[vannevar]

SpaceX is certainly in the best position of any private organization I know of to get to Mars, from the infrastructure perspective. But in terms of financing, the parent comment is right, Musk may not be a whole lot better off than Mars One in the big picture. A single manned mission to Mars could cost north of $100B, and the entire value of SpaceX is only about $20B. SpaceX is private, but estimates are that if it's profitable on an operating basis at all, it's only marginally so. Throw in Tesla's likely cash needs for the foreseeable future, and Musk may have some tough times coming. Money is going to decide the outcome here, not technology. Unless SpaceX finds some hugely profitable business to start generating cash (maybe their planned satellite constellation?), Mars is speculation.

[Robotbeat]

I think you dramatically underestimate just how strong SpaceX's position is (especially relative to Tesla). SpaceX launched more than anyone else in the industry and doubled their nearest domestic competitor and arch-rival ULA last year (which has been bleeding people, by the way, and needs to retool for a totally new launch vehicle while supporting the safe shutdown and launch-out of 3 other launch vehicles). And not only is SpaceX out-launching them, but they've demonstrated practical reuse which builds a high moat around their launch business.

It's understandable if you haven't been following this very closely, as the situation has flipped dramatically in just about 2 or 3 years, even in spite of the failures during that time.

To give an example of Tesla:

Imagine Tesla was outproducing GM and Toyota combined, globally, and had also demonstrated level 5 self-driving Model 3s and Semis for the last couple years while readying to flip the switch on 300GW worth of solar to power their global supercharger network (powering tens of millions of cars) and power several medium-sized countries. That might be comparable to the situation SpaceX finds themselves in right now.

[vannevar]

SpaceX is great, but having the highest launch rate in the industry does no good if they lose money on every one. Any more than Tesla would succeed if it outproduced GM and Toyota but lost money on every car.

[Robotbeat]

Anyone who told you SpaceX was losing money on every launch was lying. SpaceX's cost per vehicle is among the lowest in the industry. And it's not just "but we work so hard that's why we're winning," it's due to a carefully designed rocket that is simply cheap to manufacture and has design features that allow you to hit economies of scale that are usually extremely rare in space launch. (And a lot of these things can be copied, but the people who are copying them are trying to compete in the far smaller smallsat market.)

Partly that's due to clustering: They produce hundreds of Merlins per year vs their competitors which only produce like a dozen or so (often less) engines per year, so just from the learning curve they can save a lot of money.

And unlike essentially every other rocket in the industry, the two stages are largely similar, using the same pressurization scheme, same propellants, same diameter tooling, just differing by the length and number of engines (the Merlin Vacuum engine is significantly different than the Merlin 1D sea level engine, but same underlying cycle type and same heritage), so it's almost like they only need to maintain half the production line as their competitors and get the economies of scale of producing more of the same thing. Also, they're reusing the vast majority of the hardware on roughly half their flights, now, which is, unhyperbolically, a game-changing development in commercial space launch.

SpaceX has a LOT going for them right now. Falcon 9 is a very inexpensive launcher given its performance.

The thing about rockets is that there's a huge advantage in having a higher launch rate. If you're not launching a lot, you're still paying most of your labor and facilities cost just to sit idle. And SpaceX, just producing a single rocket family that is launching more than anyone else in the world (and reusably), is at an enormous advantage there.

[vannevar]

My point wasn't that SpaceX is actually losing money on every launch, only that the launch rate isn't the proper metric. The financial analyses I've seen online (eg, https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/11/11/will-spacex-earn-a...) conclude that the business is only marginally profitable, if at all. Musk could dispel the speculation by releasing the true financials. Until then, we only have limited information to go on, and that limited information points to slim-to-none profitability.

[Robotbeat]

"Analysis" is a pretty bold word for what is in that article. And even there, they mention only 16 launches out of the 18 they achieved that year. That implies significantly more profit than in that article, whose entire analysis relies on, in its own words, "just a guess."

The limited information we have is that SpaceX is significantly profitable (their fairing recovery, Raptor, BFR, and potentially even parts of the satellite constellation efforts are funded out of their profits). They have one production line and are launching 18 times per year. Their nearest competitor is ULA, with 3 product lines (Delta IV Heavy, Delta II, and Atlas V) and with half as many annual launches and with no capability to reuse. That implies SpaceX's margin can be far greater than their competitors, the opposite of your guess.

In rocket launch, your profitability is determined primarily by your launch rate and your number of product lines as there are a lot of fixed costs for maintaining launch pads and manufacturing lines. SpaceX is doing extremely well on both fronts.

[greglindahl]

I'm always kind of mystified by comments like this, which I see a lot of. SpaceX has a cost target, and if they can't meet it, they aren't going to send humans to Mars. And that target's a lot less than $10B; most of the BFR engineering is not about Mars but about a fully-reusable launcher, which is useful for launching anything, not just going to Mars.

