If SpaceX can fly out their 2015 manifest, that will be impressive. This is the year the Falcon Heavy is supposed to launch. Their first manned flight has apparently been postponed; it's been "2-3 years" away for 2 years now.[1]
I notice they've stopped putting dates on their manifest for future flights.[2][3] SpaceX is doing a great job, but they're behind their own schedule. They're two flights behind on ISS resupply, and launched less in 2014 than they'd planned. They may be having scaling problems with their organization. They have a a product and customers, but can't meet demand. This may get better once they get their own spaceport in Texas finished.
There's been a combination of SpaceX developmental delays and the US government budget for commercial space getting cut every year, which causes the contracts to get stretched out.
Can SpaceX, at least from a technology and legal standpoint, launch a manned flight without NASA involvement? If so, is it that it just makes no commercial sense? Or is the idea that the flight is far more likely to succeed with NASA's expertise?
The context here is NASA moving slowly and the possibility of SpaceX launching without their involvement. Can you think of a single customer for that? Try to get Russian permission to got to the Russian side of the station without NASA involvement or just hang out in the Dragon until you get tired of using diapers?
Such as visiting a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space station? They have a demo in orbit, an ISS module in the pipeline, and a manifested launch of a bigger unit on the SpaceX manifest. I thought this was pretty well known, guess I was wrong!
I am well aware of Bogelow. When do you think they will have their first human occupied station? I will bet you any sum that it is after NASA astronauts take a ride on SpaceX. Yes other customers for human spaceflight will exist, but right now it's just NASA.
Legal? If they get permission from the international wotsit that is responsible for the ISS, then yes. Technology? Well if they get permission, they will get access to the required knowledge about docking and procedures and stuff. The ISS isn't nearly as secretive as the cold war era space race, and there are as of yet no commercial interests in there.
Spin it all you want but a failure to meet schedules isn't really acceptable. You either failed to deliver or failed to manage your project estimation process.
Sounds an awful lot as a managerspeak. Estimations are hard - and in general, it's hard to make predictions, especially for the future, and here we're talking about estimations of a future moment.
> How do you schedule a rocket launch when someone else owns the 50-year-old range radar equipment that keeps executing HCF?
Recognize that even if you don't own the radar equipment, it is impacting your ability to deliver value, so spend the necessary funds to get them to replace the radar equipment with something that doesn't have that problem.
> Recognize that even if you don't own the radar equipment, it is impacting your ability to deliver value, so spend the necessary funds to get them to replace the radar equipment with something that doesn't have that problem.
And then convince the Air Force to certify and let you use your new radar for their payloads.
Senate was just a filler for `important political position that gets to decide stuff'. Sorry, I'm not too familiar with the intricacies of the American machine.
The Congress, including the Senate, absolutely does vote on the laws that set the parameters with which the military's acquisition process (among other military policies and processes) must conform.
And that would keep things on schedule? Have you looked at the US governance system recently? Nothing is on schedule there except the clamour for reelection.
No mere customer will get the Air Force to replace their ancient and crumbling radars, or, moreover, deal with all the various resource contention issues at the Cape. SpaceX is instead in the process of dealing with the problem in a tractable way: by building their own damn spaceport.
You say that, but there aren't a lot of options in the space business, and even SpaceX with delays is better than other available options. They are slowly improving deliveries as they learn to understand a product and business model that no human beings have ever offered. To say they should do all this and never miss a delivery date is to misunderstand the economics of the space flight industry.
That said, it will be an exciting time when SpaceX launches are so common and regular as to seem boring.
It's hard to know where to place the blame for delays, though. They have to deal with multiple government bureaucracies, bumping, launch windows, and weather. Even if SpaceX executed perfectly every time there would still be schedule slip.
<super meta>
Bummed to see this getting as downvoted as it. Although it may be construed as "managerspeak", it is contributing to the conversation as is evidenced by the several well thought out replies. Perhaps a reminder is warranted: downvote!=disagree. At least that's my understanding (and hope).
</super meta>
I don't think it was mere disagreement. He said deals were not acceptable which is false. And then tried to paint the picture as failure which is far from the truth.
