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Starship destroyed on second consecutive test flight (spacenews.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (8 children)

It is, but if you look at SpaceX's history with Falcon 1, it had 5 flights. 3 failed to reach orbit and of the 2 that succeeded only 1 was a satellite and not a mass simulator. And even then that satellite failed right after orbit (not SpaceX's fault, but still no successes).

I suspect that super heavy and starship may be near the limits for size and weight for rockets leaving earth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (6 children)

The booster is great, which makes sense, since it's basically Falcon-but-bigger, but Starship is basically conceptart that's being forced to fly WAY before it's anywhere near ready.

I'm 100% convinced they're just sending up Starship mockups to keep the capital coming, and not actually learning anything from the failures. Starlink relies on the future promise of Starship making things cheaper to bring in more capital, and the Falcon program relies on Starlink to maintain an affordable pricepoint through scale. It's a giant circle of mutual propping-up, and it all relies on Starship being the promised-land of LEO-launching.

I can't help but compare it with other programs that all do MUCH better right out of the gate, while starship is firmly rethreading either ground from the 40's and 50's, or the early 80's.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Starlink relies on the future promise of Starship making things cheaper to bring in more capital

No, Starlink has been cash flow positive for a year or so now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This is really annoying for me 😇 . I am not one who would believe words of the Elon and I would say that intuitively it didn't make financial sense but I've looked into it and to my surprise the numbers are actually getting kinda close:

they claim they have 4 million customers - at 100 USD per customer / month x 12 - 4.8 billion USD. There will be some tax, but they have also deals with US military (StarShield) or GSM Operator and wide range of "enterprise services" , so I suspect the income could be at around those 5 billion USD from starlink alone.
they did 90 launches last year maintaining and expanding the network. It's hard to say how much a falcon 9 launch cost - but CNBC says it was sold for 67 million USD in 2022. Not sure how much margin Elon gets on a single launch, but 5 billion / 90 is over 55 million USD - which is right there in the area..

Now this is ignoring the cost of the satellites, the maintenance of 150 ground stations, development of the HW /SW, advertising and god knows what else - but still at least in the "ballpark numbers".

To my unpleasant surprise - the Elon might not be joking on this one 🧐 - the Starlink might be one day paying for the development of the Starship - if it isn't already 😲 Also - this is bloody cool 🤬

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