PS: It's interesting to note that prices for a full Falcon 9 launch aren't set at "competition-killing" levels: they seem to be more like "low enough to make us the obvious choice, but leave us a healthy profit." But for Transporter, they're not pricing the equivalent of $5 million for an Electron's worth of payload; they're charging $1.2 million. That's "we're not going to allow Rocket Lab to lower their prices to compete, we're just going to kill them" pricing.
Quote from: john smith 19 on 02/09/2023 06:31 pmThat's called "predatory pricing" in the anti-trust jargon. So yes real, honest competion does lower prices. And no one knows if those ride-share prices are fair (because first stage recovery really is that efficient) or if they are set at that level for SX to hoover up a bit more cash and kill off potential rivals. The big picture is always instructive. When SX started it cost 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOAnd in 2023 it still costs 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOIOW the major price reduction that SX has brought to the market is essentially zero. Because (another little lesson they teach on Marketing courses) is that Price <> Cost. But they are a business and and they do business like a business. Anyone who has any sort of rose-tinted misty eyed vision of them when it comes to their competition here on earth is simply kidding themselves. SpaceX is a for-profit company. Unless they are selling a service at a loss, it is not predatory pricing.
That's called "predatory pricing" in the anti-trust jargon. So yes real, honest competion does lower prices. And no one knows if those ride-share prices are fair (because first stage recovery really is that efficient) or if they are set at that level for SX to hoover up a bit more cash and kill off potential rivals. The big picture is always instructive. When SX started it cost 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOAnd in 2023 it still costs 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOIOW the major price reduction that SX has brought to the market is essentially zero. Because (another little lesson they teach on Marketing courses) is that Price <> Cost. But they are a business and and they do business like a business. Anyone who has any sort of rose-tinted misty eyed vision of them when it comes to their competition here on earth is simply kidding themselves.
The big picture is always instructive. When SX started it cost 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOAnd in 2023 it still costs 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOIOW the major price reduction that SX has brought to the market is essentially zero. :
The big picture is always instructive. When SX started it cost 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOAnd in 2023 it still costs 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOIOW the major price reduction that SX has brought to the market is essentially zero.
Quote from: john smith 19 on 02/09/2023 06:31 pmThe big picture is always instructive. When SX started it cost 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOAnd in 2023 it still costs 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOIOW the major price reduction that SX has brought to the market is essentially zero. :The above snippet is complete baloney. Not worth wasting the time to do all the documentation, but SpaceX didn’t eat ULA’s and Ariane’s lunch with good looks. If you extrapolate to 2023 ULA’s price trends pre-SpaceX, a geo launch would be a billion dollars today.
Quote from: john smith 19 on 02/09/2023 06:31 pmThe big picture is always instructive. When SX started it cost 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOAnd in 2023 it still costs 10s of $m to launch a multi-tonne satellite to GEOIOW the major price reduction that SX has brought to the market is essentially zero. I need to disagree with these points.Before SpaceX the most affordable non-Russian/Chinese rocket was the Ariane 5 which charged nearly $200M to launch dual-payloads to GTO. At a (40/60?) cost split that put the smaller lower-bay payload at $80M with $120M for a larger upper bay - and that was a bargain compared to what ULA was charging.Then SpaceX arrived, with with v1.1 selling small Ariane 5 ECA lower-bay sized payloads for $62M and F9-Heavy offering to carry upper-bay sized payloads for $85M: a 20-30% reduction with a shift from co-manifesting to dedicated launch as a bonus. ULA, needing to compete for US government contracts, trimmed their fat and cut Atlas V starting prices to just $109M for a no-frills 401 launch after years of increases. Arianespace for their part couldn't drop prices to less than 150M euro even with EU subsidizes and has been whining ever since.I'm going to call that a major price reduction far from zero.The only problem, if we can call it that, is that SpaceX instead of passing on the subsequent savings from 1st-stage reuse has pushed inflation adjusted price increases. Maybe their early launches were below-cost banking on the assumption that that pricing would be sustainable once they made reuse work.. or maybe when you already have the cheapest, most response, and most reliable rocket available you don't have any incentive to go any lower. Probably the 2nd going by how cheap the transporter missions appear to be.
<snip>When starship arrives, it is going to be seriously lacking payloads to fill even a modest fleet of vehicles.<snip>
I see a lot of people on this thread assigning a single clear motive for their pricing. In my experience decision making is rarely that simple and they likely have a mixture of motives that feed into their strategy. I could think of several possibilities beyond the desire to suppress competition but there is one that I'd love to know whether or not it played a role in their decisions, if at all.When starship arrives, it is going to be seriously lacking payloads to fill even a modest fleet of vehicles. The existing players in space and the amount/types of skilled labor in the space industry at present are not prepped to fully leverage a massive expansion in inexpensive launch capacity. What is needed is a large boost to entrepreurism to bring in new blood on both the business and workforce end of things to create a situation where innovation can build an ecosystem which finds new uses for this launch capacity. I have to wonder if spacex is thinking long term enough to be trying to foster the next generation of customers via inexpensive rideshares now.
