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No, in this case it is much more pragmatic. Elon has commented on this aspect himself. When he started he thought of just buying rockets and related equipment f

No, in this case it is much more pragmatic. Elon has commented on this aspect himself. When he started he thought of just buying rockets and related equipment from Russia on the cheap but quickly found the exuberant prices states want to charge. He then made a first order approximation of how much it’d cost to just manufacture things he needs and it was an order of magnitude lower - thus he bit the bullet and started doing just that. Had the states let him buy things at a fair price may be the controlling of the stack would not have happened.

schiffern 2y ago
Here's story as retold by (now retired) SpaceX engine chief Tom Mueller: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/is-spacex-changing-the-rocket-equation-132285884/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/is-spacex-... > Significantly, the Merlin engines—like roughly 80 percent of the components for Falcon and Dragon, including even the flight computers—are made in-house. That’s something SpaceX didn’t originally set out to do, but was driven to by suppliers’ high prices. Mueller recalls asking a vendor for an estimate on a particular engine valve. “They came back [requesting] like a year and a half in development and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just way out of whack. And we’re like, ‘No, we need it by this summer, for much, much less money.’ They go, ‘Good luck with that,’ and kind of smirked and left.” Mueller’s people made the valve themselves, and by summer they had qualified it for use with cryogenic propellants. > “That vendor, they iced us for a couple of months,” Mueller says, “and then they called us back: ‘Hey, we’re willing to do that valve. You guys want to talk about it?’ And we’re like, ‘No, we’re done.’ He goes, ‘What do you mean you’re done?’ ‘We qualified it. We’re done.’ And there was just silence at the end of the line. They were in shock.” That scenario has been repeated to the point where, Mueller says, “we passionately avoid space vendors.”
- jp42 2y ago
  here more such things from Dan Rasky (nasa scientist) about his experience with spacex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMLDAgDNOhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMLDAgDNOhk
- heisgone 2y ago
  I suspect one of the reason behind that is that the supplier is asked to provide a part that cost only a few thousands bucks, but could potentially blow a multi-million rocket. So, each part end up having a sort of implied insurance and over-the-top quality control, to avoid liability. When SpaceX build something itself, it can evaluate the proper risk of each part and doesn't need to add unnecessary markup.
  - eastbound 2y ago
    That’s s problem in classic microeconomics: The right price is anything between the marginal cost of manufacturing and the total price of the rocket minus $1. Every parts manufacturer tries to extract as much as possible from the leeway in the middle.
- patwolf 2y ago
  What made SpaceX capable of being able to design and build the valve themselves faster and cheaper than the vendor? It makes a good story, but I worry about other companies trying to emulate it when the economics of space vendors might be far different from other industries.
  - alright2565 2y ago
    I'm not sure if this applies to smaller parts like this, but traditional aerospace suppliers are allergic to iteration. Everything must work the first time. You can see this in how many rockets SpaceX has blown up vs. how many ULA has blown up. I imagine it's similar to what we see in software, where we see mega-waterfall projects delivered for the government cost way too much and still fail, and where tech companies & literal hobbyists can deliver higher quality software more quickly by avoiding an overbearing planning process.
  - ploxiln 2y ago
    https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  I work in medical devices and when I read such stories I often wonder how quickly we could develop things if we reexamined the company processes that have been developed over the last 30 years. Maybe everything we do is fine, but I suspect we do a lot of stuff very inefficiently.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Life-critical devices are generally subject to a lot of regulations. Regulations that were in many cases written in blood. However I suspect you're correct that there isn't much periodic, retrospective review of these regulations and whether they still make sense or can be simplified. Especially when there are overlapping or possibly contradictory regulations. We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. It would be nice to think that engineers and executives would never sacrifice human life for profit, but we know that some of them will. I also think about all the advice I read on this forum to "raise your rates" and "charge based on the value you deliver, not what your costs are." But when physical engineering companies take this approach, it's somehow just greed or complacency. Of course any potential client can just decide to hire their own staff and do the job in-house if your quote is viewed as unreasonable.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. We know much more about what happens with regulation: prohibitively expensive nuclear power and unbearably slow progress in simple medical devices. Opportunity cost is enormous here. > It would be nice to think that engineers and executives would never sacrifice human life for profit, but we know that some of them will. This is really simplistic. We wouldn't use anything if it cost what it cost to make it 100% safe. Everything has risks and prices.
      - rqtwteye 2y ago
        We also know what happens without any regulation: milk with lead added to make it look white, cars that kill their passengers when crashing, polluted rivers, polluted air and much more. We certainly need to constantly revisit things but without regulations our society wouldn’t be fun to live in.
andsoitis 2y ago
I think you and I are saying the same thing.
- nomdep 2y ago
  It doesn't look like that. You are saying it like it was a symptom of a mental disorder, while he is stating that is the most practical and logical decision.
dingaling 2y ago
As a benchmark, Aerojet will charge NASA between $70 and $110 million for each new-build RS-25 engine for Artemis. And that's a design that dates back to the 1970s and which flew as the SSME on the Shuttle. SpaceX builds all 33 engines on a Starship for that amount.

