> Mr. Musk faces competition from another billionaire. Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, aims to send tourists and supplies into space.
Is that line even close to true? Last I heard Blue Origin was years away from revenue and far behind SpaceX in terms of capability and manufacturing.
Maybe not right now, but I wouldn't ever underestimate Bezos.
Musk and Bezos are both people I wouldn't bet against, but they're so drastically different in their styles. Musk is flashy, but gets shit done. Bezos knows how to get shit done quietly... and suddenly he's dominated and bought everything around you.
I'm a big fan of both companies, but having watched them grow I think the answer to whether or not it is true that Blue Origin is a competitor is, "No, yes, maybe?"
If SpaceX can get Falcon Heavy to work then no, so much of the oxygen will be sucked out of the launch services market that Blue Origin will be hard pressed to compete. At that point. I see them much more likely as a ULA acquisition to insure engine supply rather than a continual drain on Jeff Bezo's net worth.
If on the other hand Falcon Heavy continues to slip, or if their early attempts at launching them are unsuccessful, or they are unable to recover the three boosters (which I think is 'baked in' to the market expectations) then Blue seems to be in a position to take some of the heavy launch business, except that there isn't nearly as much of that business as there is the small/medium launch business.
Finally the dark horse here is the 'previously unexploited used for heavy things in space' which is to say some business or process that is tremendously more competitive in space than it is on Earth which grows the heavy launch business faster than SpaceX can scale up.
I worked for SpaceX but now I work for Bezos. I definitely think BO is years away... but not a decade. I don't think they'll compete for the same payloads at first but eventually they will. Bezos has significantly more money to dump into this problem than Elon.
There are plenty of other reasons, beyond the money, I don't think it will be that long before BO really starts to compete.
They are the only direct competitor on technology development. In 10 years, BO aims to be flying reusable rockets larger than the Falcon 9. You can't say that about and other company (except for SpaceX).
They are more directly a competitor for talent. Rocket engineering is a small world.
This interview with Tom Mueller (CTO of SpaceX) suggests that competitors have had to go back to the drawing board after seeing SpaceX accomplish wrt their low cost systems.
That rocket is going to be the real game-changer. I would say that the Falcon 9 is evolutionary, you know, a reusable rocket that greatly reduces the cost of access to space. Maybe we can achieve ten reduction in cost over, you know, like what ULA or the Russians or the Chinese are doing, with the Falcon. But we want like a hundred or more reduction in costs; and that’s what the Mars rocket’s gonna do. That’s going to be the revolutionary rocket.
So once we’re flying that, all other rockets will probably be obsolete. <laughs> Likely Blue Origin is working on a fully-reusable rocket <inaudible> But we’ve really changed this industry that the other guys are really scrambling. It’s pretty funny to watch this, because when we first started the company 15 years ago, my fifteen-year anniversary was Monday, May 1st. <clapping> Thank you.
We started the company on May 1st, 2002. Well, I started there; I consider—. Elon incorporated the company I think in February, but he didn’t have any employees yet. But I consider when he had his first employees when he had his company. But anyway, over the fifteen years, we’ve gotten, you know, this far; and when I was first hiring people, you know, that’s when I heard <inaudible> money to develop this rocket. And then we built the Falcon 1, which had a single Merlin engine on it, could throw about 1k lbs into LEO; and they said, you guys, you guys were able to build a small rocket. But you’ll never be able to build an EELV-class, EELV-mission class rocket. And so we built the Falcon 9 and started flying it. And they said you’d never be able to reuse it; you’ll never be able to get to the space station. And at some point, you stop listening to it. And I think it’s great, you know, if people think what you’re doing is impossible then you must be doing the right thing. You can still find the YouTube video online where people are critiquing our recovery thing as being photoshopped or CGI’d. That’s pretty high praise, when people don’t actually believe you’re doing. <laughter>
And you know, we were ridiculed by the other big companies in the launch vehicle business. At first, they ignored us; and then they fought us; and then they— we found out; they found out that they couldn’t really win in a fair fight because we were successful and we were, you know, factors of two or three or probably even five lower costs than what they can do. So then it becomes an unfair fight, where they, you know, try to destroy you politically, and use other means. And then at some point, they figure out that they’ve got to do what you’re doing. So there’s a lot of talk at these other companies about how they’ll make reusable rockets; recover the engines, recover the stages, come up with a much lower-cost rocket so that they can compete. You know, there’s no way that they ULA would have considered buying engines from Blue Origin except for the pressure that SpaceX is putting on them. There’s no way that the French would have quickly abandoned the Ariane 5 and moved to the Ariane 6 design because— except for the pressure we’re putting on.
