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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> the big bucks are in space activities not space transportation

This is an opinion, not a fact. They are presently in transportation. Moreover, the space mining and manufacturing pitch has been made (incorrectly) for at least forty years. I have yet to see a convincing business model for any of these activities, even assuming cheaper launch costs.

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Actually launch industry is minuscule compared to satellites ($5.5B for launch industry vs $13B only for satellite manufacturing)

Edit: and then of course there is the satellites services which the report estimates in hundreds of billions $.

[1] https://www.sia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/SIA-SSIR-2017...

42% is minuscule? They have reasonably comparable market caps considering the amount of time the industries have existed. The commercial launch industry really is in it's first/second decade (arguable depending on what you define as commercial, this field is radically changing), and you can trace satellite commercial use back decades to the 70's with GPS and telecom (the first satellite tv use was in 1978 for reference).

Of course satellite manufacturing is only a small part of the satellite industry. I updated comment to reflect that.

Even by their original figures, wouldn't it be 30%? 5.5B/(5.5B + 13B)?

The point is, to some people "miniscule" implies different orders of magnitude.

I'm talking about LEO activities right now. Satellite operators per year make way more than the satellite launch market is.

Lowering launch costs will dramatically reduce the value of stuff in orbit. It’s the brutal math that hammered the telecom sector through the 90’s and presents a major risk for the next few decades.

Ex: If you pay 1000$/lb to get something into orbit and your competitor waits 5 years to get better stuff into orbit at 500$/lb that means you need to lower prices while still paying back the same loans.

It doesn't work that way. If you paid 1k$/lb now and the competitor waited 5 years you got 5 years of profits which easily accound for 4 or 5 rocket launches on today's costs. Satellite operators make millions/day of operations.

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