The_President parent
Unsustainable rate of failures due to the associated costs. SpaceX might have to go public to capture funding opportunities, which would inevitably result in more accountability toward ensuring successful flight development. When the execution of their tech works it is highly impressive. Track record of success rate proven by the Falcon program. Does anyone have the numbers on how much these ships cost each? I've seen estimates of $100 million for a full Starship stack.
I doubt they’d need to go public. Regardless of your views on Elon, he’s consistently raised billions privately whenever needed. Even without Starship, SpaceX seems cash-flow positive and profitable thanks to Starlink and Falcon 9. It’s simpler to ask private investors to back his R&D efforts when they’re investing in an already profitable company excluding the R&D. Going public might echo Tesla’s early days, when profitability of the company as a whole wasn’t guaranteed.
Yeah, $100M is the estimate I have seen. Which actually makes their current track record seem very sustainable compared to SLS which has spent on the order of $4B per launch. This is the first unequivocal failure this year. Aspects of the previous flight failed but proving the booster can be reused was a significant milestone. And they can afford a dozen more of these launches while still being significantly cheaper than SLS.