Who will compete with SpaceX? The last two and next two years.

[Brovane]

But >10 years later, with the full benefit of hindsight, with enough time to gain perspective, and with a "how to do it right" example right there in front of you - to still not see it - that's just astounding..

There is no "how to do it right" example

Unfortunately for many fans I will have to agree. Until used booster flights outnumber the new booster flights the F9/FH reuse cannot be considered an example of "how to do it right". We believe that SpaceX will be able to do this and do it with a reduction in the access to space but they have yet to acheive that milestone. They have on their schedule this milestone is NET than this time next year.

There are two items that would enable the phrase:
More boosters used than new.
A general reduction in the $/kg or the general cost of access to space.

They have yet to be demonstrated.

Spacex has reduced costs via vehicle/system design and younger workforce with no paid overtime.  Reuse has yet to enter the picture and so far has yet to be income positive.

ULA only has hourly employees?  It is fairly common in the commercial sector to have salaried employees and then expect unpaid OT out of those employees. 

I would expect that SpaceX like any commercial company has both hourly and salary employees.  The salary employees are the engineers, developers, managers etc.  The hourly employees are the line workers, welders, assembly techs etc.  SpaceX is also building it's rockets in CA which has some of the strictest rules in regards to the classifications of employees Salary/Hourly. 

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Jim is right. Musk said it cost like a billion dollars to develop reuse. I'm pretty sure it takes more than 2 launches to recover that.

But I do consider it essentially proven at this point. Just a matter of time until it is the dominant method of launching. Doesn't have to be VTVL, could be VTHL or something, but fairly rapid reuse like that is inevitable at this point, IMHO. Blue Origin would've eventually done it if SpaceX didn't exist, so I wouldn't give SpaceX too much credit except for accelerating the timescale.

To reiterate it is only a matter of time from all the info I have seen for the conditions I mentioned to be met. But to get ahead of ourselves and saying it is a full achievement is not correct.

But the points about having fully met all the goals of an economical reuse success is obscuring the competitive nature or business. Without trying and striving businesses loose their competitiveness. There are two ways to fail in business to try and fail and to not try at all.

[meekGee]

Jim is right. Musk said it cost like a billion dollars to develop reuse. I'm pretty sure it takes more than 2 launches to recover that.

But I do consider it essentially proven at this point. Just a matter of time until it is the dominant method of launching. Doesn't have to be VTVL, could be VTHL or something, but fairly rapid reuse like that is inevitable at this point, IMHO. Blue Origin would've eventually done it if SpaceX didn't exist, so I wouldn't give SpaceX too much credit except for accelerating the timescale.

To reiterate it is only a matter of time from all the info I have seen for the conditions I mentioned to be met. But to get ahead of ourselves and saying it is a full achievement is not correct.

But the points about having fully met all the goals of an economical reuse success is obscuring the competitive nature or business. Without trying and striving businesses loose their competitiveness. There are two ways to fail in business to try and fail and to not try at all.

Of course.

My assertion was merely that "they're doing it right".

If people are fighting to prove that it "is not a done deal yet", they are arguing against an imaginary point of view.  It's called a "straw-man argument".

And who knows how salaries got dragged into this.

[Jim]

Where is it documented?

In the job postings, 50 hours is expected.

It is common knowledge

[Jim]

ULA only has hourly employees?  It is fairly common in the commercial sector to have salaried employees and then expect unpaid OT out of those employees. 

ULA and most aerospace companies pay overtime for salary personnel

[meekGee]

So how come those under-paid SpaceX kid-slaves manage to do so much work per person?

If it's the hours, than maybe ULA should pay its employees 20% more, get them to work 50 hours, and then be able to achieve what SpaceX is doing?

Anyway, I'm off of this "slave labor" distraction.  It's been debunked often enough before.

Who will compete with SpaceX?  Companies that chart their own course, that's who.

[Brovane]

ULA only has hourly employees?  It is fairly common in the commercial sector to have salaried employees and then expect unpaid OT out of those employees. 

ULA and most aerospace companies pay overtime for salary personnel

ULA only has hourly employees?  It is fairly common in the commercial sector to have salaried employees and then expect unpaid OT out of those employees. 

ULA and most aerospace companies pay overtime for salary personnel

When I look in glassdoor.com I see this under ULA.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/United-Launch-Alliance-Reviews-E146300.htm

"Mandatory unpaid overtime when it doesn't make sense" (in 10 reviews)"

I am being inaccurate when I say hourly versus salary employees.  The correct term is non-exempt and exempt.

Non-exempt employees get OT and exempt employees don't get OT. 

That being said, I don't think unpaid OT really isn't that beneficial for SpaceX in regards to line production of the F9.  The technicians assembling the rockets are almost certainly Non-exempt employees.  It isn't like SpaceX can lower the direct production costs of its rockets by not paying OT.  What it can lower is the cost of development, since that would probably be done by the exempt employees.  So that means you have lower development costs to amortize out per launch. 