The reality is that aggressive scheduling is a reasonable tactic, even knowing that deadlines will almost certainly slip.
Only in life-threatening situations, like idk, rescue missions or critical supply missions. In all other cases: delay is preferable over a botched launch.
Its an interesting question about how much they can do without NASA backing up their clearance requests with the FAA. Some of the early SpaceShip One clearances were a real nightmare for Scaled Composites, I don't know if it was just a lack of rulemaking or general government ineptitude.
At some point though SpaceX will have the space port and the rocket and the gear to just tell the FAA that they are going up on such and such a date with the following orbital parameters. Plus you have to notify folks that care so that they won't wonder if a missile just launched out of Texas (not that the orbital track would put Russia or China in its path but still)
The spaceport is being built specifically to accommodate SpaceX rockets. The idea is to have the rocket automatically fueled when it gets docked, use robotics to stand things up, and add a bit more automation to the overall process. There are a few articles about it online, but I just found this one from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-11/elon-musks-f...
It's not the be-all and end-all of space stations, but it's better than something that was built decades ago for a previous generation of vehicle.
That's all speculation on the part of the reporter, and a lot of it is oddly ungrounded. SpaceX has already built its own spacecraft prep facilities and launch pads at its two existing sites (Canaveral and Vandenberg), which already are largely automated (you don't want humans anywhere near a fueled rocket!) So it's not like they needed their own site for any of that.
The one part of that speculation that is sourced -- different range safety systems once the rocket is in flight -- does deal with facilities that SpaceX shares with the Air Force and other launch systems (ULA Atlas launches at both sites, at least). But handling of the rockets on the ground is already completely under SpaceX control, and done entirely with their own purpose-built equipment.
All that automation you're talking about is at least a decade out.
The most important aspect of the new launch site is that it is simply another site they can launch from. SpaceX has the rockets, they just need a couple weeks between launches at the moment to get the launch pad squared away and prepped for the next launch. By adding a second site[1], they have double their throughput.
[1] Technically it's the third site, but Vandy is limited in what it can launch, as you can only launch into very high inclination orbits from there.
Would have made sense to build it closer to the equator? As from my orbits class the more you get closer to the equator, the bigger is your launches time-window to hit the target orbit.
Texas sounds unreasonable, does anybody knows/sees other good reasons?
As rkuykendall-com mentioned, its as far south in the US as you can get without overflying other land, and they've gotta stay in the US to prevent ITAR violations.
When they were starting out with Falcon 1 launch attempts, they were using Kwajalein Atoll. They had tons of problems with corrosion from sea-water in the air though. I imagine that might be a concern in Hawaii as well, depending on which islands were available.
They'll still be near sea-water in Texas of course, but perhaps the wind tends to blow west to east, with the jetstream? I'm not sure.
And yet pop cans travel halfway around the world daily... I don't see the issue. As I said, it could be expensive, but there's no risk or danger in it.
People transport extremely fragile things by sea all the time. You may have to be mindful of weather, but it is do-able with the will and money.
I love how the writer phrased Google's incentive for investing as "Google has a practical goal in linking up with SpaceX. It wants to beam the Internet to hard-to-reach regions of the planet so it can take in more advertising revenue."
While...
"'Space-based applications, like imaging satellites, can help people more easily access important information, so we’re excited to support SpaceX’s growth,' Google spokesman Aaron Stein said in a statement."
Yeah, it's fashionable to point out that Google does what it does to sell more ads. But isn't this getting very boring? We don't hear things like "x is making a TV program to sell more ads" or "x is making a new car to take in more revenue".
I believe it's necessary to repeat this point because of the constant churn of new users who are otherwise ignorant of Google's business model. I still hear people say, "I'm so glad Google is nice enough to give us free apps!"
I've heard folks say things to that effect. "Google is awesome. They have the best search and email and smartphone software. For free! And they're fighting corrupt ISPs!"
It's nice when Google does things that benefit a lot of people, but they're a for-profit corporation and not motivated primarily by altruism. People might not fully understand that or its significance and simply enjoy Google products, but I think it's useful knowledge.
