A nice analysis from WSJ on the (partially opaque) finances of SpaceX that I just found. The tl;dr seems to be that the 2015 loss pulled SpaceX into the red, and the second loss has an effect that isn't known, but it's probably pretty bad.
One hundred and thirty nine seconds is all it took for an unmanned rocket to explode after blastoff and turn Elon Musk’s booming Space Exploration Technologies Corp. into a geyser of red ink.
That June 2015 disaster, followed by months of launch delays, contributed to a quarter-billion dollar annual loss and a 6% drop in revenue, after several years of surging sales and small profits.
Internal financial documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with former SpaceX employees depict robust growth in new rocket-launch contracts and a thin bottom line that is vulnerable when things go awry. They also show the company putting steep revenue expectations on a nascent satellite-internet business it hopes will eventually dwarf the rocket division and help finance its goal of manned missions to Mars.
A second explosion during testing on the launchpad in September grounded SpaceX again, adding to losses and causing a four-month delay. Its next launch is planned for Saturday, when it will seek to regain momentum in the face of depressed revenue, jittery customers and a rising backlog of missions.
SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., transformed the aerospace industry with innovative rocket features and Silicon Valley-style software design principles mandated by Mr. Musk, its billionaire founder and chief executive. The 15-year-old company became the first American firm in years to compete for commercial launch contracts, and the first company to launch and return a spacecraft from orbit.
SpaceX declined to comment on details of its finances but said it has a solid record of success and strong customer relationships. “We have more than 70 future launches on our manifest representing over $10 billion in contracts,” said SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnson. “The company is in a financially strong position and is well positioned for future growth,” adding it has over $1 billion of cash and no debt.
The Journal reviewed SpaceX’s financial results from 2011 through the end of 2015 as well as forecasts through the next decade. As a private company, SpaceX isn’t obligated to publicly disclose the figures, and the information has never been widely shared.
SpaceX apparently plans to make infinity billion dollars by launching a satellite internet business within their branches, with little to boast of in actual concrete accomplishments to date ("still in the planning stages") and wildly optimistic profit projections. Call me a pessimist but I simply say this the same old game that Musk has always played - the "we might suck now but ONE DAY we will be super duper great." I think he's just a scam artist who has been able to keep the scam up for an impressively long time.
Will SpaceX assets be valuable if they're put up for sale? Possibly. The only reason I have to think otherwise is that the failure "on the pad" seems to have been due to a faulty design that, as a result of a mechanical fault, led to a catastrophic failure (fuel tank walls were merged into one). No one should defend that kind of design as anything other than a terrible failure, and if F9 is riddled with such inconsistencies then I might wonder if it's a design worth keeping as opposed to starting from scratch. If it turns out that the reusability is poor and it's a Space Shuttle type "reusable but so expensive that it might as well not be" rocket then it belongs in the trash.
Is he a scam artist if his company is launching home built rockets that put satellites into space? I think most of the analysis of his (Musk's) company and his methods is valid, but 'scam artist' might be an unfair characterization.
If what he was selling was "low-cost, moderate reliability rockets" then no, he would not be a scam artist. But he sells far more than that, which is where the "scam artist" claim comes in.
His Mars plans, for one, are dead on arrival simply because he has no funding scheme for his pie-in-the-sky fantasies.
Good question, if somewhat sarcastic. It has its purposes (reducing weight) but it definitely can cause a lot of things to go wrong (it has mediocre tolerances). A design choice is a design choice and you could praise or criticize any number of things, but I'm saying (albeit probably not as well as I could have) that if F9 failure can be strongly attributed to design errors, and that if this was only one of many rather than just one unfortunate flaw, then it might just not really be that good a rocket overall.
I personally think the F9 isn't the greatest but it's decent for a rocket, and if SpaceX were to be sold off then it would have some solid buyers. But if they have more on-the-pad failures then that may not be the case.
To be fair, I suppose my assertion is a bit premature, since it doesn't really seem like we have a final consensus on the cause, whereas I though we did. And Musk says it was due to oxygen freezing, an odd conclusion.
Anyways, here's to hoping for reliable launches henceforth.
