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SpaceX undoubtedly does have US government agencies as some of their biggest customers, but 98% must be a gross exaggeration. The Falcon 9/Heavy have made nearl

• bumby 3y ago
  98% wasn't a number I pulled out of thin air. It's hard to know exact figures, but there are some people who publicly track what they can. [1] From that source, SpaceX has about ~$5.515B in contracts. Of that, about $5.411B is from government contracts (military, NASA). That's about 98.1%. There's probably a good chance it's higher, if they have govt contracts that aren't allowed to be public knowledge for security reasons. Also, nobody is claiming SpaceX receives "money for nothing" from the govt. They are a contractor who, at least at these relatively early stages, need government contracts to survive. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's the way many nascent industries survive. But we need to call a spade a spade. [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ld7Dz__7_VjqMd2uZNgANL38BnWCetYGA5F-ykDjkvc/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ld7Dz__7_VjqMd2uZNgA...
  • Meegul 3y ago
    That source only lists contracts where the price is known or can be reasonably estimated. Naturally, US government entities which have a semi-public bidding process are much easier to obtain a price estimate from. There's a large amount of foreign government contracts and private commercial contracts that are omitted from that list. Just from 2020 alone, SkySats 16-21, ANASIS-II, SXRS-1, SAOCOM 1B, GNOMES 1, Tybak-0172, SXM-7, and NROL-108. Edit: I did unreasonably make the assumption that you were making the case the SpaceX was receiving subisidies for "nothing" and I see that you weren't now.
    • bumby 3y ago
      Hell, SpaceX is private so we have limited information across all domains. I acknowledged in my first post that accurate numbers are hard to come by. But we have to work with what information we have. Foreign govts would still be govt money; many of those you listed are still public projects. Do you have estimates for those other private launches? If not, it's just speculation. Based on the information we have, it seems like it's safe to say the bulk of their launches are for governments. It's not a knock on them, and I'm not saying this is your perspective, but there's this kinda weird sentiment that they are some paragon of free-market capitalism when in fact they are a company highly dependent on government money. But that's exactly what I think is reasonable to expect in a nascent industry.
      • s1artibartfast 3y ago
        As a side note, There are easy esimates for private launches. SpaceX widely publicises their launch pricing, which lines up pretty well for the publicly disclosed contracts.
      • panick21_ 3y ago
        > But we have to work with what information we have. No sorry, if you know the numbers you have are clearly bias and wrong then you don't need to work with them.
        • bumby 3y ago
          Do you know SpaceX's cash flow? If so, please share. Otherwise, I can just claim you are speculating towards your own bias. If you think the data is bad, at best all you can claim is "we don't know"
          • vernon99 3y ago
            And this is imo what you should have done instead if saying 98%. I agree with other commenters in that this is extremely misleading.
  • bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Starlink revenues are already over $1B per year, and they're just getting started.
    • bumby 3y ago
      That's based on forecasts and not real numbers (because SpaceX is a private company), but it's a good point.
      • bryanlarsen 3y ago
        They've announced that they had 1 million users in December. It's likely that ARPU is over $1000/user.
        • bumby 3y ago
          Assuming a 100% renewal rate
          • bryanlarsen 3y ago
            Assuming they are adding faster than losing.
            • bumby 3y ago
              I think we can agree that starlink is growing and will continue to be a bigger share of their revenue. That doesn’t negate my point, though.
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    The other respondent brought up a good point regarding selection bias. A different way to approach the problem would be to look at total SpaceX launches by customer. This has its own problems, but might paint a better picture. When talking about funding in general, you also have to consider that SpaceX has significant non launch Equity funding to the tune of $10B, and that contracts can include potential future Revenue instead of funds received. Edit: If you look at their launches for 2020 onwards[1], Their number 1 customer is SpaceX (themselves), followed by US and other governments, followed by private companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... While your borader conclusion is probably accurate regarding income, your spreadsheet only 71 of 216 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, for ~$9B total. This is roughly on par with the VC funding they have recieved.
    • bumby 3y ago
      Sure, I can acknowledge there is likely a selection bias based on public reporting. But I would push back that it skews the data by an order of magnitude as suggested. We'd likely see many, many more private launches compared to public for that to be true. Let's be super generous and say that Starlink brings in $1B in revenue; that still means govt funding accounts for 80% of their revenue. And, yes, we can talk about different ways of accounting. But I wouldn't count the fickle or volatile ones like "potential future revenue" as better than measuring actual contracts. (This is what SpaceX is investing in with their own launches, to be fair, but that's different than actual revenue). People trying to raise capital are always talking about potential revenue and potential market share, but you'll get much more investor money if you have actual purchase orders.
      • s1artibartfast 3y ago
        Like I said, I dont disagree with your broader point, and would agree that 80+% is a reasonable estimate. $1B income for Starlink makes sense given they have ~1M customers paying ~$100/mo, and a $4-500 hookup cost. Lasty, you have to consider that the government contract numbers you have are cummulative going back to 2012, while the Starlink revenue is annual (2022 only). If you look at government contracts for 2021, you only get $1.6B. Using those numbers, Starlink internet would be closer to 40% of revenue, with launch contracts at 60%, which starts to paint a very different story. I think a lot of the feedback you are getting is a kneejerk reaction based on language. E.g. "government funding" had a very different connotation than "government sales". People think subsidies and then their minds short circut.
  • panick21_ 3y ago
    Sorry but this is complete nonsense. You can literally just go threw the list of their launches on Wikipedia an notice that nothing close to even 80% of them are for the government. And that is outside of their Starship business, that is by now a large part of its revenue. The numbers you present are ridicoulus, they have easily more money just from human space flight from Polaris and Axiom.
    • bumby 3y ago
      The bulk of their own launches are for their own infrastructure. That doesn't bring revenue at the launch date. They aren't paying themselves to launch their equipment; it's an investment in future revenue. Even looking at optimistic projections for 2023 Starlink revenue puts would still mean govt contracts dwarf Starlink revenue by 4:1. >And that is outside of their Starship business, that is by now a large part of its revenue. Starship is bringing in investment money, not revenue that I'm aware of. I don't know what revenue it would be bringing without actual launches. Maybe I'm wrong and you can correct me here, but I think you are conflating some business aspects. Now if you're saying that the private money will be a bigger factor in the future, I agree. That's the whole idea behind govt money being used to foster along nascent industries: the govt props them up early until a viable private enterprise can exist later.
      • s1artibartfast 3y ago
        >Even looking at optimistic projections for 2023 Starlink revenue puts would still mean govt contracts dwarf Starlink revenue by 4:1. As I just point at elsewhere, you get 4:1 by comparing cummulative contract revenue with an annual Starlink revenue.
        • bumby 3y ago
          No disagreement; this actually is proving my point. I'm pretty clear about using the larger business cycle as my point. I'm not taking a snapshot in time, I'm saying relying on govt contracts early is necessary for their business to survive. Others are either twisting or misinterpreting my point. To be absolutely explicitly clear: their business model requires using govt contracts/funding/sales early before they can transition to other viable means of revenue. They could not survive as a company without those early govt contracts, but this does not mean they are dependent on govt contracts into perpetuity. A dependency on govt contracts early and an increasingly private revenue stream can both be true. This isn't bad, but it also isn't the often-lauded ideal of free-market capitalism.