I have been one of the more negative folks on SpaceX over the years - there are still big issues with some of their bigger long term claims, however... they sure are doing a damn good job nowadays of just getting to business and making it happen.
Steve jobs said it best - Real Artist ship. SpaceX is shipping and getting really good at it. Kudos to all the folks that have made it happen.
"Shoot for Mars, and if you miss, you'll still end up building a globally dominant rocket company that puts the most powerful nation states to shame and revolutionizes human civilization."
That's overselling putting some satellites in orbit. It's going to help isolated people get internet, and maybe support some science missions, but mostly it's going to be orbiting satellites for other people.
> That's overselling putting some satellites in orbit.
GP is talking about the future. The future is what people are working towards and planning for at SpaceX. This of course goes right over most people's heads as most people are consumed by their immediate life (and rightly so).
But you're actually understating even the current state of things:
- First of all, "just" putting satellites in orbit has revolutionized human civilization time and time again. Global navigation, accurate time keeping, weather prediction, communication, physics research, disaster response, and that's just from top of my head. Cost of launching satellites often exceed the satellite development and build itself. SpaceX has improved on that immensely and continues to do so.
- SpaceX puts people into orbit and brings them back down safely. It's the only non-government organisation in the world to do so, and to do so for significantly lower cost.
> It's going to help isolated people get internet
Starlink is already helping 40000+ people in Ukraine to be informed in middle of a war! Starlink is also going to be installed on airliners which will allow far better monitoring and metric collection should the airlines want to use it for. This will greatly improve crash investigations in absence of the black box.
> One country unilaterally decides that it is fine to pollute the sky for everyone else in the name of profit.
One country allows the entire world to use its global navigation system "for free", build businesses on that technology, save people's lives and benefit from it.
One company brings usable Internet connection, the electricity of the 21st century, to anywhere in the world, with a fixed price, often lower than the existing inferior or non-existing ones.
> One company decides to produce more and more without giving a damn about their ecological impact, in the name of profit.
One company will have accelerated our escape from extinction.
> in the name of profit
If Space was such a profitable industry, it'd be as crowded as ad and social network markets. It's the exact opposite. To claim it's all for profit, is to admit you shouldn't be trusted with anything money related, as you'd probably lose it all in a blink.
Oh right, the US built GPS, one of the few GNSS systems out there! Yeah my bad, then private US companies should be allowed to pollute space, it's not the problem of the rest of the world!
> One company will have accelerated our escape from extinction
You mean by sending a few chosen people in space? Or do you believe that connecting smart devices to satellites will somehow solve the climate crisis? xD
> it'd be as crowded as ad and social network
What's your definition of crowded? I don't feel like there are thousands of successful social networks or ad companies out there...
But I get your point: SpaceX is a nonprofit with the purpose of solving the climate crisis by launching as many rockets as they can to fill the sky with satellites. No profit planned, no investors, nothing. My mistake.
> Oh right, the US built GPS, one of the few GNSS systems out there!
When US opened up GPS for civilian use, there was NO other GNSS. Other GNSSes exist BECAUSE of GPS.
> You mean by sending a few chosen people in space?
This is how every new thing starts. Do you think people one day had no cars and then suddenly a billion people were driving cars the next day? No! It started with a few who had the money and believed in the future to invest in cars, and further few who could afford to buy cars and were OK with the initial dangerous, horribly unreliable vehicles that the most ill horse of the time would be superior to.
If you read up on the history of literally any tech, that's how they start, and literally that's how they are received (e.g. waste of money, more important things to do, few chosen ones, etc.).
> I don't feel like there are thousands of successful social networks
Your feelings bears nothing on reality. Go do a app search for dating/social apps and you'll see hundreds, with dozens being pretty successful.
> But I get your point: SpaceX is a nonprofit with the purpose of solving the climate crisis
No non-profit will ever solve anything at this magnitude, by definition. This is what it boils down to:
- You need to have a plan to make profit
- in order to attract investors to give you money,
- so you can pay talented people to join your cause.
Yes some of your employees are there because they believe in the cause and they're fine with lower pay. But that's a minority. Majority of your workforce will want challenge and good pay or you'll lose them to the competition making social network apps for iPhone. I'm baffled that most people can't follow this simple logic.
> No non-profit will ever solve anything at this magnitude, by definition.
So when I say they make that for profit, you disagree, and when I say (sarcastically) that they don't want to make profit, you say the opposite again? Choose your camp. Mine is that SpaceX exists because it is profitable.
Then one thing that would be worth considering is that technology is the problem today. You seem to consider that cars made the world a better place, that's your opinion. But it would be hard to argue that the current climate crisis is not caused by technology. You're just blindly hoping that more of it will magically solve the problem which is: technology is destroying life on Earth. Because we can do something cool (nobody denies that SpaceX is cool) doesn't mean we should do it.
To say someone's doing something for money, is to imply money making is their main motivation and end goal. I'm arguing that money is the means to an end.
> You seem to consider that cars made the world a better place, that's your opinion
I probably can argue for that, but what's more important than cars themselves, is the technology, processes and innovations that came about because of the desire for personal transportation.
