptp0XbmOeoWN&t=432 https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=pK-tptp0XbmOeoWN&t=432 > "... a couple days to get booster back. At least a few days to refurbish it for flight ..." In practice, wiki mentions 21 days as fastest turnaround for a single booster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters#Booster_1058 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b... - So that means bringing booster back with ship, refurbishing, putting on the new payload and launching again.
sandworm101 2y ago
There is more to SpaceX than just cost comparisons. SpaceX is a US company, meaning anyone wanting on the rocket has to submit to a host of space-related regulations and US national security policies. Some launches don't want to, or cannot, deal with such oversight. A doubling of launch costs seems huge, but operating satellites isn't cheap. Many launches may prefer the premium price if it means launching on a European rocket.
InTheArena 2y ago
Having followed the launch industry for 30 years, I can safely tell you that this is the exact line that every competitor (save RocketLabs and the startups fueled by the SpaceX diaspora of engineers) says whenever they are trying to justify their legacy wasteful rockets. Even Rocketlab's CEO had to "eat his hat" when he finally realized that the cost difference was real, that reusability was here to stay, and they had to develop a direct competitor to SpaceX. SpaceX provides a per-seat, per-launch cost, not a direct government subsidy - That would be ULA. ULA was literally a direct mechanism for transferring tax revenue to large multi-national defense companies to procure "independent access to space" (sound familiar?). They do use (and pay for and lease) NASA and Air Force facilities - but in America, airports are government institutions as well, that are explicitly leased out to airlines. Reuse of NASA's unused resources, rather than destroying them (or paying for the upkeep) after the shuttle program, was an explicit political decision. So why isn't SpaceX cheaper? They have kept prices high (but still lower than everyone else) to help fund Starlink. The fact that they can do so is reflective of Falcon's costs. Reusability is real. Ariane 6 is nothing more then the ULAification of Arianespace.
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  Given that ULA historically purchased engines from Russia, are you suggesting that it was a direct mechanism for transferring tax revenue to Russia companies?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Indirect through ULA, but yes; it's not like Russia is in an alien dimension. Trading with it was fine, at least until recently.
    - dmd 2y ago
      And for anyone who wants to read about Russia in an alien dimension, I can't recommend highly enough Charles Stross's "Merchant Princes" and "Empire Games" series!
  - jjoonathan 2y ago
fallingknife 2y ago
You don't actually believe that a rocket that is thrown away every launch could possibly be cost competitive with one that can be reused 20 times, do you?
- rbanffy 2y ago
  A rocket that's thrown away was cheaper per flight than the shuttles, which were only partly discarded. It all depends on how much does it cost to build vs refurbish. Falcon 9 was designed to be easily refurbished and Ariane 6 was designed to be cheap to build. Also, launch campaign costs are not neglectable - moving the parts around, fueling, testing, and so on, are expensive. Their next-gen ones should be reusable, and share a lot of design with the Falcon 9 family. Methalox might next, as it's very promising, but the RP1 supply chain is well established.
  - nordsieck 2y ago
    > A rocket that's thrown away was cheaper per flight than the shuttles, which were only partly discarded. It all depends on how much does it cost to build vs refurbish. Falcon 9 was designed to be easily refurbished and Ariane 6 was designed to be cheap to build. It's not just that the Shuttle was expensive to refurbish. It was also very expensive to build. Whereas Falcon 9 is much less expensive to build new than Ariane 6. Ariane 6 was designed to be cheaper to build (cheaper than Ariane 5, that is).
    - TMWNN 2y ago
      >Whereas Falcon 9 is much less expensive to build new than Ariane 6. For context, my understanding is that SpaceX builds one new Falcon 9 upper stage (not reused) every day. I doubt there is another entity on earth building a new rocket every month. SpaceX has a large fleet of Falcon 9 reusable boosters, but still needs to build one every now and then.
      - nordsieck 2y ago
        > For context, my understanding is that SpaceX builds one new Falcon 9 upper stage (not reused) every day. Probably not quite that often. They're aiming to launch ~150 this year (although with the recent RUD, that'll be pretty tough). But yeah - 1 every other day is still very impressive.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
> massive taxpayer support When the Forest Service buys a truck from Ford do you also call that "taxpayer support"? The government buys stuff from SpaceX, it hasn't directly subsidized SpaceX for years. The government buys from the lowest bidder, which is almost always SpaceX. For example, NASA estimated that it would have to pay $1.5B to deorbit the ISS. After tender, SpaceX bid and won with an $843M bid. Who is subsidizing who here? > uses facilities built by the military and NASA. And for which it pays quite dearly for, on the order of $1M per launch. It's quite clear from Rocket Lab's books that operating their own launch facility is far cheaper than using the Space Force's or NASA's. > creative accounting quoting their PR numbers, To win their contracts, SpaceX has had to open their books to both the Space Force and NASA. It's one thing to lie to the press in a tweet, it's quite another to lie to the military in audited books. The press may be gullible, but army accountants are not incompetent and the consequences for lying to the military are not minor. SpaceX's books are not open, but the amount they receive from the government is very public. It's quite obvious that SpaceX is highly profitable. They receive well under $2B from the government each year, they sell a couple dozen other rocket launches to others for ~$70M apiece, have not raised money for over 18 months, have a payroll approaching $1B per year and are quite obviously sinking multiple billions each year into Starship and Starlink. The only way the numbers add up is if Starlink is ridiculously cheap to build and Falcon is ridiculously cheap to launch.
- realityking 2y ago
  > The government buys from the lowest bidder To my knowledge, in the case of NASA’s launch contracts, only US companies are allowed to bid on these. It’s quite understandable that Europe would like to keep domestic capabilities the same way NASA aims to maintain the US’ domestic capabilities.
  - TMWNN 2y ago
    >To my knowledge, in the case of NASA’s launch contracts, only US companies are allowed to bid on these. Not true. One example: <https://www.yahoo.com/news/ariane-5-rocket-delivers-satellites-022700144.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/ariane-5-rocket-delivers-satellit...>
dotnet00 2y ago
It's sad seeing this delusional take despite all the evidence to the contrary.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support and uses facilities built by the military and NASA So does ArianeSpace [1]. (It’s majority owned by the French state. EDIT: It’s not.) > no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost Refurb rates and turnaround times for Falcon 9 first stages are publicly documented [2]. Refurb costs are more opaque, but they’d have to be multiples of what SpaceX charges to approach Ariane 6’s cost projections. Ariane 6 is obsolete on arrival; ArianeSpace’s CEO admitted as much in asking the ESA to fund a reusable heavy booster like Falcon Heavy [3]. [1] https://www.space.com/europe-ariane-6-rocket-debut-launch https://www.space.com/europe-ariane-6-rocket-debut-launch [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b... [3] https://www.illdefined.space/arianespace-the-only-fish-in-the/ https://www.illdefined.space/arianespace-the-only-fish-in-th...

