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The thing is, from the outside view (also partially as an Elon stan) I remember all these arguments about landing rockets - from Arianespace, half a decade ago. It always had an undertone of desperation - "well, it isn't proven that landing rockets is even possible", then "well, it isn't proven that landing rockets is even financially beneficial" - with the unstated "of course, if it is, we're just dead, so let's not think about that."
Somebody who's currently taking your lunch money has no need to document their balance sheet. The default assumption, IMO, is that reuseability is very profitable, and so is Starlink. I did some math on it a few years ago, and there's basically no half-way on that service; it's either ruinously cash negative or deliriously cash positive. Given that SpaceX is happily running a hardware-rich experimental launch program right now, I suspect the latter.
(I have no opinion on Tesla.)
Also Falcon 9 launches were both profitable and undercutting the competition by massive margins before SpaceX ever landed a single booster. The space industry was beyond ripe for disruption.
From what I understand we don't actually know that. Do we have any audited numbers on their launch costs?
The thing is, if it's not the case, we have to consider that SpaceX is putting down more launches than the rest of the market put together as some sort of stunt or fraud, which starts to edge into conspiracy theory. Either Musk is a machiavellian genius running a massive misinformation campaign using billion dollars of hardware, or F9 launches are profitable and more launches are more profitable, which would explain why SpaceX literally started a separate company to justify being able to make more launches.
Not if you realize the overwhelming majority of those launches are for Starlink, than it becomes a straight-forward application of using hype to generate more hype to extract as much money from investors as possible.
I unironically believe that this is closer to the truth than the alternative, and that we'll see it soon enough (I'll go with Thunderf00t's 5 year clock, starting last year, though like I said the vibes are telling me it might happen a lot sooner).
Even before Starlink launches began, SpaceX was launching roughly three times as many rockets as ULA per year
That still massively diminishes the size of the "conspiracy theory", and doesn't change the fact we don't have any audited numbers. Like I said, we'll see soon enough.
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Sure, but if they don't publish it, I have no way of confirming that they are, in fact, taking anyone's lunch money.
Sure but if a rocket is worth launching and throwing away, then it stands to reason that getting it back in one piece will be financially positive for you unless you are spending a LOT on refurbishing. The case is very intuitive imo.
Not necessarily. I had a comment about this, but I think it got sucked into the abyss when out database crapped out, but the short of it is that due to the fundamental properties of rocketry, you get the most oomph out of the last bit of fuel you burn. If you reuse your rocket, that last bit will be necessary to bring your rocket back. So there's a simple exercise you can do with an excel spreadsheet that shows you the economics of reusability relative to one time use, and it's not impossible to end up above the break-even point. The Shuttle was barely below, and it wasn't really due to NASA's incompetence.
Hasn't China developed reusable rocket tech? ( despite not owning a single emerald mine!)
Not that I would expect the CCP to be awesome with allocating capital, but if you assume they're not completely incompetent then it would blow up the theory that SpaceX can't possibly gain economic advantage from it.
There's at least a half dozen Chinese companies (plus their government) working on reusable orbital rocket boosters, hopefully to be operational within the next couple years for some, but AFAIK none of them are beyond hop tests yet.
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Thunderf00t is a pompous simpleton, don't believe his click bait.
It doesn't matter how much fuel a rocket uses, or if the rocket uses more fuel to be reusable, because fuel cost are negligible in the grand scheme of things.
The propellant cost of a Falcon 9 is around $300.000 for liquid oxygen and $200.000 for rocket grade kerosine (you also need to buy expensive Helium to pressurize tanks, there is a statement of Musk that this costs as much as oxygen).
https://spaceimpulse.com/2023/06/13/how-much-does-rocket-fuel-cost/
So propellant cost is well under a million dollars. Even the Space Shuttle only used a few millions (but the Shuttle project cost billions every year).
Fuel is nothing. SpaceX sells a launch for $67 million.
Sure, there is the cost for ground infrastructure, but this is a fixed cost and is proportional cheaper the more launches SpaceX does. We don't know the cost for refurbishment, but not throwing the engines away alone must be a big win. The last time the company took investor money was in January 2023 (750 million). Their cost of business/revenue is now guessed as over a dozen billions. This is not possible if they are not cashflow positive. I am unsure if they are profitable altogether because they invest so much in Starship, they are building another launch tower in Texas and two other Starship towers in Florida, but this is just building the machine which builds the thing.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kpK1h4GvGPs
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The trick is that you split the rocket in two halves, and then you end up on the good side of the rocket equation because you mostly only need to brake your engines and your landing fuel, and also you can use a lot of air friction. Now, I refuse to watch an hour long video with that title, lol, but any video that doesn't at least account for these two factors is bullshitting you. (How about link the actual spreadsheet instead of the video, and I'll try to fix it?)
The Shuttle wasn't exactly due to NASA incompetence, because by the time the final plans were drawn up the damage was already done. However, the Shuttle was an still an unusually bad example of a reusable rocket.
Also the fuel costs are basically a nonfactor. SpaceX have an issue in that their F9 rockets are overbuilt and undersized, to the point where they've literally started making their engines worse as a cost-cutting measure by saving on material. Landing is an unusually good value proposition for them, because they already have isp overhang. The rocket equation is simply not a relevant limiting factor for their market.
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In addition to this, there are some less-obvious pernicious possibilities: running the factory to make rockets is, itself, a cost, and doesn't scale amazingly well with respect to cost or quality. One could conceivably develop reusable rockets, meaning you could reduce (first-stage) production from every couple weeks to a couple new units a year, which sounds like a cost savings, but suddenly you need to reorganize your employees and roles are no longer as specialized, your QA folks are dragged into an unfamiliar task every six months, and a lot more time is spent churning on unfamiliar tasks. And good luck running a "do it the same, right way every time" quality program when nobody immediately remembers the last one: suddenly your high-throughput factory is now making bespoke aerospace parts like old-school space programs are famous for, and costs rise accordingly.
I'm not saying that has happened, but it's at least a possibility.
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