Comment by kortilla
10 hours ago
There is no “subject to interpretation”. The costs they charge for launches are lower than any other provider by a significant margin. And fundraising docs have shown many times that the Falcon launches make money and Starlink was just starting to make money about 1.5 years ago.
> What we clearly know is that using software development methodologies to building critical hardware is as a bad idea as it sounds.
This methodology is what provides high speed, low latency internet to the South Pole and every other spot on earth allowed by regulatory.
Yeah, Falcon rockets are a regular workhorse kinda rockets. Nothing special about them. NASA could have made their own but someone decided it needs to be outsourced.
I mean they did a fine job there, but nothing to write home about IMHO.
And on the topic of reusability I can't really find much info besides that it is just partially reusable. Not sure what the point of it actually is. I guess what matters is the launch price?
The question I still have it, wasn't SpaceX supposed to get USA back on the moon? And I heard they got billions in subsidies but have nothing to show for it.
> The question I still have it, wasn't SpaceX supposed to get USA back on the moon? And I heard they got billions in subsidies but have nothing to show for it.
AFAICT, SpaceX are not the bottleneck holding this back. Or at least, not the only one.
And they do have something to show for it, just not a complete final version. Starship is not yet fully reusable, and I will not make any bet on if they even can make it so as this is not my domain, but if you skip the re-use it is already capable of yeeting up a massive payload to LEO, enough to do a lunar mission.
> I guess what matters is the launch price?
It’s a commercial launch company. Of course the price matters and it being so much cheaper than the trash from ULA, Russia, etc is why there has been an explosion in new space endeavors (see the bandwagon launches).
> Nothing special about them. NASA could have made their own but someone decided it needs to be outsourced.
“Anyone could have done it bro,” is such an ignorant response. Nobody did it and there was the entire launch industry to collect if they did.
Even if NASA could have, they were derelict of duty in enabling space utilization because they never did it.
> And I heard they got billions in subsidies but have nothing to show for it.
Should probably check stuff before you repeat it. SpaceX has not received billions in subsidies for going to the moon. It did win a contract to do it, which as the name implies has required deliverables.
Spacex is a private company; this means "we" know nothing about actual costs. Fundraising documents dont show this either, as they are a washed-down version for, well, fundraising purposes. As an investor, it is common practice to sign an NDA just to get access to actual somewhat relevant numbers, so any actual relevant info isnt public.
Also it seems you conflate "making money" with being profitable - its not the same thing. A private company can easily "massage" the PNL sheet to present itself as at a break-even point, and some back-of-the-napkin calculation seems to point to it. Granted, I may be wrong, but the fact is we don't know for sure.
You also seem to not be aware that there are multiple internet satellite providers with south pole coverage, as well as other regions in the globe.
> Spacex is a private company; this means "we" know nothing about actual costs. Fundraising documents dont show this either, as they are a washed-down version for, well, fundraising purposes. As an investor, it is common practice to sign an NDA just to get access to actual somewhat relevant numbers, so any actual relevant info isnt public.
None of this is correct. You don’t get fidelity as an investor repeatedly publishing fraudulent documents.
Also, it’s not like spacex can hide costs. There is no other supply of money to cover operations.
> You also seem to not be aware that there are multiple internet satellite providers with south pole coverage, as well as other regions in the globe.
They are a joke. Completely different leagues of access. Coverage of the South Pole (not McMurdo) got effective continuous bandwidth around the throughput of dialup and periodic passes from a polar sat to upload scientific data.
GEO is absolutely terrible in terms of latency and cost. Starlink is currently the only good option for the entire ocean and any remote place on earth not reachable by fiber infra.
The only up and coming potential competitor is Amazon’s Kuiper/Leo. China is also experimenting here but it’s not clear that will be available to the world.
Claiming there are alternatives to Starlink is extremely ignorant. It only takes a brief glimpse of what it’s doing to both maritime and aviation to understand that it’s unique.