PJ Media has covered all side of the space debate, from Nasa to SpaceX to Obama. Since I last visited this topic, SpaceX has enjoyed success delivering cargo to the International Space Station. But today’s Washington Examiner reveals that founder Elon Musk is attracting the eye of the IRS in Green stimulus profiteer comes under IRS scrutiny.
The Internal Revenue Service is auditing SolarCity, the SEC filings reveal, and at the same time the Treasury Department’s inspector general is investigating the company. The question at hand: Did President Obama’s Treasury Department inappropriately give stimulus money to Musk’s company.
. . .
Treasury found that SolarCity repeatedly overstated the value of its investments, the SEC filings indicate. In those cases, Treasury awarded smaller grants than SolarCity had tried to claim. Now the department’s IG and the IRS are doing a broader audit of the projects for which SolarCity and other large solar companies got stimulus cash. Investigators want to know if the companies regularly overstated the value of their investments and thus got overly generous taxpayer grants.
But Musk’s problems are bigger than just valuation reporting issues. More from the Examiner:
Musk is the paradigmatic political entrepreneur, launching businesses that seek to capitalize on government favors and lobbying clout rather than provide goods or services that consumers demand.
. . .
Musk has personally given more than $100,000 to Obama’s re-election campaign, including two gifts of more than $30,000 each to the Obama Victory Fund, which divides the money between the maximum allowable donations to the Democratic National Committee and the maximum to the Obama campaign. (Musk has also given generously to Republicans.)
Tesla got that $465 million loan from Obama’s DOE in order to produce the Model S, an all-electric plug-in car, which will also benefit from other stimulus goodies. This summer, Tesla began delivering the taxpayer-subsidized cars at $50,000 a pop.
Musk touts SpaceX as the cutting edge of free-enterprise space exploration, but so far the company’s revenue seems to come mostly from Uncle Sam.
Musk demonstrates a fundamental quandary about “privatized” space flight. ”Private” space advocates and libertarians tout Musk as the next step in space exploration, free from NASA’s budgets and bureaucrats. But there is one problem – only the price tag has changed (for now). The people paying the bills remain the same. Sure, it costs less. But what of the much touted principle of “private” space flight. If a small budget is the only payout, then there are possibly ways to achieve the same ends in a revolutionized NASA.
This isn’t private space flight. This is government money spent on spaceflight in different places.
Musk and SpaceX don’t stand for the principle of privatized space flight, because SpaceX certainly isn’t. So once the philosophical goal of private spaceflight isn’t in play, and all we are talking about are dollars spent, then a whole range of issues are on the table. As the Examiner is determined to root out, what role does political coziness play in Musk obtaining enormous sums of taxpayer money to pursue his failed green projects and his yet to be fully successful SpaceX project? Should the taxpayers be funding Musk’s solar and electric car projects?
Either way, Musk now seems to epitomize what has gone wrong with the Obama administration’s crony capitalism. Should Romney win the White House, SpaceX shouldn’t escape the same scrutiny that Tesla Motors and SolarCity deserve.
After their last article the Washington Examiner has no credibility in addressing Elon Musk (or as far as I’m concerned any credibility, following the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect rule), and the gravamen of your complaint about SpaceX is that “The people paying the bills remain the same.“, specifically the government.
But if you look at their launch manifest they’ve got many more orders booked for other customers, how many depends on the number of launches required to loft ORBCOMM’s 18 next generation satellites (and how many eggs they’re will to put in any one basket (launch)).
The green stuff, yes, it’s entirely disappointing and probably worse. But SpaceX seems to have its act together better than any other entity; not only have they designed everything for low cost, they’re actually wildly successful in the real world, which for “rocket science” isn’t something you can take for granted.
Oops, dropped a double quote in link to the launch manifest (I wish all PJMedia comment pages had a preview feature).
Anyway, go there and count them up, assuming 2 launches for ORBCOMM (they’re going to try 9 each).