Quote from: Blackjax on 02/10/2023 02:49 amI see a lot of people on this thread assigning a single clear motive for their pricing. In my experience decision making is rarely that simple and they likely have a mixture of motives that feed into their strategy. I could think of several possibilities beyond the desire to suppress competition but there is one that I'd love to know whether or not it played a role in their decisions, if at all.When starship arrives, it is going to be seriously lacking payloads to fill even a modest fleet of vehicles. The existing players in space and the amount/types of skilled labor in the space industry at present are not prepped to fully leverage a massive expansion in inexpensive launch capacity. What is needed is a large boost to entrepreurism to bring in new blood on both the business and workforce end of things to create a situation where innovation can build an ecosystem which finds new uses for this launch capacity. I have to wonder if spacex is thinking long term enough to be trying to foster the next generation of customers via inexpensive rideshares now.I find it helpful to think of the commercial launch market as a finite pie - potentially worth about $10B. Those who forecast tremendous growth to this market in my view do so without taking into account what the arrival of Starship actually means.If Starship achieves 100t to orbit for $10M, that will mean Starship can launch 1000 times a year in a market worth $10B. That’s 100,000t to orbit.Outside of Elon’s Mars colonisation program, it’s gonna take multiple decades before an annual payload demand of 100,000t exists. So there is no reason for the $10B market size to grow, if $10B can now buy multiple times the upmass demand that exists in the entire world.Put differently, while Starship will open up the market for in-space activities tremendously, it won’t increase the size of the LAUNCH market. It will still be ~$10B. Only now you will have to launch ten twenty times more often at a tenth twentieth the price per launch, to generate the same revenue you would have in the pre-Starship days. If you don’t, you will be too expensive to compete.This is not making launch business cases more feasible. It is instead destroying them.
Quote from: M.E.T. on 02/10/2023 04:15 amQuote from: Blackjax on 02/10/2023 02:49 amI see a lot of people on this thread assigning a single clear motive for their pricing. In my experience decision making is rarely that simple and they likely have a mixture of motives that feed into their strategy. I could think of several possibilities beyond the desire to suppress competition but there is one that I'd love to know whether or not it played a role in their decisions, if at all.When starship arrives, it is going to be seriously lacking payloads to fill even a modest fleet of vehicles. The existing players in space and the amount/types of skilled labor in the space industry at present are not prepped to fully leverage a massive expansion in inexpensive launch capacity. What is needed is a large boost to entrepreurism to bring in new blood on both the business and workforce end of things to create a situation where innovation can build an ecosystem which finds new uses for this launch capacity. I have to wonder if spacex is thinking long term enough to be trying to foster the next generation of customers via inexpensive rideshares now.I find it helpful to think of the commercial launch market as a finite pie - potentially worth about $10B. Those who forecast tremendous growth to this market in my view do so without taking into account what the arrival of Starship actually means.If Starship achieves 100t to orbit for $10M, that will mean Starship can launch 1000 times a year in a market worth $10B. That’s 100,000t to orbit.Outside of Elon’s Mars colonisation program, it’s gonna take multiple decades before an annual payload demand of 100,000t exists. So there is no reason for the $10B market size to grow, if $10B can now buy multiple times the upmass demand that exists in the entire world.Put differently, while Starship will open up the market for in-space activities tremendously, it won’t increase the size of the LAUNCH market. It will still be ~$10B. Only now you will have to launch ten twenty times more often at a tenth twentieth the price per launch, to generate the same revenue you would have in the pre-Starship days. If you don’t, you will be too expensive to compete.This is not making launch business cases more feasible. It is instead destroying them.The Transporter program has brought multiple new companies and VCs into the market. Maybe a rounding error on $10B but it has brought new ideas and people to the industry.
