Comment by hazrmard

This is not intended as a product launch. I think this is a preemptive bet on a conjunction of the following happening in time for a future product launch:

  1. Cost to launch / mass lowering due to technological advancements.  
  2. Mass / compute lowering due to technological advancements.  
  3. Compute hardware evolution stagnating to the pace, relative to compute payloads, where CapEx is amortized over longer duration.  
  4. Compute & energy hardware reliability improving so OpEx is lower, and remaining useful life predictably keeps hardware running over its designed lifetime.

(I work on #4).

A wishy-washy inequality (per time, factoring out launch cost from OpEx):

    Revenue - CapEx/lifetime - (launch_cost + OpEx) * (1 + failures) > 0

Presumably, any one of these could see a x100 improvement and make the whole equation in the green. But, I believe this is a low-earth-orbit-shot bet on the sum getting better.

Note: I did 1+failures to denote baseline cost (initial launch, nominal OpEx).