> But it would be hard to argue that the current climate crisis is not caused by technology.
True.
> You're just blindly hoping that more of it will magically solve the problem
Trend towards more technological societies has historically solved the issues of the past. In field of medicine alone, it's because of industrial revolution, mass production, integrated circuits, and countless other tech innovations that: we have access to all sorts of medical imaging and measurement devices that help diagnose and save people's lives; vaccine development, patient monitoring to name just a few. You look at cars and see excessive number of people moving machines. I see an entire history of innovation in mass production that high scale car manufacturing has led. Mass production is what has made possible the cheap silicon tech we have today, that goes into everything.
TL;DR you can't just pick one thing and label it good or bad. Technology is general has evidently (as piles and piles of stats show) and increasingly improved the quality of life of the world population in general.
> technology is destroying life on Earth
Earth will be destroyed even with no humans on it. In the long run, technology is the only tool for survival of life. Life will go extinct one way or another, sooner or later. We can either stay in the cave and face our doom, or get out, innovate, make mistakes and extend how long life sticks around. We can obviously make more mistakes than we need to but that's a much more nuanced conversation than "tech is bad, let's stop".
> Because we can do something cool (nobody denies that SpaceX is cool) doesn't mean we should do it.
"Something cool", just like "only for profit", is not the goal. SpaceX'es mission is to extend life beyond Earth. Making Space cool is what's needed to inspire people to join and make things happen.
> Earth will be destroyed even with no humans on it. In the long run, technology is the only tool for survival of life.
I guess that's where we disagree. I don't care if life goes extinct in twenty thousands years. And I don't want to survive on Mars, looking back at how we destroyed most living beings there.
I don't say that technology is bad in itself. Consumerism is.
Elon recently in an interview with Tim Dodd, said: "At SpaceX, we make the impossible late". In hindsight, nothing is impossible but before SpaceX did any of the routine things they do now, everyone said it was impossible: private company getting to orbit; landing rockets back on earth (let alone on a floating ship in the middle of the ocean); etc.
So if history is any lesson, when SpaceX makes a claim, one has to pay real good attention to details and question all their own assumptions hard because these guys have made impossible possible time and again.
Yes, not only SpaceX is pushing the humanity forward directly with its missions, but it's also indirectly pushing all the governments and people who are in too comfortable position (not taking any risk, only playing very safe missions, not innovating because they are afraid to lose a very well paid and prestigious job).
Still, it feels sad to see that a few months ago, SpaceX had roughly the same valuation as... Snapchat. It shows ultra short-term greed of investors and a clear lack of vision of VCs to see the mid-term potential of space exploration and travel.
Not evreyone can invest in SpaceX. More capital isn't always the best thing or necessary and it still involves a lot of risk. This is just an ignorant comment imo.
That said I'd love to buy some SpaceX stock if only I could!
I don't specifically mean why isn't more money in SpaceX in general, I want to know why there is so little money and companies actually innovating in important hard things like space, clean transportation, clean energy, etc.
Imagine if as a global civilization we'd invested the two trillion in crypto into clean energy instead. We might actually solve our pressing climate change problem. Instead we got digital coins and NFTs and actually made the climate change problem worse.
SpaceX should never go public, keep the decisions with the engineering-rich management there and never let Wall Street shareholders have any say on selecting leadership. From that perspective, why does their valuation even matter?
This is one of the problems at Tesla I think; they've likely held off on going into areas that are likely more financially risky but with longer-term industrial potential (electric semis in particular) because the shareholders would balk at moving capital into such production efforts.
> likely more financially risky but with longer-term industrial potential (electric semis in particular) because the shareholders would balk
Electric Semis are not that risky. Tesla has been very very clear about their strategy. As long as they can turn all the batteries and chips they can get into car they will not actually make any more profit by adding more model diversity.
Unlike every other car company that is promising 50 models in 2025, Tesla basically will only do so if they can.
The Semi will be a big seller when it comes out. Simply put, nobody else has the batteries either to dominate the market.
Relatively low valuation is a common feature of ambitious work. The ultimate outcome is too uncertain and it's too far in the future to matter in the market. And even if you make a breakthrough, somebody else may be in a better position to take advantage of if.
That last point is important. Even if you discover something truly valuable, there is no particular reason to believe that you will be the one getting rich by it.
I didn't invest in Snapchat, but I did recently manage to invest in SpaceX. I don't really care what the valuation is, I just want a piece of something great!
Why would you not care about the valuation if you were investing in a company? Are there coolness points for being able to say "I'm a spacex investor" that are just worth the cost?
Is it safe to say that you invested a small enough (to you) amount that you would consider it a fair price to pay for a framed stock certificate of a defunct SpaceX if the company were to cease to exist? That is, as a memento? Or did you invest what you consider to be a significant sum in the hopes of someday getting your investment back plus?
I want to know too. I would like to buy some shares, put them in a box and save them for my grandchildren. Seems the very definition of a long play to me.
