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Starship is funded by NASA and built by a for-profit corporation, like SLS is and like the Space Shuttle was. The difference between SpaceX and the contractors that built the Shuttle and SLS is that those contractors kept their CEOs' names out of the news, and gouged like crazy.

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That's not true. Starship was funded and started independently of NASA. NASA is just the first customer that is paying to develop a Moon-landing version of Starship that will be used for its Moon landing mission.

Starship has partial funding from NASA, but its only "after delivery" funding. SpaceX has explicitly talked about how they've needed to raise additional private funding to support Starship development because they're developing it simultaneously with Starlink.

I'll also note that NASA's funding for Starship was for a lunar lander, not a launch vehicle, and SpaceX was the cheapest of all the competitors despite developing a launch vehicle as well while the competitors were only developing a lander and planned to use an existing launch vehicle.

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