[duke_sam]

The schadenfreude is strong here but it’s hard to argue with results. By treating space launches as a process to refine through iteration (so the more the better) they’ve come to dominate the market. It’s also a process where others don’t gain the benefit of those iterations, there’s no new tech innovations to base your own launch vehicle on, just lots and lots of internal knowledge.

It’s worrying to have a capacity like this so concentrated in one company (whatever the leanings of the figurehead) but hard to see how that changes unless others start using the same methodology

[HenryBemis]

> worrying to have a capacity like this so concentrated in one company

If it wasn't US spending their precious $$$$ on this (Elon says that in the end of they day these are ICBM's going to space), none of this would have happened.

I think that this deal "US gets super-duper ICBMs" and "Elon takes us to space" is a great deal.

I don't think any company's wallet can afford this, and Russia/China are decades away to do this on their own. Sharing technology is (so far) out of the questions because of the certain weapon-isation of the tech.

So for the next few decades it is Elon or nothing.

[chneu]

I think you're really discounting China. They have the resources, motivation, and the track record to fast track this. They've already landed rovers and have their own space station. They can fail faster than the US can succeed because of sheer size.

[spwa4]

But ... Elon Musk has never once "come to dominate the market". He's always worked to figure out how to get government to give him ever larger amounts of money. He's built it up to the point where he gets close to 9 million USD per day from the US government (that's a stat only from his public companies. It doesn't include starlink military spending and the military part of SpaceX). Elon Musk's companies are something like Northrop Grumman/Lockheed Martin v2.0, not market-based enterprises, which they never were.

Tesla: cheating to make electric cars affordable, not by better engineering (in fact arguably way worse engineering), but by having the government pay (initially) 8000 out of a 45000 car, or close to 20%. Then continue by attempting, and failing spectacularly in an almost comical manner, to monopolize the battery market.

SpaceX: take a fundamentally bad business idea (there's plenty of private space launch attempts, but even the best go bankrupt), by ... getting the government to pay for space launches, in what is a very very bad deal (the government MUST have space launch capabilities. So it can never stop developing Boeing SLS. Therefore what is paid to SpaceX is paid ON TOP of what we pay to SLS, and is NOT a better alternative (as Musk screams), and so not any kind of saving. We don't have the numbers, because SpaceX is private, but all other companies trying it are 10x or 100x removed from profitability. Why would SpaceX, even if it has a 10x cost advantage, survive? And it is very hard to believe it's cost advantage is more than 2x or 3x if it exists at all)

Starlink: this has been tried, and tried and tried again. It just isn't profitable. SpaceX LEO satellites need to be replaced, 7000 satellites, every 5 years. That's 1400 satellites per year, or about 40 launches per year (you can only launch satellites together that go into the same orbit with very few exceptions), at a (subsidized by the government) cost of 70 million per launch. OPERATING (not building) SpaceX costs 2.1 billion dollars per year, not counting personnel, actual data transmission and uplinks, development of satellites and terminals. That's a minimum. The total market for internet in rural areas worldwide is ... about 300 million. The only real market for Starlink is military, and that means Europe, Russia, China, ... can never use Starlink. And even the US can't rely on it for several reasons (it's got a huge target painted over it's satellites and you can bet your firstborn Russia and China and Japan and ... have hundreds of experts working on destroying Starlink quickly. Hell, I bet the US has people working on that, even under Trump, just in case)

Explains a lot of why mr. Musk is so desperate to get a large amount of control over the government doesn't it?

Btw: does it really need to be stated that

1) every billionnaire is a financial engineer, finding holes in government tax policy, and if they don't admit this, they're lying.

2) mr. Musk's entire empire is utterly dependent on government spending. Totally. 100% (because all these companies would go bankrupt without government money, they wouldn't lose 10% of their income. They'd be gone). Therefore the idea that Musk wants to cut government spending is a bit ...

[TMWNN]

>SpaceX: take a fundamentally bad business idea (there's plenty of private space launch attempts, but even the best go bankrupt), by ... getting the government to pay for space launches, in what is a very very bad deal (the government MUST have space launch capabilities. So it can never stop developing Boeing SLS. Therefore what is paid to SpaceX is paid ON TOP of what we pay to SLS, and is NOT a better alternative (as Musk screams), and so not any kind of saving.