On January 15 2017 07:09 LegalLord wrote: Good question, if somewhat sarcastic. It has its purposes (reducing weight) but it definitely can cause a lot of things to go wrong (it has mediocre tolerances). A design choice is a design choice and you could praise or criticize any number of things, but I'm saying (albeit probably not as well as I could have) that if F9 failure can be strongly attributed to design errors, and that if this was only one of many rather than just one unfortunate flaw, then it might just not really be that good a rocket overall.
I personally think the F9 isn't the greatest but it's decent for a rocket, and if SpaceX were to be sold off then it would have some solid buyers. But if they have more on-the-pad failures then that may not be the case.
To be fair, I suppose my assertion is a bit premature, since it doesn't really seem like we have a final consensus on the cause, whereas I though we did. And Musk says it was due to oxygen freezing, an odd conclusion.
Anyways, here's to hoping for reliable launches henceforth.
I dont really get your arguments. If the goal is low cost reusable rockets they seem to be on the right track. First order of business is to build a low cost rocket. Second thing is to stick the landing. Third thing is to be able to refurbish it cheaply. That third step may require you to build rockets differently than what we think is optimal today. And initially they might be less reliable because of it. As long as the launches mostly work this is fine. As they keep going they can refine the concept. Going from superexpensive advanced design like the shuttle and making it less expensive will never work. Small cheap cars were unreliable and had terrible safety records at first, now they are still cheap but ultra reliable and safe as well.
As long as companies think it makes economic sense to launch with spaceX (insurance premiums are not to high) and they are breaking even on launches they are fine.
if the "breaking even" part includes zero corporate welfare then its great and Musk is an American hero. if SpaceX is the aerospace industry's answer to the Florida Marlins where they get their baseball stadium built for free and pay no rent then i do not "breaking even" means much. Incidentally, this baseball team has a special deal with the government where all Stadium employees come from local jails and they can pay them 25% of minimum wage.
if SpaceX is working on the Florida Marlins "business model" i do not consider it a free-enterprise for-profit organization.
It's the same each time: it requires a great amount of trust in Musk because he's Musk, and the final breakthrough is always just out of reach. It's always, "there is an economy of scale just waiting to burst open" but people should be very wary of that idea because building something efficiently that no one wants is a very real thing. And Musk is so very far from building things efficiently, with a massive dependence on government cheese and investor hype to survive. As he fails to deliver on extravagant promises at a deadline he moves the goalposts and starts the hype again. Yes, it is impressive that he's able to keep it up this long without ever delivering the breakthrough.
With SolarCity, they've folded into Tesla because they ran out of money. With Tesla, they are bleeding cash, not really showing any potential for profitability, and they are just seeking more money to keep the show rolling. With SpaceX, the truth is just that we don't know. Their financials are not available to us, and while the WSJ article I gave should suggest that I'm at least partially right about "Tesla would look good if you didn't see its financial statements." They may very well lose money on each rocket - and while I'm able to believe that they probably squeezed out some better margins (given that ULA thinks it can probably cut its costs in half in the long run), it turns out that their safety record is nothing to boast about. If they lose a third rocket then we should probably start acknowledging that the problem runs deeper than any fans are willing to acknowledge, and that saving a couple million just isn't worth having a moderate risk of either losing your payload or having your entire launch delayed for four months every time someone goofs.
Reusability? Have they reused a rocket yet? That's the part that really matters. Landing a rocket doesn't particularly impress; nothing about it is technically unfeasible. What we need is to see if it's economically feasible or not, which we don't have any idea about. They won't tell us how much reuse costs (Space Shuttle showed that "reusable but one-offs are cheaper overall" is an issue), JJR is right that they have consistently scaled back their claims, and they still haven't reused. There was hype about reuse all the way into August; after September it all died. Now I wonder when they will finally get reusing, so we can see if it works?
That's not even getting into issues like "we thought of everything about Mars except money to pay for it, the only thing that really matters" and "by our absurdly optimistic projections we will make billions off our not-yet-developed satellite internet business in just a couple of years."
It's capitalism. If they get it to work it works. If they don't the will fail, someone will buy the tech and the world moves on.
