<\/em><\/p>\n This is part three of the interview conducted by Braddock Gaskill. NASASpaceflight.com: In the last update you mentioned that SpaceX was looking to be cash-flow positive. I was wondering if you could define cash-flow positive a little more precisely, and how SpaceX was getting there.<\/em><\/p>\n Elon Musk: Well, cash flow positive is a much more objective measure than accrual accounting. You can also call it positive on a cash-accounting basis, rather than an accrual account basis. You can\u2019t play fancy games with cash accounting, as you can with accrual accounting.<\/p>\n So the reason actually we are cash flow positive is because our expectations are that we will receive more cash from customers than we will spend in R&D, general overhead, manufacturing and launch activity.<\/p>\n NASA mission updates (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n NASASpaceflight.com: Is that mostly from launch contracts, or is that from other work \u2013 or expecting COTS?<\/em><\/p>\n Elon Musk: It\u2019s primarily from advance payments on launch contracts, and there is some small amount of development money that has been paid for customization and specialization \u2013 things that were somewhat \u201coff menu\u201d, if you will, but which were asked for by our customers.<\/p>\n Elon Musk: I think there is valid skepticism in the market because, obviously, you have that example. Although, frankly, I think people tend to draw far too many generalizations on the basis of far too few examples in the launch business.<\/p>\n There is a fundamental difference in architecture between ourselves and the Pegasus. I think if you were the smartest person on earth you could not make the Pegasus cheap.<\/p>\n The reason I say that is because it is a five stage rocket. You\u2019ve got an airplane, which is a dedicated Lockheed L-1011. No matter how many times you launch, you have to maintain that plane at several million dollars per year. You have to have dedicated pilots.<\/p>\n Your range safety is much more complex because you essentially have a man-rated system \u2013 you are interacting a rocket and a plane with people on board, and then launching it with maybe 20 or 30 feet separating the pilot and that rocket. So I think that complicates things.<\/p>\n Then you have three solid rocket motor stages, including a complete hypersonic airplane in the first solid rocket stage. And then you have the fifth stage, which is the liquid apogee HAPS stage. So if you were the smartest person on Earth, I don\u2019t think you could make that system very cheap.<\/p>\n If you look at ours in contrast: it is a two stage rocket, no wings, no control surfaces, both stages are the cheapest propellant you can use, LOX\/Kerosene.<\/p>\n We pay $1.90 per gallon of rocket propellant grade Kerosene\u2026[laugh]\u2026I can\u2019t fill my car up for that\u2026and the liquid oxygen in Texas \u2013 unfortunately in Kwajalein it ends up being a little more expensive than I\u2019d like \u2013 but certainly in the continental United States you can actually buy liquid oxygen for about 40 cents per gallon.<\/p>\n Range safety issues are far less because the rocket is only fueled at the time of launch, and we\u2019re able to get away with, for example, a thrust termination system instead of strapping explosives to the vehicle.<\/p>\n NASASpaceflight.com: Some of our readers have remarked that launching spacecraft is more than just the vehicle; you perform load analyses for the clients, payload separation systems, clean room services, range fees, and all of these things add up for the launch vendor, and may be a sort of burden on them. Elon Musk: There are some realities, such as the range fees, which we have only limited influence over. We are working closely with the Army and Kwajalein range services to be as efficient as possible \u2013 without taking any shortcuts that would sacrifice safety of people \u2013 trying to find ways to just be more efficient about the range time, because they are really quite high. They [range fees] are a little higher than we expected initially.<\/p>\n As far as the problem of the load analyses, we\u2019ve done several at this point, so I think we understand, at least, what level of effort is required for coupled loads analyses of relatively sophisticated small satellites \u2013 not necessarily in the class of the big satellites, but also not completely trivial.<\/p>\n The price being quoted on the web is all-inclusive. Unless someone asks for something special \u2013 like they want to have a multi-satellite adapter. On the Malaysian satellite launch, the Malaysians wanted to put on some secondary satellites; there is some extra charge there because of the multi-satellite integration.<\/p>\n But if someone has sort of a normal satellite, and it doesn\u2019t have any special requirements, and isn\u2019t gonna put a mission assurance process burden on the launch, then it\u2019s an all inclusive price.<\/p>\n NASASpaceflight.com: Could you briefly characterize the team you\u2019ve assembled at SpaceX, and how the environment at SpaceX differs from most of the launch industry?<\/em><\/p>\n Elon Musk: Ironically, most SpaceX personnel come from Boeing, Northrop and other space companies. It is the sometimes Dilbertian environment, not the individual engineers, that holds those organizations back.<\/p>\n When companies become very large, internal communication weakens, the original clarity of purpose becomes diffuse, decisions are made by committee with common sense and personal responsibility often taking a back seat and most senior managers are so far from the actual hardware, that their once good judgment becomes impaired.<\/p>\n **NASASpaceflight.com Job Opportunities**<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elon Musk, CEO of The Space Exploration Company \u2013 commonly known as SpaceX \u2013 has given his thoughts on the rocket business. Musk details how SpaceX is on-track to be cash flow positive this year, contrasts the Falcon 1 with Orbital Sciences\u2019 Pegasus launch vehicle, and talks about how SpaceX handles range fees, load analyses, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9246],"class_list":["post-41975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-spacex-elon-musk"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPART 1: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/content\/?cid=4674<\/em>
\nPART 2: <\/em>http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/content\/?cid=4691<\/em><\/p>\nNASASpaceflight.com: Some for our readers work for Orbital Sciences, and have made comments about SpaceX that they\u2019ve lived through this before, in that Pegasus was originally priced a $6 million per launch. They had a couple failures, they had their review, they made their improvements, their market didn\u2019t quite emerge, and now they\u2019re $20 million per launch. I was wondering if you could possibly contrast where SpaceX is going to where Orbital Sciences has gone, and how you intend to avoid launch cost increases.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI was wondering if you have any innovations in those areas, or if you feel these are things that should be somehow restructured in the launch industry?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/em><\/p>\n
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\n <\/em>LIVE UPDATE PAGES<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n