I assuming they drug test because it's a requirement for govt contracts. Given that they get something like 98% of their funding from the govt, they can't exactly flippantly violate their best customers rules.
On the other hand, I met a person recently who works for Lockheed and I'm pretty sure he was regularly (or randomly) tested at his workplace.
SpaceX does receive other funding as part of various NASA contracts, but that funding is also related to providing services to them, not just receiving money for nothing.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
From that source, SpaceX has about ~$5.515B in contracts. Of that, about $5.411B is from government contracts (military, NASA). That's about 98.1%.
There's probably a good chance it's higher, if they have govt contracts that aren't allowed to be public knowledge for security reasons.
Also, nobody is claiming SpaceX receives "money for nothing" from the govt. They are a contractor who, at least at these relatively early stages, need government contracts to survive. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's the way many nascent industries survive. But we need to call a spade a spade.
[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ld7Dz__7_VjqMd2uZNgA...
Edit: I did unreasonably make the assumption that you were making the case the SpaceX was receiving subisidies for "nothing" and I see that you weren't now.
Foreign govts would still be govt money; many of those you listed are still public projects. Do you have estimates for those other private launches? If not, it's just speculation. Based on the information we have, it seems like it's safe to say the bulk of their launches are for governments. It's not a knock on them, and I'm not saying this is your perspective, but there's this kinda weird sentiment that they are some paragon of free-market capitalism when in fact they are a company highly dependent on government money. But that's exactly what I think is reasonable to expect in a nascent industry.
No sorry, if you know the numbers you have are clearly bias and wrong then you don't need to work with them.
If you think the data is bad, at best all you can claim is "we don't know"
Put differently, why do you think there isn’t an abundance of people chiming in to say “there’s not enough data to make a claim” rather than jumping to defend SpaceX’s honor? If people were truly rational, the strength of their convictions would be proportional to the strength of the data being it.
When talking about funding in general, you also have to consider that SpaceX has significant non launch Equity funding to the tune of $10B, and that contracts can include potential future Revenue instead of funds received.
Edit: If you look at their launches for 2020 onwards[1], Their number 1 customer is SpaceX (themselves), followed by US and other governments, followed by private companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
While your borader conclusion is probably accurate regarding income, your spreadsheet only 71 of 216 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, for ~$9B total. This is roughly on par with the VC funding they have recieved.
And, yes, we can talk about different ways of accounting. But I wouldn't count the fickle or volatile ones like "potential future revenue" as better than measuring actual contracts. (This is what SpaceX is investing in with their own launches, to be fair, but that's different than actual revenue). People trying to raise capital are always talking about potential revenue and potential market share, but you'll get much more investor money if you have actual purchase orders.
$1B income for Starlink makes sense given they have ~1M customers paying ~$100/mo, and a $4-500 hookup cost.
Lasty, you have to consider that the government contract numbers you have are cummulative going back to 2012, while the Starlink revenue is annual (2022 only). If you look at government contracts for 2021, you only get $1.6B. Using those numbers, Starlink internet would be closer to 40% of revenue, with launch contracts at 60%, which starts to paint a very different story.
I think a lot of the feedback you are getting is a kneejerk reaction based on language. E.g. "government funding" had a very different connotation than "government sales". People think subsidies and then their minds short circut.
> I would also hold it as distinct from pure free-market capitalism that can exist outside of government money. (Which, ironically, is a point many people hold against legacy aerospace). And I think that latter point is relevant because SpaceX (and Musk himself) is often held up as some sort of capitalistic ideal and any counterpoint to that makes people bristle. In all, however, I think that hybrid approach is ultimately beneficial to both SpaceX and the public
I think a lot of people dont really get this nuanced distinction. Rockets and spaceships have always been never been built by the government. Most of the work was always done by publically traded companies. NASA, whomever, would put out a contract, and then be involved in high level diretion of the design process.
The difference with SpaceX is that 1) they not publically traded (who cares?) and 2) they dont take design direction from NASA for their rockets, and built what they wanted. Thats it!
The cool part is that they built somthing more ambitious buy cutting NASA out of the design process, and relied on the fact that it will be so good that NASA will want it when they saw it.
My quibble is that this is very different than the classic case of the government spuring new industires. The government was already buying rockets from established manufactures for a half centry. SpaceX just came in and ate other companies lucnhes by being more focused and more efficienct.
