How to evaluate a launcher startup

[DerekL1963]

An interesting read...

http://unreasonablerocket.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-evaluate-launcher-startup.html

[wumpus]

Didn't Douglas Adams have a saying about advice for those trying to make it in music (even if they're already in a band with [still unknown] John Lennon and Paul McCartney): "don't".  I think it was how he (or one of his characters) having better/followed better advice (i.e. "don't") than what the Beatles had and avoided a music career.  A similar thing goes in rocket startups.

It is wildly unlikely that the market that they are trying for can possibly justify how stacked the odds are against them.  I'm not even certain that XCOR were that adamant about 9,000m/s, they seemed to be advertizing "trips to space" (Alan Shepard style, not orbit).  And that was only for the Lynx II,  the Lynx I got half as high (more than twice as high as any jet).  I remember reading a book (from 2000ish) that includes a quote from someone (probably the CEO) pointing out that if they wanted to be rich they would start anything but a space corp.  They started a space corp to go into space.

I forgot how much was spent "winning" spaceship 1's prize, but it was several times more than the prize.  And I haven't heard of any plans of taking any non-test pilot up in spaceship 2.  And that was for a certain payoff (for one team, anyway) without having to compete with companies that have at least paid off the costs of getting into orbit.