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Post by AztecBill on Nov 16, 2018 18:28:26 GMT -8
Spacex is killing it.
Percentage of commercial launches by Spacex 2016 30% 2017 45% 2018 65% (est.)
This does not reflect lowered cost via reusability which will cut costs in half and it does reflect launches from long term contracts. Other space launch companies, meanwhile are scrambling to lower costs. They are asking for and getting government subsidies and not charging for fixed costs (which largely are used to pay back development costs). I guess all those people who thought Spacex was merely a vanity project, have been proven wrong.
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Post by AztecBill on Nov 24, 2020 19:28:42 GMT -8
SpaceX launched their 100th Falcon 9 mission tonight. Next week they will attempt a 150km "hop" with a full starship mockup. They will try landing the craft upright at the launch site. A big step that will likely fail. Starship will carry more payload to orbit than any rocket ever and cost only $7 million per launch. The Space Shuttle cost $1.2 Billion per launch to put 1/5th the payload.
Exciting times for space.
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Post by Al-O-Meter on Dec 1, 2020 9:02:39 GMT -8
The Falcon 9 is interesting but Starship will change the game entirely. It is hard to understate how monumental of a step in the industry it represents.
Ignore for a moment the capabilities that vehicle has. When Starship flies, it will mean the entity with the most advanced hardware and with the capability to launch the most tonnage to orbit annually will be a corporation instead of a nation state. Before this decade is done, SpaceX will have more annual launch capability than NASA, Russia, and China combined. Even if you include ICBMs as launchers, the nation states still fall short of what SpaceX can do.
While admittedly conjecture on my part, I do believe SpaceX will set up a colony on Mars, establish a Martian government to run the colony, and legally move the corporate headquarters of SpaceX to Mars to get out of the jurisdiction of the United States. There is evidence that move is planned in some of the wording in the StarLink user agreement.
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