SpaceX have had small profits before and they are in the red this year. To me this doesn't seem like a company that is in particular trouble if their field is rocketry. If they deliver on re usability somewhere down the line they will make massive money eventually. As it stands now the trend was that they make a little money on just having cheap rockets without reusing them. Even if reuse just cuts cost with 1 % in the beginning that's more profit and eventually the tech gets better. As long as their investors and their customers are happy they have no problem.
Same thing for Tesla. They have more preorders on the model 3 than they can handle. As long as they turn some kind of profit on each model 3 they sell they have no problems either. They have a 20-30 % profit margins on their luxury cars and they are selling a sedan for 35$ so it sounds probable enough. If they don't, well that's capitalism and it's how the system works. Investors know this well enough.
And as far as governments helping out, to me it seems like self driving electric cars, solar power and space exploration are three fields we really want to help out.
I just don't get why people get so emotionally invested in Musk, both for and against him.
With the failures that cost at least a hundred million directly and a fair bit more in launch delays, both 2015 and 2016 are almost certainly losses. But again, we don't know the actual numbers, nor the accounting used. Maybe they count prepayments as a profit for work they haven't done yet. It's a private company, we just don't know.
Capitalism isn't capitalism when it's subsidized heavily by the government. Musk gets huge subsidies for each of his companies and has a lot of suspicious incestuous funding arrangements between his trio of companies.
If Musk goes under in a big way, then that will have a large effect on future willingness of people to invest in "green field" projects and will probably discredit any massive government subsidies in this shit. I for one would prefer that not to happen.
On January 16 2017 03:49 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote: It's capitalism. If they get it to work it works. ... And as far as governments helping out, to me it seems like self driving electric cars, solar power and space exploration are three fields we really want to help out. ...
so its capitalism.. and its not capitalism.
"we" want to help out. no we don't. i don't. i'm glad Canada's SPAR aerospace has been crippled by a lack of government funding. i thought it was a waste of money.
On January 16 2017 03:49 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote: It's capitalism. If they get it to work it works. ... And as far as governments helping out, to me it seems like self driving electric cars, solar power and space exploration are three fields we really want to help out. ...
so its capitalism.. and its not capitalism.
"we" want to help out. no we don't. i don't. i'm glad Canada's SPAR aerospace has been crippled by a lack of government funding. i thought it was a waste of money.
No it's still capitalism. It's just incentives one way or another.
Like in most major cities in Sweden they want less cars so they put a special city tax for driving at rush hours. But they want people to drive electric cars so those are exempt.
This doesn't change the fundamental system away from capitalism at all it just changes the market dynamics and lets the government have some slight control over choices. If electric vehicles are still nonviable no one will buy them no matter the incentives. It's less efficient to subsidize things for sure but doing things less efficiently is not the same as running the country on a 5 year plan.
And we live in a democracy. If YOU don't like the way your government acts vote differently. If enough people won't agree with you to bad. And if your Canadian you have no say on how the US spends it's tax money either way.
Anyway this is getting off topic so it's my last post in the thread for a good while. We all agree that SpaceX lives or dies with their launches and their long term economic viability anyway.
The US, like most countries, has a lot of bipartisan stupidity when it comes to hype artists who promise the world and deliver little more than PR candy. The ballot box alone doesn't solve this issue - people need to understand just how deep this scam goes.
So I was trying to make sense of Musk's account of what went wrong with the last rocket. It doesn't help that he was quite vague about the cause. My summary of his story of what happened: 1. SpaceX decided that they should have cooler than average liquid oxygen in their tank, a few degrees short of freezing, to squeeze in a little more fuel. 2. Furthermore, they needed liquid helium to pressurize during launch. Since the liquid oxygen is much colder than average, they decided that the LOX tank was a good place to keep the helium because the temperature in there is lower than average and it makes it easier to cool the helium. The helium was kept in a special graphene (carbon) container. 3. The very cold liquid helium, colder than the oxygen freezing point, caused it to freeze (why? Bad insulation?). 4. The solid oxygen reacted with the graphene caused a combustion reaction when the liquid would not (???) which led to explodification.
Anyone happen to be more versed in exactly what happened there? This story feels either incomplete or infeasible.