Ask around in the private equity markets. They usually don't want to deal with small fry like me, but I was relentless :-) These things are very high risk, so I don't really want to be blamed if things go awry for anyone. I suggest starting with asking your brokerage.
As much as I'm a SpaceX fan this was 3 independent launches of 3 separate rockets over 3 separate days (though they all landed!). While exciting this rate of orbital launching was already done by individual space organizations in the 60s and speaks more about reaching that scale again than proving something can be done.
More excitingly the quickest turnaround is just over 21 days, or twice as fast as the quickest space shuttle turnaround. This is still a long ways from the 24 hour turnaround SpaceX is aiming for which often draws heavy doubt (just like the reusability factors used to). As much as I'd like to see a turnaround that quick I don't think that'll come with the Falcon 9 generation, maybe with Starship/Super Heavy if we're lucky though.
By pure chance I happened to witness the Globalstar satellite deployment last night along with its propellant plumes with the naked eye - pretty cool (and very uncommon) sight to see over the Midwest US!
"rogue employees" are a much bigger issue right now with vague demands and bike shedding stalling progress.
Obviously if Musk lost his interest in space flight that could very possibly be a death knell for the company but that doesn't seem very likely right now.
Yes. And for the love of god (any of them really), could we please get Gwynne Shotwell to take over Elon Musk's twitter account and run it with the competence, diligence, and care with which she's been running SpaceX?
Shotwell explicitly said several times (starting from many years ago) that she won't use twitter.
Also while Shotwell is a wonderful and competent president with a great business acumen. She doesn't have a lot of engineering vision for what things should be. SpaceX is kind of dual-run by Shotwell and Elon Musk. He drives forward and pushes forward with crazy ideas and then when they're semi-marketable he hands off the project to Shotwell to clean things up and prune out some of the economics. For example Starlink was Elon driven up until early 2020 or so, after they'd already started selling to customers, after which it was handed off to Shotwell.
I mean, the world needs both, but if you were proposing to stick me on a desert island with either a batshit-crazy visionary or a boring, immensely competent executor, I know which one I'd pick. And I have a hard time believing that she is completely lacking vision in much the same way that I believe Musk has execution skills as well.
I want to be clear: I say all this as an outsider. I know SpaceX has a reputation for long hours and a high turnover rate, and I won't try to apportion responsibility for those to her and Musk (though I'm sure she gets her share), but I certainly give her at least 50% of the credit for SpaceX getting where they are today both financially and technically.
I read a while ago words to the effect of "the mark of a captain with superior ship-handling skills is that they don't get into situations where they need their superior ship-handling skills". As near as I can tell from the outside, that's Gwynn Shotwell.
Likely Frank Borman (Gemini 7, Apollo 8, test pilot) “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill.”
I don't like to try to split up credit. They're both absolutely needed but in different ways. (It's one of the things Tesla has lacked for some time.) One of the other things she's good at is smoothing over ruffled feathers of government bureaucrats. But I personally find that there are a lot fewer Elon Musks in the world than there are Gwynne Shotwells in the world.
And as to the deserted island. I'd take the Elon Musk personally if I had to pick, but I'd prefer to take both.
And as for ship captains. Ship captaining isn't supposed to be exciting and shouldn't be involving risk taking. That analogy doesn't hold into the world of pioneering the new and different. I agree though, if you're running a business based on things that people know how to do well already, all you need is the good ship captain.
Thinking from first principles on what the right solution to escape is, planning resources, putting together a plan and making me believe its possible. Seems like pretty good person to have.
Perhaps my interpretation is incorrect, but what I wrote above is what I read out of this (and other interviews).
> Shotwell: The way Elon and I share the load, he focuses on development. He's still very highly engaged in the day-to-day operations, but his focus is on development. He was the lead on Starlink, and I started shifting my focus to Starlink around late spring, early summer of last year. [Interview done in early 2021.] Elon’s focus in that time was moving to Starship, that is his primary focus at SpaceX. It doesn't mean he's not thinking about the company on a day-to-day basis, but his emphasis is to get the Starship program to orbit.
> The thing about Starship is, we know how to design rockets and fly rockets. What we have failed to do to date is to design and fly a rocket that is easily producible and fully reusable. It's still hard to produce a Falcon 9. It's a lot of work and it's very expensive. The focus for Starship is to make it highly producible, highly reliable, and 100 percent operationally reusable, both for the first and second stage. That's hard.
She gets lots of attention. She is speaker at lots of events, has been on TV many times, has received awards and is universally known by anybody who knows anything about space.
The only reason people keep saying that is because Musk is basically one of the most famous people alive and thus gets absurdly more attention then here.
Shotwell is much better known then pretty much every president of any other space company.
To be fair, most people couldn't name even one executive of a space company except Musk and Bezos. Shotwell has gotten a lot of professional recognition and is well respected by people into spaceflight, but feels like she doesn't get enough of it in more general circles, even though she makes for an amazing role model.
Steve jobs said it best - Real Artist ship. SpaceX is shipping and getting really good at it. Kudos to all the folks that have made it happen.