- Dec 20, 2003
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The successful launch of the Falcon Heavy last week has propelled SpaceX into a potentially dominant position in the world satellite market for the foreseeable future. Their reusable rocket cost structure, their lift capacity and now demonstrated record of success in Falcon9 and even Falcon heavy launches make them a tough act to beat.
Many space addicts like myself are quite happy about this because Musks commitment to the larger vision of space makes his success about far more than profit and revenue. SpaceX have sense of mission and of vision about them that much of the planet has shared since Apollo. A sense of mission that has been frustrated for 2 generations and only recently reactivated and reinvigorated by Musk and crew.
But it is worrying that all our ambitions for the moon and Mars rest on ones mans vision, drive and business acumen. Musk himself has expressed the desire to see multiple companies and agencies competing to get to Mars because it increases the probability of his goal of a multi-planetary species being achieved. But no other company has achieved the costs, numbers of successes , lift capacity etc that Spacex have achieved. Indeed their success seems to make some alternate visions redundant.
There is a great danger in putting all our hopes on Musk for a number of reasons:
1) What happens if he dies? Who would replace him as CEO of SpaceX - would they just try and cash in on the current level of SpaceXs achievements and forget about Mars.
2) What happens if his companies go bust? Tesla does not have a profit at the moment for instance. I met a guy today who told me he had sold his SpaceX shares for a 400% profit directly after the launch because he did not consider Musk to be a good business man and that his companies had yet to demonstrate a sustainable cost model. Elon Musk in fact lost 1.1 bn net worth as a result of the fall in stocks across his companies despite the successful launch.
3) What happens if the stress and expectations loaded upon the man break him and he goes nuts. He's not a Christian , has a shaky childhood, he has demonstrated extraordinary character thus far but how much can the man handle when the going gets really tough without any supernatural source of strength.
Market Tumble Wipes Out Almost $100 Billion From World's Richest
Many space addicts like myself are quite happy about this because Musks commitment to the larger vision of space makes his success about far more than profit and revenue. SpaceX have sense of mission and of vision about them that much of the planet has shared since Apollo. A sense of mission that has been frustrated for 2 generations and only recently reactivated and reinvigorated by Musk and crew.
But it is worrying that all our ambitions for the moon and Mars rest on ones mans vision, drive and business acumen. Musk himself has expressed the desire to see multiple companies and agencies competing to get to Mars because it increases the probability of his goal of a multi-planetary species being achieved. But no other company has achieved the costs, numbers of successes , lift capacity etc that Spacex have achieved. Indeed their success seems to make some alternate visions redundant.
There is a great danger in putting all our hopes on Musk for a number of reasons:
1) What happens if he dies? Who would replace him as CEO of SpaceX - would they just try and cash in on the current level of SpaceXs achievements and forget about Mars.
2) What happens if his companies go bust? Tesla does not have a profit at the moment for instance. I met a guy today who told me he had sold his SpaceX shares for a 400% profit directly after the launch because he did not consider Musk to be a good business man and that his companies had yet to demonstrate a sustainable cost model. Elon Musk in fact lost 1.1 bn net worth as a result of the fall in stocks across his companies despite the successful launch.
3) What happens if the stress and expectations loaded upon the man break him and he goes nuts. He's not a Christian , has a shaky childhood, he has demonstrated extraordinary character thus far but how much can the man handle when the going gets really tough without any supernatural source of strength.
Market Tumble Wipes Out Almost $100 Billion From World's Richest
