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- Hacker News
- Due to subsidies and investment fraud and subsidized tax breaks to 1% shareholders this will cost the US 10x more than if NASA just did it. People like to say nasa was a bloated waste of money, but thinking beyond k=1 it is obvious privatization costs even more in the long run.by mrloopex
- Can you go into more detail? You're clearly assigning costs to SpaceX that go beyond the invoice price.by xhkkffbf
- What is this nonsense argument? Can you share more then one sentence about this?
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.
by panick21_ - “NASA” has always relied on private companies. It was always Boeing, Rockwell, etc., designing and building rockets under contract.by rayiner
- This whole series of launches costs about the same as 1 SLS launch. Plus SpaceX is probably more aligned with DOW goals than NASAby Rebelgecko
- Your argument is that NASA could launch 18 rockets for ~$160 million total or ~8.8 million per launch?
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?
by LaffertyDev - If only the short term hype investors could get out of the market now and we can start building this thing back up.
- That’s now the whole marketby dgellow
- LOLLLL yea...
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.
by ulfw - Both Reich and you are deeply unfortunate.
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.
- They are literally the only option, the other options are strongly delayed and even when they come online they will have a large backlog and missing launch infrastructure.
What do you want them to do, you magic to launch the sats?
by panick21_ - The trifecta - fraud, waste and abuseby blitzar
- This thread is evidence of the decline in comment quality on this board.
- This would be a better comment if your first post on this website wasn't literally a sarcastic NIMBY driveby: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48261228
The way you hurl stones from a glass house it kinda just sounds like you disagree and are upset.
by bigyabai - Any kind of constructive discussion becomes very hard.
Fake ”criticism” and cheapshots make actual criticism nearly impossible.
by vardump - 18 launches for $1.6B sounds like a terrible deal for SpaceX. Will they even profit?by 2OEH8eoCRo0
- SpaceX claims they launch for $20 million and thier public minimum price is lower than the charge here
- These are their normal prices, its actually reasonable cheap for military launch. And they have a fantastic margin on Falcon 9, at least 50% likely more.by panick21_
- The standard catalog price for a dedicated falcon 9 launch is $74 million. So this is actually up-charging the government a bit (I assume there is some custom work or extra cost for arranging for the appropriate security/secrecy).by voxic11
- Even more significant is the timing, it's 18 launches by the end of 2027. Even before New Glenn and Vulcan broke they couldn't have scheduled a single launch before the end of 2027. Their manifests were full because they were years late.
SpaceX could easily charge more for timeliness. Its way more important than price per kg for a military customer.
by thinkcontext - 1,600M / 18 means $88.8M per launch.
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.
by vel0city - Man if only SpaceX had IPO without all the xAI crap attached to it. Then it might actually be worth looking into. I wanted to invest in SpaceX for a long time but now its laughably overvalued.by panick21_
- Huh, DOGE didn't find any waste in spaceforce?by tw04
- DOGE didn't find any actual waste anywhere.by UltraSane