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SpaceX - a triumph of science (and statistics)

Author: Ben Ireland
Date: 09/06/20

SpaceX - a triumph of science (and statistics)

Last Saturday, Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket and orbited their Crew Dragon capsule. This is a manned option in SpaceX’s arsenal which also includes Falcon 9 Heavy - a heavy payload ‘space freight’ transporter. The story has been something that’s fascinated us in the office, and the statistics are phenomenal:

Falcon 9 rocket (which launched the capsule): $390m NASA estimate to produce a similar rocket in 2011: $1.7-4bn

Cost per kg (Space Shuttle): $54,500 Cost per kg (Falcon 9): $2,720

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spacex-falcon-x-heavy

Moore’s law states that the number of of transistors on a microchip can be expected to double every two years, so that we can expect the speed and capability of our computers to increase.

This got us thinking about some stats of our own:

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spacex-barclaycard
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  • Cera reporting times from 20 days to x 6.7 hours

  • 10M Customer served by our Barclaycard calculator

  • Boots pharmacy online access to 6,500 UK pharmacists

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spacex-sse
spacex-number-of-developers
  • Our Taxly app available to Circa 6M Swiss tax payers

  • SSE smart energy app trial customers saw a 17% reduction in energy usage

  • Number of developers to change a light bulb – 1 cross-functional sprint team