The problem is even worse. SpaceX does not cost less, it cost more. Since it’s vehicle carries so little cargo you need many flights to carry up a fixed amount of required cargo, each flight may be cheaper but the total to do the job is more. For example the shuttle cost about $800M per flight but could carry 30 to 40 thousand lbs of cargo plus crew. Space X carries (advertized since current load is much smaller) about 3 thousand lbs at about $150M (or $125M advertized makes little difference). So you need on order 10 SpaceX flights to do the job of one Shuttle flight. So cost to resupply the station is actually going up, not down
By the way the other cargo haulers such as the ATV and the HTV that fly to the station carry about 15 thousand lbs
Where are you getting your figures from? I get $133 million per launch for the initial NASA contract ($1.6 billion/12 launches) and 3674 lb minimum contractual per launch (20,000 kg/12); according to NASA the maximum cargo per launch is 3,310 kg/7,297 lb (and it can bring back 2,500 kg/5,512 lb.
Using your figures for the Shuttle (which I’m uncertain of, at least the cost per launch, which was quite variable based on the launch rate (overhead of staff, it was a public works project after all)) I get a best figure of $20,000/lb not counting overhead to provide pressurized cargo space vs. $18,226/lb best for SpaceX with that overhead.
When Saturn was retired to be replaced by the Shuttle I was distressed because we were loosing a real capability in exchange for a promise. The promise of the Shuttle was not really met, but it was a vehicle of impressive performance, just not what was promised and we lost our ability to voyage in the process. I am also a big fan of commercial space, by that I mean nongovernmental space. Most of the spaceflights today have a strong commercial aspect. During the 90′s for instance the Atlas II program flew almost once a month, largely flying commecial contracts. When Elon started SpaceX it too was a commercial activity primarily funded by himself, however SpaceX has transition to essentially a government contractor quite some time ago (nothing wrong with that just not much different that Atlas V and Delta IV, two high capability vehicles)
Now to answer your question SpaceX has a number of subliment the budget quoted and a fixed cargo number, both Space Act and Stimulus when all added together they reach past $2B to deliver 20MT = 100,000 per Kg approx. But more importantly we are comparing demonstrated capability vs promised capability. If they reach it good for them, but there are fundemental systems issues with large 2 stage Kerosene/Ox vehicle that are very limiting. Which is why people go through all the trouble of having hydrogen upper stages (or just more stages in the case of the Russians)
The HTV and ATV vehicle are robots like Dragon but carry a lot more at a lower cost per lb as well.and of course we have lost the ability to expand or replace major ISS component with the loss of the Shuttle.
Getting to space is a major accomplishment and SpaceX deserves praise for their accomplishments, but in terms of capability, and economics we appear to be going in the wrong direct.
Go to the SpaceX launch manifest. Only about 35% of their launch schedule over the next several years is for a government launch. The rest are commercial launches.
The major US launch provider is ULA. They build and fly the Delta IV and Atlas V. Those are good boosters but quite expensive. 100% of their launches are for the US government (military, NASA and other civilian agencies) because they’re too expensive to compete for the non-government civilian market.
SpaceX is cheaper by far than any other competitor, at under $2,000/# for a fully loaded F9 launch. That is necessarily in the right direction. LH2/LOX is only of theoretic advantage in upper or even only in a last stages. If the development of LH2 upper stage is not of economic benefit, you’ll have to explain why you think SpaceX should use one.
In reality, in using SpaceX and Orbital vehicles for supporting manned spaceflight, NASA is simply – finally – using the same “commercial” approach that has been used by the government for unmanned missions since just about forever. Manned space missions were all designed and conducted by the government. Unmanned missions have been all designed and conducted by private companies under government supervision since the late 50′s. The reason for the difference initally was that manned missions were thought to represent something new and unique, but it soon developed into a jobs program.
SpaceX tried the commercial space route but made the mistake of thinking there really was a robust market for small launch vehicles. Thus they designed the Merlin engine to be much too small – the smallest 1st stage engines used since Vanguard – and needed 9 of them attached to a much larger booster for the ISS support mission. They will need 27 of the engines for some commercial missions.
Now, the NASA support has enabled them to branch out and also build vehicles for actual, real, existing commercial space markets – e.g., comsats. They have given up on the small vehicles that were the reason for their start. Without NASA funding it is unlikely they would have had the money to break into the big time – assuming that they really ever do. They made an early mistake in targeting their market and the government bailed them out.
This may turn out to be good for everybody, but the company’s real trajectory actually resembles the Government Missiles-to-Space Boosters approach that dominates most of the world rather than something truly new and remarkable.