Or is your argument that the "real" cost of this $1.6B SpaceX / Space Force contract is in fact closer to ~$16B or ~$160B after accounting for tax subsidies and investment fraud?
> People balk at the cost of large government in house projects like the manhattan project, well imagine that cost if the government had to pay contractor rates on that project instead of doing it in house.
If you were actually serious, and not a political shill then you wouldn't pick one random example without anything to compare it to. You are just making assertions based on literally nothing.
And if you knew something about SpaceX and NASA you would know that NASA own internal investigation suggested that actually NASA should be in the business of doing basic things that companies are perfectly good at doing.
The Manhatten project was something large and very new on the cutting edge of science. Launching rockets in the 1960s was that, it isn't anymore. Instead of the government doing everything, allow fair contracting and companies can compete on offering the government a cheap price.
> how these contracts usually are pricing in cost overruns
Yeah I mean governments don't have cost overruns, I mean the great leader said there wouldn't be any, so we know they can't exist.
I'm sure you've heard of trade secrets before
You can charge more or make higher margins at the market clearing price.
I thought everyone has done at least one semester of microeconomics at high school level, but the internet challenges my assumption frequently.
But, like, that's divergent from "This SpaceX contract is pure grift" that OP was not so subtly implying.
> You can never convince me profit is not a cost.
It is a cost, but with the cost you are getting something. And NASA (the US) as it happens literally got the best deal maybe in human history.
The US was literally sucking in space, their rockets were shit. Their human launch was shit. All their major space project were going to utter and complete shit and were literally an intersectional embarrassment. And btw the companies were still making profit, never in its history did NASA not primary work threw independent companies.
Then they bought things from SpaceX and yes SpaceX made some profit. That encouraged the largest ever investment surge into space industry. SpaceX used the profit to build a reusable rocket revolutionizing rockets and the US went from doing like 0% of the global commercial launch to like 80%.
Because that lowered cost many new in space ideas became possible. And US companies have taken that opportunity the best. Where in GEO launches the US was in tough competition against Europe and China. In LEO US is utterly dominated.
In addition to that a whole new crop of rocket launchers were designed. Many of the people designing them only got into the field because of SpaceX.
The location of SpaceX head quarter now sits in the most successful aerospace cluster in the world.
The US went from not making the best engine to making the most and the best engines in the world.
Let alone all the new companies trying everything they can think of. Space based solar to increase sat power. Platinum mining. And so many other things.
The US military profits form that too, cheaper then all global competitors. Allowing it to launch even more. And thanks to all competition in the launch market, some switched to hypersonics. Giving the military hypersonic test platforms they didn't have to develop themselves. Let alone all the crazy startups that pop up because they can find venture money.
Sorry that nobody takes you seriously when you complain about SpaceX making profit on launches when that very profit is what allowed for the US to go from being stagnate in space to being the unquestionable juggernaut all while the government was paying less then they had ever paid in their whole history.
Unless you can explain, how this would have happened, without allowing SpaceX some profit, go ahead.
To expensive homes. Expensive vacations. Expensive cars. Expensive meals. Private jets. Buying a social media website. Etc. All waste. Finery.
But of course they do understand that and the primary nationalized the resources, and have a model where the nationalized company bids for that resource against private companies as well.
That’s like saying “theoretically you could get to space by flapping your wings”—you just need to ignore inconvenient laws of physics. Economics describes forces of the real world, you cannot just wave them away.
The point is that you have to account for those second order effects even in theory. The consequences that arise from those effects isn't some conflict between theory and practice. It's a defect in the theory itself, because the theory ignores relevant variables.
Compensation for the risks taken and opportunity cost lost by doing this instead of something else.
Are you serious? I suggest you re-evaluate your priors because you're spouting things that demonstrate a severe lack of consideration for 1st, 2nd and 3rd order effects.
Once more you demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic you're talking about.
You're complaining that c-suite are being "forced" to own equity, while regular employees get the choice of doing so or not?
Come on now. You're just upset and lashing out without considering things.
Touch grass man. Figure out what you actually want, and support policies that actually achieve it, instead of just going off a knee jerk reaction to people you dislike.
Because… is the Falcon launch business profitable? SpaceX has spent massive amounts of money to launch their rockets hundreds of times to bring the cost this low. Because they have economies of scale and can learn from their mistakes at a volume no rocket manufacturer has ever achieved.
So your question should actually be: can NASA build a rocket that can do 18 cargo launches for less than $1.6B? The answer is probably no. Because Falcon 9 isn’t a one-off design, it’s the cheapest launch system ever designed. By a massive margin.
A bigger point here is that, sure, you’re right, there are many late-stage capitalistic businesses which basically only exist to increase profit and cut corners as much as possible, to customer detriment. And probably scam the government out of huge amounts of money.
But SpaceX isn’t a late-stage business like that.