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Comment by purpleidea | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, why do they need so much money? If their rockets are really re-usable, and with all these launches they've been doing, they should have tons of cash...

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They are generating lots of money with current launches, but are designing a next generation rocket. Rocket programs are expensive.

The best comparison for the rocket that Musk is building for Mars is to SLS. Per https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/nasas-sls-moon-rocket-is-2... we've spent over $17 billion on the SLS program so far, and it probably isn't as far along as Musk's SuperHeavy/Starship is.

Admittedly Musk is doing his rocket development for cheaper. A lot cheaper. But the baseline for what rocket development "should" cost is more than SpaceX has received in revenue, total, through all of its history. (Not profit, revenue. Nobody knows what its profit margin is. But given that SpaceX routinely launches at prices below what its competitors can afford, they probably aren't rich.)

> we've spent over $17 billion on the SLS program so far, and it probably isn't as far along as Musk's SuperHeavy/Starship is.

There is a nearly complete SLS core stage awaiting testing at Stennis Space Center. How far along is Starship?

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/08/sls-green-run-verify...

From your article, they haven't even put fuel in the SLS core stage to see if it leaks. Their promised timeline is based on the expectation that there will be no major snags on the way to actually sending it into orbit. I'm not aware that any orbital rocket program has ever been that lucky. I'm therefore dubious that everything will go according to their plan.

By comparison, a full-sized prototype of Starship managed to launch and land again a few weeks ago. (Though on one engine, and not on all 6 for the final model.) As of June, they still considered it possible that they would get to orbit this year. (See https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-orbital-launch-deb... for confirmation.) I consider that unduly optimistic, but certainly would take an even money bet that they get into orbit in under a year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1HA9LlFNM0 (Starship SN5 150m Hop, August 4th 2020)

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-raptor-engine-crushes-russi... (SpaceX crushes rocket engine world record during Raptor test)

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295495834998513664 (@elonmusk: Raptor engine just reached 330 bar chamber pressure without exploding!)

Raptor engine production is significantly ahead of the RS-25 production line restart. That core stage is using old Space Shuttle engines.

Starship could certainly beat the first SLS launch sceduled for late 2021 if they gave up on reuse & in-flight refueling.

I suspect your question was somewhat rhetorical, but still: a test Starship is literally flying (albeit short hops currently) and the Raptor is looking pretty good.

Starship has done test hops to half a kilometer multiple times, and they're on prototype... 7, 8?

SLS hasn't moved an inch off the ground, ever.

I guess you could make a case that, today, SLS is further along. But SpaceX is moving several times faster here than SLS, so in any case it is going to be up and flying regularly long before SLS. And in terms of cost per weight to orbit, it will be a hundred times less.

Their profits are all being sunk directly into Starlink and R&D for Raptor, Starship, and Superheavy. It's not that reusability isn't netting them a profit, it's that their ambitions outstrip their savings from reuse.

Something to consider is that one of their goals is to be able to operate with relatively little constraint even in the event that government contracts, NASA grants, and/or commercial contracts hit a dry spell. That's the whole point of Starlink, for example — a continuous, launch-independent source of revenue to fund Mars ambitions.

A lot of their recent launches have been for their internet constellation, StarLink. Given the nature of this constellation, they have to do a large number of launches before it is operational and can take paying customers. There is a large upfront cost.

Its a bit of a chicken and the egg scenario with launch services right now. The fact that these new internet constellations were coming killed demand for the large, expensive one-off communications satellites that was a large part of SpaceX's business. Fundraising like this gets them across the chasm.

Both Starlink and Starship were estimated to cost about $10B each.

Starlink: 12000 satellites * (250K to build + 250K to launch) plus a few hundred base stations, plus a few million terminals, plus...

Elon initially said that Starship woul cost $10B to develop, but that was for the carbon fiber version. Switching to stainless reduced that cost dramatically, but it's still a multi-billion dollar program.

As for rocket launches, they'll probably do about a dozen customer launches this year (plus a similar number of Starlink launches, but those don't provide revenue). The customer launches are sold for about $50M, so call it $25M of profit per to be generous. That's $300M of profit. That doesn't pay for multi-billion programs.

They want to launch >10k satellites for Starlink. If each satellite costs $1M (I'm making that up), that's $10B right there. I've seen numbers as high as 40k satellites, though I don't know if those are reflective of their near-term goals.

They are launching satellites on their own dime. Needs lots of initial capitol.

I certainly think that's a fair question - as you see the contracts they have been awarded and wonder how do they not have adequate cash flow for that given their rocket tech.

The article makes me think:

1) mostly looking for money to build the Starlink satellite network as that is not brining in the necessary cashflow yet

2) it explicitly mentions the round was larger than originally intended and oversubscribed. Sure, if you haven't yet proven yourself it's certainly not always great to raise extra, but I don't think that applies as much here

Obviously it's only part of the cost, and then there's the development costs for Spaceship. SpaceX could probably self fund Spaceship and Starlink, but with investment it will go much quicker. In the case of Starlink there is a limit in that they have to complete at least half their deployment before their timer runs out with the FAA / ITU Radio Regs. So cash flow is an issue aside from reuse.

Because believe they will get a good return from accelerating their development instead of moving at whatever speed the return from their current launches can sustain.

Did you watch the launch today? The live feed from space was not an iPhone taped to the side of the rocket with FaceTime running. Everything has to be custom built. And it has to be very reliable and durable in a wide range of environments.

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