government wildlife officials have released a final opinion about spacex's planned expansion
in boca chica texas proposing mitigation steps as part of a prolonged environmental review
by federal regulators federal wildlife experts recommended spacex undertake several mitigation
measures including contracting with a qualified biologist to conduct monitoring of vegetation
and birds operating an employee shuttle between the launch facility site and the nearby town of
brownsville reducing vehicle traffic and adjusting lights to minimize the impact on sea turtles
the report said spacex has provided an update of its biological monitoring plan to the regulators
we're one week from the faa's latest deadline to complete the environmental review
process for spacex's launch site in south texas this time my expectation is that
there will not be another extension likely decision a mitigated phone c
this means spacex is likely to get approval to move ahead with experimental launches of starship
however they will have to make some accommodations for environmental impacts this is what i am
hearing but you should not consider it official information said eric berger reports revealed
that spacex is seeking to raise at least 1.725 billion dollars in its first funding round of 2022
potentially boosting the private company's valuation as high as 127 billion dollars the
report signals just the latest in a long line of high profile rounds of funding spacex has secured
over the last seven years gradually boosting its valuation by a factor of more than 100
more likely than not this round will also be fully subscribed or even oversubscribed as investors
scramble over a relatively rare opportunity to snag a small slice of spacex a demand so high that
equidate once stated that spacex effectively had access to an unlimited amount of funding in 2018
for years later it's clear that equidade's position and forecast were prescient after a
few slow years post 2015 spacex's fundraising activity returned with a vengeance in 2019
from 2019 to 2021 the company privately raised more than 5.2 billion dollars
nearly triple the amount of private funding spacex raised from 2002 to 2018 in the likely event that
the latest in a long line of highly sought after and oversubscribed spacex investment rounds spacex
will have ultimately raised between eight dollars and sixty cents and nine billion dollars since two
thousand fifteen averaging about one point three billion dollars per year over the last seven years
more likely than not a vast majority of that nine billion dollars has gone towards starlink and
starship both of which are also almost exclusively responsible for the fact that spacex's valuation
outmatches its annual revenue by a factor of several dozen ceo elon musk stated in 2017
and 2018 that spacex invested around 1 billion dollars to develop falcon booster reusability and
more than 500 million dollars to develop a triple booster variant of falcon 9 known as falcon heavy
still the most capable operational rocket in the world four years after its debut
it's possible that some portion of spacex's fundraising since 2015 has gone towards
basic recurring expenses during years with few launches and relatively little revenue
however it's likely that most or all of the remaining seven billion dollars to 7.5
billion dollars separate from several lucrative contracts awarded by the us military and nasa
has gone towards starlink and starship in the last few years spacex has effectively built a massive
factory in launch pad for the largest rocket ever built starship out of empty lots in south texas
spacex has also turned several nondescript buildings near seattle washington into the
most productive satellite factory in space flight history and is working on additional factories to
mass produce hundreds of thousands to millions of cutting-edge satellite dishes per year to allow
millions of people to connect to the internet through starlink assuming a rough marginal cost
of 500 000 per satellite and 15 million dollars per falcon 9 launch spacex could have easily
spent more than 2 billion just to build and launch the 2650 starlink satellites its launch to date
accounting for the annual salaries and overhead needed for the thousands of employees required
to build those satellites and conduct more than 50 different starlink launches
the true cost over several years could be closer to three billion dollars to five billion dollars
meanwhile starbase has rapidly expanded built vast new infrastructure
mass-produced around two dozen different starship tanks and prototypes completed dozens
of tests built and tested 150 to 200 raptor engines and conducted nine major flight tests
up until late 2021 perhaps less than five to ten percent of funding for the above activities
came directly from u s government contracts while starlink remains almost entirely privately funded
spacex's starship program received a major influx of funding support from nasa through a three
billion dollar moon landing contract awarded in april 2021 but protests from two competitors meant
that funds from that contract only began reaching spacex around the end of the year ultimately
it's not hard to see why spacex has needed to raise so much capital in the last three years
boeing's cst 100 starliner safely landed in new mexico on may 25th
concluding a six-day uncrit test flight to the international space station and setting
the stage for the spacecraft's first flight with people starliner undocked from the international
space station at 2 36 pm eastern and maneuvered away from the station after a one minute de-orbit
burn using four orbital maneuvering attitude control omac thrusters at 605 pm eastern
the crew capsule jettison the service module and re-entered the atmosphere over the pacific ocean
the capsule deployed two drogue chutes followed by three main parachutes jettisoning its heat shield
to reveal airbags used to cushion the landing the spacecraft touched down at 6 49 pm eastern at
white sands space harbor in new mexico the landing immediately deemed successful by nasa and boeing
wrapped up the orbital flight test oft to mission almost exactly six days after its liftoff from
cape canaveral florida the spacecraft docked with the station a little more than 24 hours
after liftoff it was a picture-perfect landing steve stick nasa commercial crew program manager
said at a post landing briefing the systems performed great on the vehicle
and once we work through all the data we'll be ready to fly the crew on this vehicle oft 2 was
a redo of the original oft mission in december 2019 which suffered problems immediately after
launch that kept the spacecraft from reaching the iss boeing attempted to launch oft 2 in august
2021 but problems with propellant valves in the spacecraft service module postponed the launch
the company took nearly 600 million dollars in charges to fix the problems from the original oft
and subsequent first oft to launch attempt before it was able to launch the spacecraft last week
this mission was not without problems two omac thrusters failed during an orbital insertion
burn shortly after separation from the atlas 5 upper stage an issue boeing and nasa continue to
investigate two reaction control system thrusters also malfunctioned but were later recovered
in both cases boeing said the vehicle had sufficient redundancy to continue the mission
the spacecraft also encountered problems with a thermal control loop early in the mission
stick said controllers tried firing those two thrusters after undocking
we saw an interesting signature that looks a little bit like the signatures we saw at shutdown
he said that could help narrow down the cause of the problem he added neither stick nor mark
nappy boeing's commercial crew program manager were worried about the thruster problems none
of them looked to be serious that they would turn into some kind of design change nappy said
i'm more optimistic that we'll be able to explain these and move on
the next step in the development of starliner is the vehicle's first crude flight the crew flight
test cft mission carrying at least two nasa astronauts the starliner spacecraft could be
ready for cft as soon as late this year although a launch date will depend on what work needs to be
done in response to issues found during oft 2 as well as the schedule of iss activities
nappy said it would likely be several months before they can set a date for the cft mission
i don't see any reason why we can't proceed to the crew flight test next stick set we have a
few things to work on between now and then but i don't see any show stoppers this time
he added the performance of starliner on oft 2 was very similar in lots of ways to the demo one
on crit flight test of spacex's crew dragon in 2019 in terms of the issues encountered
oft 2 was a test flight and we expected to learn from this thing and we did nappy said despite the
thruster and thermal cooling system anomalies the team and the vehicle handled those extremely well
and it was a really good learning experience the valve problem that delayed oft to from
last august was not an issue on this flight but stick and nappy said they would examine whether
to perform the same mitigations such as purging the valves with nitrogen gas to remove moisture
for cft or take other measures that could include redesigning the valves we have options for cft
we still need to look at the longer term solution nappy said i feel confident that we can get
an option in place for use on cft and look at longer term solutions for operational missions
on a scale of 1 to 10 he said when asked to rate the oft 2 mission i think i'd give it a 15.
this was incredible and that wraps up today's episode we did also like to take the time to
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