Sorry to interrupt your nonsense, but Biden's NASA administrator Bill Nelson quoted a member of the Joint Chiefs as telling him that SpaceX had saved the US government $40 billion for just launching military payloads. <https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/05/did-spacex-really-...>.

On the civilian side, SpaceX saved NASA $2 billion for just one payload, Europa Clipper <https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/a-year-from-launch-the...>, so who knows how many billions more from other launches.

>Starlink: this has been tried, and tried and tried again. It just isn't profitable.

Two outside analysts estimate that Starlink became cash flow positive in 2024, with FCF hitting $2B in 2025. <https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growin...>

[spwa4]

I explained why SpaceX is a bad deal for the US government. They have strategic reasons why they cannot be limited to SpaceX. Hence anything "saved" by a SpaceX launch is illusory: they can choose to pay for SLS ... or they can choose to pay for SLS AND for SpaceX.

Which number will be bigger? The price of SpaceX launches doesn't even matter. Or in economic lingo: SpaceX launches aren't that much cheaper to the marginal cost of SLS, which is what matters.

EVERY private space launch company beats SLS on price. Nothing special about SpaceX on that front. Who has the cheapest launch cost? This might be a surprise, but Russia does (about 50 million dollars). Yes Falcon can carry more and is more modern, but all rockets are different (and they do have big ones too), but you want cheapest? Russia is currently unbeatable, mostly because they do close to zero development at this point. Obviously, you can see the problem with using Russia too.

[stetrain]

> They have strategic reasons why they cannot be limited to SpaceX. Hence anything "saved" by a SpaceX launch is illusory: they can choose to pay for SLS ... or they can choose to pay for SLS AND for SpaceX.

There are other options than SpaceX and SLS. And SLS is not designed or destined to launch the majority of US government payloads as an alternative to SLS.

SpaceX's primary market competitors are ULA and Blue Origin. The US govt can continue to fund competition even if the SLS program goes way.

[spwa4]

Ok, I don't fully agree, but it's beside the point ... that makes all government money spent on SpaceX worthless (because it cannot replace money that has to be spent)

Think of it like buying a car ... after you've already signed the contract to buy a new car. The contract signing means that all money spent on cars afterwards is money wasted, because you will have to complete the contract regardless. Likewise, buying a rocket from SpaceX does not let the government avoid spending on SLS.

[stetrain]

> that makes all government money spent on SpaceX worthless

I don't follow your logic. I think you're conflating two very different things, the US government launch market and the Artemis lunar program.

The US government previously paid ULA as the sole provider for many launch services. (Well, before that it was Boeing and Lockheed but they consolidated into ULA).

Since SpaceX became a competitive provider, the US government has had a choice on new contracts between ULA and SpaceX in competitive bids. SpaceX has won many contracts by being cheaper than ULA, and ULA has dropped their own prices to be more competitive to SpaceX.

That is real savings on US government launches through competition. There's no 20 year committed car loan on all future rocket launches that the US government is already paying for these services.

SLS isn't really part of the picture for the vast majority of these launches that SpaceX is winning contracts on. SLS is being built for upcoming lunar missions only at this point, as part of the Artemis program.

SpaceX's existing Artemis contract is to provide a lander to work alongside the SLS rocket and Orion, not as a replacement for SLS. Without SpaceX's lander there will be no way for astronauts to get from lunar orbit to the surface for the initial planned landing missions.

But treating SLS solely as money already committed to be spent is a sunk cost fallacy. The SLS continues to cost billions per launch even if you ignore all of the development costs up until this point. It can also only launch once every year or two.

A mission architecture based on competitive bids from multiple service providers (ULA, Blue Origin, and SpaceX) will almost certainly cost less going forward and allow an increased flight rate.

[maxglute]

TBH if Musk is truely fixated with Mars then even 100 billion $$$ global commercial empire across multiple sectors wasn't going to finance it. The only play for trillions for Mars is to insinuate way into government largesse, and there's only one gov who can both afford to and willing (or dumb enough) to play. And even for US gov it's a squeeze... billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money... if Musk wants trillions no wonder he's wants to cut billions elsewhere.