But did you also hear them say, "...and they're doing it as a charity" and then get shocked when you revealed that Google is actually a for-profit organization that makes money via advertising?
It's a nuanced point. aros said some people believe Google is "nice" which isn't wrong in my experience. I didn't interpret aros' words to mean that people explicitly deny Google is a for-profit corp nor espouse that it is a charity, but people have expressed warm fuzzies about Google.
My takeaway was that many people produce warm feelings about an entity that doesn't necessarily reciprocate or find those warm feelings important in it of themselves.
I personally like Google (so far). E.g. I could have seen them siding with ISPs, trying to dismantle net neutrality, and using their capital to stifle innovation keeping them at the top.
But if sometime in the future, Google enacts policies that aren't so "nice", people may do well to avoid confusion by remembering that Google isn't inherently "nice", but they are inherently "for-profit".
Agreed, it's a bit silly to assume that all Google cares about is ad revenue. Plus, improving internet accessibility and making more revenue aren't mutually exclusive. Why do self driving cars? Def no ad revenue there.
> Why do self driving cars? Def no ad revenue there.
Sure there is. Many people commute in their cars for 1-2 hours per day, when it is illegal for them to look at ads on their smartphone. If Google makes this legal, it's another 10%ish increase in the waking hours that people may be clicking on their ads.
I think that Google's ambitions are a lot higher than this, of course. Self-driving cars will be a lucrative business for them in numerous ways. And increased ad revenue will be one of them.
The business model for the self-driving car is a computer-scheduled, dynamically-provisioned taxi service cheap enough that nobody needs to own a car in the city. Because self-driving cars don't need to park (they can just move on to the next assignment or deprovision), if they catch on then in-city parking decks can be redeveloped into business space or park space.
You forget transportation of goods. Pretty much all over-land cargo in the U.S. and most of that elsewhere (less so, because trains) could be transported by self-driving cars/drones. Not sure if that is larger or smaller than transportation of people at this point, but it's still an astronomically huge market.
Mostly because, freight and passenger trains interfere badly. No passengers = easier freight. A big wave of deregulation of the market a few decades ago helped, too. The Economist ran a special about the US market a few years ago.
I don't believe ad revenue in self-driving cars will be meaningful. I don't think google will force people to watch ads after they pay for being driven.Maybe only as a discount ,but most will prefer not to, the same way that today, there aren't any attractive options to watch ads for pay.
Not force, but the fact is that people will have more time to do whatever they want while their car drives them somewhere, during which many will be browsing the Internet through choice, and browsing the Internet generally involves looking at ads.
Frankly, I'm not entirely sure such a roundabout benefit even comes up in management's eyes compared to the difficulty of getting self-driving cars working and on the roads, but it is one.
Assume self-driving car is perfected, Google can easily offer better mobile/local ads for both business and consumer because of context.
Show popups ads of ongoing/upcoming events of the current street you are on. Going to the movie theatre, recommend a nearby lunch spot. Feeling lucky? Let the car plan your weekend
Imagine how many more hours a day you'll have to look at your android device when you don't have to pay attention to driving to and from work? Or going on road trips.
sure there is. if you make self driving cars, instead of spending my time driving, I'll spend that time on my phone, tablet, or laptop. More time spent online = more ads clicked. I work from home, but I still end up driving for several hours a week. Some people drive several hours a day. Lots of ads getting clicked if everyone has a self driving car.
It isn't silly to assume considering that an overwhelming majority of Google's revenue comes directly from advertisements.
As for self driving cars, I can think of a ton of marketing use cases including tracking how often people drive, where they go, how long they stay there, the frequency in which someone goes to a location, what type of features in the car the user takes advantage of...
And that's just from the top of my head in 30 seconds. I'm sure the marketing kids at Google can think of far more ways to milk you.
I suspect that technology giants like Google and Facebook are trying to wean themselves from ad revenue, to become conglomerates like other companies of that size, like GE.
The alternative is massive problems in a few years, when somebody has the guts to kickstart a consumer laptop that comes with adblock preinstalled.
