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SpaceX Launches, Landings and News

foamy said:
If I recall correctly, landing the ISS supply contract is what made SpaceX a viable company. I'm not sure I'd count that as a subsidy per se, though.
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Maybe yes, maybe not.

The Goal of the Commercial Cargo program was to create a viable private space launch industry in the US. So, the awards weren't focussed 100% on cost-effectiveness, but also on boosting the local corporations.

Not a pure subsidy, but at least some assistance.
 
SpaceX (specifically Musk and Shotwell) have claimed that their operations are profitable, but it's pretty much a certainty that they're putting that straight into R&D and expanding their operations.

foamy said:
If I recall correctly, landing the ISS supply contract is what made SpaceX a viable company. I'm not sure I'd count that as a subsidy per se, though.
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The development contract for supplying the ISS, to be specific. They were supposedly a week away from being unable to make payroll when they got it.

Vyslanté said:
Eh, what the quote from Changeling implied was more along the lines of "the US government pays for everything in SpaceX", not just "SpaceX has the Government in its clients"
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The article he linked only came up with small incentives from state/local governments as examples of outright subsidies for SpaceX. You could certainly make the argument that COTS was a subsidy since it didn't involve SpaceX providing any actual services to NASA, though it did lead directly to the much larger CRS contract which did. The situation with the various phases of the commercial crew program is pretty much identical. Either way though, a large majority of the money SpaceX has received from the government is for services rendered.

And, you know, there's the billions of dollars of private contracts and investments too.
 
TheThinker said:
Tesla isn't profitable at the moment because they are expanding their R&D efforts and infrastructure. If Tesla remained the way they are now, without doing any more "unnecessary" R&D and expansion, they'd be profitable. Hopefully Elon's not wrong, and that the investment into the company isn't a waste.
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Nope. Q2 financials. Total revenues of $2,417,065K, cost of revenues $1,889,821K, and operating expenses of $1,013,508K for a total loss (in the six months fiscal year to date) of $567,960K, expanding to $575,455K with interest income and expenses. Of that $575.5M loss, only $374M was spent on R&D. So even if they completely eliminated R&D, they'd still be losing money. Capital expansion is separate from this.
 
Not really even sure why Tesla's being discussed in this thread, but...
 
DonBosco said:
Nope. Q2 financials. Total revenues of $2,417,065K, cost of revenues $1,889,821K, and operating expenses of $1,013,508K for a total loss (in the six months fiscal year to date) of $567,960K, expanding to $575,455K with interest income and expenses. Of that $575.5M loss, only $374M was spent on R&D. So even if they completely eliminated R&D, they'd still be losing money. Capital expansion is separate from this.
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What about the 295 million they spent expanding infrastructure? Without that, I believe they'd be making a profit, though a relatively small one. Once they've got all their stuff online they should be making a much larger profit.
 
Angle said:
What about the 295 million they spent expanding infrastructure? Without that, I believe they'd be making a profit, though a relatively small one. Once they've got all their stuff online they should be making a much larger profit.
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That's capital expenses, which is a different budget than operational expenses. You don't include it when talking about profit except on a depreciation basis.
 
DonBosco said:
Nope. Q2 financials. Total revenues of $2,417,065K, cost of revenues $1,889,821K, and operating expenses of $1,013,508K for a total loss (in the six months fiscal year to date) of $567,960K, expanding to $575,455K with interest income and expenses. Of that $575.5M loss, only $374M was spent on R&D. So even if they completely eliminated R&D, they'd still be losing money. Capital expansion is separate from this.
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I'm confused, you say 575 thousand and then million, can you clarify?
 
The Iridium NEXT first launch, which is also the SpaceX return-to-flight following the September pad explosion, is due to lift off Saturday at 17:54 UTC/GMT, or 9:54 local (California) time, or about six hours from the time of this post. The rocket is a Falcon 9 Full Thrust, and the payload consists of 10 satellites for the Iridium NEXT constellation.

Live stream will be here:

 
I loved the video feed from the first stage. It seems to be some level of HD, and it stayed live right to the landing.

Also the first landing on JRTI.

Second stage is in LEO and ready to deploy satellites.

Job well done. SpaceX are back in business.
 
First time landing on the Just Read The Instructions and the first time they managed to show the landing from the first stage's perspective all the way down!
 
SpaceX performed their first launch from LC-39A this morning, carrying supplies and experiments to the ISS.



Every Saturn V (save those used for Apollo 10 and Skylab) launched from this pad, as did a majority of the shuttle missions (including the first and last). SpaceX intends to launch all Falcon Heavy and manned Falcon 9 missions from this pad. Their first reused stage will also launch from it sometime next month. They eventually want to launch their incredibly over-the-top Mars rocket from here, too.

This morning also featured the first daytime landing of a first stage on land:



As God and Heinlein intended.
 
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Propulsive landings are always awesome to watch, but seeing it over land during daytime is amazing and looks like the sort of thing that for so long was relegated to science fiction.

If there wasn't such a high chance of any one of these launches getting pushed to a different day, I'd go see them in person. :( Still, I'll take getting to watch them rise over my neighborhood's treeline.
 
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So Elon Musk just got done with a conference-call press release, and apparently a pair of private individuals have paid SpaceX to launch them around the moon in a Dragon 2 using a Falcon Heavy. Next year.

Lunar space tourism.

What a time to be alive.

Edit: It looks like an article about it has been put up on the SpaceX site.
 
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RRoan said:
So Elon Musk just got done with a conference-call press release, and apparently a pair of private individuals have paid SpaceX to launch them around the moon in a Dragon 2 using a Falcon Heavy. Next year.

Lunar space tourism.

What a time to be alive.

Edit: It looks like an article about it has been put up on the SpaceX site
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The article implies they are going to land on the Moon, yet you say around. Know why the discrepancy?

Also, how much must that have cost? Ow.
 
RRoan said:
So Elon Musk just got done with a conference-call press release, and apparently a pair of private individuals have paid SpaceX to launch them around the moon in a Dragon 2 using a Falcon Heavy. Next year.

Lunar space tourism.

What a time to be alive.

Edit: It looks like an article about it has been put up on the SpaceX site.
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Now I want to know how much they paid. You know, to begin save money :V


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Estro said:
The article implies they are going to land on the Moon, yet you say around. Know why the discrepancy?
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No, the article says "a journey to circumnavigate the moon"
 
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I have my fingers crossed that they get it done before the SLS does the same thing. Then maybe we can finally get nasa out of building rockets and move on to the challenges in being in space and not mostly about just getting there.
 
Vyslanté said:
Now I want to know how much they paid. You know, to begin save money :V
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List price of a Falcon Heavy launch is $90 million USD, though the payload listed with that implies reuse and that may or may not be possible for this flight. Plus there's the Dragon 2 which should come in at several tens of millions on its own. Worst case for the whole thing would probably be somewhere around a quarter-billion.

Tasrill said:
I have my fingers crossed that they get it done before the SLS does the same thing. Then maybe we can finally get nasa out of building rockets and move on to the challenges in being in space and not mostly about just getting there.
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SLS EM-2 is scheduled for 2021, so SpaceX would have to have several years of setbacks to not beat SLS.
 
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