ddalex 2y ago
If I would be begging for new development money from the parent org after just launching a new product, I would also say that the new product is obsolete and we need to work on a replacement ASAP... especially in a pork-barrel org
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > I would also say that the new product is obsolete and we need to work on a replacement ASAP Sure. See the rest of the article. Everyone else has been saying the same for a decade. Note that the reusable heavy launcher he’s pitching is still aiming to deliver in a decade what SpaceX can do today. It’s not a strategic option, it’s a jobs programme.
  - ddalex 2y ago
    It is a strategic option because should SpaceX suddenly say no to launches, you have a backup. An expensive backup, but it's there. If ESA has 100 payloads, it can just book 90 of them on SpaceX and the mandated 10 of ArianeSpace (to keep the political pork happy), and lose only 10% efficiency (considering Ariane flight is twice as expensive as SpaceX). The problem is that ESA has no scalable payload economy, nobody has a good reason yet to launch that much mass. SpaceX is its own customer with Starlink for scalable launches, but ESA or NASA will not deliver 100 sattelites per year.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > should SpaceX suddenly say no to launches, you have a backup. An expensive backup, but it's there It's not a functional back-up. Not for any commercial use case relevant outside the military. If all you want is a back-up for military launches, the Ariane 5ME was a better, cheaper option that could have bridged the gap to a competitive reusable [1]. The billions of dollars wasted on Ariane 6 would have put Europe into the running for a competitive launch vehicle in the 2030s. Instead, we have Arianespace's CEO pitching another boondoggle to ensure Europe has a Falcon Heavy by the 2030s. So yes, having 10% launch capability is better than zero. But that 10% could have been bought for much cheaper. And saying 90% of your space industry is subject to foreign control versus 100% is a bit milquetoast, particularly when the alternative would have been R&D to bring that down to e.g. 50%. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5#Ariane_5_ME https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5#Ariane_5_ME
- 627467 2y ago
  that's a marginal improvement in attitude than previous Arianespace leaders: > "Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket which we can use ten times—we would build exactly one rocket per year. That makes no sense. I cannot tell my teams: 'Goodbye, see you next year!'" https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-frustrated-with-spacex-for-driving-down-launch-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/ariane-chief-seems-f...
  - sgu999 2y ago
    They must have poached him from the consumer electronics industry... Thanks for sharing this ridiculous statement. I remember one of the execs of ArianeSpace or ESA just a couple years ago stating on radio with much confidence that SpaceX would never manage to reuse a rocket.
littlestymaar 2y ago
> So does ArianeSpace [1]. (It’s majority owned by the French state.) True, but the EU has tight rules about government subsidies (TFEU art. 107-109) which don't have equivalent in the US. > Ariane 6 is obsolete on arrival; ArianeSpace’s CEO admitted as much in asking the ESA to fund a reusable heavy booster like Falcon Heavy [3]. This is true though.
- Cipater 2y ago
  >True, but the EU has tight rules about government subsidies (TFEU art. 107-109) which don't have equivalent in the US. ESA member states contributed €2.815 billion for the development of Ariane 6. Industry contributed €400 million. Additionally, the member states have agreed to subsidize the Ariane 6 to the tune of €340 million annually.
  - Angostura 2y ago
    Where does SpaceX get its development funding from?
    - yokem55 2y ago
      They've had multiple private VC rounds. They also have had several milestone based development contracts from the government to develop capabilities (iss cargo and crew mainly) while charging the government less to do that dev work then their competitors bid.
      - basementcat 2y ago
        Several of the investment rounds included participation from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Several of the investment rounds included participation from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm Not a significant source of capital. NASA COTS was Hawthorne’s public-money shot in the arm.
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qwytw 2y ago
> It’s majority owned by the French state Is that really true? I thought it was owned 50:50 by Safran and Airbus which are both publicly traded companies. ~25% of Airbus is owned by France, Germany and Spain. France owes ~11% of Safran. So France seems to own only ~10% of ArianeSpace
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  You’re correct—thank you. I missed CNES transferring its shares to Safran [1]. [1] https://www.arianespace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Corporate-brochure-EN-Feb2016.pdf https://www.arianespace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Corpo...