schiffern 2y ago

Here's story as retold by (now retired) SpaceX engine chief Tom Mueller: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/is-spacex-changing-the-rocket-equation-132285884/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/is-spacex-... > Significantly, the Merlin engines—like roughly 80 percent of the components for Falcon and Dragon, including even the flight computers—are made in-house. That’s something SpaceX didn’t originally set out to do, but was driven to by suppliers’ high prices. Mueller recalls asking a vendor for an estimate on a particular engine valve. “They came back [requesting] like a year and a half in development and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just way out of whack. And we’re like, ‘No, we need it by this summer, for much, much less money.’ They go, ‘Good luck with that,’ and kind of smirked and left.” Mueller’s people made the valve themselves, and by summer they had qualified it for use with cryogenic propellants. > “That vendor, they iced us for a couple of months,” Mueller says, “and then they called us back: ‘Hey, we’re willing to do that valve. You guys want to talk about it?’ And we’re like, ‘No, we’re done.’ He goes, ‘What do you mean you’re done?’ ‘We qualified it. We’re done.’ And there was just silence at the end of the line. They were in shock.” That scenario has been repeated to the point where, Mueller says, “we passionately avoid space vendors.”

jp42 2y ago
here more such things from Dan Rasky (nasa scientist) about his experience with spacex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMLDAgDNOhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMLDAgDNOhk
heisgone 2y ago
I suspect one of the reason behind that is that the supplier is asked to provide a part that cost only a few thousands bucks, but could potentially blow a multi-million rocket. So, each part end up having a sort of implied insurance and over-the-top quality control, to avoid liability. When SpaceX build something itself, it can evaluate the proper risk of each part and doesn't need to add unnecessary markup.
- eastbound 2y ago
  That’s s problem in classic microeconomics: The right price is anything between the marginal cost of manufacturing and the total price of the rocket minus $1. Every parts manufacturer tries to extract as much as possible from the leeway in the middle.
patwolf 2y ago
What made SpaceX capable of being able to design and build the valve themselves faster and cheaper than the vendor? It makes a good story, but I worry about other companies trying to emulate it when the economics of space vendors might be far different from other industries.
- alright2565 2y ago
  I'm not sure if this applies to smaller parts like this, but traditional aerospace suppliers are allergic to iteration. Everything must work the first time. You can see this in how many rockets SpaceX has blown up vs. how many ULA has blown up. I imagine it's similar to what we see in software, where we see mega-waterfall projects delivered for the government cost way too much and still fail, and where tech companies & literal hobbyists can deliver higher quality software more quickly by avoiding an overbearing planning process.
- ploxiln 2y ago
  https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
rqtwteye 2y ago
I work in medical devices and when I read such stories I often wonder how quickly we could develop things if we reexamined the company processes that have been developed over the last 30 years. Maybe everything we do is fine, but I suspect we do a lot of stuff very inefficiently.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Life-critical devices are generally subject to a lot of regulations. Regulations that were in many cases written in blood. However I suspect you're correct that there isn't much periodic, retrospective review of these regulations and whether they still make sense or can be simplified. Especially when there are overlapping or possibly contradictory regulations. We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. It would be nice to think that engineers and executives would never sacrifice human life for profit, but we know that some of them will. I also think about all the advice I read on this forum to "raise your rates" and "charge based on the value you deliver, not what your costs are." But when physical engineering companies take this approach, it's somehow just greed or complacency. Of course any potential client can just decide to hire their own staff and do the job in-house if your quote is viewed as unreasonable.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. We know much more about what happens with regulation: prohibitively expensive nuclear power and unbearably slow progress in simple medical devices. Opportunity cost is enormous here. > It would be nice to think that engineers and executives would never sacrifice human life for profit, but we know that some of them will. This is really simplistic. We wouldn't use anything if it cost what it cost to make it 100% safe. Everything has risks and prices.
    - rqtwteye 2y ago
      We also know what happens without any regulation: milk with lead added to make it look white, cars that kill their passengers when crashing, polluted rivers, polluted air and much more. We certainly need to constantly revisit things but without regulations our society wouldn’t be fun to live in.

andsoitis 2y ago

I think you and I are saying the same thing.

nomdep 2y ago
It doesn't look like that. You are saying it like it was a symptom of a mental disorder, while he is stating that is the most practical and logical decision.

dingaling 2y ago

As a benchmark, Aerojet will charge NASA between $70 and $110 million for each new-build RS-25 engine for Artemis. And that's a design that dates back to the 1970s and which flew as the SSME on the Shuttle. SpaceX builds all 33 engines on a Starship for that amount.