Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday October 14 2017, @05:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the to-infinity-and-beyond dept.

Following SpaceX's nearly back-to-back rocket launches this week, Morgan Stanley analysts released a report praising SpaceX's reusable rocket technology and predicting a big valuation for the company. But the value is expected to be in satellite-based broadband rather than mundane and cheap rocket launches:

SpaceX could become a $50 billion juggernaut through its launch of a satellite broadband network, a team of Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a report Thursday. The private space company on Wednesday launched its 15th rocket this year, and the second this week. More importantly, the Falcon 9 rocket launch was the third time SpaceX reused the first stage booster, and with each of these so-called "flight-proven" launches, it should be easier to attract new customers.

Morgan Stanley says SpaceX developing reusable rockets is "an elevator to low Earth orbit." "When Elisha Otis demonstrated the safety elevator in 1854, the public may have struggled to comprehend the impact on architecture and city design. Roughly 20 years later, every multistory building in New York, Boston, and Chicago was constructed around a central elevator shaft," Morgan Stanley said. "It all comes down to SpaceX."

Reducing the cost to launch a satellite to about $60 million, from the $200 million that United Launch Alliance charged through most of the last decade, was a monumental breakthrough. SpaceX is trying to reduce its cost to $5 million per mission, and Morgan Stanley says the launch business "generates limited operating income." The cash cow, to Morgan Stanley, is the SpaceX plan to launch a satellite broadband network in two years and send humans to Mars in seven.

Counterpoint at Business Insider and an even higher guesstimate at NextBigFuture.

Previously: SpaceX Successfully Launches and Lands its Third Used Falcon 9 Rocket (Second Launch in Three Days)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @01:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @01:46PM (#582264)

    Back of envelope:

    What is the market? Worldwide, reasonably priced bandwidth.
    What are the applications? Military ops, disaster bandwidth, remote broadcast, airline in-flight Internet access, low latency, perhaps business customer's global coverage smart phone.
    What will it cost? Spending $10B (1k sats * $10M/sat) could be economically reasonable for a $50B company. (Technically reasonable seems a whole other matter?)
    How much revenue? $50B /50pe = $1B income/year. Perhaps a $5B revenue stream to support this. (Could be 5M $1K customers or 5K $1M customers or a mix in between.)

    The cost/capability of the sat's seems out of wack by today's standards.
    (Especially building powerful enough sats to work with a reasonable smart phone power budget.)
    But if he could build and operate such a network, there it seems possible to have enough customers to support it.