SpaceX will boost Hubble's orbit for free to extend its operations
twitter.com
twitter.com
> NASA and SpaceX signed an unfunded Space Act Agreement Thursday, Sept. 22, to study the feasibility of a SpaceX and Polaris Program idea to boost the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit with the Dragon spacecraft, at no cost to the government.
> There are no plans for NASA to conduct or fund a servicing mission or compete this opportunity; the study is designed to help the agency understand the commercial possibilities.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-spacex-to-stu...
(Submission title is: SpaceX will boost Hubble's orbit for free to extend its operations)
I couldn't find an estimate of just JWST's launch cost. Bundled with a couple other parts of the project, it was 700 million euros (https://www.planetary.org/articles/cost-of-the-jwst).
https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/tesla-ai-day-2022-elon-...
Development cost for additional Hubbles would be close to nil, so cost would be only reproducing it.
Presumably we don't need very many functional Hubbles, although competition for time on it probably is not slacking any.
Do they retrieve fairings? I know they had a boat to chase and catch them, and gave that up. They could make them float, with a beacon, and drive out and get them, and wash the salt off. I would think so, but back when they still chased them, I was viciously downvoted for suggesting that would be cheaper.
They raised a lot of money but that is not that much considering the mega projects of Starlink and Starship. The idea that they could also lose money on everything else just doesnt add up.
Also investors have insight into financials, what sane investors would give them money for Starship if the were losing money on Flacon flights.
Because it simply doesn't make sense. Their competition is Europe, China, India. They will not simply stop building rockets because SpaceX is cheap. In fact the opposite, all of them have massively increased their spending to also lower prices.
In addition, in the US, NASA and DoD will always support multiple providers.
And in addition to that the Bezos money pissing is not gone stop if SpaceX lowers prices.
So on the face of it that plan would be utter insanity. Literal stupidity beyond believe. No investor who spent even 5min looking at the Space industry would invest in SpaceX if they thought that was their strategy.
And again, they simple didn't get anywhere close to enough investment to run their core business at a loss AND at the same time make massive investments. It simply doesn't add up.
They only got large billions in investment once they had proven the feasibility of lowering launch cost threw re-usability. No expert in the field is now questioning this.
That's nice you think it's stupid but other companies have ran at a loss subsidized by investments
There's articles from 2018 saying their leaked documents show a loss
Its LITERALLY impossible for SpaceX to capture the US market. I don't know what you don't understand. ITS LITERALLY A LAW THAT REQUIRES THE DOD TO SOURCE FROM MULTIPLE COMPANIES. SpaceX could be free and other companies will still exist in the US.
In the international market (sometimes called free bid) however they are competing against all those I listed. And non of those are gone give up.
> That's nice you think it's stupid but other companies have ran at a loss subsidized by investments
Yes ok I agree that it exists. But simply because that strategy exists doesn't mean you can just supply it to every company ever who lowers prices.
And for SpaceX its simple not possible. It doesn't make sense. Literally no sense. And the number don't add up. If you look at how much SpaceX has raised, it just does not add up if you also assume the launch Falcon 9 at a loss.
> There's articles from 2018 saying their leaked documents show a loss
Yes of course because at that point they were in major development of major, major capital projects like Starship and Starlink. It was also before they got the money for the human flight from NASA, another major capital project.
And of course since then they have come a very, very long way in terms perfecting re-usability and operational efficiency and you can see that in their numbers.
It seems that you just somehow want to believe this despite not a single expert on the industry believing this is true. Despite you not having a shred of evidence to support it. And despite it being a strategy that makes absolutely no sense what so ever in the launch industry.
Arianespace accused them of the same thing as early as 2014 if I remember correctly and even then they were getting laughed at because even then, before re-usability its was a dumb take. Not even Arianespace now still claims this is true.