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FTR_1077 t1_jdpfbwu wrote

Reply to comment by morosis1982 in Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX’s Falcon 9 by cnbc_official

>But they have committed serious funds to develop both a LEO satellite constellation for fast internet and also a fully reusable rocket design that would lift 150t to LEO,

Well, the former one changes the business model of the company, from orbital launches to telecommunications. It's a bad sign for a start-up to pivot that late in the game.

And on the later, although it sounds like a natural progression of the launch services, the failure of FH is a bad sign for starship.. SpaceX may end up never making money.

>It's like Amazon, where they didn't 'profit' for 2 decades because they were building AWS.

Sure, but SpaceX is still far away.. let's say it takes another 10 to make starship as smooth as F9. Are the investors willing to wait 30 years? 40 years? At some point money is going to run out.

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morosis1982 t1_jdpmax8 wrote

I wasn't aware FH had failed, mind expanding on that? I was under the impression it's just that most launches don't require that capability given how ubiquitous F9 has become.

Starlink is a bit of a left field idea but from the sounds of it was designed as a way to provide cashflow long term to develop Starship. Not all that crazy given they owned the launch vehicles and used it to test the reusability of them long term.

I somewhat agree with Starship, it's hard to see that many people with requirements that fit it's capability, but that's also possibly just because those capabilities just a few years ago were hundreds of millions per launch. It's likely the lower launch costs will see a lot more development in the space just as we saw with F9.

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FTR_1077 t1_jdqwef9 wrote

>I wasn't aware FH had failed,

FH has flown about once a year, a rocket more capable than F9. The market just doesn't exists.. A product left on the shelves is a failed product.

Starship is even more powerful, the only actual client is Artemis, and that will fly once every few years (if we are Lucky). And on top of that SpaceX is not making money out of HLS, part of the reason why they got the contract was because SpaceX is putting like half of the money.

>Starlink is a bit of a left field idea but from the sounds of it was designed as a way to provide cash flow long term to develop Starship. Satellite internet already exists, is a mature market.. even if SpaceX completely dominated the market, there's not enough money there to fund starship development. That's why SpaceX keeps running rounds of investment.

SpaceX is a start-up, a 20 year old start-up that doesn't make money.

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