So we’re really changing the world. The Russians are saying they’re coming up with a rocket that can beat SpaceX, which is entertaining, <laughs> which is entertaining, because they’ve been working on their Angara rocket for 22 years, and launched it once. And suddenly they’re going to be coming up with a low-cost one.
Bezos is the richest man in the world, and he definitely knows what he is doing. If anyone is able to compete with Musk it is Bezos... sorry for all these assorted Commies on the other side of the globe.
Forbes seems to have always been wrong about Musk's net worth unless I'm missing how it works. By my estimations, now he should be worth around $23B. $11B from Tesla. $11.5B from SpaceX.
Obviously they haven't updated for this news yet, but they still won't be at $23B.
Regardless, going from having invested all is PayPal money by 08 and in dire straits to being $20B+ 9 years later is awesome. And depending on what narrative you believe, money to this degree isn't what he cares about anyway.
Kudos to Elon, SpaceX, and everyone working there.
I mean, SpaceX is great and all, but it's no Cargill or even in the same league as Cargill or other similar companies like Koch (which is #2 in the US):
Revenue: US$109.6 billion (2017)[1]
Net income: US$2.835 billion (2017)[1]
Total assets: US$55.8 billion
25% of all United States grain exports
22% of the US domestic meat market
Yeah I found the valuation mildly depressing for similar contexts.. considering the total value of spaceX is less than half of the proposed ~increase~ to annual US military expenditure this year.
We could afford 2 fully-blown spaceX per year just by maintaining our present disproportionately large military rather than expanding it by roughly a Great Britain this year.
Each and every valuation attempt of a private tech company by the mainstream press takes the number of shares outstanding and multiplies it by the share price at the last round, pretending that preferred shares are valued as common. Since the round details are usually sealed (e.g., a company could in theory offer preferred shares with 100x liquidation pref and 25% annual preferred dividend, which would completely wipe out every shareholder except for the investors in the last round), the press doesn't really have a good way to value debt+equity instruments.
Also counting up the company value based on investor deals is weird in itself. Just because I buy 1% of a startup for $10k, doesn't mean I would buy 100% for $1m.
This is what you call a fluff piece. HN and the broader computer technology industry is sycophantic for Elon Musk, and will ignore that all of his companies would be dead in the water if it weren't for the questionable appropriation of government funds, at least if they spent and marketed the way that they do. The products are great, but the money comes out of everyone's pockets. You're all paying for some guy's Model S.
Does being publicly traded necessarily mean you focus on the short term nowadays? We've got companies like Snap who issue non voting shares. I imagine SpaceX could offer common shares that have no voting rights, accept all future dilution and require you punch yourself in the head on Tuesdays and they'd still have a pretty decent offering.
It makes me sad that SpaceX, a company that actually invents and makes stuff, is mentioned alongside Uber whose only product is evading taxes and regulations
Comparing SpaceX with Uber is like comparing apples to oranges.SpaceX may be inventing stuff but Uber solves a common problem for everyone around the world. I don't need to think twice about going from point A to point B without much hassle. And coming to the invention part, I believe rocket science is as much difficult as serving million requests concurrently and consistently without affecting user experience anywhere in the process. If Uber's product is evading taxes and regulations, then Google's products are just trying to make you click on some random ads.
As a fellow hacker, you know what hard problems i am trying to talk about and we should respect that. I agree uber has some problems internally but they don't deserve to be disrespected.
Technically both company wants to take people from point A to point B. But those points vary widely though.
As someone from India, I have huge respect for Uber. The taxi unions here were looting people. They were quite arrogant. In Bangalore, most auto taxi drivers would happily stay idle for the whole day, and try to make some quick bucks during the rush hours by charging 300% or 400% extra, until Uber came and killed their arrogance.
Uber may not have had the same level of technical innovations as SpaceX. But they do have mammoth execution challenges, to the scale that no company might have had to face so far. For eg, in India, in each of the 29 states , they have to deal with the regulators of each state. In hundreds of cities, they have to deal with the respective taxi unions. Extrapolate it to a global scale , I can't even imagine.
My respects to both Elon and Travis! Both are my heroes.
I don't think that is a fair comparison, Uber has revolutionized the transport industry. It has direct impact on you and me right now. Space X does not have such a direct impact for the rest of us.
