antlers
3309
I don’t think they intend to be profitable until the Martian colony is well-established.
They are borrowing lots of money to fund Starship/Super Heavy development.
They were snubbed in the last Air Force launch contract, but speculation is that is because the Air Force were sure they would be around anyway and so wanted to send their largesse to more vulnerable potential suppliers.
If Musk is right about Starship, he’ll be able to launch it for $2 million. That’s the advantage of full reusability; Falcon 9 is partially reusable, and costs ~$50 million to launch (and even at that price, SpaceX is cheaper than existing alternatives). At $2 million a launch, SpaceX would be able to make money launching passengers to orbit with a ticket price in the low five-figures. At that price there are millions of potential customers and things like space hotels become viable.
Of course, Musk has been very wrong about self-driving Teslas, so he might be wrong about Starship as well.
Successful static fire of Super Draco’s on Crewed Dragon today(this was the test that led to the explosion last spring). Now onto inflight abort test hopefully in a few weeks.
I know a lot about astrophysics and cosmology. In my expert opinion, the Universe is connected by a series of tubes.
jpinard
3314
Tired of Boeing grifting this country:
Menzo
3316
Gotta make up that lost revenue from the 737 Max somewhere.
Doesn’t really matter what Musk’s proposed price point is if he can’t deliver.
jpinard
3318
They’re charging way more than the Russians too. And the Russians were price gouging us.
SpaceX could fall apart as a company if something ontoward were to happen to Musk. Maybe people are worried about relying too heavily on one billionaire/figurehead?
RichVR
3320
I don’t think so. It is, after all, a huge corporation. The people who do the ship design and implementation are still there. As well as, I would think, a board of directors. It would survive, perhaps with less ready cash.
Boards on Musk companies tend to be pretty weaksauce. The Tesla board couldn’t even stop him tweeting in violation of the law.
antlers
3323
SpaceX has a very strong President/COO in Gwynne Shotwell who would do just fine if Musk were to disappear.
She’s been great at running the day to day business Of SpaceX but Musk is the visionary that drives stuff like Starlink and Starship.
Musk is part of the SpaceX “brand”. (Also, part of the Tesla “brand”.) The public (or the investors) may lose interest if the “brand” is diminished. I mean, none of us on Qt3 are ever going into Space. But Musk has personally given a lot of people the hope or dream that they may go into Space. (Especially when compared to Boeing or Lockheed or Roscosmos or whomever.)
Anyway, I will stop being Negative Nancy.
I think Musk is a great motivator more than anything. Smart people can really excel in their field but it usually takes a motivator/visionary like Musk, Steve Jobs etc. to encourage collaboration with people from different fields (hardware, software, design) to create something awesome for actual customers.
Is the jury still out on whether Apple “survived” Steve Jobs death? Last I heard they were doing pretty well.
As much as a “hero entrepreneur” brand can be grating I think I prefer a visionary individual with a consistent theme to the recent Google hivemind approach that seems to mostly be throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks. You might need a backup motivator when the original one leaves but that shouldn’t be too hard to find for companies with 1000+ employees. And if that fails it’s just one company and several other visionaries might start their own where the employees might find work instead.
So, the stuff that makes it money.
So, the stuff that may bankrupt it or expose it to the world’s largest reputational risk liability. (“Who took away the stars, grandma?”)
SpaceX never exists in the first place if it’s not for Musk. Not sure what all the snark is for.
Starlink really is an absolute goddamn nightmare. Here’s the group that are already up there ruining an observing run at the Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
Once there are more of these things (from Musk and from others) it’s going to render ground-based astronomy almost impossible.