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Xixi 2y ago

Ariane 6 is quite heavily subsidized, with ArianeGroup getting €340M per year to operate it [1]. With an expected 10 launches per year, that's about €34M/launch. But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter: Europe needs to be able to put its own military satellites (or anything else critical) up there. Military satellites sold to third party countries also won't launch themselves... [1] https://europeanspaceflight.com/arianegroup-to-receive-e340m-per-year-to-operate-ariane-6/ https://europeanspaceflight.com/arianegroup-to-receive-e340m...

Rinzler89 2y ago
>Ariane 6 is quite heavily subsidized All major aerospace companies and projects are heavily subsidized in every country otherwise they would never survive or even be born. Like how much profit did NASA make over its lifetime?
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  NASA is a government agency though, so it doesn't have profit generation as its target. And that's fine, neither does the US army or any other government branch except for the tax office.
- ambicapter 2y ago
  Right? At a certain point, governments are the only entities that can afford to send things to space. "Highly-subsidized" here just means "government is 99% of company's market base".
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    That certain point is in the past. Today, all sorts of private entities send things into space. As launch gets cheaper, private activities in space will dominate, if they don't already.
londons_explore 2y ago
> But in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter: Europe needs to be able to put its own military satellites (or anything else critical) up there. Military satellites sold to third party countries also won't launch themselves... I'm very surprised the EU and the USA and SpaceX didn't work out a deal to buy a certain number of F9's to be launched and operated from the EU. The EU would pay a (vey high) price to buy outright the rockets, and would agree not to develop a competing rocket design in the next 20 yrs.

hoseja 2y ago

Massive taxpayer support for such frivolous projects as the first and only global broadband (battlefield capable) communication system and the only working american human-rated launcher, both for quarter the cost the next guy would like to charge. Truly, shameless leeches.