His plan was "certainly not before we get to Mars", so don't worry about it happening any time soon. This big valuation will smooth the way to developing the BFR, though - and that's the big deal for SpaceX.
Shouldn’t the title include some qualifier like “tech company”, because there are private companies like Cargill out there that have yearly revenue above $20 billion.
Thinking about it a bit more, I don't believe that Blue Origin and SpaceX are competitors. In a sense yes, but they will not fight for customers. I believe there is very much demand for their services.
Space-X is, at long last, getting their launch rate up. 9 Falcon-9 launches so far this year. For a while, they had commercial customers canceling because they were way behind on their launch schedule. It's quantity of successful launches that makes money in that business.
Not much is happening at the Brownsville TX site, where Space-X still hasn't done much more than pile up dirt and wait for it to settle. They're building on beach sand. They really need that site so they can have more pad time.
It's surprising how little money was taken in this round. You'd have expected something closer to $1B. I'm sure $350M will help enough and it has been over 2 years since the last funding. So maybe it's fine. They can keep raise again soon if need be.
Especially with Bezos pumping $1B into Blue Origin a year.
[+] [-] loeg|8 years ago|reply
Is that line even close to true? Last I heard Blue Origin was years away from revenue and far behind SpaceX in terms of capability and manufacturing.
[+] [-] tzm|8 years ago|reply
http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/52/1600x800/landscape-14508878... http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/52/1450888612-bevsx.jpg
[+] [-] BlackjackCF|8 years ago|reply
Musk and Bezos are both people I wouldn't bet against, but they're so drastically different in their styles. Musk is flashy, but gets shit done. Bezos knows how to get shit done quietly... and suddenly he's dominated and bought everything around you.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|8 years ago|reply
If SpaceX can get Falcon Heavy to work then no, so much of the oxygen will be sucked out of the launch services market that Blue Origin will be hard pressed to compete. At that point. I see them much more likely as a ULA acquisition to insure engine supply rather than a continual drain on Jeff Bezo's net worth.
If on the other hand Falcon Heavy continues to slip, or if their early attempts at launching them are unsuccessful, or they are unable to recover the three boosters (which I think is 'baked in' to the market expectations) then Blue seems to be in a position to take some of the heavy launch business, except that there isn't nearly as much of that business as there is the small/medium launch business.
Finally the dark horse here is the 'previously unexploited used for heavy things in space' which is to say some business or process that is tremendously more competitive in space than it is on Earth which grows the heavy launch business faster than SpaceX can scale up.
[+] [-] ranman|8 years ago|reply
There are plenty of other reasons, beyond the money, I don't think it will be that long before BO really starts to compete.
[+] [-] Govindae|8 years ago|reply
They are more directly a competitor for talent. Rocket engineering is a small world.
[+] [-] gozur88|8 years ago|reply
Though ULA is buying engines from BO.
[+] [-] hkmurakami|8 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/6b043z/tom_mueller_...
That rocket is going to be the real game-changer. I would say that the Falcon 9 is evolutionary, you know, a reusable rocket that greatly reduces the cost of access to space. Maybe we can achieve ten reduction in cost over, you know, like what ULA or the Russians or the Chinese are doing, with the Falcon. But we want like a hundred or more reduction in costs; and that’s what the Mars rocket’s gonna do. That’s going to be the revolutionary rocket.
So once we’re flying that, all other rockets will probably be obsolete. <laughs> Likely Blue Origin is working on a fully-reusable rocket <inaudible> But we’ve really changed this industry that the other guys are really scrambling. It’s pretty funny to watch this, because when we first started the company 15 years ago, my fifteen-year anniversary was Monday, May 1st. <clapping> Thank you.
