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Ask HN: How Do SpaceX's Stated Goals Make Financial Sense?

6 points by tmuir ↗ HN
How will SpaceX's investors ever see a return on their investment by sending humans to Mars by 2020? More broadly, is space exploration and planetary colonization even compatible with capitalism, without governments making the investments?

Today, SpaceX's revenue comes from selling its services to the US government. If the US government foots the bill to send humans to Mars, then SpaceX would certainly stand to profit handsomely. But if that's what Musk has in mind, he's not in a position to dictate the timeframe. Additionally, NASA's stated goal is to send humans to Mars in 2030, not 2020. Thus, I think we can establish that Musk intends for SpaceX to finance the mission.

At best, the first humans on Mars will do some science experiments, take a bunch of video footage and pictures, and then come back to Earth. But where does a ROI come into the picture?

Musk likes to talk about colonizing Mars, and sending humans to Mars is certainly a necessary first step. But then we have to send infrastructure to Mars. Nevermind actually creating a livable environment through terraforming, creation of an atmosphere, seeding the planet with an abundance of life, etc. Just facilitating the construction of sustainable buildings that would allow long term human survival will be a technological feat requiring huge investments that don't have obvious paths to returns besides enabling the next step in the colonization process. Each subsequent step magnifies this point.

What does SpaceX stand to gain, from the perspective of a for-profit company, if it pivots from selling the use of its rockets, to using those rockets to send humans to Mars on its own dime?

5 comments

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Arcana
Mars One intended to broadcast the missions as a reality TV show and hope to fund themselves by selling the rights to said TV show. So maybe SpaceX will look at a similar model?

I think long term ROI is expected from selling and benefiting from the advanced technology developed and possibly the resources obtained from Mars. Possibly commercial flights and space tourism too?

They also have contracts with NASA which wouldn't necessarily dictate the time frame as they seem to be technology development contracts.

I don't think that the Mars colonisation is their main goal, simply something that would advance technology and aid them in their other commercial goals.

zer00eyz
I think this article covers some of the background better than I could ever explain:

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/

-- Musk is insane (in a good way)

-- As SpaceX builds the tech to DO it, they don't have to be the ones to FUND it. If Musk says "yes we can" and proves it, and the private sector starts dumping money in it, the governments of the world are going to quickly get involved. You don't think russia and the US are going to throw cash at musk so they can jump off the ladder and be the first down together?

-- "then come back to earth" is a pretty big leap. I suspect that there are going to be a LOT of one way trips.

-- Nasa has planed this to DEATH. But nasa is bad at controlling costs. I suspect that spaceX can pick the number, find the money, and get the job done.

In total I don't think SpaceX will foot the bill, but they dam sure will build most of the systems if musk has his way.

coralreef
Getting to Mars is a goal with many difficult problems along the way. But its kind of like building a nuclear bomb. The expertise and technologies developed could be immensely valuable to other industries. For example, it is said that SpaceX developed their own unique friction welding techniques for welding together two pieces of alloy. They share those techniques with Tesla.

Who knows what kind of interesting innovations in rocketry, material sciences, biology, etc. will come up in trying to accomplish the Mars mission.

greglindahl
> Today, SpaceX's revenue comes from selling its services to the US government.

SpaceX also has a large non-US-government business. If you keep that in mind, you can see how lowering the cost to get to space can benefit SpaceX handsomely, even if it never finds anyone to pay to land humans on Mars.