SpaceX Data Shows Loss in 2015, Heavy Expectations for Nascent Internet Service
wsj.com
wsj.com
Space launches are a high-variability industry. Sometimes there's lots of demand, sometimes you lose the ability to launch for 4 months because of a minor accident (or $250m explosion...).
This internet service is a new customer who can smooth demand out. SpaceX sets a goal for launches for a year, and gives the internet company 20% of their launches. If they oversell, some internet launches get cancelled. If they undersell, the internet company buys extra. Either way, booster production remains smooth. Every other customer is afraid of using used boosters? No problem, watch SpaceX use them themselves.
And if the internet thing doesn't turn out to be profitable? Ah well, the capital that financed it probably came from outside anyways.
So like paying one credit card bill with another credit card. Right?
Space-X's problem is not lack of demand. Their problem is that they can't keep up with their launch backlog. Their latest stall in launches after the blowup on the pad last September cost them about $250 million. The Falcon Heavy is at least four years late. The Brownsville launch site slipped two years.
About half of those could be launched now if Space-X was ready. Some, like ISS resupply missions, are supposed to happen periodically. Most of the satellite launches are waiting on Space-X, not the payload. Space-X already lost Inmarsat, which will use ArianeSpace instead.
http://spacenews.com/inmarsat-shifts-satellite-from-spacex-t...
Inmarsat still has 2 launches on the SpaceX manifest.
Money quote: "Inmarsat is looking forward to continuing to work with SpaceX going forward," the company said in its statement.
The Russians can any day drop their margins and put SpaceX out of business. They have the tech and the track record that SpaceX will take another decade or two to match.
SpaceX is being propped up cause NASA, Boeing, Lockheed et al have become such dinosaurs that they can't do anything by themselves.
This is an argument I haven't heard before. Any sources I can read up on to learn more?
As for the 'tech', yes the Russians have a long and pretty good history with rocketry but SpaceX has technological edges as well.
Having said that, here - http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum13/topic2156/?PAGE... - is a table maintained by Russian space forum participant(s). You can dig for more original sources from there.
So - yes, I agree that the information sources are limited. But at least you can try to trace the original sources from posts there.
On the original question, I haven't seen a comparison of actual SpaceX launch prices with actual launch prices used by other launch providers, specifically Russian ones. With Russians it could be useful to check both "commercial" and "federal" launch prices, as the first are driven by market, while second are more driven by actual costs.
Can SpaceX prices be compared to Russian ones?
I.e. "federal" prices are likely subsidized. What's the point using them?
First if mentioned in John Clark's "Ignition!", where he says that the Russian approach to bigger payload isn't the technology, but just the size of the rocket - with same low-tech as something smaller. So, in other words, technological edges aren't always translating into lower costs in this industry.
Second is Russian's technological edges with kerosene liquid fuel engines. Technologies are well-optimized, including costs, and are the primary used ones for Russian space program. Not solid rockets, not hydrogen - and comparatively little hydrazin-based rockets, at least by the number of launches.
SpaceX is not being propped up, the get contract because they beat everybody else on price.
Nevertheless it's a widely circulated claim in certain groups.
The idea that "SpaceX beats everybody on price" unfortunately got little actual checks. Of course there is the claim, and some support for that, like rocket structure, engines - but not the actual comparisons. SpaceX does wonderful advancements - but just how wonderful and how do they compare with existing offerings on the whole range of parameters, including price, is rarely compared to what SpaceX actually proclaims.
Don't overestimate the cost of older technologies.
Yes and no. The have 6 boosters sitting around that no one is willing to use because they were previously flown. No one will take the risk of going first.
As well, SpaceX could meet that demand by increasing their size, but there is a risk that once their backlog is completed they'd need to scale down again. A customer like the internet service smooths that demand no matter the situation.
Edit: my point about smoothing demand remains though. If they can double their output without worrying about fluctuations in demand, they'll increase efficiency.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/5nqxs9/exclusive_pe...
The $22 some odd billion in operating income they're projecting, would likely make them among the couple dozen most profitable companies in the world (at that point).
I'd be very concerned that they're forecasting what they think they have to hit to get to Mars, rather than what's realistic. Getting even ten million satellite subscribers at $60 or $70 per month in eight years, will be an amazing accomplishment. More likely, unfortunately, is that SpaceX achieves a fraction of these figures by 2025 and struggles to figure out how to afford the push to Mars (NASA co-funding is the likely solution). This goal reminds me of the 500,000 sales goal by Tesla that's due in 24 months (they'll miss that target by at least half). Maybe SpaceX Internet will get to 40 million eventually - it's certainly possible - it'll take a lot longer than eight or nine years however.
> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
So what's the workaround? The web link doesn't work anymore.
I'm able to get this article but not others. I think they might be doing more cross-sectional A/B type tests along this line now, making different articles available open or closed to the google-referral-loophole. Maybe even different access to different IP blocks?
https://www.google.com/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/exclusiv...
It also seems disingenuous to compare spaceX's launch history with that of a 36 year old company (Arianespace)
Some of the struts they bought were 1/5 as strong as specced. I wouldn't call that an inspection failure.
Rain kills it, too.
Geostationary Orbit is 35,000km above the Earth. Light "only" travels at 300,000km per second. That's a minimum latency of ~246 ms per packet, once you go round-trip from Earth -> Satellite -> Earth again.
Remember that starting up a TCP connection is Syn -> Syn-Ack -> Ack, which means a minimum latency of 750ms before a TCP connection is established. You're well into seconds+ before you can view Google's homepage. I guess this part can be sped-up with a smarter satellite.
Anything above 200ms is damn near unplayable for video games IMO.
That's the minimum latency according to current laws of physics. If you lower the orbit below Geostationary, then life starts to get extremely complicated for the people down on the ground. You can't just point your dish in a particular direction in the sky, because the satellite would be moving.
If you had a neighborhood completely clear of trees, maybe you could program a mobile radar dish to rotate with the moving satellites as they move across the sky (Subsynchronous orbit). But this doesn't seem too applicable to most people's home situations.
Latency won't be an issue. Can't find any information on their plan to solve the second problem - but since they've announced the service already, I've got to believe they've come up with workable solutions.
[0]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/spacex...
Latency aim is hence 25-35ms.
>You can't just point your dish in a particular direction in the sky, because the satellite would be moving....
Plus these are low earth orbit, so the latency will be less than that of services like Xplorernet