People who think Musk is eccentric/unhinged/unstable/etc should consider a much simpler possibility: He's just a regular guy, and simply does not filter himself like his peers do.<p>Other people in his position adopt the public/private persona and for the most part just plain shut up. They don't tweet anything than platitudes, they don't joke, they don't speak with random people on Twitter. They probably do this to minimize their downside exposure, but that might not be very effective. Bezos's bland Twitter feed hasn't stopped anyone from making into a villain.<p>Musk OTOH, makes Monty Python references, fart jokes, strikes up random conversations, shittalks randos etc. Ie, things normal people do. So the downside is a deluge of tusktusktusking at his "unstable" behaviour, but the upside is that a lot of people like him because he comes across like a real person rather than a PR bot.
Bear in mind that per-kg-to-orbit, the Falcon Heavy is 50 times cheaper than the Space Shuttle.<p>edit: I think thats based on programme lifetime costs, if you look at incremental costs per launch its about 12 times cheaper -see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706930" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706930</a><p>edit: OK maybe not the best two things to compare (although the original vision for the space shuttle was that it would launch all US payloads, due to projected re-usability). But FH is still way cheaper than any contemporary competitors, see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706762" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18706762</a><p>edit: I've been looking at old pics of the space shuttle and lamenting that its the only thing we've ever put into space that actually looked like a proper spaceship. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-13719297/unique-footage-of-endeavour-shuttle-docked-at-iss" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-13719297/u...</a>
While Musk has personally been a bit odd lately[0], SpaceX as a company seems to be in good hands with Gwynne Shotwell. They're launching very regularly[1], haven't had a customer-impacting failure in years[2] and they've got the market cornered. They have customers lined up for years, and continually make huge gains by reducing costs. They've got a head start by at least 5-10 years over all new entrants (Blue Origin, Electron, etc) and are massively undercutting the legacy competitors (ULA).<p>If I could invest in SpaceX, I would.<p>[0] I think he's overworked and burned-out himself out but can't recognize it. Who am I to judge- I've been there.<p>[1] They were going to launch about 20 minutes ago actually, but scrubbed at the last minute. They'll probably launch it tomorrow.<p>[2] Two failures recently were Falcon Heavy middle core doing a dive instead of a landing due to running out of igniter fluid, and the much-watched booster 'water landing' recently, where they fully recovered the booster afterwards. Both were successful launches.
SpaceX, UAL, Ariane and Blue Origin are all doing launches today. We really need a global manifest with updated real-time links to livestreams ;)<p>GPS III SV01 Mission<p><a href="https://www.spacex.com/webcast" rel="nofollow">https://www.spacex.com/webcast</a><p>New Shepard NS-10<p><a href="https://www.blueorigin.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.blueorigin.com/</a><p>CSO-1<p><a href="http://www.arianespace.com/mission/ariane-flight-vs20/" rel="nofollow">http://www.arianespace.com/mission/ariane-flight-vs20/</a><p>Delta-IV NROL-71<p><a href="https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/delta-iv-nrol-71" rel="nofollow">https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/delta-iv-nrol-71</a>
If the BFR happens they'll be unstoppable. Not because of what that rocket is but for building a company that's capable of producing something like that whilst operating a normal ongoing launch business.
$30B seems steep TBH. Consider that launch revenue last year was only $3B worldwide, and that's revenue, not profit. Granted SpaceX owns a good chunk of that, and their margins are the best in the industry, but with another player arriving at the scene soon their dominance could be short lived.<p>OTOH, if their Starlink effort succeeds (a big "if"), and they capture a fraction of the global $1T internet access market, this $30B could be totally peanuts. But that requires some serious faith on the part of the investor.<p>Still, though, if I could invest, I would. This is as close to "going to the moon" effort as it gets these days, I'd rather bypass the government money black hole and fund it directly.<p>Elon, maybe run an ICO for this?
This increase in valuation doesn't really seem justified, at least based on what's occurred since its last one. It is roughly a $3 billion increase but SpaceX has underperformed its targets for 2018. It had a target of 30 launches this year, and has only seen about 20, roughly the same as 2017.
Can someone knowledgeable chip in on how effective a satellite based broadband network will be? Will it have enough throughput? How future proof will it be? How are updates/upgrades done?
Valuations like this always remind me of this meme which went around when 37Signals had an absurd one of their own: <a href="https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-valuation-tops-100-billion-after-bold-vc-investment" rel="nofollow">https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-...</a><p>$500m sounds like a lot, but the 60:1 ratio says to me that the investors aren't confident they're getting their money back.