13 thoughts on “SpaceX’s Finances”

  1. This was expected. The conventional wisdom around DC has Jim Bridenstine as the favorite for the new Administrator. He’s a very impressive guy, very pro-commercial, and considered a good choice on both sides of the aisle.

    Bob Lightfoot is a delightful person, and a space enthusiast in our stripe. He’ll make a solid bridge to whoever actually gets the permanent nod.

    1. I don’t know how this got posted on this page, but obviously belonged on the NASA’s Temporary Administrator page.

  2. I’m worried about them. They had this bright idea of using commercial launches to test their new ideas, and they’ve gotten unlucky. Two things need to happen: 1) Greatly increasing flights, based on standardization and growing expertise on making flight routine. 2) Decreasing costs, based on reusability.
    SpaceX has been risking the first to make the second happen, continually pushing new designs into its ships. In IT we would call it testing in production. But losing a flight is proving really costly, pushing everything off for half a year each time.
    Hope they get back on track and stay there.

  3. I think composite structure in LOX tanks is a really bad idea.
    I hope it does not kill the company, its already killed one maybe two launches.

    Density of 6000 psi helium at 70K is 0.1550
    Density of super critical liquid helium at 6Ksi and 3K is 0.2
    So one would have to put double walled insulated metal tanks some place of equvalent volutm to the present He tanks in the Lox.

    So the composite chilled tanks are probably the lightest solution, alas they are a bomb…

    1. Correction: “They are da bomb!”

      Perhaps it would make more sense to move them out to the interstage area.

      1. Don’t they rely on the LOX to keep the helium cool and increase the density at a safe pressure?

        Either way, I agree that they seem to have been seduced by the ‘efficiency’ monster that’s caused so many problems for earlier launchers. Redesigning to give the same payload without the supercooled propellant and COPVs might well have cost less than the loss of two vehicles.

    1. It’s the typical Silicon Valley model. They expect to grow to make huge Frankenrockets, they have a large order book, they keep changing the design. So there’s probably little chance for automating a lot of the work.

      IMO they should get something either in the Falcon 9 class and optimize it for production. They have done some production optimizations though. Like the channel wall nozzle.

      1. From what I’ve read, I believe the plan is to stop changing the Falcon 9 design soon, once they’ve made whatever changes are required for reusability. Production costs won’t be as important as refurbishment costs if you can fly them ten or twenty times.

  5. I think this is a reasonably positive picture, I’m sure a lot of people assumed that Musk was just writing a big check every few months.

    They don’t seem to have flight risk figured into their price sheet at a high enough level. Every incident cost them both the immediate loss as well as interrupted/lost revenue until the cause is found and corrected.

    Imagine what an airline ticket would cost if a crash meant that the airline would have to suspend operations and the aircraft type would be grounded until a definitive cause was found.

    Further, compare their turnaround on these last two incidents with the likely time for a NASA investigation. NASA would probably still be trying to nail down the seating arrangement for the commission investigating the 2015 incident.

    1. I’m sure a lot of people assumed that Musk was just writing a big check every few months.

      And now a lot of people are saying they aren’t making enough profit. Can’t win with everyone.

      1. A business that doesn’t recover all of their costs doesn’t make a profit and goes broke.

        If something like this happens on a crewed mission. Will they have to absorb the cost of sitting around for a couple of years twiddling their thumbs while some sort of commission, many of whom will have a blatant conflict of interest, sorts it out?

        Pricing is hard, maybe even harder than rocket science.

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