Spacex revenue opportunity

[raketa]

a/Space launch ~10B/year
Global Space launch revenue is less 10B/year.Will probably not grow significantly.
Low risk for Spacex, limited grow.

b/Satellite services-Internet ~100B/years
SpaceX moved years ago to satellite services, and potential revenue is ~several hundred /year.
Low risk for Spacex, potential grow up to trillions

c/Satellite services~car connectivity ~100b/years
Car connected to the internet, with the self-driving feature. Demand to be connected to internet increase.Could replace cell phone services with car connectivity and wi-fi connectivity through our car.
Low risk for Spacex, potential grow up to trillions.Tesla car could be a test bed for the system.

d/LEO space tourism~10b/years
Every day 500 paying passenger to experience LEO orbit and EVA. 50k/person
High risk for Spacex, limited revenue potential.

e/Free return around moon LEO ~5b/years
Every week 100 paying passenger to experience flying around Moon. 1M/person
High risk for Spacex, limited revenue potential.

f/Government grants and projects ~0.1-0.5B
Limited revenue resource

g/Any other revenue resources?
...

[Robotbeat]

You over-estimated some of the LEO and free-return tourist revenue by almost an order of magnitude and under-estimated government projects by an order of magnitude.

Flights to the lunar surface and Martian surface as part of "tourism."

80,000 people to Mars every year (so more per synod) at $200k/ticket is only $16 billion, by the way. Their low Mars settlement ticket prices will depend on sharing infrastructure with higher revenue projects.

[savuporo]

a/Space launch ~10B/year
Global Space launch revenue is less 10B/year.Will probably not grow significantly.
Low risk for Spacex, limited grow.

Globally estimated launch industry revenues are at around $6 billion, and only about $2B of it is commercially competed. Growth rate has not exceeded about 4%. It would take about 40 years at 100% market share to get to $10B

[Smrg]

g/ How about de-orbiting problematic space junk using re-usable rockets on some kind of contract from spacefaring nations? There's something like 20 thousand pieces of junk in various orbit families.

[raketa]

You over-estimated some of the LEO and free-return tourist revenue by almost an order of magnitude and under-estimated government projects by an order of magnitude.

Flights to the lunar surface and Martian surface as part of "tourism."

80,000 people to Mars every year (so more per synod) at $200k/ticket is only $16 billion, by the way. Their low Mars settlement ticket prices will depend on sharing infrastructure with higher revenue projects.

1/Spacex was geting 1.3B for 4 years development of Falcon 9 (0.3B /year)
Spacex fly 4 CRS flight / years total 0.4B
For crew development is ~0.2B /year.
My estimate is right they are getting in best year 0.6B/year from NASA.

2/Moon and mars transportation is what try to get money for and will be a long time before they will be profitable.

[Pipcard]

g/ How about de-orbiting problematic space junk using re-usable rockets on some kind of contract from spacefaring nations? There's something like 20 thousand pieces of junk in various orbit families.

Basically like the anime "Planetes."

[Mader Levap]

g/ How about de-orbiting problematic space junk using re-usable rockets on some kind of contract from spacefaring nations? There's something like 20 thousand pieces of junk in various orbit families.

Basically like the anime "Planetes."

Something tells me spacecrafts used in those services will not be manned, just remotely controlled.

[Ludus]

It's obviously speculative, but I think Elon Musk is still interested in a global money transfer/banking/finance system. X.Com was his first really ambitious company and he clearly expected much more of it than developed with PayPal. The internet Constellation is a logical extension of SpaceX achieving rapid reusability because it's both a profitable means of pushing up launch rates (that SpaceX needs) and that low cost launch forms a moat or barrier to entry to competition. Once you have a universal global internet system, what might you do with it? Maybe build a universal global payments, banking, financial system on top of it. The SpaceX Constellation would be the first self contained global digital communications network. It could internally move bits between any two places.

