It is not possible to do a fair comparison of launch costs between Falcon 9 and other platforms without knowing the true cost of Falcon 9 launches.
I don't know why you're so obsessed with cost. The only thing that matters when it comes to commercial providers is price. And SpaceX, (as far as I can tell) stands alone among the medium-heavy lift providers by providing a price directly on their website.
Of course, for government launches the government typically wants extra services, which does boost the prices different levels for different missions (I think the Europa Clipper mission is particularly expensive for example). But all of those missions are competitively bid, and SpaceX tends to be the low price bidder, so those extra fees seem like they're probably pretty reasonable.
https://spacenews.com/starlink-may-account-for-up-to-40-of-s...
The documents WSJ viewed are for SpaceX as a whole, not "SpaceX's launcher division". Even if the launcher division charged the Starlink division 9000 megazillion dollars per launch, that would be exactly balanced by the Starlink division having to book 9000 megazillion dollars of expense per launch.
Again, according to the documents WSJ viewed, SpaceX overall has achieved profitability. That's a major accomplishment given it being by far the lowest-cost launch provider in the world.
I don't think you understood what I wrote. GP claimed "SpaceX is profitable, so they're not pricing below cost", but the bulk of SpaceX's revenue can be attributed to the company owner transferring his money around.
Your comment is so far off it reads as something outputted by a poor machine learning model.
My point is that even if SpaceX books Starlink launches as revenue,[1] it would still have to be accounted for as an expense on Starlink's side, so SpaceX's overall bottom line would not change. If SpaceX's confidential internal financials show that SpaceX has achieved profitability then, yes, that indicates that SpaceX is not pricing its launches below cost.
>Your comment is so far off it reads as something outputted by a poor machine learning model.
Sorry, not my fault that you can't comprehend the fact that revenue can't come out of nowhere. It has to always be balanced by expense, and this isn't some magic way for Musk to generate "fake profits".
[1] A fairly common business practice, in and of itself. When an Apple employee receives a new Apple computer for use at work, that computer is booked as revenue for Apple; after all, Apple is acting as a customer for a product, albeit its own. The division that employee works for in turns records the price of that computer as an expense. The revenue amount is going to be lower than what an outside customer would pay—basically, Apple as seller will charge Apple as customer zero markup—but some revenue will be recorded all the same.
1. As far as I know, no one has presented any evidence that SpaceX sells Falcon 9/H launches for less than cost. ArianeSpace used to really talk up this point, but even they've mostly given up.
2. I'm not really sure why it matters. If SpaceX can sell for less than cost at their current volume, well... good for the tax payers - we're getting a deal.
> Elon loves to do this btw.
Really? I thought Tesla was known for it's high margins? I don't think any of Elon's other businesses are public.
At the cost of killing all other competitors and letting SpaceX monopolize so we are stuck with whatever quotes from SpaceX?
1. Are you suggesting that SpaceX will bankrupt Japan (HIII), India (GSLV/PSLV), and Europe (Ariane 6)? That seems unlikely to me.
2. There's very little evidence that SpaceX will jack up prices when they're a monopoly. I mean, they're a defacto monopoly right now (in a limited sense) with ULA transitioning to Vulcan, and ArianeGroup transitioning to Ariane 6. And their prices haven't budged.
3. The DoD (as part of NSSL) and NASA work very hard to split large contracts between multiple launch providers - effectively ensuring that there is no monopoly in US medium-heavy launch providers.
If anything SpaceX has lead to an explosive increase in competition.
This can and is considered predatory pricing, which is a criminal offense in some jurisdictions.
SpaceX has shown these numbers to investors and have received money on good valuation. If not even there core buissness was profitable why would anybody invest in Starship?
The argument that SpaceX subsudizes their launch prices is just a nonsense argument that doesnt hold up to study.
These companies will lose billions for years with this single intention.
The true cost minus the listed price adjusted for years of interest and extremely high VCreturns are all useful numbers to know because that adjusted by a risk multiple will tell you how much wealth the investors are expecting the monopolization to transfer from the taxpayer to their pockets.
1. SpaceX will never have a monopoly over launch because it's competing with lots of governments who will never give up their rocket programs. ArianeGroup, Japan/Mitsubishi, Russia, China, and India all have active launch programs (although Russia and China are isolated right now).
2. There are a truly stupid number of startups trying to compete for a slice of the launch pie. Most of them are in the small-lift launch segment for some reason, even though it's probably impossible to run a profitable rocket launch business in that segment of the market. But there are enough companies that aspire to launch larger rockets that SpaceX needs to be on its toes.
Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and Relativity are probably the main future competitors to SpaceX. And both Rocket Lab and Relativity have talked up prices that are equal to or lower than what SpaceX is currently offering.
3. The DoD and NASA are actively working to prevent SpaceX from forming a monopoly in the US market.
This whole discussion is centered around cost. The only argument presented in favor of paying SpaceX for launches is launch cost.
If it wasn't for costx why would an org like NASA even consider delegating a critical part of their mission to a third party?
Its just a convieniant attack on SpaceX because they are private. It has no bases in reality.