Quote from: imprezive on 02/10/2023 07:00 amQuote from: M.E.T. on 02/10/2023 04:15 amQuote from: Blackjax on 02/10/2023 02:49 amI see a lot of people on this thread assigning a single clear motive for their pricing. In my experience decision making is rarely that simple and they likely have a mixture of motives that feed into their strategy. I could think of several possibilities beyond the desire to suppress competition but there is one that I'd love to know whether or not it played a role in their decisions, if at all.When starship arrives, it is going to be seriously lacking payloads to fill even a modest fleet of vehicles. The existing players in space and the amount/types of skilled labor in the space industry at present are not prepped to fully leverage a massive expansion in inexpensive launch capacity. What is needed is a large boost to entrepreurism to bring in new blood on both the business and workforce end of things to create a situation where innovation can build an ecosystem which finds new uses for this launch capacity. I have to wonder if spacex is thinking long term enough to be trying to foster the next generation of customers via inexpensive rideshares now.I find it helpful to think of the commercial launch market as a finite pie - potentially worth about $10B. Those who forecast tremendous growth to this market in my view do so without taking into account what the arrival of Starship actually means.If Starship achieves 100t to orbit for $10M, that will mean Starship can launch 1000 times a year in a market worth $10B. That’s 100,000t to orbit.Outside of Elon’s Mars colonisation program, it’s gonna take multiple decades before an annual payload demand of 100,000t exists. So there is no reason for the $10B market size to grow, if $10B can now buy multiple times the upmass demand that exists in the entire world.Put differently, while Starship will open up the market for in-space activities tremendously, it won’t increase the size of the LAUNCH market. It will still be ~$10B. Only now you will have to launch ten twenty times more often at a tenth twentieth the price per launch, to generate the same revenue you would have in the pre-Starship days. If you don’t, you will be too expensive to compete.This is not making launch business cases more feasible. It is instead destroying them.The Transporter program has brought multiple new companies and VCs into the market. Maybe a rounding error on $10B but it has brought new ideas and people to the industry.I’m talking about the LAUNCH market, not the broader SPACE market. Which new LAUNCH companies have been brought to the market by the Transporter program as you claim?
Quote from: M.E.T. on 02/10/2023 07:41 amQuote from: imprezive on 02/10/2023 07:00 amQuote from: M.E.T. on 02/10/2023 04:15 amQuote from: Blackjax on 02/10/2023 02:49 amI see a lot of people on this thread assigning a single clear motive for their pricing. In my experience decision making is rarely that simple and they likely have a mixture of motives that feed into their strategy. I could think of several possibilities beyond the desire to suppress competition but there is one that I'd love to know whether or not it played a role in their decisions, if at all.When starship arrives, it is going to be seriously lacking payloads to fill even a modest fleet of vehicles. The existing players in space and the amount/types of skilled labor in the space industry at present are not prepped to fully leverage a massive expansion in inexpensive launch capacity. What is needed is a large boost to entrepreurism to bring in new blood on both the business and workforce end of things to create a situation where innovation can build an ecosystem which finds new uses for this launch capacity. I have to wonder if spacex is thinking long term enough to be trying to foster the next generation of customers via inexpensive rideshares now.I find it helpful to think of the commercial launch market as a finite pie - potentially worth about $10B. Those who forecast tremendous growth to this market in my view do so without taking into account what the arrival of Starship actually means.If Starship achieves 100t to orbit for $10M, that will mean Starship can launch 1000 times a year in a market worth $10B. That’s 100,000t to orbit.Outside of Elon’s Mars colonisation program, it’s gonna take multiple decades before an annual payload demand of 100,000t exists. So there is no reason for the $10B market size to grow, if $10B can now buy multiple times the upmass demand that exists in the entire world.Put differently, while Starship will open up the market for in-space activities tremendously, it won’t increase the size of the LAUNCH market. It will still be ~$10B. Only now you will have to launch ten twenty times more often at a tenth twentieth the price per launch, to generate the same revenue you would have in the pre-Starship days. If you don’t, you will be too expensive to compete.This is not making launch business cases more feasible. It is instead destroying them.The Transporter program has brought multiple new companies and VCs into the market. Maybe a rounding error on $10B but it has brought new ideas and people to the industry.I’m talking about the LAUNCH market, not the broader SPACE market. Which new LAUNCH companies have been brought to the market by the Transporter program as you claim?You’re talking about the LAUNCH market being a finite pie. But the LAUNCH market is a market of SATELLITE companies that is served by LAUNCH companies. So yes if new SATELLITE companies are coming into being because of Transporter it impacts the LAUNCH market.
Quote from: Blackjax on 02/10/2023 02:49 am<snip>When starship arrives, it is going to be seriously lacking payloads to fill even a modest fleet of vehicles.<snip>Will disagree. Starlink v2 comsats and propellants to orbital depots will be the vast majority of payloads for Starship.
Now all you need is 100,000t of new satellites each year, in order to exceed $10B worth of Starship payload capacity.Once you have that, then the market will start growing. So then, how long do you reckon it will take for the market to require more than 100,000t of upmass in a single year?