Cipater 2y ago

>SpaceX benefits from massive taxpayer support Ariane 6 was funded by European taxpayers to the tune of €2.815 billion. >and uses facilities built by the military and NASA. Ariane is launched from the Guiana Space Centre which is owned and operated by the ESA. Since you haven't familiarised yourself with the topic, ESA is the European Space Agency and is owned by 22 European governments. In addition, the member states of the ESA will subsidize the rocket for up to €340 million annually in return for an 11% discount on launches.

panick21_ 2y ago

Lol, how delusional. ArianeGroup literally just got 5 billion $ plus use of lots of tax payer subsidized infrastructure. That is 4 billion $ more then SpaceX ever got for development of Falcon 9. Falcon 9 got an old shitty broken down launch sites they had rebuild, ArianeGroup got a whole new built launch site for free. But feel free to live in fantasy land. > It’s not a like for like comparison especially give SpaceX keeping its books private and giving no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost. Actual smart people and analyist firms have done a lot of work on this. And literally every single expert on the topic disagrees with you. Its literally impossible to assume SpaceX is not saving money, because it would be insane for them to do 100+ launches if they couldn't do as cheaply as they claim. > Given Musks history of creative accounting quoting their PR numbers, the ones they pitch congress, as facts is naive in the extreme. No idea what you are talking about. All SpaceX contracts with the government a fixed cost. What they actually cost doesn't matter, if SpaceX can't deliver, they pay it themselves. If the were constantly offering prices cheaper then they can do things for, they wouldn't exist. Its amazing the brain power it takes to believe that SpaceX is losing money on launches, losing money on development contracts, and is developing Starlink and Starship and is losing money on Starlink operations. But somehow they still exist because 'mmhhh they raised money'. Problem is we know how much money SpaceX raised, you can look it up. And we know what they get paid for their government contract. Their money raising isn't that crazy, in fact, its hard to believe that they have enough to work on Starlink and Starship at the same time. Other companies have spent far, more on things that are far less impressive. But somehow they did both at the same time while also developing human launch. Increasing launch rates. And taking on a number of other fixed price development contracts. And somehow they still exist. Anybody who actually studies these numbers come to the same conclusion. And those simply don't agree with you. Go and actually try to build a model and do the numbers yourself. You will prove yourself wrong. But of course you wont do that, because you were already to lazy to look up what all the space analysts already concluded. Better just keep repeating those anti-Musk talking points you found on twitter from people who wouldn't know what side of a rocket points up.

londons_explore 2y ago
> Problem is we know how much money SpaceX raised If they wanted to raise money without it becoming public, they could do so easily - for example using directors loans. A better way to guess their expenses is to look at how many employees they have. Lets call it 15,000. Lets put average pay at $150k/year after overheads and taxes. 96 launches in 2023. That puts the salary cost per launch at $23M/launch. It's a very rough figure because obviously some rocket parts are purchased, there are other overheads, and there are other revenues and costs from starlink etc.

ekianjo 2y ago

do you imagine the ESAs some kind of private actor? its paid by the taxpayers whether it makes money or not

jve 2y ago

> It’s not a like for like comparison especially give SpaceX keeping its books private and giving no clear public indication of how reusable its rockets really are or their refurb cost. Elon in some interview was stating that Falcon architecture limits reusability to particular amount days so it is not _rapidly_ reusable in comparison to having Starship being catched by tower/reused rapidly. However mentioning merely days - that is surely pretty reusable and makes economical sense. https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=pK-tptp0XbmOeoWN&t=432 https://youtu.be/aFqjoCbZ4ik?si=pK-tptp0XbmOeoWN&t=432 > "... a couple days to get booster back. At least a few days to refurbish it for flight ..." In practice, wiki mentions 21 days as fastest turnaround for a single booster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters#Booster_1058 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b... - So that means bringing booster back with ship, refurbishing, putting on the new payload and launching again.

sandworm101 2y ago

There is more to SpaceX than just cost comparisons. SpaceX is a US company, meaning anyone wanting on the rocket has to submit to a host of space-related regulations and US national security policies. Some launches don't want to, or cannot, deal with such oversight. A doubling of launch costs seems huge, but operating satellites isn't cheap. Many launches may prefer the premium price if it means launching on a European rocket.

InTheArena 2y ago

Having followed the launch industry for 30 years, I can safely tell you that this is the exact line that every competitor (save RocketLabs and the startups fueled by the SpaceX diaspora of engineers) says whenever they are trying to justify their legacy wasteful rockets. Even Rocketlab's CEO had to "eat his hat" when he finally realized that the cost difference was real, that reusability was here to stay, and they had to develop a direct competitor to SpaceX. SpaceX provides a per-seat, per-launch cost, not a direct government subsidy - That would be ULA. ULA was literally a direct mechanism for transferring tax revenue to large multi-national defense companies to procure "independent access to space" (sound familiar?). They do use (and pay for and lease) NASA and Air Force facilities - but in America, airports are government institutions as well, that are explicitly leased out to airlines. Reuse of NASA's unused resources, rather than destroying them (or paying for the upkeep) after the shuttle program, was an explicit political decision. So why isn't SpaceX cheaper? They have kept prices high (but still lower than everyone else) to help fund Starlink. The fact that they can do so is reflective of Falcon's costs. Reusability is real. Ariane 6 is nothing more then the ULAification of Arianespace.

