Engine Rich

I'm Engine Rich, and I'm exhausted.

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@aaronburnett Within the past year, we've gone from

"there might be data centers in space"

to

"there will be data centers in space"

to

"basically everything we send to space will be a data center".

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@KenKirtland17 are you getting it yet?

[Philip Johnston @PhilipJohnston]

People should build more launch vehicles. There is an enormous sucking sound from the market that justifies many many efforts on this front.

Orbital compute will be >one trillion $ per year capex spend by 2035. There will be more than one launch company serving this. It’s not too late to get in the game, now is the time to build launch! 💪

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@Tjernlund @edels0n

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@Tjernlund @edels0n 🤣 holy shit

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@Tjernlund @edels0n I'm not familiar with his emotional bias related to those companies.

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@HermesSlim @edels0n Oh that's a clever testicle joke. Have a nice day.

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@jimstewartson Elon's space lasers gave me cancer and killed my dog! Arrest him!

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@HermesSlim @edels0n There are multiple dates, with similar patterns of behavior at each. This is called a pattern or trend.

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@Jack_Frodo What the f*ck that mean? Make music or something?

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@JarettGross @RyanTanaka Either you misunderstood his post, or I did 😆

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@grantbelden Their SpaceX valuation published over a year ago is looking pretty good. Conservative, actually.

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@HermesSlim @edels0n His words

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@TSLAFanMtl I tried to tell 'em

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@edels0n Maybe his judgement is compromised by emotional bias?

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

I don't know shit about robots, but I assume this is happening with Optimus.

[Beff (e/acc) @beffjezos]

The thing about Elon is he is often not the very first in a space bur he always frontloads solving the mass production challenges and then has an unbeatable ramp that always wins asymptotically and crushes competition

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

@100MBTC @aaronburnett @SemiAnalysis_ @JoeTegtmeyer 9 months ago they weren't even an AI company

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

So your contention is that SpaceX is such an incredible company that they can build the first spacecraft in 50 years to land people on the moon, just as a casual side quest.

They're so skilled, so overflowing with talent and resources, that you (as a hater) predict they will accomplish one of the greatest engineering achievements imaginable, as a low priority vestigial side project. Incredible.

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

So your contention is that SpaceX is such an incredible company that they can build the first spacecraft in 50 years to land people on the moon, just as a casual side quest.

They're so skilled, so overflowing with talent and resources, that you (as a hater) predict they will accomplish one of the greatest engineering achievements imaginable, as a low priority vestigial side project. Incredible.

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

I think refurb times will be on high side of your sliders initially. But I think my broader bearish take on this point is that operational efficiency will be relatively low. They will be learning a LOT with this first reuse flights. They will be changing things, they will find new problems. This applies to the launch pad too, all the fuel and consumables.

The thing that we definitely agree on is that the program is finally reasy to ramp, which is incredibly exciting. But because of that, all of these systems and subsystems are going to be stress tested to a degree that they haven't yet to this point in the program. And they have to be really careful. Starship is not a normal rocket (obviously you already know this). The risk severity of a bad re-entry is much worse for starship since it will mistly survive to the ground even if it breaks up.

So I guess my argument summed up is: they will have relatively lower operational efficiency compared to their theoretical rate based on hardware readiness alone. And that the reason for this is because they'll be learning a ton and iterating, stress testing systems to new levels, and taking a seemingly uncharacteristically risk-averse ramp-up due to the fundamental risks of large stainless steel structures returning from orbit, which is not something we have a prior reference for, even with SpaceX.

[Engine Rich @engine_rich]

Love it! My process is based more on vibes and less on simulation, but I just don't see more than 20-25 starship flights next year. I'm rarely on the bearish side on starship, and I hope my guess ends up being under!

I think 25 flights in 2027 would be an amazing success for Starship. 40+ flights in 2027 would blow my fucking mind. But I hope it happens!