And let's be frank, an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail.
So when he started OneWeb and then Ob3 (or vice-versa) I was skeptical. Now, reading about OW, and how it was mostly a middleman, I would say I am not surprised at all that he would pull this one and blame a virus. With chapter 11 he gets to protect his equity and compensation
I expect him to rebound, with even better compensation.
This is one in 10 years chance to reprice failed aqusitions, investments went bad, mismanaged opportunities etc. And blame unpredictable, external circumstances.
If we are to show loss on a quarterly report let it be large one-time figure. Heck we can even qualify for some bailout money.
As Elon recently said, they have ALL gone under. The goal of Starlink is to not go bankrupt. Well, it's actually to fund the Mars mission, but a first step is to not go bankrupt like everyone else did.
Not necessarily. SpaceX has an advantage in owning the rails. It isn’t, however, decisive.
OneWeb failed to bring any advantages of its own to the table. It compounded its launch and first mover disadvantages by launching with ArianeSpace. It gave away any satellite advantages by using Airbus to make the birds.
There simply wasn’t any strategic ground for OneWeb to stand on.
SpaceX seems to be doing everything themselves. Amazon seems to be doing a lot but will likely outsource launching of the birds. Wouldn't be surprised if they fly on SpaceX rockets in part....
It would seem that in this case, it was.
https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-history-of-crisis-201...
Many of them ended up being salvaged afterward and many are still operating today (some at a profit) after going through bankruptcy: ORBCOMM, Iridium, Globalstar. All three have launched second generation satellite constellations. Bankruptcy doesn't have to mean society loses their value.
I'm as big of a SpaceX fan as anyone, but I hope we manage to salvage OneWeb out of bankruptcy and get at least the minimal constellation up somehow. Maybe they'll be able to switch to cheaper reusable launch providers like SpaceX or New Glenn as part of the bankruptcy.
Iridium used SpaceX very successfully to get their entire new constellation up.
SpaceX's first propulsive landing attempt was September 2013, by the end of 2014 they had twice succeeded at controlled descents over the ocean. Their first landing on a solid surface (i.e. actual recovery of the booster) was late 2015.
So yes, there weren't yet reusable rockets, but the writing was very clearly on the wall.
Tesla still isn't in the satellite business unless you count the roadster that SpaceX launched, Starlink is part of SpaceX. It was announced at roughly the same time as Oneweb receiving funding (January 2015). My understanding is that Oneweb and SpaceX had been in talks that broke down, so they knew it was coming.
With the gift of hindsight that's true, but I disagree, it wasn't clear back then. Keep in mind that the concept of reusable rockets has been around ever since the first rocket launch around the 1960's, and we (humanity) threw away the entire thing. It took SpaceX to make reusable rockets real, but not for lack of trying on the part of Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors (in the US). SpaceX had only a very small (single digits) number of test launches they could do before running out of money. A couple more grid fin unknowns causing failures and SpaceX would have gone bankrupt so it wasn't clear back then.
Also keep in mind that back in 2015, it wasn't clear that Tesla was necessarily going to be successful either. The Model 3 was still a couple years away so nothing was really proven, publicly.
What would have happened if SpaceX had run out of money, we'll never know, but in the interim 5 years, the reusability of SpaceX's rockets has become clear. Despite all the shorts betting against Tesla, Elon Musk succeeded and smart money has learned not to bet against him, whether it be SpaceX or Tesla.
Tesla's success is relevant to Elon Musk maintaining full control of SpaceX and funding mars mission research. It wasn't at all relevant at that point for whether or not SpaceX would continue to exist as a company, or succeed at re-use.
This is in no way true. When SpaceX was working on F9 reuse, their business was (very) profitable at their launch prices. They are still pricing F9 launches at a point where the launches would be profitable if every launch was expendable. Reusability was not what they needed to win -- it was the victory lap after they had already won.
There is a lot of fud arguing otherwise based on external estimates, but they all fail to take into account that the internal cost of F9 is only less than a fifth of what all the competitors pay for their comparable rockets. The reason is that SpaceX is extremely vertically integrated, and every component that goes into their rockets is heavily optimized for cost first and performance second.
For example, most other American launchers use RL-10's for their upper stage engines. There is a good reason for this -- RL-10 with it's best-in-class Isp is quite possibly the best upper stage engine that exists. However, this comes at a rather steep cost that is not public knowledge but was in 2017 estimated to be ~$25M. The costs of the rocket engines on a F9 is not public knowledge either, but is known to be less than $500k each, or at most ~$5M total.