[vannevar]

Don't fool yourself, there is a lot more to landing humans on Mars than building a big launch vehicle. The only data point we have is the Apollo project, and Mars is an order of magnitude more difficult. Apollo was around $150B in today's dollars, so if anything, the $100B estimate for Mars is low. Which at this point puts SpaceX closer to Mars One than it is to Mars itself.

[Robotbeat]

The situation is wildly different. A half century of progress has been made, and SpaceX is taking a much more affordable approach to the whole thing.

We used expendable rockets for Apollo. And there were at least 6 different stages, depending on how you count (3 stages for the Saturn V, plus the command module which had a propulsion section and a reentry module plus the lunar module which had descent and ascent stages), all of which were expended. There were at least 3 different propellant combinations with even more engine types. All of these components were basically dedicated to the Apollo program and had to be paid out of that budget. Each mission requires the expenditure of all those stages.

The BFR for SpaceX, on the other hand, is just two stages. The two stages are very similar, using the same propellant type and basically the same engines. BFR will be used for satellite launches initially, so its development can be paid for separately. The advantage of BFR is that it is fully reusable, so you literally can use the same rocket to send stuff to Mars as is used for satellites. The biggest part, the booster, never needs to leave a few hundred kilometers from the launch site, and can be reused for satellite launches. SpaceX is able to get by with just two stages because they simply refuel the landable upper stage again and again instead of dropping stages. They're leveraging reuse not just to lower launch costs, but to dramatically simplify their mission architecture (and thus reduce development costs).

The reusable upper stage also serves as the lander, once refueled. And it is designed to be refueled by an essentially identical vehicle. And the lander itself can also be reused for the next Mars window. So in a single Mars mission, NOTHING needs to be expended, and at most you're just tying up a single stage during the duration of the mission; the rest of the architecture elements can earn their keep launching satellites while astronauts are on Mars.

Before SpaceX, launch costs for the US were around $20,000 per kilogram to LEO. SpaceX's F9 and Falcon Heavy have brought the cost down to around $1000-2000/kg. BFR, since it's fully reusable, could bring the costs down to $100/kg or even $10/kg. SpaceX designed an architecture that could reduce the cost to Mars by orders of magnitude and whose primary components can be developed and paid for the same way Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon are paid for (i.e. by delivering cargo for paying customers).

[vannevar]

There are many good reasons to rationalize away the possible costs. But there are equally good reasons to believe we're underestimating the cost by not accounting for the unknown. Experience leads me to believe that the latter case is much more likely to be true, given the singular nature of a manned Mars mission.

Full disclosure, I love SpaceX and absolutely want to see them succeed. But we should be realistic about the challenges that Mars presents.

[Robotbeat]

This isn't just rationalizing away possible costs.

I'd argue that we are more fully prepared for a human Mars mission now than we were for Apollo when Kennedy made his speech. We have decades of operational experience operating robotics on the planet and decades of on-orbit human spaceflight experience with durations of the same order of magnitude as a Mars mission. In contrast, the US had just shot someone on a suborbital flight into space by the time JFK gave his speech, and we had next to no understanding of the Moon's surface or long-duration human spaceflight.

I've thought intensely about Mars. I think a human Mars surface mission is easily within reach if the right architectural approach is used. SpaceX has a particularly good architectural approach. Using a reusable upper stage also as a tanker and a lander is a game-changer.

Scaling that up to a sustainable mass settlement initiative, on the other hand, is absolutely full of unknowns, as you say. That remains a crazy proposition without guarantee of success.

The first human mission is primarily about launch, entry/reentry, and logistics. SpaceX has a good handle on those and has retired a lot of risk by demonstrating supersonic retropropulsion (in a portion of the atmosphere approximating Martian conditions) and landing almost two dozen times, and I think SpaceX has a good plan to mitigate the rest of the risk.

EDIT:Another thing: SpaceX is building the lander and the rocket anyway and plan to pay for it just by switching over all their services from Falcon 9, Heavy, and Dragon. BFR is also big enough to serve as the transit hab and surface hab. So by just consolidating F9, FH, and Dragon to the BFR vehicle, they'll have 95% of the Mars architecture already built and paid for. The lone additional thing they need is ISRU: the mining equipment, the power production (primarily solar as it'll be cheapest), and the chemical plant. Chemical plant and solar are well-understood as both have been tested at small scale either on Mars or on ISS or similar, but the mining equipment only has some not-terribly-representative testing by scientific sample handling on the various landers and rovers of Mars. That is a question the first uncrewed mission will need to address.

[greglindahl]

I don't recall saying that all there was to landing humans on Mars was a big launch vehicle. Perhaps you're arguing with a straw man instead of the people you're replying to?

[vannevar]

And that target's a lot less than $10B; most of the BFR engineering is not about Mars but about a fully-reusable launcher, which is useful for launching anything, not just going to Mars.

Sorry, I read your comment to read that you thought the cost would be much less (as little as their target of $10B), since they had already developed the launch vehicle.

If your point was just that if they can't do it for $10B, they won't, that may be valid but it's not the issue under discussion. We're talking about how likely it is that SpaceX will go to Mars, not whether SpaceX continues as a going concern.