[Tev]

Anyway, I'm off of this "slave labor" distraction.  It's been debunked often enough before.

I would like to see a link to those posts that clearly debunk it. I've seen many debates on the matter, and no one actually disputed it as much as you. Glassdor & other sources frequently mentioned that those 50 hours are "expected minimum", and many people work much more. Life / work balance being non-existant at SpaceX and people frequently burning out, etc.

I agree that reusability is pretty much proven, and we can just argue about exactly how much savings will it bring, but the cost reductions so far were pretty clearly at least partially from cheap workforce. It would be useful to stop pretending otherwise, and maybe rather start discussing why are people working for so much less money, and how (whether) can other companies motivate their employees that much.

[JBF]

Anyway, I'm off of this "slave labor" distraction.  It's been debunked often enough before.

I would like to see a link to those posts that clearly debunk it. I've seen many debates on the matter, and no one actually disputed it as much as you. Glassdor & other sources frequently mentioned that those 50 hours are "expected minimum", and many people work much more. Life / work balance being non-existant at SpaceX and people frequently burning out, etc.

I agree that reusability is pretty much proven, and we can just argue about exactly how much savings will it bring, but the cost reductions so far were pretty clearly at least partially from cheap workforce. It would be useful to stop pretending otherwise, and maybe rather start discussing why are people working for so much less money, and how (whether) can other companies motivate their employees that much.

To truly quantify it, we would also need some real numbers and does the labor savings actually go into the
launch price or are they using it to do other things.  I have a feeling that even if they had exactly the same labor cost as others in the industry, the launch costs would be the same. They would just have to cut back on some of the R&D.

[ZachF]

Two wagoneers sitting on their horses looking at the just completed railroad and saying "Why worry, the trains are not running regularly yet".

That the enthusiast crowd has that mentality is almost to be expected.  But when corporate leadership is also doing the same, just strike these companies from the list of possible competitors.

It's the same story of tech disruption that has happened many times before. The industry has never faced (Or, at least not within living memory of current employees) the full power of creative destruction and continually underestimates it's effects until it's too late.

[ZachF]

Anyway, I'm off of this "slave labor" distraction.  It's been debunked often enough before.

I would like to see a link to those posts that clearly debunk it. I've seen many debates on the matter, and no one actually disputed it as much as you. Glassdor & other sources frequently mentioned that those 50 hours are "expected minimum", and many people work much more. Life / work balance being non-existant at SpaceX and people frequently burning out, etc.

I agree that reusability is pretty much proven, and we can just argue about exactly how much savings will it bring, but the cost reductions so far were pretty clearly at least partially from cheap workforce. It would be useful to stop pretending otherwise, and maybe rather start discussing why are people working for so much less money, and how (whether) can other companies motivate their employees that much.

To truly quantify it, we would also need some real numbers and does the labor savings actually go into the
launch price or are they using it to do other things.  I have a feeling that even if they had exactly the same labor cost as others in the industry, the launch costs would be the same. They would just have to cut back on some of the R7D.

Vertical integration probably saves the most labor costs for SX, both from cutting development lead times and reducing the amount of suppliers who need to take their cut of profit and management fees. Old space is very horizontal and often spread out among many congressional districts for political leverage.

[MechE31]

Where is it documented?

In the job postings, 50 hours is expected.

It is common knowledge

Coming from someone with direct experience, this does happen and is expected (with 50 hours mostly being on the low side depending on position) with a big *. Stock compensation more than makes up for the unpaid OT as long as you stay for more than 1 year and aren't dumb about it (which a lot of people are).

[Semmel]

Jim. A large source of the launch cost difference and speed of development of SpaceX compared to ULA comes also from the fact that ULA has to give huge amount of money to its parents. Without that drain, ULA could be more competitive and innovative than it is today. In the context of this thread, this alone disqualifies ULA as a competitor in terms of innovation and cost.

[meekGee]

Anyway, I'm off of this "slave labor" distraction.  It's been debunked often enough before.

I would like to see a link to those posts that clearly debunk it. I've seen many debates on the matter, and no one actually disputed it as much as you. Glassdor & other sources frequently mentioned that those 50 hours are "expected minimum", and many people work much more. Life / work balance being non-existant at SpaceX and people frequently burning out, etc.

I agree that reusability is pretty much proven, and we can just argue about exactly how much savings will it bring, but the cost reductions so far were pretty clearly at least partially from cheap workforce. It would be useful to stop pretending otherwise, and maybe rather start discussing why are people working for so much less money, and how (whether) can other companies motivate their employees that much.

I didn't say 50 hours was a myth.

I said that the statement that "it's clearly documented that SpaceX pays less than others" is false.

I also work for a company that is "doing it right", and 50 hours is a no brainer.  Btw, our average age is well over 40.