I get the feeling that this "Google is doing X only because of ad revenue" meme is starting to get into Illuminati territory. I find it as believable as that thing a group of anti-vaxxers told me yesterday, that 'Bill Gates is really trying to depopulate the world using vaccines to sterilize people', as evidenced by 10 second quote from his 2010 TED talk, taken out of context.
Makes no sense, SpaceX has been profitable almost every year they've been in business. Musk & Jurvetson are on record multiple times of SpaceX's profitability and how the aerospace industry is uniquely structured that way.
Edit: The article doesn't even mention any rep from SpaceX saying they're profitable. This SEEMS like a guesstimate by the writer
True, this is what the field of accounting theory is all about: how do you best represent the finances of a company? The best way to do so depends heavily on the type of company you're talking about and who wants to know the information, but many companies choose to keep multiple sets of books--one that follows the IRS's rules (this one is required), one that follows the SEC's rules (required if they are a publicly traded corporation), one for non-public investors, and one used internally allows management to make strategic decisions and departments to make plans.
The existence of various ways of considering the finances of a corporation don't necessarily mean that any one method is "wrong". But when you get into questions of "is it profitable?" The answer depends a lot on who's asking.
In any one month, more money may go out of your checking account than came in, but does that mean you lost money that month? Maybe some of the outgoing money was paying for a year's worth of an expensive service, or was an investment in some other company, or was the purchase of some assets that will allow you to become more productive. In those cases, while your cash flow may be negative, you can keep a set of books that spreads the cost of a year's worth of service over the entire year, even if you pay it all at once on January 1. Or a building you might want to spread the cost out over the duration of any loans you took out to pay for part of it, or if you paid cash, you still may want to spread the expense out over the 15 year expected lifetime of the asset.
Obviously the IRS and SEC rules have to be pretty standard across the board, but within any particular industry or business model, a different representation may provide investors or management with a more accurate picture than the IRS or SEC rules would allow.
Obviously all of these can be abused, and investors should be skeptical and do due diligence, but even 100% honest businesses may report a loss to the IRS, a profit to investors, and a break-even for the SEC. They aren't necessarily trying to scam anyone.
Pretty much everything you mention in this paragraph is covered by accounting rules a student would learn in year 1. Cash flow isn't profitability. Spending on assets is capitalized, and they depreciate according to rules, not what you "may want" to do.
Yes, there is always some leeway to play fast and loose with accounting, and companies are always trying "adjust" earnings to suit to their business model. 4 times out of 5, it's horsecrap. That's why we have GAAP.
Sure, but to take depreciation as an example, the rules do not necessarily match reality. Sometimes an asset's practical life is longer than the rules allow, sometimes it is less. These factors do not just depend on the asset, itself, they depend on how the asset is used. If a company goes under, the resale value of the asset may be worth more or less than its carrying value depending on outside economic conditions, technology changes, or what have you. Even the most earnest accountant can get things very wrong.
Yep, that's the point I was trying to make. Most people, presumably including the parent commentator, have not taken any accounting, and don't think about all the simple, obvious examples I listed.
They're not making that claim. Bloomberg is a high quality source for financial / business related news, their writers are extremely unlikely to confuse such a basic financial matter.
The "as" in the title isn't meant to be a "because of Google cash," rather it's an elaboration of the present context of SpaceX, noting they're both profitable and have the cash from Google.
Good to see an independent company do this. The only way space will be open to world is for it not to be shacked in the hands of governments; nor should it ever get stuck away as a corporate only endeavor. Let countries do the hard science, the exploration part, and step out of the way when someone else can do the mundane, especially when there are savings to be reaped
I didn't realize the cost of fuel is only $200-$300k for a space launch. That's ridiculously low considering it costs more than that in fuel to cross the Atlantic ocean in a 100-foot yacht.
This is an unnecessarily depressing way to see things. What you should believe is that your dreams are not meant for you. They are meant for someone much like you who probably doesn't exist yet. Someone who will actually understand what you've done and how you've helped them achieve what you would like to.
You will die, and someone else will follow in your footsteps. Make sure that person has what they need to live the life you wanted, because you're probably the only person who really knows what that is worth.
You are making a logical fallacy of sorts. He wasn't destined for this role, he just happened, by skill and luck, to make it out of the 7 Billion people who didn't. If he was alone he wouldn't succeed.