The Army didn’t tell Orville and Wilbur how to build. They dangled the carrot of a lucrative military contract to incentivize their innovation. It’s what transitioned the effort from hobbyists to an actual industry. There was no “industry” until the govt put up money because the govt was really the only entity that could bear that kind of risk. It’s the same with the initial days of SpaceX.
I agaree that the government contracts are a carrot, and broadly speaking supports the entire space industry. Im not debating that at all.
However, I do think there is a narrative difference between companies that that humm along doing the same thing eating eating their carrots, and a new one that beats them at their own game and steals all the carrots. The carrots have been there for decades, and then someone came along and radically shakes up the industry and it makes it jump forward. Thats exciting!
It is like when a chef tells the customer "I wont make what you ordered, But I will make something so much better you can't resist.
It is as if Lockeed were to tell the military I won't build the F-35 to your specs, but when you see it, you will want it more than what you designed.
This is exciting because it marks a transition of industry dynamics. Something changed, and it wasn't the carrots. SpaceX brought something new to the table in a 60 industry, and they deserve credit for that change. The government deserves credit too, but the dynamic is different than if it were year 1 of the space industry.
I still give SpaceX credit that they did a much better job of raising the bar in response to that incentive. I have some reservations about the way they’ve gone about some of it, but at the end of the day I think they have done a much better job than the legacy aerospace companies.
You can literally just go threw the list of their launches on Wikipedia an notice that nothing close to even 80% of them are for the government.
And that is outside of their Starship business, that is by now a large part of its revenue.
The numbers you present are ridicoulus, they have easily more money just from human space flight from Polaris and Axiom.
>And that is outside of their Starship business, that is by now a large part of its revenue.
Starship is bringing in investment money, not revenue that I'm aware of. I don't know what revenue it would be bringing without actual launches. Maybe I'm wrong and you can correct me here, but I think you are conflating some business aspects.
Now if you're saying that the private money will be a bigger factor in the future, I agree. That's the whole idea behind govt money being used to foster along nascent industries: the govt props them up early until a viable private enterprise can exist later.
As I just point at elsewhere, you get 4:1 by comparing cummulative contract revenue with an annual Starlink revenue.
To be absolutely explicitly clear: their business model requires using govt contracts/funding/sales early before they can transition to other viable means of revenue. They could not survive as a company without those early govt contracts, but this does not mean they are dependent on govt contracts into perpetuity.
A dependency on govt contracts early and an increasingly private revenue stream can both be true. This isn't bad, but it also isn't the often-lauded ideal of free-market capitalism.
Honestly I don't get your issue. You can just go to wikipedia and look at the list of the launches. So clearly the 98% is wrong, this isn't a question, its not speculation.
The original claim was “US government can't be more than some low double digit percentage”.
Let’s say it’s by “low double digit percentage” we’re generous and say 20%. (I interpreted their stance to be lower, but they didn’t specify).
We can are there is incomplete data but we have reasonably good data on the the govt side: U.S. govt contacts are at least $5.4B, likely higher. So that means we expect the complementary private side to be 5x, or over $22B. The absolute most optimistic Starlink estimates about $2B through 2023. Do you think the other private streams dwarf Starlink by 10x? I just don’t see how we get there given the govt is still there #1 launch customer after Starlink, and this is the most generous interpretation to steelman the case. The only way is true is if there is some unknown customer launching nearly 3x that of the US govt.
The only way the numbers work out is if the govt is the major revenue stream or there’s some secret launch customer that dwarfs the US space agencies.
It’s a claim based on wishful feeling, not on data.
That is nonsense. Look at their flight manifest and see how many flights are NASA or Space Force. Maybe like 3 launches in the next several months out of planned 25.
The point is their business model is predicated on using govt contracts early, when they were an unproven commodity, because the govt is generally the only organization who can take those kinds of risks. In turn, this fosters the development of a space industry which can transition to more private revenue streams. Musk himself said they were in the 11th hour of bankruptcy before NASA "saved" them with a huge contract.
Even if you want to go against HN guidelines and not read the comment generously, they have still gotten the vast majority of their revenue from the govt in present tense. We can quibble about the exact percentage, and in reality it's probably impossible to pin-point without insider information. But we can use the information we know to estimate that it's still a major part of their business and it wouldn't be viable without it. And they'd still have to keep those customers happy by following their rules.