XCom would be mostly software running in the cloud so it could be developed in stealth mode until ready for release. It would be founded on the SpaceX Internet already being a consumer facing company selling services to hundreds of millions of people all over the world. If you are setting up an account with SpaceX to pay for internet why not take advantage of their many other payment, money transfer and banking services?

[ZachF]

a/Space launch ~10B/year
Global Space launch revenue is less 10B/year.Will probably not grow significantly.
Low risk for Spacex, limited grow.

Globally estimated launch industry revenues are at around $6 billion, and only about $2B of it is commercially competed. Growth rate has not exceeded about 4%. It would take about 40 years at 100% market share to get to $10B

That the entire global launch industry is $6b a year makes it very interesting that we spend $3b/year on SLS...

[Kenp51d]

a/Space launch ~10B/year
Global Space launch revenue is less 10B/year.Will probably not grow significantly.
Low risk for Spacex, limited grow.

Globally estimated launch industry revenues are at around $6 billion, and only about $2B of it is commercially competed. Growth rate has not exceeded about 4%. It would take about 40 years at 100% market share to get to $10B

That the entire global launch industry is $6b a year makes it very interesting that we spend $3b/year on SLS...

Good point . Never thought of it that way. Thanks

Sent from my XT1565 using Tapatalk

[RDMM2081]

g/ How about de-orbiting problematic space junk using re-usable rockets on some kind of contract from spacefaring nations? There's something like 20 thousand pieces of junk in various orbit families.

Of course it's an interesting problem and it should be solved.  So should the floating garbage in the oceans.  And many other problems.  The same issue covers many of them however, and that is is "someone else's problem" I.E. there's absolutely no money or incentive (other than self preservation perhaps?) for anyone to do anything about it.  I have never seen any indication that there was a customer out there putting a bounty, or any other money on the line for de-orbiting space junk.

Yes, space junk absolutely should be addressed, but it either has to be so cheap that it can be done with no profit, or find some way to "industrialize" the problem.  Make every launch pay a "disposal tax" that goes into a fund, and if you manage to de-orbit some junk, you get paid per kilo out of the fund? Just the first thing to come into my head, please don't take it too seriously.

[ZachF]

g/ How about de-orbiting problematic space junk using re-usable rockets on some kind of contract from spacefaring nations? There's something like 20 thousand pieces of junk in various orbit families.

Of course it's an interesting problem and it should be solved.  So should the floating garbage in the oceans.  And many other problems.  The same issue covers many of them however, and that is is "someone else's problem" I.E. there's absolutely no money or incentive (other than self preservation perhaps?) for anyone to do anything about it.  I have never seen any indication that there was a customer out there putting a bounty, or any other money on the line for de-orbiting space junk.

Yes, space junk absolutely should be addressed, but it either has to be so cheap that it can be done with no profit, or find some way to "industrialize" the problem.  Make every launch pay a "disposal tax" that goes into a fund, and if you manage to de-orbit some junk, you get paid per kilo out of the fund? Just the first thing to come into my head, please don't take it too seriously.

I like the idea of a global cleanup fund.

[Pipcard]

Yes, space junk absolutely should be addressed, but it either has to be so cheap that it can be done with no profit, or find some way to "industrialize" the problem.  Make every launch pay a "disposal tax" that goes into a fund, and if you manage to de-orbit some junk, you get paid per kilo out of the fund? Just the first thing to come into my head, please don't take it too seriously.

Any incentive to mitigate space debris is a good idea, especially if 4000+ internet satellites are going to be added to the collection of objects (functioning and non-functioning) in low Earth orbit.

[RDMM2081]

Yes, space junk absolutely should be addressed, but it either has to be so cheap that it can be done with no profit, or find some way to "industrialize" the problem.  Make every launch pay a "disposal tax" that goes into a fund, and if you manage to de-orbit some junk, you get paid per kilo out of the fund? Just the first thing to come into my head, please don't take it too seriously.

