The bosses in their space

How Dmitry Olegovich “defeated” Ilon Errolovich

At a video conference with Vladimir Putin on April 10, timed to coincide with an event not of a Russian, but of a global scale, the flight of Yuri Gagarin into space, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, not only in words “won back the launch market for Russia” (experts are still trying to calculate such large Russian percentages, which Rogozin publicly reported to the president - so far they do not agree with the data of real launches in 2019), but for the umpteenth time accused the founder and director of SpaceX, poor fellow Elon Musk, of market dumping.

Rogozin literally stated the following (quoted from kremlin.ru): “In order to increase our presence in international markets, we are working to reduce the cost of launch services by more than 30%, reducing non-production costs and increasing the operational efficiency of the enterprise. The pricing procedure we proposed is, in fact, our response to dumping by American companies that are financed from the US budget, and if the market launch price, for example, SpaceX has about $60 million, then NASA pays for the same service from one and a half up to four times more.

Well, what could be the answer to the head of our space state corporation. Short.

Firstly. Before talking about reducing the cost of Russian missiles by 30%, it would be good to calculate what it is now, initially. Just be honest. And not like this, when the multibillion-dollar debts of rocket manufacturing enterprises (in particular, Khrunichev) are regularly restructured or written off at the expense of the budget.

Secondly. To talk about “dumping Musk”, you need to know the cost of his missiles, and not just how much he offers them on the market.

After all, real “dumping” is selling below cost, everything else is just market competition.

And according to the information that circulates and is considered close to the truth among experts (SpaceX is a non-public company and is not required to disclose its financial performance), the cost of the main Falcon-9 rocket is at the level of $35 million. And then the launch price of $ 65 million is normal: after all, Musk needs money for development. The same Raptor methane engines, the BFR super-heavy rocket and the Starship interplanetary spacecraft, where NASA does not finance anything SpaceX. In contrast, by the way, from Roskosmos itself, the entire development of which is directly paid for by the Russian budget in tens of billions of rubles a year.

Third. Already many times and in different places I (already a corn on the tongue!) It was explained,

why Musk has the lowest cost of missiles on the market. This is not dumping. It's not a miracle. It's not a focus.

This is just a new - revolutionary - model for the production of rockets. Two main factors. First. “Cheap” (and not technically perfect, like the rest of us) engines, and engines are 50% of the cost of any rocket. Second. Rejection of cooperation (established throughout the world at the beginning of the space age) and, therefore, the cost of feeding it: Musk does almost everything himself. Compare, SpaceX creates 90% of the cost of the Falcon-9 rocket (everything except for the head fairing), and the same Khrunichev or TsSKB-Progress, the final assemblers of the Russian Proton-M and Soyuz rockets, only 10%, the rest - voracious and clumsy multi-level industrial cooperation. By the way, it is precisely the rejection of cooperation that makes Musk also so rapid in the development of space technology - Musk coordinates all changes with his employees.

Fourth . The fact that Musk sells launches more expensively in the closed domestic market for foreigners in the interests of NASA and the Pentagon than in the open world market has also been explained many times. This is “understanding the market situation”. Another level of competition, other conditions, the result is a different price.

Do Roscosmos employees go to restaurants? They are not surprised that in a restaurant wine is 3 times more expensive than in retail, and 4 times more expensive than in wholesale?

Does this mean that wholesale is dumping?! These are the foundations of a market economy. In the buyer's market, the selling price is precisely such as to have an advantage over competitors.

But we're fine. We are accustomed to Roskosmos fairy tales, which are sure to come, but exactly what later, not now.

But a very public, but childishly naive engineer and businessman Ilon Errolovich (Mask) got caught - he decided to explain himself to the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Olegovich (Rogozin) about the development of astronautics and about the economy in space. As is now customary among space leaders - via Twitter.

He replied that Roskosmos, which has excellent space designers and engineers at its disposal, should not talk about dumping, but, for example, deal with reusable rockets. Which, as usual, Roskosmos has, but only in plans for the future.

Of course, we must admit that our dear Ilon Errolovich answered off topic. For the reusability of rockets a priori increases their cost at the low rate of launches that the Falcon-9 now has (15–20 launches per year). But, apparently, Elon Musk once again wanted to show his favorite - for so far the only space (and not business) know-how is the reusability of the first stages of rockets. Forgive him this weakness.

But here the trap slammed shut, and Dmitry Olegovich cut off the naive Ilon Errolovich. Also via twitter.

We do not need, they say, "instructions from Washington." Although what does Elon Musk have to do with Washington?! SpaceX is a private company based in California.

Little of. In the following tweets, Dmitry Olegovich added pepper to the words: he accused a formally unknown American person (but in fact Rogozin had no correspondence with anyone except Musk in recent days) not only of dumping, but also of lobbying for sanctions against Roskosmos, called him a cynic, a hypocrite and referred to the image of the "blue thief" Alexander Yakovlevich from "12 chairs", who, as you know, could not help stealing, but when stealing, he was always shy and blushed.

A lesson to you, naive Ilon Errolovich, do not sit down to play with Roskosmos either at the table or under the table. Don't get into a public argument.

I understand. But the legacy of Tsiolkovsky - Queen - Gagarin is still a pity ...