
SpaceX raises another $100M - elsewhen
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141217000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml
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jcasman
Is that a lot or a little? How am I supposed to judge? It looks like SpaceX is
well over $1B with a B in funding in total now. In comparison Blue Origin just
gets money from Bezos, so "no" funding?

Big wikipedia list of private space companies (no funding info):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies)

Overall venture funding going up (from 2015):
[http://fortune.com/2016/02/22/vcs-invested-more-in-space-
sta...](http://fortune.com/2016/02/22/vcs-invested-more-in-space-startups-
last-year/)

~~~
askafriend
Well, Pinterest also has over $1 Billion in funding, if that makes you feel
any better.

Sure reality is more nuanced than that, but it's a fun comparison to make.

~~~
tradersam
Jesus F. Christ, you’re right.

Just shows where humanity’s overall priorities are, funny enough.

~~~
drcross
Instagram cost 19 billion. You can buy 73 of the worlds largest container
ships for that amount of money.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Just as a side note, that's such a weird thing to compare against... What
intuition does the average reader have about the price of container ships? If
anything, I learnt that container ships are less costly than I would have
guessed...

~~~
lostlogin
It’s probably a misunderstanding of common media units of measure. If an
Olympic swimming pool or an Empire State Building are a valid unit of measure,
why not a container ship?

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Those are probably weird too, but most people have some idea of how tall tall
buildings are (even if they haven't been to NYC), and likewise have probably
been to a pool.

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WalterBright
I wish SpaceX was traded on the stock exchange so I could buy stock in it. I
had to settle for buying some TSLA.

~~~
erikpukinskis
There's no way Elon will take it public unless he absolutely has to. He said
this about Tesla earlier this year:

"I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to
be a public company." \- [https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/elon-
musk-inve...](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/elon-musk-
inventors-plans-for-outer-space-cars-finding-love-w511747)

The stock market news cycle is a constant barrage of criticism every quarter:
commentary on whether they made some random analyst's projections, investors
asking the same inane questions over and over... How many times has he given
the "there's no point in giving you delivery estimates for specific months
because the ramp will be exponential and small factors can change individual
months by an order of magnitude" speech? I've heard him say that at least 10
times, and yet investors keep asking the same dumb questions every earnings
call.

Which isn't really that huge of a time sink, but then people go and make a big
deal out of that stuff in the press, "Model 3 production was supposed to be
5,000 by year end, and it's looking more like 500... Tesla suffers 90% crash
in production rate! It's all over folks!" Even though Musk described this
scenario two years ago, and said it was accounted for in their planning.

Now imagine he's trying to get to Mars and every 3 months he has to go in
front of investors who are asking, "So, your orbital launch rate for this
quarter seems to be 50% lower than projections, would you say that's more due
to your incompetence or is it more that your business model is fundamentally
flawed?"

He's not optimizing for quarterly revenue. He's not optimizing for revenue at
all, he's optimizing to make something fundamentally new and valuable happen,
and he's calculating that the value will come, although it's never clear what
year. But a segment of public investors seem unable to accept that story.

~~~
deepGem
Unlike Tesla, Spacex is not a threat to any other publicly traded company
AFAIK. So the barrage of negativity will be minimal. For every incompetent
investor who comes on board, you'll have a great investor who'll trust you.
This is the case in Tesla too. I mean, the odds that most of your investors
will be incompetent is fairly low. It's not that much of a time sink, if you
are running just one public company. Running two is a miracle. Jack Dorsey is
doing it, so I wouldn't put it past Elon. All said and done, given a choice,
Musk will keep Spacex private forever.

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Ntrails
> _For every incompetent investor who comes on board, you 'll have a great
> investor who'll trust you._

Incompetence is blind trust. A good investor actually cares about the
performance of the companies in which they invest - and that includes its
ability to realistically project and meet those projections. A CEO who
promises the moon on a stick and delivers little is not doing his job well. I
am a fan of Elon, but you can't take a whole heap of money and then complain
that people are interested.

As people have said, you can avoid this obligation to your shareholders by not
having any.

~~~
deepGem
A CEO who promises the moon on a stick and delivers little is not doing his
job well

But Elon is not promising the moon. He is very clear when he states his goals,
that these goals are very ambitious goals and that the probability of meeting
them is fairly low.

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jngreenlee
Uses Rule 506(b): "If the issuer will not use general solicitation or
advertising to market the securities then the sale of securities can be issued
under Rule 506(b) to an unlimited number of accredited investors[4] and up to
35 other purchasers."[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_D_(SEC)#Rule_506](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_D_\(SEC\)#Rule_506)

~~~
ProAm
Im not sure why you posted this? Is this important? (honest question)

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burger_moon
If I understand correctly I believe they are pointing out that after a certain
point in raising funds they will be forced to go public because they will have
too many investors.

~~~
cryptoz
Elon seems pretty bent on having SpaceX do regular trips to Mars and back
before IPO. I would guess that he will ensure that SpaceX stays within the
private company rules so as not to go public until the Mars trips are
commonplace.

Also, does this mean that SpaceX could raise funds indefinitely without going
public as long as they come from the same source?