Any incentive to mitigate space debris is a good idea, especially if 4000+ internet satellites are going to be added to the collection of objects (functioning and non-functioning) in low Earth orbit.

Yes.  Of course.  In terms of this thread, I was just trying to point out that the number of times people/companies these days do things without getting paid, is... Small.

[raketa]

g/Moon supply and crew missions ~2-5B
Transportation for  Moon for crew and supply.
If base will have an international crew, it could get achieve revenue 5B/years, by participating nation like EU, China, USA. If USA only 2B/year will be max. NASA could spend.

[JamesH65]

g/ How about de-orbiting problematic space junk using re-usable rockets on some kind of contract from spacefaring nations? There's something like 20 thousand pieces of junk in various orbit families.

Of course it's an interesting problem and it should be solved.  So should the floating garbage in the oceans.  And many other problems.  The same issue covers many of them however, and that is is "someone else's problem" I.E. there's absolutely no money or incentive (other than self preservation perhaps?) for anyone to do anything about it.  I have never seen any indication that there was a customer out there putting a bounty, or any other money on the line for de-orbiting space junk.

Yes, space junk absolutely should be addressed, but it either has to be so cheap that it can be done with no profit, or find some way to "industrialize" the problem.  Make every launch pay a "disposal tax" that goes into a fund, and if you manage to de-orbit some junk, you get paid per kilo out of the fund? Just the first thing to come into my head, please don't take it too seriously.

it is being addressed, went to a talk the other day by someone working on it at British Aerospace. It's a very real problem, getting to a very dangerous peak. Just needs funding. Surprise surprise.

[M.E.T.]

Blue Origin is focusing on suborbital tourism, right? It seems that they see a sizeable market in that space. So I was wondering, could SpaceX not offer the same service at a rather low cost, using fully reusable technology as early as next year?

What I mean is, once they have Dragon 2 human rated, could they not just put it straight onto a Falcon 9 Block 5 first stage and launch it to a sub-orbital flight? Without needing a 2nd stage at all?

What type of flight profile would the Dragon achieve then, and would this offer the type of sub-orbital flight experience that tourists are interested in? If so, the entire vehicle can be recovered and reused repeatedly, thereby opening up a potential revenue opportunity for SpaceX using existing technology.

EDIT

I've just done some back of the envelope calculations and it seems to me that unless you charge the 6 passengers exorbitant amounts, such a venture would not really be very profitable using a Falcon 9 1st stage and a Dragon capsule, even if it is technically feasible. If I recall, Virgin was charging something like $200k for a sub orbital trip, which would bring the revenue of a 6 person Dragon to only around $1.2m dollars. This hardly seems financially justifiable, for a Falcon 9/Dragon launch, even if reusable.

[Smrg]

Dragon is much lighter than second stage and payload...
So this would be a much longer ride. Normally first stage by itself tops 160 miles so without a second stage the dragon could go even higher.
They say the first stage without landing legs and fuel reserve could go orbital by itself.
Fuel cost about $200k, but lots of other support required, including range which might well cost something.

[guckyfan]

Suborbital with Dragon was always dubious IMO. Now with powered land landing off there is just no way for that happening.

[envy887]

Dragon is much lighter than second stage and payload...
So this would be a much longer ride. Normally first stage by itself tops 160 miles so without a second stage the dragon could go even higher.
They say the first stage without landing legs and fuel reserve could go orbital by itself.
Fuel cost about $200k, but lots of other support required, including range which might well cost something.

First stage can't go much faster than Mach 8, as it won't survive reentry.

Also, this would be expensive. IMO, anyone willing to pay $40M+ for a full F9/Dragon launch can afford to drop $10M on an expendable upper stage and go to orbit for 3 days instead of 3 minutes of suborbit.

Or this could be a good application for a reusable upper stage, since F9 has extra performance to LEO.