Fake ”criticism” and cheapshots make actual criticism nearly impossible.
Supposedly they've been selling launches for ~$74M per launch.
https://nextspaceflight.com/rockets/3/
If its profitable at $74M then I'd imagine its more profitable at $88.8M. There could be some extra costs for dealing with government customers, but I imagine a lot of those $74M launches were also government customers. Lots of estimates of their cost per launch is somewhere <$20M.
The stink of endless corruption in the new US of A
Surely is completely unrelated to Musk throwing money behind electing the people who give him these contracts.
SpaceX has always been the lowest bidder and always been paired. Including here in NSSL.
And there's no other launcher. A sensible company seeking profits would match SLS pricing.
What do you want them to do, you magic to launch the sats?
Sure, there’s a limited float plus meme stock/hype/etc but still, steady growth which would lead to like a $20 trillion company in a few years?
Since I’m assuming IPO investors are going to be comparing to the last decade’s history of the tech giants and wouldn’t be satisfied with a 1.25x from IPO over 5 years or something…
Or is your argument that the "real" cost of this $1.6B SpaceX / Space Force contract is in fact closer to ~$16B or ~$160B after accounting for tax subsidies and investment fraud?
That’s like saying “theoretically you could get to space by flapping your wings”—you just need to ignore inconvenient laws of physics. Economics describes forces of the real world, you cannot just wave them away.
But, like, that's divergent from "This SpaceX contract is pure grift" that OP was not so subtly implying.
Because… is the Falcon launch business profitable? SpaceX has spent massive amounts of money to launch their rockets hundreds of times to bring the cost this low. Because they have economies of scale and can learn from their mistakes at a volume no rocket manufacturer has ever achieved.
So your question should actually be: can NASA build a rocket that can do 18 cargo launches for less than $1.6B? The answer is probably no. Because Falcon 9 isn’t a one-off design, it’s the cheapest launch system ever designed. By a massive margin.
A bigger point here is that, sure, you’re right, there are many late-stage capitalistic businesses which basically only exist to increase profit and cut corners as much as possible, to customer detriment. And probably scam the government out of huge amounts of money.
But SpaceX isn’t a late-stage business like that.
Compensation for the risks taken and opportunity cost lost by doing this instead of something else.
Are you serious? I suggest you re-evaluate your priors because you're spouting things that demonstrate a severe lack of consideration for 1st, 2nd and 3rd order effects.
Many launchers in several countries, SpaceX is the cheapest in its sector.
NASA own analysis suggest that Falcon 9 development (just the initial nonreusable) version would have cost 10x as much (and that is with their estimation methods that often are wrong by 2-3x).
Do you also think NASA should build its own cars and planes to move around? Should they make their own spoons too?
What is your evidence that NASA could make things cheaper, or that they would be cheaper if NASA had tried to do it themselves.
We don't even have to base it on the study NASA did, they did develop the Ares 1 rocket during the same time when SpaceX developed Falcon 9. And NASA rocket cost many times what Falcon 9 cost and had little prospect of becoming much cheaper anytime soon and when canceled wasn't finish developing despite being based on existing well understood technology. In fact, only a complete redevelopment of the rocket from the ground up had any chance to ever match Falcon 9.
So we have both a theoretical study and a practical example that SpaceX Falcon 9 is vastly cheaper by an almost unimaginable large amount. And that is even before SpaceX on its own dime and on its own investment developed re-usability. And that made things even cheaper.
So can you please outline a realistic history where either now or in the next 20 years NASA would be cheaper then Falcon 9. Please assume the same amount of funding for the relevant project.
If you want to make the argument that somehow in 2050 it would be cheaper, I don't think you will win many people over with that logic.