- he can't fix the entire world by himself, there are a lot of things you can do to make a difference;
- edw519 would probably point out that he's not making the thing he makes by the power of his own hands, he leverages the global economy to achieve his goals; if you do anything that's even remotely useful, you're helping him and everyone else;
- somebody needs to buy those Teslas ;).
(not that they sound very convincing, I'm not sure if I ever believe them myself)
SpaceX will IPO when their Mars Colonial Transporter is making regular trips between Earth and Mars. Elon thinks that taking the company public before then would result in a potential derailment of Mars colonization plans. Having MCT making regular Earth-Mars trips before going public will ensure that quarterly-return-investors won't try to interfere with sending millions of people to go live on Mars.
MCT should be flying its first trips in about 15 years (Elon says 10-12, so we add some). So I'd guess IPO in around 15-20 years. The real colonization effort will probably be getting going in 20-25 years. SpaceX will want to send about 80,000 people each year (or each launch window), and that scale is probably 30-40 years away.
Most of us will see SpaceX go to Mars. And optimistically, I think many of us will go too.
Who is going to pay for it, though? If Musk is then, okay, maybe. But if he's counting on Congress to pony up the cash it may never happen at all. Probably won't, in fact.
Elon will not wait for Congress. Who will pay for it?
1. The people who want to move there - target price $500k USD.
$500,000 is the estimated price at which the demand is estimated at 80,000 tickets. Elon figures that if the price of moving to Mars is comparable to buying a home in California, the number of people who could afford to go and would want to go is ~80,000. So that's ~$40B or so.
2. Elon - maybe worth $50-100B by then?
If we assume that SolarCity and Tesla will continue to grow for the next 10-20 years, then Elon's net worth will probably be ~$50B or so. Not enough to fund a full Mars colony, but it'd be a really good start.
3. Satellite internet profits
The recently announced satellite internet effort by SpaceX, financed by Google and Fidelity, is intended to provide high-speed, low-latency global internet access to billions of people. Elon expects to be able to fund part of the Mars colonization project with profits from that.
4. NASA / Congress
NASA already expects to spend many billions on making trips to Mars. It does not seem unlikely that, in 20 years, they would be willing to join some efforts and allocate $10-30B towards Mars colonization with SpaceX.
5. VCs and billionaires.
The Martian economy may have a rough start but will probably grow wildly once established. SpaceX already attracts VC funds in the billions from large firms and billionaires, and this will certainly be amplified in the future.
I have trouble trusting business statements from companies in the space industry. They play in a world of secrets, classified technologies and continuous background checks. At every launch, over in the corner, sits a uniformed member of the US military and a switch. That switch is to destroy the rocket should it run off course.
SpaceX might be profitable today. It might be very profitable tomorrow. But because of the classified nature of the industry that can change in a heartbeat. Fall out of favour with certain government agencies and suddenly that constant stream of background checks slows, deadlines get missed, and profits become loss. There are many fingers on many kill switches.
Maybe the company is or will be a great success, but that success comes only with permission. Investors beware: Balance sheets are only half the story. The other half is not open for inspection.
Well the reason for that is because they're given exclusive access to basically launch a missile from US airspace. With a mere change of payload, that rocket can be used to deliver a nuclear warhead. So yeah, it's pretty prudent to have background checks, massive amounts of oversight, and many kill switches. An even if you have all the best intentions, it doesn't take that much to accidentally crash into the ISS and kill everyone aboard. Look at all the maneuvers SpaceX had to do to prove they were capable of docking with the ISS.
Sure, politics comes into play. But the idea of a less-regulated spaceflight industry doesn't seem feasible anytime soon. Even the airline industry is still heavily regulated compared to even automobiles. That's just the risk associated with the massive inherent dangers associated with flight.
>Look at all the maneuvers SpaceX had to do to prove they were capable of docking with the ISS.
They haven't even proven that yet. This version of Dragon can't dock - they just get within arm's reach (heh) of the station so they can be dragged in.
