Google and Fidelity Invest $1 Billion in SpaceX
It’s Early Days in 2015 But SpaceX is Starting at Light Speed with a Satellite Constellation and Possible Google Investment [Updated], SpaceRef Business
Marc’s note: Updating my story from yesterday, SpaceX this evening issued the following statement.
“Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has raised a billion dollars in a financing round with two new investors, Google and Fidelity. They join existing investors Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn. Google and Fidelity will collectively own just under 10% of the company.
SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft. This funding will be used to support continued innovation in the areas of space transport, reusability, and satellite manufacturing.”
With this new investment, SpaceX is now valued at over $10 billion. A nice way to start the year even if their Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship suffered some damage from that spectacular crash landing earlier this month by the Falcon 9 first stage recovery attempt.
Is Musk selling up or just short of money?
Although it may be one of the other original investors that is cashing up.
Or speeding up?
Anything that diminishes the dependence of space exploration on ding-bat politicians suddenly seeing sense is very welcome indeed. 🙂
Musk has always had an eye for investors, his main concern was not giving up control and not going public before his goals are more established. He stated he didn’t want the bottom line to take over because of shareholder desires for short term returns.
I think he’s going to work on the Mars stuff with a much stronger focus and needs to set up a viable money stream if he can. In the video of the SpaceX Seattle event he plainly said that he was going to need a lot of money to build a “Mars City” and the new satellite venture with Google was part of that. He expects it to make money…
In his subreddit AMA Musk said his people weren’t working on making the F9/FH upper-stage reusable becuse he felt those resources would be better spent on the Mars system.
What we may be seeing is SpaceX transitioning from only talking about Mars to actually developing the stuff they need for getting there and the future infrastructure they think they’ll need once there. Musk said, “a lot of money” will be needed to build a Mars City The Google/SpaceX satellite constellation is meant to generate revenue as well as develop equipment and know-how that will be needed at Mars.
Sometimes it’s easy for me to forget that when SpaceX talks about this Mars City thing, no matter how crazy it may sound, Elon Musk is completely serious about it.
Yes I agree. Not only that but I think Musk has realised that NASA is too hamstrung by politics to be in any way an effective ally in pursuing his original Mars agenda in a private/public partnership so now it’s going to be commercial all the way as NASA continues its slide into hsf irrelevancy. Oh, it’ll continue to keep the ISS afloat as long as possible but it’s pretty well bankrupted it’s science program with Curiosity and JWST and SLS/Orion on the hsf side.
Cheers
quote “This is intended to generate a significant amount of revenue and to helpfund a city on Mars,” Musk said Friday during a speech in Seattle announcing the satellite project. “Looking at the long term, what’s needed to create a city on Mars? Well, one thing’s for sure: a lot of money. So we need things that will generate a lot of money.”
Elon intends to fund Mars One?
No. His is a real project.
Hello, Neo…
http://www.quickmeme.com/im…
Now that’s a reason to make some money 🙂
Very, very interesting. Lockheed tried something like this before with Astrolink (phones vs. internet) but SpaceX/Google bring the wily young billionaire mindset vs. the entrenched aerospace mindset. They could very well succeed.
I wonder if Google will keep up its X-lab ‘loon project which intended to do the same thing but with long-endurance balloons instead of satellites.
I also wonder if lack of internet is the biggest obstacle facing lesser-developed countries. Clean water, food, and medical care come to mind.
Clean water and the rest will come when folks figure out they are making too many babies.
Inflammatory? The birth rate all around the world goes down as economic success goes up. It’s not complicated. Recent stories coming out of Haiti (five years since the quake) showed many young mothers living in squalor. This is nothing more than ignorance.
This is why interconnectivity is so important. Cell phones have created stunning improvements in life quality in Africa, including an entirely home-invented form of phone banking. Slowly wealth will accumulate and pressure on mother Earth will decrease.
Internet access could be useful but how will people pay for it? Even electric power is a problem in many areas. Cell phones in these areas generally often on local cash transactions and dealers who have gas-powered chargers. However if Google could seriously undercut Iridium on costs they might be able to considerably enlarge the market for mobile communications and also backhaul for any local cell towers operators.
It was pointed out on Twitter that Dragon has been a test bed of sorts for some of the technologies that might go into the satellites. For example, the “off the shelf” computers used instead of the traditional, far more expensive and far slower, “radiation-hardened” microprocessors. No doubt SpaceX intends to keep its focus on “low cost” for these satellites, especially given the relatively high number required for their proposed constellation.
Where is Iridium in all this? If they had determined that an internet satellite network was profitable they would be building it.
