S
spacester
Guest
<font color="yellow">How can SpaceX fly 10-12 Falcon V missions over 2 years and possibly have enough money to fund a Saturn V class rocket? </font><br /><br />Listen to that Space Show interview (I wonder if there's a transcript?). Then tell me I'm making this stuff up. Maybe you already have, maybe I read too much into what I heard. I am a zealot after all. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br />Some folks seem to think that SpaceX is planning on losing vast amounts of cash with every launch. Yes, their marketing strategy is to undersell the competition, and their pricing appears to be only loosely tied to cost of launch, but . . .<br /><br />What they're trying to do is create a rocketship company. To achieve that basic goal, they need to fly rockets, and they aim to do so with 100% reliability. They have the internal and external financing they need to pull it off. The pricing reflects this strategy, yeah maybe they lose some money on every launch in the first two years. Call it product development, even though it will look like an operational rocket ship company.<br /><br />Plus, when you only need around a dozen people to launch the thing, maybe just maybe they're not losing money per launch after all.<br /><br />The other thing you're missing here IMO is emerging markets. I can't list them for you, but SpaceX thinks they are out there chompin at the bit to fly for a meager $16 Million. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>