More competition is good.

That's a lot of words for "Hey guys! ME TOO!".

[deleted]

They got seed money from NASA, and plenty of contracts, but not much that could be considered a "subsidy". At worst, they may have gotten some fat contracts as an investment by NASA, who desperately needed private companies to fill the LEO hole, and quick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX#Funding

Supposedly, by 2012, about half of their funding had been government contracts that provided down payments, while the rest were private investments. A year later, they would be undercutting the costs of the Ariane 5 and Proton-M

Thanks a lot for this

If I have a construction company and am hired by the government to build them a warehouse, it doesn't mean the government then owns my fucking house

> Gwynne Shotwell

From what I understand: As COO (Chief Operating Officer), she's basically in charge of running the company itself and making sure it's running at peak performance. Who to hire, tracking internal goals, evaluating the performance of middle management, etc. Whenever a company has plenty of people not doing anything, has big work bottlenecks, has useless managers, is ignoring laws & oversight, or is otherwise running in an inefficient manner, it is the COO's role to make sure those things get fixed. An engineer may or may not be good at that job. Management-oriented engineers, like industrial engineers, logistics or systems engineers would probably do well at a COO job, as long as they have plenty of managerial experience. A mechanical or electronic engineer that are top of their field but aren't necessarily managers would probably not be able to keep up in that role.

A CEO (Chief Executive Officer) is tasked with executive tasks, and is the primary ambassador for the company. By executive, I mean they are in charge of "making sure things are happening (being executed)". They ultimately decide and shape the directions the company will take in the medium and long term (acquisitions, looming market threats, new product lines, etc), and are also in charge of making sure stockholders and other stakeholders are kept happy. Often enough, they will be the ones who will ultimately face potential big investors, and represent their company in public (interviews and interrogations). CEOs are paid so disproportionately much not because their job is necessarily super hard (it depends, some are way more hands-on than others), but because their decisions carry the largest impact on the company's performance in the long run, so the pressure they are under is massive. A COO hiring a bad project lead, or a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) choosing a cloud service provider that was ultimately terrible, will not be as catastrophic to the company medium-term as a CEO deciding to branch out into a market the company is woefully unequipped to handle, or the CEO failing to secure crucial investments to finish a large project.

So Elon is CEO of SpaceX, Tesla and now Twitter, and he's famously a very involved CEO, at least in one of them at a time (he kind of neglects SpaceX and Tesla while he focuses on Twitter). Very likely, he made the final call on approving SpaceX's Starlink, which deviated from their core rocket-building business. He was also likely the one who ultimately decided Tesla should focus on expanding their production with Gigafactories, and launching Powerwall to branch into infrastructure projects. Not only that, but in these cases, he was certainly very involved in steering the course these projects would take, based upon the recommendations of his subordinates. You'll also recognize that it will be hard for you to name a single current Tesla, SpaceX or Twitter employee aside from him, and that is by design (especially since his companies have the habit of firing their PR teams). As CEO, he focuses all negative attention the company attracts on himself, and ideally liberates his team from that negative attention.

Ohk got it thanks

For anyone as confused as I am: Yes, there are literally 33 engines at the bottom of that thing. And 6 more in the upper stage.

Here's an image which helped me: Naked Engines!

I've misread it as firing all 33 Starship engineers at once

I am disappointed in myself for not coming up with a good moonshot-shotwell connection. Seems like an easy win but I just can't find it.

>Shotwell

If rockets are some sort of projectile then she definitely lives up to her name

it’s not a subsidy, I was just speculating as to why this first commenter brought up taxpayer dollars

Seems like those starship engines need to find new employment soon /s

But those are payment for services rendered or services that will be rendered right? A subsidies main purpose is to keep the cost of something low. Kind of like the $7500 income tax credit for electric cars

The STS wasn't privately owned.

Same with the space shuttle, the cost to maintain the shuttle was nearly the same as just building a new one.

We paid to develop those services, but ownership of the results of all that development are privately held.

I'm not a c suite expert and not all c titles are equivalent between companies/industries, but as I understand it Shotwell is responsible for ensuring revenue, development, and production goals are on track. She hires and manages engineering project managers, and sets realistic expectations and sources for income to support those projects.

"Sorry, you're over the daily engine firing limit."

Im confused what she does is she an engineer too or just sells the rockets. What does a COO do. And how different is it from ceo

NASA has contracts with them for their rockets. So in a way I guess some of our taxes might go to them. But not a lot, NASA has a pretty small budget compared with other government agencies

Did Spacex get any subsidies?

It’s also a full-flow staged combustion engine, the most complex but most efficient type of combustion engine possible. Meant for maximizing and optimizing efficiency to a ridiculous degree, squeezing every drop of juice possible. If it’s successful it would also be the first full flow stage combustion engine to ever be successfully operated and used in history.

It wasn't a gift, you paid for services which were delivered