SpaceX’s timing lets it take advantage of a borrower’s market in leveraged finance...
I started this thread to talk about SpaceX company news.In the news today SpaceX is seeking to take out a $500M loan:SpaceX Seeks $500 Million Loan Via Goldman Sachs - BloombergApparently it's a smart financial move - from the article:QuoteSpaceX’s timing lets it take advantage of a borrower’s market in leveraged finance...I know that profitable companies take out loans for many good reasons, so this is not unusual. In fact it's probably much better than giving up equity for the same amount.Thoughts?
Starlink and BFR.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 10/26/2018 12:52 amStarlink and BFR.Agreed, Leaning more to Starlink. That needs to be a higher priority than BFR, since it is suppose to generate the revenue for BFR.
Quote from: wannamoonbase on 10/26/2018 01:14 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 10/26/2018 12:52 amStarlink and BFR.Agreed, Leaning more to Starlink. That needs to be a higher priority than BFR, since it is suppose to generate the revenue for BFR....part of the way it's going to "generate revenue(sic) for BFR" is because a huge portion of the cost of Starlink's deployment is launch, and BFR can launch Starlink more affordably. It's amazing how many times this needs to be repeated before people will attempt to understand it.They'll be funded as one chunk.
. SpaceX can launch (some) Starlink without BFR/S. just as Tesla could build (some) cars without the Gigafactory, but to get the capacity they really need, they need to invest the capital for BFR/Gigafactory.
... get down to a marginal cost for a Falcon 9 launch down, fully considered, down under $5 or $6M
Quote from: IntoTheVoid on 10/26/2018 02:43 pm. SpaceX can launch (some) Starlink without BFR/S. just as Tesla could build (some) cars without the Gigafactory, but to get the capacity they really need, they need to invest the capital for BFR/Gigafactory.This is unclear.It would be very nice for them to have BFS to launch it, but a wholly reusable F9 would also enable this.Fourteen score and seven days ago, Elon said Quote... get down to a marginal cost for a Falcon 9 launch down, fully considered, down under $5 or $6M Later he gave a 2-3 year timescale on this.At least initially, and perhaps up until operation with a thousand or two, a reusable F9 would be quite adequate, and probably not meaningfully more expensive than BFR, given that the cost per satellite launch would be $150K, and presumably they'd still cost a fair bit more than that, even with aggressive cost reduction, never mind total system cost including user terminals.
Sorry I don't have a link to cite this, but in one of Elon's many comments on Starlink it was said that the initial deployment would be 800 satellites over the USA (and "possibly"Europe,) to capture the high value market, to help fund the rest (he didn't remark onfunding BFR/BFS). That deployment would / could be done by F9 / FH before retirement.As an aside, it would satisfy the FCC requirement to give access to remote regions of the USA that at present don't have cheap (affordable) access to the internet.
Quote from: cro-magnon gramps on 10/29/2018 11:59 amSorry I don't have a link to cite this, but in one of Elon's many comments on Starlink it was said that the initial deployment would be 800 satellites over the USA (and "possibly"Europe,) to capture the high value market, to help fund the rest (he didn't remark onfunding BFR/BFS). That deployment would / could be done by F9 / FH before retirement.As an aside, it would satisfy the FCC requirement to give access to remote regions of the USA that at present don't have cheap (affordable) access to the internet.How will he launch only the low orbit satellites that are over the US?
Quote from: John-H on 10/29/2018 06:27 pmQuote from: cro-magnon gramps on 10/29/2018 11:59 amSorry I don't have a link to cite this, but in one of Elon's many comments on Starlink it was said that the initial deployment would be 800 satellites over the USA (and "possibly"Europe,) to capture the high value market, to help fund the rest (he didn't remark onfunding BFR/BFS). That deployment would / could be done by F9 / FH before retirement.As an aside, it would satisfy the FCC requirement to give access to remote regions of the USA that at present don't have cheap (affordable) access to the internet.How will he launch only the low orbit satellites that are over the US? they won't. they'll launch satellites into orbital planes that spend a lot of time over the continental US first; they'll be all over the world, but in sporadic groups, but provide complete coverage (24x7 at high enough satellite density) over the US.later they'll backfill other planes that provide eg higher or lower latitude coverage.
Quote from: starsilk on 10/29/2018 06:47 pmQuote from: John-H on 10/29/2018 06:27 pmQuote from: cro-magnon gramps on 10/29/2018 11:59 amSorry I don't have a link to cite this, but in one of Elon's many comments on Starlink it was said that the initial deployment would be 800 satellites over the USA (and "possibly"Europe,) to capture the high value market, to help fund the rest (he didn't remark onfunding BFR/BFS). That deployment would / could be done by F9 / FH before retirement.As an aside, it would satisfy the FCC requirement to give access to remote regions of the USA that at present don't have cheap (affordable) access to the internet.How will he launch only the low orbit satellites that are over the US? they won't. they'll launch satellites into orbital planes that spend a lot of time over the continental US first; they'll be all over the world, but in sporadic groups, but provide complete coverage (24x7 at high enough satellite density) over the US.later they'll backfill other planes that provide eg higher or lower latitude coverage.There will be equally good coverage not only over the continental US - but anywhere in the world that is at the same latitude (north or south) or closer to the equator than the continetal US. You can't just target the continental US, that's not how orbital mechanics works. Once the continental US has good coverage, so will south america, Africa, Australia, and most of Asia.Bandwidth limits might be more of a limiter (selectively only enabling it over certain areas), but coverage through orbital planes will basically cover everything in the world other than Alaska, Canada, Russia, and Northern Europe.EDIT: This image shows how much of the world a LEO constellation needs to cover to provide continental US coverage. From +50 latitude to -50 latitude. The vast majority.
Not going to trim anything, but this is one of 100s of examples of why we keep saying "STAY ON TOPIC!"
To be fair, this is a redundant thread with such a title. It's basically just a "Bloomberg" article and nothing since. Let's change the title to what it actually is.
SpaceX Seeks $750 Million Loan Via New Arranger BofAElon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is planning to launch a $750 million leveraged loan this week, which will now be led by Bank of America Corp. instead of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to people with knowledge of the matter.Bank of America has scheduled a Nov. 7 presentation for potential investors, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the transaction is private.>