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The schadenfreude is strong here but it’s hard to argue with results. By treating space launches as a process to refine through iteration (so the more the bette

The schadenfreude is strong here but it’s hard to argue with results. By treating space launches as a process to refine through iteration (so the more the better) they’ve come to dominate the market. It’s also a process where others don’t gain the benefit of those iterations, there’s no new tech innovations to base your own launch vehicle on, just lots and lots of internal knowledge. It’s worrying to have a capacity like this so concentrated in one company (whatever the leanings of the figurehead) but hard to see how that changes unless others start using the same methodology

HenryBemis 2y ago
> worrying to have a capacity like this so concentrated in one company If it wasn't US spending their precious $$$$ on this (Elon says that in the end of they day these are ICBM's going to space), none of this would have happened. I think that this deal "US gets super-duper ICBMs" and "Elon takes us to space" is a great deal. I don't think any company's wallet can afford this, and Russia/China are decades away to do this on their own. Sharing technology is (so far) out of the questions because of the certain weapon-isation of the tech. So for the next few decades it is Elon or nothing.
- chneu 2y ago
  I think you're really discounting China. They have the resources, motivation, and the track record to fast track this. They've already landed rovers and have their own space station. They can fail faster than the US can succeed because of sheer size.
spwa4 2y ago
But ... Elon Musk has never once "come to dominate the market". He's always worked to figure out how to get government to give him ever larger amounts of money. He's built it up to the point where he gets close to 9 million USD per day from the US government (that's a stat only from his public companies. It doesn't include starlink military spending and the military part of SpaceX). Elon Musk's companies are something like Northrop Grumman/Lockheed Martin v2.0, not market-based enterprises, which they never were. Tesla: cheating to make electric cars affordable, not by better engineering (in fact arguably way worse engineering), but by having the government pay (initially) 8000 out of a 45000 car, or close to 20%. Then continue by attempting, and failing spectacularly in an almost comical manner, to monopolize the battery market. SpaceX: take a fundamentally bad business idea (there's plenty of private space launch attempts, but even the best go bankrupt), by ... getting the government to pay for space launches, in what is a very very bad deal (the government MUST have space launch capabilities. So it can never stop developing Boeing SLS. Therefore what is paid to SpaceX is paid ON TOP of what we pay to SLS, and is NOT a better alternative (as Musk screams), and so not any kind of saving. We don't have the numbers, because SpaceX is private, but all other companies trying it are 10x or 100x removed from profitability. Why would SpaceX, even if it has a 10x cost advantage, survive? And it is very hard to believe it's cost advantage is more than 2x or 3x if it exists at all) Starlink: this has been tried, and tried and tried again. It just isn't profitable. SpaceX LEO satellites need to be replaced, 7000 satellites, every 5 years. That's 1400 satellites per year, or about 40 launches per year (you can only launch satellites together that go into the same orbit with very few exceptions), at a (subsidized by the government) cost of 70 million per launch. OPERATING (not building) SpaceX costs 2.1 billion dollars per year, not counting personnel, actual data transmission and uplinks, development of satellites and terminals. That's a minimum. The total market for internet in rural areas worldwide is ... about 300 million. The only real market for Starlink is military, and that means Europe, Russia, China, ... can