Recent comments in /f/space

FTR_1077 t1_jdpfbwu wrote

>But they have committed serious funds to develop both a LEO satellite constellation for fast internet and also a fully reusable rocket design that would lift 150t to LEO,

Well, the former one changes the business model of the company, from orbital launches to telecommunications. It's a bad sign for a start-up to pivot that late in the game.

And on the later, although it sounds like a natural progression of the launch services, the failure of FH is a bad sign for starship.. SpaceX may end up never making money.

>It's like Amazon, where they didn't 'profit' for 2 decades because they were building AWS.

Sure, but SpaceX is still far away.. let's say it takes another 10 to make starship as smooth as F9. Are the investors willing to wait 30 years? 40 years? At some point money is going to run out.

−6

Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdpbt4u wrote

Also don't forget that SpaceX has very little reason to lower Starship's pricing at first. Sell more expensive flights to first for super heavy launch needs (Falcon Heavy and SLS replacement options). Once they are ready to start replacing the Falcon 9, then expect prices to come down.

2

Anthony_Pelchat t1_jdpbg48 wrote

RL has something SpaceX didn't. They can see in hindsight all of the failures SpaceX made and learn from them. SpaceX only had the Shuttle's failures to really learn from. SpaceX was also trying to improve as a launch provider in general during that time. RL has already had a decent bit of experience.

With Starship, SpaceX actually has reasons to take it slow before signing up customers on it. Not positive they will of course. But they have a huge amount of flights for Starlink first. They also really need to get reusability nailed down, so waiting on customers allows them to take more risks.

When it all comes down it, Rocket Lab may move faster than expected and Starship may take longer before signing up customers even if it's flying a bunch first.

0

dreamchains t1_jdpbeoa wrote

You clearly don't understand what "not quite" means, so not sure why you're being so pedantic. It's not contradicting anything. It's saying his comment was "not completely or entirely" (definition straight from google) true. Really don't understand why you guys feel the need to get so defensive on behalf of someone I wasn't even attacking.

−3