[lazaroclapp]

SpaceX comes with, well, an astronomical (snicker) level of risk attached to it. So I suppose the idea is that SpaceX might well end up being worth a lot more than WhatsApp, but WhatsApp and its user base are worth a lot now. It is also unlikely that they will end up not being worth anything in the future (if we hit a second dotcom bubble WhatsApp might end up being worth a lot less than their current valuation, but like AOL, it won't be literally worth nothing). SpaceX might.

There is also some level of tragedy of the commons problem going on, in which SpaceX benefits all of us every time they successfully test a new design, but it only benefits their investors when they manage to get mining rights to the moon or set up martian tourism or the like. Goals which are possible - which is the impressive thing - but still very risky bets.

[threeseed]

> when they manage to get mining rights to the moon or set up martian tourism or the like

I always wonder if people actually seriously believe this.

We are many, many decades away from this being even close to a reality.

[patmcc]

>>We are many, many decades away from this being even close to a reality.

If there aren't companies like SpaceX (or governments doing similar work) we'll never be any closer to that reality. Mines on the moon and O'Neill cylinders in space aren't going to pop into existence in 2098 or something, they're going to be built on top of the foundations being laid by SpaceX (and others) today.

Maybe SpaceX will last long enough to profit from it, maybe they won't. It's still a better use of $1 billion of Google's money than another social network or whatever.

[adrianN]

No, we're not decades away, we're dollars away. A base on Mars in feasible with today's technology, see for example the Mars Direct plan by Zubrin. The only thing we need are about 30 billion dollars, that's like eight aircraft carriers or 1/3 ISS.

[threeseed]

The Beagle landed on Mars and was unresponsive. The last SpaceX test rocket failed to land. If all we need is money then there would be no failures that would result in masses of tourists dying or billions of dollars in mining equipment being destroyed.

But alas the world doesn't work like that. It takes time to repeat the design, build, test process until you get it right. And no throwing money at the problem doesn't result in a quicker solution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law

[arrrg]

Beagle 2 hitched a ride on Mars Express which was and still is a very successful low cost mission. It’s still orbiting Mars and being used for scientific research more than a decade into its mission.

The total cost including that decade of operations is about €300M (until 2013) – and less than 20 percent of that was spent on Beagle.

But that’s not even the whole story. Venus Express was heavily borrowing from Mars Express and did consequently cost substantially less (€85M vs €150M for launch and spacecraft, excluding subsequent operations and in the case of Mars Express also Beagle 2; total mission cost until its end in 2014 €220M).

Beagle 2 and the whole Mars Express mission was really put together on a shoestring budget. It’s more a demonstration that you can do a lot with a little, really, than anything else …

Other then that SpaceX has shown incredible process in their re-usability quest, the latest failed landing included. They have been on a steady march towards re-usability, without any major roadblocks (except the usual delays). There is nothing there that shows them hitting any kind of wall, actually.

[cmsmith]

The Apollo program is a remarkably direct and relevant example of throwing money at a problem resulting in a quicker solution. There is of course a limit, but we're well below that point now. And with our current rate of experimental launches, many employees won't even remain in the job long enough to experience more than one of them. Speeding the rate up could have exponential increases in productivity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29#Orion_Pr...

[TeMPOraL]

> The last SpaceX test rocket failed to land.

This is disingenous. The last SpaceX rocket successfully returned from suborbital flight onto the target landing site. They just underestimated the amount of hydraulic fluid needed to make a proper landing (but then again, they hit the barge anyway!). It's basicaly a 99% success with a minor error that was found and will be corrected.

Stupid failures always happen, but at this point we can definitely assume that yes, they have a reusable stage.

[gizmo686]

The last SpaceX didn't just return from a suborbital flight, it returned after successfully completing its mission to boost the upper stages on their way to the ISS (where they eventually arrived without issue). As long at the booster was going to come crashing down into the ocean anyway, they decided to use it to test their experimental landing capabilities, and came remarkably close to an unexpected success.

[lmm]

> The Beagle landed on Mars and was unresponsive.

The Beagle was the cheapest Mars mission ever (~50 million), and the investigation attributed the failure directly to not having enough money to do things properly. Again, dollars, not decades.

> The last SpaceX test rocket failed to land.

It was a test, an experiment; Musk was describing it as "50/50" beforehand. The mission achieved exactly what it was meant to do.

[lazaroclapp]

Sure, I guess the assumption is that those "dollars away" also include the money to run a whole lot of unmanned flights, a bunch of manned-but-risky flights and have some failures (hopefully of the unmanned kind) in the process of making the whole thing repeatable.

[davedx]

Says who?