never use Starlink. And even the US can't rely on it for several reasons (it's got a huge target painted over it's satellites and you can bet your firstborn Russia and China and Japan and ... have hundreds of experts working on destroying Starlink quickly. Hell, I bet the US has people working on that, even under Trump, just in case) Explains a lot of why mr. Musk is so desperate to get a large amount of control over the government doesn't it? Btw: does it really need to be stated that 1) every billionnaire is a financial engineer, finding holes in government tax policy, and if they don't admit this, they're lying. 2) mr. Musk's entire empire is utterly dependent on government spending. Totally. 100% (because all these companies would go bankrupt without government money, they wouldn't lose 10% of their income. They'd be gone). Therefore the idea that Musk wants to cut government spending is a bit ...
- maxglute 2y ago
  TBH if Musk is truely fixated with Mars then even 100 billion $$$ global commercial empire across multiple sectors wasn't going to finance it. The only play for trillions for Mars is to insinuate way into government largesse, and there's only one gov who can both afford to and willing (or dumb enough) to play. And even for US gov it's a squeeze... billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money... if Musk wants trillions no wonder he's wants to cut billions elsewhere.
- TMWNN 2y ago
  >SpaceX: take a fundamentally bad business idea (there's plenty of private space launch attempts, but even the best go bankrupt), by ... getting the government to pay for space launches, in what is a very very bad deal (the government MUST have space launch capabilities. So it can never stop developing Boeing SLS. Therefore what is paid to SpaceX is paid ON TOP of what we pay to SLS, and is NOT a better alternative (as Musk screams), and so not any kind of saving. Sorry to interrupt your nonsense, but Biden's NASA administrator Bill Nelson quoted a member of the Joint Chiefs as telling him that SpaceX had saved the US government $40 billion for just launching military payloads. <https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/05/did-spacex-really-save-taxpayers-40-billion/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/05/did-spacex-really-...>. On the civilian side, SpaceX saved NASA $2 billion for just one payload, Europa Clipper <https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/a-year-from-launch-the-europa-clipper-spacecraft-nears-finish-line/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/a-year-from-launch-the...>, so who knows how many billions more from other launches. >Starlink: this has been tried, and tried and tried again. It just isn't profitable. Two outside analysts estimate that Starlink became cash flow positive in 2024, with FCF hitting $2B in 2025. <https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growing-rapidly-as-it-faces-a-moment-of-promise-and-peril/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growin...>
  - spwa4 2y ago
    I explained why SpaceX is a bad deal for the US government. They have strategic reasons why they cannot be limited to SpaceX. Hence anything "saved" by a SpaceX launch is illusory: they can choose to pay for SLS ... or they can choose to pay for SLS AND for SpaceX. Which number will be bigger? The price of SpaceX launches doesn't even matter. Or in economic lingo: SpaceX launches aren't that much cheaper to the marginal cost of SLS, which is what matters. EVERY private space launch company beats SLS on price. Nothing special about SpaceX on that front. Who has the cheapest launch cost? This might be a surprise, but Russia does (about 50 million dollars). Yes Falcon can carry more and is more modern, but all rockets are different (and they do have big ones too), but you want cheapest? Russia is currently unbeatable, mostly because they do close to zero development at this point. Obviously, you can see the problem with using Russia too.