Just like… If [ULA] had determined that [reusable space launch] was profitable they would be building it.
Or CNES and Roscosmos, for that matter, vis a vis the Ariane 5.
Iridium is building what their sources of financing (e.g. COFACE and their public shareholders) are allowing them to build – which is a replacement of their existing constellation. They have no capacity to build anything else.
Detroit comes out with new car models every year. Surely Iridium could rev up a new production line.
Covenants on Iridium’s COFACE loan would surely prevent them from doing anything else, even if they wanted to.
Great pitch to potential investors, but I would like to see more than a crash landing on a barge before I write a check.
SpaceX has done plenty of other things that would draw in investors, in case you hadn’t noticed.
That crash landing on a barge was the first ever return of an intact booster after a satellite launch with hypersonic entry through the upper atmosphere to a precise target. The touchdown itself has been done numerous times before.
Anyone know what Fidelity is going to do with their shares? I’d like some. 🙂
good point – and, since when is Iridium a rational actor?
Elon sure seems to have a nack for finding money just lieing around that others ignore,
Hey look, why do those guys keep dumping multi million dollar rocket boosters in the sea??
Google is investing in a better barge this time. 😉
I wonder if you can Google the “Google Barge”? Maybe that is one of the things Google would rather forget. With the European laws, they can. 😉
Apparently nearly no one remembers that it’s been nearly 21 years since Craig McCaw and Bill Gates announced Teledesic – a $9 billion program to do the same thing. Even fewer people remember Celestri, the Motorola version that also never got built. TRW announced a concept for a similar system in the 90s also.
One wonders how much pocket change will be left after the reusable rocket is perfected and the high performance space-based internet routing system is in place. How many satellites, minimum, are needed to demonstrate the advantages of the new system – 4000?
That was back during the age before affordable reusable rockets Elon is leading the way to create markets for cheaper rockets. Now it just might work!
I just saw new images of Ceres with its tiny gravity well and ice. Isn’t Musk about to be making ion thrusters in house? Ceres Sample return mission. Why do something hard when a Ceres sample return would be easy. Used Dragon V2 cluster of ion engines in the trunk. Falcon HR as launcher. Dragon ion fly to Ceres. Dragon lands leaving ion trunk in orbit. Tesla rover drive out hatch to collect samples. Ice dragon launches to orbit using standard docking hardware to dock with ion trunk. Ion trunk brings sample home. Dragon ion spaceship uses shield for aerobraking earth orbit or dragon just lands with thrusters or chutes.
Sample hardware could used for any small rocks. Mars moons for example
Elons satellites businesses build the tool box for great planet science missions
no sample return mission is going to be “easy.” what you’ve outlined would be extremely complex. it would require an enormous expenditure of time and funds to customize each bit to accomplish the task you’ve given.
the “easiest” sample return mission would be a flyby through the geysers on Enceladus or Europa.
Agree
But once you build for one small rock you could do same way for another small rock. You are building standard and by using production hardware much much cheaper
in that case, you might as well ask NASA to put the OSIRIS-Rex architecture on a manufacturing line.
Point is a sample return on a small rock is much easier than dealing with a big gravity well like Mars
Ceres isn’t a “small rock” though. it’s 600 miles across.
Musk getting in the satellite business sets him up to do planet science mission cheaper.
no, it doesn’t. why do you think so?
You edited out the lol, thanks 🙂
Because a satellite is a spaceship VS a launch vehicle.maybe in-house ion propulsion.
You didn’t say my little spaceship built out of Spacex building blocks was impossible, just not easy. Wouldn’t it be possible to build a similar Spaceship that could go to different rocks Ceres size or smaller and bring samples back to earth orbit to a space station/like the Bigelow garage where the samples are off loaded and the little ship is refueled and sent to another rock for more samples? Just seems that we need to think more about using production hardware and how to reuse that hardware even when doing cutting edge exploring.
Space Systems/Loral, LLC. is the largest satellite manufacturer in the United States. when’s the last time they made a spacecraft for a planetary science mission?
Of course SpaceX has the technological resources and, for the most part, the know-how to do a planetary science / sample retrieval mission. so technically speaking, what you suggested isn’t impossible.
however, as you ought to know, rockets and spacecraft aren’t Legos. you can’t just snap bits together. it takes years of design work and reviews before you can start bending metal and putting the hardware together. everything you mentioned would need to be customized for the mission you suggest. that will take time, energy, and money to do.
you wandered out of the realm of possibility when you suggested bringing the samples back to Earth orbit, though. lugging around the hundreds of tons of fuel needed for such a maneuver is not practical. a direct-reentry return capsule is far more efficient.