~~~
londons_explore
And those 35 sources can do credit swaps and various other kinds of deals with
other sources...

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dopamean
I know it's probably in the docs somewhere but I'm feeling lazy: how much does
it cost SpaceX to launch a rocket? I'm sure there's some variation so a range
or average will suffice. Thanks.

Edit: Turns out that was a bit of a silly question. Thanks for the replies.

~~~
mLuby
Off the top of my head I'd guess it's $30M for the rocket launch itself:

\- SpaceX _charges_ $60M per launch.

\- Elon said fuel is $200k-$300k when explaining the value of reusability.

\- majority of cost is probably engine, followed by fairing, which Elon has
said is expensive enough to want to reuse.

Keep in mind that there're a _lot_ of operational and R&D expenses, and the
launches have to cover that too, so I assume a healthy margin on each launch.

~~~
londons_explore
Majority of the cost is probably operational and R&D costs.

A F9 rocket is 14 tons of mostly aluminium alloys. The materials aren't a big
fraction of the costs.

Manufacturing is very expensive, but due to the accuracy, repeatability and
size of parts needed, the vast majority of the work is semi-automated. It's
the tooling and design thats expensive, not each individual rocket.

~~~
mLuby
Wouldn't that suggest that the first rocket in a line, say the F9, would be
very expensive, and subsequent F9s would be close to the cost of the raw
inputs?

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modeless
$450M, not $100M, right?

~~~
jngreenlee
Also says "common stock issuable upon conversion of preferred stock"

So maybe this is about shares conversion?

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leroy_masochist
It's likely an artifact of the nitty-gritty details of SpaceX's corporate
structure; usually when you see something like this, it's reflective of a
clause in their corporate charter saying something along lines of, "from now
on, all additional equity stock issued for fundraising purposes will be in the
form of a warrant that will convert to common once the preferred holders are
able to cash out."

\- fmr investment banker

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peter303
Does cash flow cover operations with existing technology? They will launch 18
or 19 times in 2017, most with paying customers. I could see new capital going
to new technology like the Falcon Heavy and Human launches.

~~~
andygates
Existing F9 operations - commercial launch and ISS resupply - is comfortably
profitable.

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exabrial
Whoah, I'm actually surprised they're not cash-flow positive

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regnerba
They spend everything they earn, plus more, on R&D. The whole goal of SpaceX
is to get to Mars. No one else would take them there so they want to build
spaceships and rockets that will. To fund that they build the Dragon 9 and are
working on their satellite internet constellation. Everything SpaceX does is
meant to fund getting to Mars. So they could potentially be cash positive, but
Mars.

~~~
marvin
Adding to this: Reinvesting everything you can in a productive way is exactly
what you want in a low-interest rate economy. It can be debated whether you
should also raise more/borrow in order to further increase investment, if you
are capable of investing it in a constructive way.

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pjy04
Maybe they're using all this money to also do stock buybacks.

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swarnie_
What stock?

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londons_explore
Even though they aren't publically traded, they still have shareholders. And
some of those shareholders might want to sell.

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Sabinus
Why would SpaceX want more funding?

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kss238
Typically funding is wanted to pay for things.

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mrwong
Musk should do a SpaceX ICO

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leroy_masochist
MarsCoin has a nice ring to it

~~~
vidarh
There is already a MarsCoin. According to coinmarketcap.com it has a "market
cap" of about $100k, and a volume in the ast 24h of $148.

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keepper
And this is why Blue Origin will ultimately come out ahead in the private
launch race. This, for the most part, is technology that once shown possibly,
is possible to replicate.

But what it takes is money, lots and lots of money. Bezos has that....

~~~
btilly
SpaceX has consistently developed technology for a small fraction of what it
costs anyone else.

As a case in point, Blue Origin started before SpaceX. They have put more
money into development than SpaceX. But they have yet to launch a single
rocket into orbit.

And yet, Blue Origin is not bad. They appear to be in the same ballpark of
costs as NASA originally estimated for development on the Falcon 1. They are
just failing to rewrite the rules the way that SpaceX has consistently done.

That said, if SpaceX ever fails as a business because Elon takes one risk too
many, I'm sure that Blue Origin will happily buy the technology...

~~~
peter303
SpaceX is wisely recycled NASA and Russia Tech too. Why reinvent all the
wheels? SpaceX lured away some of the best industry engineers by promising
projects that actually get launched. Accomplishment is as important as money
to some of us techies.

~~~
Already__Taken
Yeh what's that story of the engineer saying they need a heat shield solution.
So spacex just bought the company that made what he recommended they look
into.

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11thEarlOfMar
Oh, man.

I read _SpaceX_ , exactly as written in the title. My brain convolved it with
_Tesla_ , and I started reading the comments thinking 'This won't do much to
increase Tesla's runway'.

Need... deprogramming... now...