On January 16 2017 13:27 LegalLord wrote: So I was trying to make sense of Musk's account of what went wrong with the last rocket. It doesn't help that he was quite vague about the cause. My summary of his story of what happened: 1. SpaceX decided that they should have cooler than average liquid oxygen in their tank, a few degrees short of freezing, to squeeze in a little more fuel. 2. Furthermore, they needed liquid helium to pressurize during launch. Since the liquid oxygen is much colder than average, they decided that the LOX tank was a good place to keep the helium because the temperature in there is lower than average and it makes it easier to cool the helium. The helium was kept in a special graphene (carbon) container. 3. The very cold liquid helium, colder than the oxygen freezing point, caused it to freeze (why? Bad insulation?). 4. The solid oxygen reacted with the graphene caused a combustion reaction when the liquid would not (???) which led to explodification.
Anyone happen to be more versed in exactly what happened there? This story feels either incomplete or infeasible.
No definitive answer (and not sure we can get one). The scenario you describe is the proposed one.
What some google search adds: - Helium container (COPV) is made of an aluminium liner in a graphene overwrap - There are some small gaps between liner and overwrap at places (buckling in the aluminim liner) - When COPV gets pressured, LOX pooling in those gaps can be trapped and stress change on the overwrap can produce breaked fibers - Helium is cold enough to bring trapped LOX to a solid state (contact with the liner)
Breaking fibers from the overwrap could be ignited due to friction (proposed cause). Probability is very low with only LOX, somewhat higher if SOX is present (friction increases from what I gathered).
how much did it cost to repair the launch pad where the SpaceX rocket exploded? the only stuff i could find via google were estimates. OR, is the launch pad still unusable?
what is also sad is the replies to the tweet. even if the landings were faked guys like Armstrong and Cernan were merely soldiers/pawns following orders as part of a cold war bluff. every Apollo11 to 17 astronaut had a very long exemplary record as a pilot and test pilot long before their Apollo assignment.
WASHINGTON — Bigelow Aerospace is in discussions with NASA about extended use of an experimental module added to the International Space Station last year, but both the company and the space agency say no agreement has been reached yet.
In a Jan. 18 tweet, the company said that the performance of its Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) “continues to outperform expectations.” The module, built under a NASA contract and flown to the station on a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft in April 2016, was installed on the station and expanded to its full size in late May.
In the same tweet, the company said it and NASA “are in agreement to evolve BEAM into becoming an everyday asset aboard the ISS.” The company did not elaborate on what that would involve.
In a statement to SpaceNews Jan. 18, company founder Robert Bigelow said more details about any agreement with NASA about extended use of BEAM would be released at a later date. “We are excited that BEAM may serve multiple uses that could extend its time attached to station well beyond the original two-year expected period,” he said. “We will be happy to provide more specifics as this process develops shortly.”
NASA spokeswoman Cheryl Warner said Jan. 18 that the agency was still in discussions with Bigelow about “next steps” for BEAM. “The BEAM demonstration is providing valuable data regarding how the materials and an expandable structure perform in the space environment,” she said. “We are in discussions with Bigelow Aerospace to evaluate the next steps for the module.”
BEAM’s principal mission is to demonstrate the company’s expandable module technology and its suitability for use on crewed spacecraft. Although the company previously demonstrated that technology on two uncrewed spacecraft, Genesis 1 and 2, launched in 2006 and 2007, respectively, BEAM is the first time an expandable module has had people inside while in space.
BEAM is designed for a two-year mission on the ISS. The module is closed off from the rest of the station most of the time, with astronauts periodically entering BEAM to check the status of the module and instruments mounted inside.
NASA has previously indicated that it would dispose of BEAM at the end of its two-year mission, using the station’s robotic arm to detach the module and allow it to burn up in the atmosphere. There are no immediate plans, though, for use of the docking port where BEAM is installed after that two-year mission ends, opening the possibility for an extended mission.
Robert Bigelow has previously suggested there was commercial interest in the module. As a NASA press conference in April 2016 prior to the launch of BEAM, he said there were four different groups, both countries and companies, interested in flying experiments in BEAM. “We’re hoping that, maybe in half a year or something, we can get permission from NASA to accommodate these people in some way,” he said then.
EPT
