Isn't that pretty normal? People give different orders at different price points, according to their demand curve. The seller then chooses which order to serve and which to ignore.
Huh, so they recently raised $850M just before end of February, at $74B valuation. Anyone have an educated guess on why they raised more so soon after that? Maybe some investors threw money at them at a much higher valuation?
Musk has recently been quite public about how the starlink project is going to need to go through a deep trough of high expenses/not much customer revenue, before the network is fully online.
I'm sitting here with a beta terminal that regularly does 310 Mbps down and 16-20 Mbps upstream, with 0.25% (1/4th of 1%) packet loss to seattle over a 3 hour period, so I'm fairly optimistic.
Maybe a financial analysis that tech growth companies like theirs will have their valuation punished when the economy recovers and the fed starts raising interest rates, so better raise enough capital for several years of growth now?
With 8,000 employees, SpaceX has a payroll of almost $150 million/month, plus other operating costs. Sounds like they're in financial trouble and need to raise to continue operating.
Note that there's a very small world-wide market for satellite launches, which won't pay for the above. The reusable feature of SpaceX is a business mistake, as noted by both ULA and ESA.
Elon Musk is a welfare queen, as all of his businesses rely on govt. handouts and rebates.
I find it disappointing how many people on HN post these types of comments, and just the general sentiment of the internet nowadays. I don't know what compels you to make such negative comments.
SpaceX has a solid track record, extremely profound technical achievements, and very compelling goals (interplanetary humanity!). I think less cynicism would go a long way, unless you're leading your own rocket company that outperforms SpaceX in these regards.
> The reusable feature of SpaceX is a business mistake, as noted by both ULA and ESA.
The ESA analysis was perfectly correct, for the launch rates they were projecting. Since then, SpaceX has unveiled plans and started filling out a constellation of 42000 satellites. That rather increased launch rates, to the point where SpaceX launched more than half of all the mass to orbit last year. If they stick to their schedule, they will launch 75% this year.
This comment ignores existence of Starlink that already proved the tech and business model, while also having a considerably lower cost to build the constellation than competition thanks to the reusability.
Sure the investors are willing to invest so much money into a failing company at a high evaluation because they are such idiots?
> Note that there's a very small world-wide market for satellite launches, which won't pay for the above.
They are raising money for Starlink, not sat launching.
> The reusable feature of SpaceX is a business mistake, as noted by both ULA and ESA.
ESA is spending 100s of million researching re-usability and developing reusable engines, their next rocket after Ariane 6 will be reusable. Arianespace has already admitted that Ariane 6 is not competitive and have asked Europe to force all domestic launches onto Ariane 6.
ULA is military created monopoly all their rockets were built with government money and in their whole existence they were utterly non-competitive in the international launch market. Taking their word for what is the right way to compete in the international rocket market is like taking sex advice from a priest.
Fact is, ULA doesn't know how to create a re-usable rocket and the parent companies don't want to invest the money to figure it out.
> Elon Musk is a welfare queen, as all of his businesses rely on govt. handouts and rebates.
[+] [-] d_silin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WJW|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] est31|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cookingboy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|4 years ago|reply
I'm sitting here with a beta terminal that regularly does 310 Mbps down and 16-20 Mbps upstream, with 0.25% (1/4th of 1%) packet loss to seattle over a 3 hour period, so I'm fairly optimistic.
[+] [-] m12k|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peripitea|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redis_mlc|4 years ago|reply
Note that there's a very small world-wide market for satellite launches, which won't pay for the above. The reusable feature of SpaceX is a business mistake, as noted by both ULA and ESA.
Elon Musk is a welfare queen, as all of his businesses rely on govt. handouts and rebates.
[+] [-] jkelleyrtp|4 years ago|reply
SpaceX has a solid track record, extremely profound technical achievements, and very compelling goals (interplanetary humanity!). I think less cynicism would go a long way, unless you're leading your own rocket company that outperforms SpaceX in these regards.
[+] [-] Tuna-Fish|4 years ago|reply
The ESA analysis was perfectly correct, for the launch rates they were projecting. Since then, SpaceX has unveiled plans and started filling out a constellation of 42000 satellites. That rather increased launch rates, to the point where SpaceX launched more than half of all the mass to orbit last year. If they stick to their schedule, they will launch 75% this year.
This changes the math of how profitable reuse is.
[+] [-] randomsearch|4 years ago|reply
Hell of a citation needed moment.
[+] [-] krasin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickik|4 years ago|reply
Sure the investors are willing to invest so much money into a failing company at a high evaluation because they are such idiots?
> Note that there's a very small world-wide market for satellite launches, which won't pay for the above.
They are raising money for Starlink, not sat launching.
> The reusable feature of SpaceX is a business mistake, as noted by both ULA and ESA.
ESA is spending 100s of million researching re-usability and developing reusable engines, their next rocket after Ariane 6 will be reusable. Arianespace has already admitted that Ariane 6 is not competitive and have asked Europe to force all domestic launches onto Ariane 6.
ULA is military created monopoly all their rockets were built with government money and in their whole existence they were utterly non-competitive in the international launch market. Taking their word for what is the right way to compete in the international rocket market is like taking sex advice from a priest.
Fact is, ULA doesn't know how to create a re-usable rocket and the parent companies don't want to invest the money to figure it out.
> Elon Musk is a welfare queen, as all of his businesses rely on govt. handouts and rebates.
Also wrong.
[+] [-] drenvuk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheButlerian|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gvv|4 years ago|reply
We could've been on Mars by now given the military industrial complex expenditure.
[+] [-] unixhero|4 years ago|reply