r/SpaceXLounge

I'm optimistic we can light the candle today but the weather is looking a bit offputting, do y'all think today's gonna be the day or might it be scrubbed

I have a question about the news that SpaceX is going to do the IPO thing, initial public offering. I don't really understand much about stocks or how they work.

I have a few questions though. What exactly changes once they do the IPO? Does this mean it will go from being a privately held company, to being publicly held? Does this also mean Elon might lose control, or lose majority stake in the company, and lose decision making power? Could he get fired? Also, what are the positive and negative consequences of going IPO? If they go public, is there any risk the company and the decisions made will be held hostage by a group of rich executives who could end up making greedy or wrong decisions and destroy or add red tape to the innovations, ruin the work culture, slow or complicate decision making, and it ends up ultimately ruining something that was once good?

I’m pretty new to following SpaceX, so I’ve been going back and watching older launches and reading updates to try to get a feel for how Starship is actually improving.

What I’m noticing so far is it’s not really about one big success, but more like each test fixes a few things and then uncovers new problems.

I keep seeing people talk about stuff like the heat shield tiles, engines, and reentry, but I’m still trying to connect the dots on what really improved from one flight to the next.

For those who’ve been following this for a while — what do you think were the biggest improvements in the recent tests?

The quote that sums up the article (and the study it discusses):

>In comparison, Starship is more than three times heavier than the RLV C5 at launch. A significant portion of that mass is the cost of full reusability: heat shield tiles, landing fuel, structural reinforcements, the wings. Of every tonne Starship sends to orbit, only around 40% is payload however the RLV C5, with its simpler partially reusable approach, manages to put 74% of its mass-to-orbit into useful payload. What it lacks in raw capacity it gains in efficiency.

The article, the study, and (apparently) European policymakers, cannot wrap their heads around the fact that Starship—manufacturing, launch infrastructure, and launch cadence—is being developed as a system, a conveyor belt to orbit. So, the entire basis of their analysis is between vehicles (one of which is theoretical) and the one metric they can point to as better—percentage of mass-to-orbit—is meaningless.

Governments and companies care about time, cost, reliability, and payload capacity. This theoretical European launch vehicle, being partially reusable and fueled with hydrolox, likely could never achieve an absolute cost advantage over Starship. If you add in Starship's economies of scale and rapid launch cadence, then cost per kilogram is also a pipe dream. So, Starship as a system has the only efficiencies that matter (the caveat being that those capabilities are still under development).

Of course, it doesn't help that the technologies for this notional launch vehicle don't actually exist (they're "under investigation") and the development path suggested by the study is practically tailor-made for eventual cancellation, especially with Europe's political environment of squabbling governments and contractors.

The one really interesting thing that comes out the study and its analysis of Starship is that SpaceX may actually be underselling the capabilities of Versions 2 and 3 of Starship.

I’m heading down to Texas today, and am staying at Casa Rosa Inn.

I’m hoping to find some enthusiasts nearby to hang out while waiting for the launch, or maybe take a drive down highway 4 if it’s open.

If anyone is looking to just chill and talk space things, that would be awesome.

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2056143109528940885