HenryBemis 2y ago

> worrying to have a capacity like this so concentrated in one company If it wasn't US spending their precious $$$$ on this (Elon says that in the end of they day these are ICBM's going to space), none of this would have happened. I think that this deal "US gets super-duper ICBMs" and "Elon takes us to space" is a great deal. I don't think any company's wallet can afford this, and Russia/China are decades away to do this on their own. Sharing technology is (so far) out of the questions because of the certain weapon-isation of the tech. So for the next few decades it is Elon or nothing.

chneu 2y ago
I think you're really discounting China. They have the resources, motivation, and the track record to fast track this. They've already landed rovers and have their own space station. They can fail faster than the US can succeed because of sheer size.

spwa4 2y ago

But ... Elon Musk has never once "come to dominate the market". He's always worked to figure out how to get government to give him ever larger amounts of money. He's built it up to the point where he gets close to 9 million USD per day from the US government (that's a stat only from his public companies. It doesn't include starlink military spending and the military part of SpaceX). Elon Musk's companies are something like Northrop Grumman/Lockheed Martin v2.0, not market-based enterprises, which they never were. Tesla: cheating to make electric cars affordable, not by better engineering (in fact arguably way worse engineering), but by having the government pay (initially) 8000 out of a 45000 car, or close to 20%. Then continue by attempting, and failing spectacularly in an almost comical manner, to monopolize the battery market. SpaceX: take a fundamentally bad business idea (there's plenty of private space launch attempts, but even the best go bankrupt), by ... getting the government to pay for space launches, in what is a very very bad deal (the government MUST have space launch capabilities. So it can never stop developing Boeing SLS. Therefore what is paid to SpaceX is paid ON TOP of what we pay to SLS, and is NOT a better alternative (as Musk screams), and so not any kind of saving. We don't have the numbers, because SpaceX is private, but all other companies trying it are 10x or 100x removed from profitability. Why would SpaceX, even if it has a 10x cost advantage, survive? And it is very hard to believe it's cost advantage is more than 2x or 3x if it exists at all) Starlink: this has been tried, and tried and tried again. It just isn't profitable. SpaceX LEO satellites need to be replaced, 7000 satellites, every 5 years. That's 1400 satellites per year, or about 40 launches per year (you can only launch satellites together that go into the same orbit with very few exceptions), at a (subsidized by the government) cost of 70 million per launch. OPERATING (not building) SpaceX costs 2.1 billion dollars per year, not counting personnel, actual data transmission and uplinks, development of satellites and terminals. That's a minimum. The total market for internet in rural areas worldwide is ... about 300 million. The only real market for Starlink is military, and that means Europe, Russia, China, ... can never use Starlink. And even the US can't rely on it for several reasons (it's got a huge target painted over it's satellites and you can bet your firstborn Russia and China and Japan and ... have hundreds of experts working on destroying Starlink quickly. Hell, I bet the US has people working on that, even under Trump, just in case) Explains a lot of why mr. Musk is so desperate to get a large amount of control over the government doesn't it? Btw: does it really need to be stated that 1) every billionnaire is a financial engineer, finding holes in government tax policy, and if they don't admit this, they're lying. 2) mr. Musk's entire empire is utterly dependent on government spending. Totally. 100% (because all these companies would go bankrupt without government money, they wouldn't lose 10% of their income. They'd be gone). Therefore the idea that Musk wants to cut government spending is a bit ...

maxglute 2y ago
TBH if Musk is truely fixated with Mars then even 100 billion $$$ global commercial empire across multiple sectors wasn't going to finance it. The only play for trillions for Mars is to insinuate way into government largesse, and there's only one gov who can both afford to and willing (or dumb enough) to play. And even for US gov it's a squeeze... billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money... if Musk wants trillions no wonder he's wants to cut billions elsewhere.
TMWNN 2y ago
>SpaceX: take a fundamentally bad business idea (there's plenty of private space launch attempts, but even the best go bankrupt), by ... getting the government to pay for space launches, in what is a very very bad deal (the government MUST have space launch capabilities. So it can never stop developing Boeing SLS. Therefore what is paid to SpaceX is paid ON TOP of what we pay to SLS, and is NOT a better alternative (as Musk screams), and so not any kind of saving. Sorry to interrupt your nonsense, but Biden's NASA administrator Bill Nelson quoted a member of the Joint Chiefs as telling him that SpaceX had saved the US government $40 billion for just launching military payloads. <https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/05/did-spacex-really-save-taxpayers-40-billion/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/05/did-spacex-really-...>. On the civilian side, SpaceX saved NASA $2 billion for just one payload, Europa Clipper <https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/a-year-from-launch-the-europa-clipper-spacecraft-nears-finish-line/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/a-year-from-launch-the...>, so who knows how many billions more from other launches. >Starlink: this has been tried, and tried and tried again. It just isn't profitable. Two outside analysts estimate that Starlink became cash flow positive in 2024, with FCF hitting $2B in 2025. <https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growing-rapidly-as-it-faces-a-moment-of-promise-and-peril/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growin...>
- spwa4 2y ago
  I explained why SpaceX is a bad deal for the US government. They have strategic reasons why they cannot be limited to SpaceX. Hence anything "saved" by a SpaceX launch is illusory: they can choose to pay for SLS ... or they can choose to pay for SLS AND for SpaceX. Which number will be bigger? The price of SpaceX launches doesn't even matter. Or in economic lingo: SpaceX launches aren't that much cheaper to the marginal cost of SLS, which is what matters. EVERY private space launch company beats SLS on price. Nothing special about SpaceX on that front. Who has the cheapest launch cost? This might be a surprise, but Russia does (about 50 million dollars). Yes Falcon can carry more and is more modern, but all rockets are different (and they do have big ones too), but you want cheapest? Russia is currently unbeatable, mostly because they do close to zero development at this point. Obviously, you can see the problem with using Russia too.