News site covering SpaceX, Starship, NASA missions and other spaceflight, with detailed posts on launches and hardware.
HN links it for SpaceX reporting, such as the Raptor engine bankruptcy-risk story, Gulf Coast platforms and booster recovery. Commenters use it as a source in SpaceX debates.
Given Musk's email about SpaceX being close to bankruptcy, how will this affect them financially? Can SpaceX survive without a bailout? What would a bailout look like, another Solarcity?
https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/
"Unfortunately, the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it had seemed a few weeks ago. As we have dug into the issues following the exiting of prior senior management, they have unfortunately turned out to be far more severe than was reported. There is no way to sugarcoat this...
...we will need all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster.
The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong.
In addition, we are spooling up terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume massive capital, assuming that satellite V2 will be on orbit to handle the bandwidth demand. These terminals will be useless otherwise"
Per https://spaceexplored.com/2021/05/06/can-you-make-it-as-a-blue-origin-astronaut/:
> When it comes to the G-Forces being pushed on you, many roller coasters have peak G’s at or above these limits. Most people are probably familiar with the different rides at Walt Disney World so let’s use those for examples. At EPCOT, Mission Space is a centrifuge-based ride where you go through a simulated launch and landing on Mars. The sustained G’s on that ride is 2.5 G’s, close to how many G’s New Shepard will experience during launch.
> For the descent, Blue Origin says you must be able to withstand 5.5 G’s, if you ever rode Rock ‘n Roller Coaster at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, you would have experienced up to 5 G’s during the initial launch of the ride.
Epcot Mission Space (the "Orange" version) is pretty intense as it's really sustained G-forces, but manageable. During the ride, you have to reach in front of you to press some buttons, and that's when you feel the G-forces most. But for SpaceX/BlueOrigin, passengers do nothing.
Rock n Roller Coaster itself for the peak G is done by kids, not a big deal.
Seems unlikely to me that starship will get to orbit this year. They haven't received FAA approval to test launch to orbit from Boca Chia. SpaceX's tests usually fail multiple times before they succeed, so the clock hasn't even started. The interval at which they can run tests logistically is at minimum a few months. As well, we also know that the raptor engine production line is running much too slow. [1] Starship required 34 raptors for every test, so you can do simple math at how quickly they will be able to do tests based on how quickly they can build the engines. There's never been an engine production line which could build much more than one engine per week.
It also seems likely that SpaceX will have to fundraise at least once at their current burn before Starship gets to orbit, so that could be a down round.
[1] https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/
Interesting - I'd be curious when that article was written - it states Sept 2, 2021 at the top, but towards the end of the article it mentions speeds improving to 200Mbps "as of April 12". Their experience sounds quite likely for those early days, but not at all what my relatives experienced (they got theirs in late August 2021). I think their dish placement is also poor - the app basically showed my relatives that the roof was the only place with good enough sight of the sky (they have similar amounts of trees to what's in videos on that article)
> The caveat here concerning economic viability still stands, even if it's not looking bad.
Yeah, for sure - however much you trust Elon's internal messaging, he suggested it is minimally viable as-is, needs starship to be a real moneymaker [1]
[1] https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/
Musk has said that the current version of Satellite V1 is "financially weak", that V2 is necessary to achieve their bandwidth goals.
> The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong.
> In addition, we are spooling up terminal production to several million units per year, which will consume massive capital, assuming that satellite V2 will be on orbit to handle the bandwidth demand. These terminals will be useless otherwise.
https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/
Rich countries have burned many multiples of SpaceX "losses" to find their space programs completely obsolete, in both tech and economics.
Now non-space faring nations can leapfrog NASA, Europe, Russia and China just by booking cheap transit for their cargo from SpaceX.
SpaceX has been a wealth generating dynamo. Its tech is worth far more than it cost to develop.
Raised estimated $9.9 Billion [1]
Worth based on recent funding $127 Billion. [2]
Any perception of overall "losses" comes from a incomplete accounting.
[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies/company_financials
[2] https://spaceexplored.com/2022/05/23/how-much-is-spacex-worth/