The ULA thread is regularly complaining about mandatory unpaid overtime.  I have yet to see such complaining on SpaceX threads.

I also said that SpaceX gets a lot more done per employee, and we're not talking 20% here.

Thus "debunked".

And...  I'm out of salary talk. Again.

[matthewkantar]

If one starts from the notion that nobody can rocket better than past rocketeers, then you will always deny progress or explain it away as cheating or some sort of illusion.

Matthew

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Two wagoneers sitting on their horses looking at the just completed railroad and saying "Why worry, the trains are not running regularly yet".

That the enthusiast crowd has that mentality is almost to be expected.  But when corporate leadership is also doing the same, just strike these companies from the list of possible competitors.

It's the same story of tech disruption that has happened many times before. The industry has never faced (Or, at least not within living memory of current employees) the full power of creative destruction and continually underestimates it's effects until it's too late.

A tech disruption does not always get adopted.

Sometimes it withers and dies out. But the cases of tech disruptive adoption by industry has three basic cases:
1- Rapid adoption where the new tech obsoletes and causes the old tech solution to die out.
2- No general adoption by others but accepted by customers as equal to existing such that it becomes another general solution on par with the original solutions. This is the case where the tech either takes a long time for it to fade away or it becomes another of the ho-hum standard industry differentiation between providers.
3- Rejection by customers such that the tech solution withers and dies out sometimes quickly and sometimes over a long period because it had a rival disruptive tech solution introduced at same time that became the accepted solution.

But to make a general item there has never been a straight increasing line adoptive case. The curves come in three examples the positive logarithmic S curve, the flat line that does not increase or decrease, and the negative logarithmic S curve.

Space X says that their tech solution is the first case. But it is too early to tell if that will be the case. Check back in 5 years. If hardly any LVs are EXPD only then the first case of rapid and accelerating rate of adoption is proven out.

[Jim]

Anyway, I'm off of this "slave labor" distraction.  It's been debunked often enough before.

just because you say it doesn't mean it is true.

the facts are they get paid less and work more.  See HXMHMX

[Jim]

I also work for a company that is "doing it right",

Unqualified statement

[jongoff]

I said that the statement that "it's clearly documented that SpaceX pays less than others" is false.

I have a friend who used to work for another aerospace company doing competitive research (among other things), and when they interviewed ex-SpaceX employees, they'd try to find out how much they were paid. He said that they were coming in consistently around 80% of typical market salaries for the same position/experience. I'm not sure if that was direct salary, or counting salary+benefits, but that was the data he got from dozens of interviews over the years.

And for the expected minimum of 50hrs thing, when I interviewed there in 2008, that was exactly what they told me.

All that said, I agree that calling this "slave labor" is hyperbole--nobody is forcing SpaceX employees to take jobs there or stay there. I try to treat my employees differently, but at the end of the day if people are willing to trade long hours and scant pay for working on something awesome, they're adults, and that's their decision. It doesn't change the fact that that gives SpaceX effectively much cheaper labor, at least for as long as they can keep their labor model working. My guess is that as you start seeing more companies doing awesome things, the competition for labor will end up driving up what they have to offer to retain talent--pretty much like it would for any other industry.

One other thought--I turned down the SpaceX job to stay at a job that paid significantly less, had even less benefits, and required even longer hours of work, so work hours and benefits don't paint the full story.

~Jon

[meekGee]

I said that the statement that "it's clearly documented that SpaceX pays less than others" is false.

I have a friend who used to work for another aerospace company doing competitive research (among other things), and when they interviewed ex-SpaceX employees, they'd try to find out how much they were paid. He said that they were coming in consistently around 80% of typical market salaries for the same position/experience. I'm not sure if that was direct salary, or counting salary+benefits, but that was the data he got from dozens of interviews over the years.

And for the expected minimum of 50hrs thing, when I interviewed there in 2008, that was exactly what they told me.

All that said, I agree that calling this "slave labor" is hyperbole--nobody is forcing SpaceX employees to take jobs there or stay there. I try to treat my employees differently, but at the end of the day if people are willing to trade long hours and scant pay for working on something awesome, they're adults, and that's their decision. It doesn't change the fact that that gives SpaceX effectively much cheaper labor, at least for as long as they can keep their labor model working. My guess is that as you start seeing more companies doing awesome things, the competition for labor will end up driving up what they have to offer to retain talent--pretty much like it would for any other industry.

One other thought--I turned down the SpaceX job to stay at a job that paid significantly less, had even less benefits, and required even longer hours of work, so work hours and benefits don't paint the full story.

~Jon

I spoke with two folks from Hawthorne, and their salaries were "California reasonable". 

SpaceX certainly doesn't have to pay a premium to lure people in, and you can't "blame" their success on lower wages.

If ULA can't compete, it's not because SpaceX starves its employees. It's because SpaceX gets much more done per employee and per dollar.