We started the company on May 1st, 2002. Well, I started there; I consider—. Elon incorporated the company I think in February, but he didn’t have any employees yet. But I consider when he had his first employees when he had his company. But anyway, over the fifteen years, we’ve gotten, you know, this far; and when I was first hiring people, you know, that’s when I heard <inaudible> money to develop this rocket. And then we built the Falcon 1, which had a single Merlin engine on it, could throw about 1k lbs into LEO; and they said, you guys, you guys were able to build a small rocket. But you’ll never be able to build an EELV-class, EELV-mission class rocket. And so we built the Falcon 9 and started flying it. And they said you’d never be able to reuse it; you’ll never be able to get to the space station. And at some point, you stop listening to it. And I think it’s great, you know, if people think what you’re doing is impossible then you must be doing the right thing. You can still find the YouTube video online where people are critiquing our recovery thing as being photoshopped or CGI’d. That’s pretty high praise, when people don’t actually believe you’re doing. <laughter>
And you know, we were ridiculed by the other big companies in the launch vehicle business. At first, they ignored us; and then they fought us; and then they— we found out; they found out that they couldn’t really win in a fair fight because we were successful and we were, you know, factors of two or three or probably even five lower costs than what they can do. So then it becomes an unfair fight, where they, you know, try to destroy you politically, and use other means. And then at some point, they figure out that they’ve got to do what you’re doing. So there’s a lot of talk at these other companies about how they’ll make reusable rockets; recover the engines, recover the stages, come up with a much lower-cost rocket so that they can compete. You know, there’s no way that they ULA would have considered buying engines from Blue Origin except for the pressure that SpaceX is putting on them. There’s no way that the French would have quickly abandoned the Ariane 5 and moved to the Ariane 6 design because— except for the pressure we’re putting on. So we’re really changing the world. The Russians are saying they’re coming up with a rocket that can beat SpaceX, which is entertaining, <laughs> which is entertaining, because they’ve been working on their Angara rocket for 22 years, and launched it once. And suddenly they’re going to be coming up with a low-cost one.
[+] [-] iknowicouldturn|8 years ago|reply
It could've that BO can't attract enough talent. Bezos might not be spending enough time at BO and perhaps the prospects aren't as great there.
[+] [-] grondilu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anovikov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skinnymuch|8 years ago|reply
Obviously they haven't updated for this news yet, but they still won't be at $23B.
Regardless, going from having invested all is PayPal money by 08 and in dire straits to being $20B+ 9 years later is awesome. And depending on what narrative you believe, money to this degree isn't what he cares about anyway.
Kudos to Elon, SpaceX, and everyone working there.
[+] [-] gpawl|8 years ago|reply
http://variety.com/gallery/elon-musk-buys-fifth-bel-air-home...
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-mclaren-f1-hypercar... wrecked-it-2015-6
[+] [-] strictnein|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill
[+] [-] elif|8 years ago|reply
We could afford 2 fully-blown spaceX per year just by maintaining our present disproportionately large military rather than expanding it by roughly a Great Britain this year.
[+] [-] prostoalex|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imron|8 years ago|reply
100% of all interplanetary travel, shipping and trade.
[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbosch|8 years ago|reply
What about Vitol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitol), Saudi Aramco, Koch Industries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries) ... etc ?
[+] [-] jpatokal|8 years ago|reply
Saudi Aramco is indeed much more valuable than the lot combined, but it's not exactly a startup.
[+] [-] hariananth|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microcolonel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellow_postit|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onebyzero2506|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkunnamp|8 years ago|reply
As someone from India, I have huge respect for Uber. The taxi unions here were looting people. They were quite arrogant. In Bangalore, most auto taxi drivers would happily stay idle for the whole day, and try to make some quick bucks during the rush hours by charging 300% or 400% extra, until Uber came and killed their arrogance.
Uber may not have had the same level of technical innovations as SpaceX. But they do have mammoth execution challenges, to the scale that no company might have had to face so far. For eg, in India, in each of the 29 states , they have to deal with the regulators of each state. In hundreds of cities, they have to deal with the respective taxi unions. Extrapolate it to a global scale , I can't even imagine.
My respects to both Elon and Travis! Both are my heroes.
[+] [-] sumedh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golergka|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayvd|8 years ago|reply
More taxes and regulations are NOT good things.
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gogopuppygogo|8 years ago|reply
Don't the people working for SpaceX deserve to have liquidity?
Isn't it fair for the general public to have the ability to profit off of his epic feats?
[+] [-] andygates|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhalperin|8 years ago|reply
(but you might still be correct!)
[+] [-] owens99|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Inconel|8 years ago|reply
https://www.axios.com/founders-fund-partner-leaves-to-launch...
[+] [-] martinmusio7|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NumberCruncher|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omarforgotpwd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mxschumacher|8 years ago|reply
Here's the top 15: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_private_non-go...
[+] [-] fnord123|8 years ago|reply
I'm not so sure SpaceX is "one of the world's most valuable privately held companies".
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
Not much is happening at the Brownsville TX site, where Space-X still hasn't done much more than pile up dirt and wait for it to settle. They're building on beach sand. They really need that site so they can have more pad time.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skinnymuch|8 years ago|reply
Especially with Bezos pumping $1B into Blue Origin a year.
[+] [-] martinmusio7|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RikNieu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miheermunjal|8 years ago|reply