I think the case would be more like you accidentally used the thrusters too much at the last minute and tore a hole in ISS. Or your docking mechanism failed horribly and showed safe when it was not safe
Well, they're offering an economic benefit (cheaper) to those who want it, with the U.S. government (and I imagine primarily military) with interest in seeing this succeed and anything that allows rapid deployment of whatever (slightly terrifying) into space.
That is to assume that those customers care about economic benefit. Frankly, if cost were their only concern, the US military would have abandoned ULA and gone with SpaceX long ago.
I'm reminded of the first calls (90s->2002, not the later programs) for bids to replace the KC-135. There were only two real contenders, Airbus and Boeing. Airbus's first reaction was essentially: "why even bother."
When you're launching a $2B satellite, saving $60mm on the launch is not a slam-dunk. The Air Force had a series of launch failures that made them extremely conservative. Sure, I think they ought to be moving faster with SpaceX, but you should give them credit for having some serious concerns.
A lot of that $2B cost comes from requirement that everything should just work, and therefore thoroughly tested, because customers don't want to have it broken in space where no one can fix things and have to send another one... which costs $2B... see cyclical reasoning? If launches would be cheaper, customers could afford to make less expensive payloads - after all, if it breaks, they can just send another one.
A primary reason why payloads are so expensive is because launch services - used to be - so expensive. With lowering the launch price payloads can become cheaper.
The situation today is that the Air Force has a $2B satellite to launch soon that they ordered a decade ago.
You're right that tomorrow, a different one could be built with the new launch cost in mind. The entire "new space" movement revolves around lowering launch costs and building much cheaper satellites to take advantage of lower launch costs.
That's not entirely correct. The bottom line is that military satellites are just expensive - period. They will always be expensive because of their capabilities.
Not all military satellites require some outstanding capabilities - and military does launch cubesats and other small-scale devices today. Reminding that if 50 years ago military requests pushed boundaries of technology, today commercial applications are so demanding - and command such a large market - that it is military devices which piggyback on RND results of commercial ones.
Yes, you may always want a unique, expensive, cutting edge satellite. But you won't always need that - military doesn't directly set the goal to spend as much as possible. X-37 demonstrates a lot of capabilities while being much cheaper than previous reusable space vehicle. So with launch costs going down other, cheaper opportunities open - to everybody, including military. That's beside the idea that cheaper rocket doesn't mean worse rocket, reminding Japanese cars of few decades back.
Agreed. They will always have more capability than a non-military satellite, and so will be more expensive. If it didn't have more capability than a non-military satellite, then it isn't a military satellite.
I meant it had to be different to non-military satellites in some important ways. Otherwise it'd be just a non-military satellite. Imagine buying a consumer-grade computer. It's cheap to get one with 16gb ram, but if you want a 64gb ram one, it would probably vastly more than the 64/16=4 times as expensive. Each step you go out of the non-military satellite capability curve (with multiple dimension including features, reliability), it gets exponentially more expensive. If the a research-grade computer wasn't different from a consumer-grade computer in some aspect (by having a lot of ram, cores, processing speed), it would just be a consumer-grade computer.
A computer that is substantially cheaper would be hobbyist-grade computer.
Of course I'm only talking about traditional military rather than forces like A* Qda which might make do with whatever they can get their hands on, which is probably what you're referring to.
I suppose a very cheap satellite could be terrorist-grade. ;)
Yes, except currently military radars and GPSes are more expensive and more capable than versions you can buy in the shop. Same applies for Humvees, Tanks, guns, and even malware. All of the ones used by the military and intelligence agencies cost vastly more to buy and at the same time have more capability than their corresponding consumer versions. So it's only a symmetric argument if you view "military" and "consumer" as symbols in a program without any of the background context, which I did not intend for you to do.
I notice they've stopped putting dates on their manifest for future flights.[2][3] SpaceX is doing a great job, but they're behind their own schedule. They're two flights behind on ISS resupply, and launched less in 2014 than they'd planned. They may be having scaling problems with their organization. They have a a product and customers, but can't meet demand. This may get better once they get their own spaceport in Texas finished.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130802104411/http://www.spacex... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20141030024140/http://www.spacex... [3] httpd://www.spacex.com/missions