sidewndr46 2y ago
Given that ULA historically purchased engines from Russia, are you suggesting that it was a direct mechanism for transferring tax revenue to Russia companies?
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Indirect through ULA, but yes; it's not like Russia is in an alien dimension. Trading with it was fine, at least until recently.
  - dmd 2y ago
    And for anyone who wants to read about Russia in an alien dimension, I can't recommend highly enough Charles Stross's "Merchant Princes" and "Empire Games" series!
- jjoonathan 2y ago

fallingknife 2y ago

You don't actually believe that a rocket that is thrown away every launch could possibly be cost competitive with one that can be reused 20 times, do you?

rbanffy 2y ago
A rocket that's thrown away was cheaper per flight than the shuttles, which were only partly discarded. It all depends on how much does it cost to build vs refurbish. Falcon 9 was designed to be easily refurbished and Ariane 6 was designed to be cheap to build. Also, launch campaign costs are not neglectable - moving the parts around, fueling, testing, and so on, are expensive. Their next-gen ones should be reusable, and share a lot of design with the Falcon 9 family. Methalox might next, as it's very promising, but the RP1 supply chain is well established.
- nordsieck 2y ago
  > A rocket that's thrown away was cheaper per flight than the shuttles, which were only partly discarded. It all depends on how much does it cost to build vs refurbish. Falcon 9 was designed to be easily refurbished and Ariane 6 was designed to be cheap to build. It's not just that the Shuttle was expensive to refurbish. It was also very expensive to build. Whereas Falcon 9 is much less expensive to build new than Ariane 6. Ariane 6 was designed to be cheaper to build (cheaper than Ariane 5, that is).
  - TMWNN 2y ago
    >Whereas Falcon 9 is much less expensive to build new than Ariane 6. For context, my understanding is that SpaceX builds one new Falcon 9 upper stage (not reused) every day. I doubt there is another entity on earth building a new rocket every month. SpaceX has a large fleet of Falcon 9 reusable boosters, but still needs to build one every now and then.
    - nordsieck 2y ago
      > For context, my understanding is that SpaceX builds one new Falcon 9 upper stage (not reused) every day. Probably not quite that often. They're aiming to launch ~150 this year (although with the recent RUD, that'll be pretty tough). But yeah - 1 every other day is still very impressive.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

> massive taxpayer support When the Forest Service buys a truck from Ford do you also call that "taxpayer support"? The government buys stuff from SpaceX, it hasn't directly subsidized SpaceX for years. The government buys from the lowest bidder, which is almost always SpaceX. For example, NASA estimated that it would have to pay $1.5B to deorbit the ISS. After tender, SpaceX bid and won with an $843M bid. Who is subsidizing who here? > uses facilities built by the military and NASA. And for which it pays quite dearly for, on the order of $1M per launch. It's quite clear from Rocket Lab's books that operating their own launch facility is far cheaper than using the Space Force's or NASA's. > creative accounting quoting their PR numbers, To win their contracts, SpaceX has had to open their books to both the Space Force and NASA. It's one thing to lie to the press in a tweet, it's quite another to lie to the military in audited books. The press may be gullible, but army accountants are not incompetent and the consequences for lying to the military are not minor. SpaceX's books are not open, but the amount they receive from the government is very public. It's quite obvious that SpaceX is highly profitable. They receive well under $2B from the government each year, they sell a couple dozen other rocket launches to others for ~$70M apiece, have not raised money for over 18 months, have a payroll approaching $1B per year and are quite obviously sinking multiple billions each year into Starship and Starlink. The only way the numbers add up is if Starlink is ridiculously cheap to build and Falcon is ridiculously cheap to launch.

realityking 2y ago
> The government buys from the lowest bidder To my knowledge, in the case of NASA’s launch contracts, only US companies are allowed to bid on these. It’s quite understandable that Europe would like to keep domestic capabilities the same way NASA aims to maintain the US’ domestic capabilities.
- TMWNN 2y ago
  >To my knowledge, in the case of NASA’s launch contracts, only US companies are allowed to bid on these. Not true. One example: <https://www.yahoo.com/news/ariane-5-rocket-delivers-satellites-022700144.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/ariane-5-rocket-delivers-satellit...>

dotnet00 2y ago

It's sad seeing this delusional take despite all the evidence to the contrary.