Ode to SpaceX and Musk

The media is enamored with Elon Musk. Why not? He’s building rockets and rockets are cool; he doesn’t discourage the many ‘genius’ tags thrown his way (maybe because there aren’t too many physics majors in journalism); he’s already made a fortune (PayPal) in the real world (and cashed out), and he’s a reliable political and social liberal.

But that won’t make a rocket fly, nor will it make SpaceX succeed, even if they are unencumbered by the cost-adding layers of bureaucracy the military, NRO, and NASA all create. Less ‘oversight’ equals less cost, after all, but can a new start reliably reduce the cost to orbit by something approaching a half-order of magnitude? I don’t think so.

And at some point, the SpaceX ‘get real’ flag has to be thrown. For example:

Even if an engine [on the nine engine Falcon 9] explodes, says [SpaceX propulsion chief Tom] Mueller, the others will not be affected.

I’m not too sure about that; engine failures tend to be catastrophic and don’t much seem to gracefully degrade. And then there’s this:

Talking about a [8000 person] city on Mars by the middle of this century—even as SpaceX has yet to fly its first cargo mission to Earth orbit—is one of the reasons space professionals are skeptical about Musk’s claims.

SpaceX is for real and they are showing it with substantive and unprecedented accomplishments, but they are like everyone else in the space industry in one important way: they can only make money by selling the government a service. The competition is useful to the customer (that is, the government), but at some point this thing called reverting to the mean comes into play and space launch falls prey to regulatory capture, rent-seeking, and/or crony capitalism.

Will reverting to the mean affect SpaceX’s performance, cost, or schedule? History suggests it is most likely to revert on cost and schedule, especially as the customer demands ever-increasing insight.

A wise man once said the government wants to pay a fair price and have the contractor make a fair profit. If we could only agree what we mean by fair.

Elon Musk Revisited

The Lexington Institute’s Loren Thompson takes a look at the SpaceX/Elon Musk story and is underwhelmed.

While I’m wondering myself how SpaceX can underbid India and China (and the Chinese are asking the same thing.  Think two words, loss leader), Thompson misses a few major points:

Space launch is an inherently and hugely risky business and offers few rewards to the bold.  The fact Falcon 1 had several failures is little different than, let’s say, the Corona program which went thirteen missions before it delivered space-capability.  And after the one successful mission, there were another three unsuccessful missions.

Or the Atlas program which had five acknowledged failures in thirteen months.

Thompson notes a planned “family” of launch vehicles, Falcon 5, never did launch.  The reality is there have been plenty of launch vehicles which have had minimal or no launches due to market forces, financing, technology, sizing (payload to orbit issues) and the likes, and consider the Delta III as a case-in-point.  While it’s easy to mock paper rockets, all rockets start as paper projects and SpaceX has moved well beyond that.  They have real rockets.

So no matter what, I’m willing to give SpaceX a chance for the fundamental reason that competition is useful (begin sarcasm font now: unless you’re talking about the second engine for the F-35; then of course, it’s wasteful).  Otherwise, U.S. space launch becomes an issue of keep doing what you’re doing, keep getting what you got.

Of course, Thompson still hits the nail on the head in one regard: the way to really make money in, to, through, and from space is to sell space hardware and services to the government.  Providing launch services to Iridium Next is not likely to be the real target when you ponder the taxpayer-provided monies of NASA, the Air Force, and the NRO.

 

Once Again, How Do You Make Money In Space?

From a Yahoo article which starts things off by talking about an Elon Musk attended fund-raiser for the Obama 2012 campaign (at almost $40k per plate) and then transitions into a more…uncomfortable subject.

…the Musk/Obama partnership has been a very profitable one for both parties. Obama has funneled tens of millions of dollars, with much more promised, to Musk’s companies. Musk has given tens of thousands to Democrats and Democratic causes, with more to follow.

This shift toward Democrats contains great peril for Musk, however. The House has been taken over by Republicans, many of whom take a dim view toward what they see as crony capitalism going on in commercial space.

So is it possible crony capitalism is as important for new space as it is for traditional space? 

Remember the rule of thumb on how you make money in space: sell goods and services to the government.