Given that SpaceX is about to launch four people on what is more-or-less a joyride (Polaris Dawn), it's really only the government and boeing that seem to be having problems.
As we've seen these past few years, Boeing is perfectly capable of royally screwing things up on its own without the government's involvement.
Any company solely motivated by profit would probably be destroyed in this system, because the incentives created do not reward competence.
SpaceX remains a private company solely focused on their mission undeterred by outside influence which allows engineers the space to do what they do best.
There’s a difference and anything that’s truly critical to our lives or human livelihood should consider delisting. Once shareholders demand your company to stray from excellence and quality in the name of raising the bottom line, it’s time to give it a hard look.
However their commercial launch business is still considerably larger than what US gov gives them and always has been , it is possible and quite likely they would have existed as a successful commercial space launch company without government contracts , albeit smaller and perhaps slower to reach many milestones .
I can also argue reasonably that many things US government wants is not useful (or simply restricted) for other customers and building those features were and are a distraction.
No different for a startup to have a very large customer who has all sorts of customization needs that no other customer will focusing on that can kill the company as ULA and Boeing space are feeling today.
SpaceX is successful because they don’t need government support not because of it, they can build starship without waiting for a nasa mission and not even using VC money but just money from their revenues .
Even Musk doesn't make that claim.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/29/elon-musk-9-years-ago-spacex...
"“I messed up the first three launches. The first three launches failed. And fortunately the fourth launch, which was, that was the last money that we had for Falcon 1. That fourth launch worked. Or it would have been — that would have been it for SpaceX. But fate liked us that day. So, the fourth launch worked,” says Musk."
Flights one, two, and three all involved government funding (Air Force and DARPA payloads).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RatSat#Aftermath
"Even though SpaceX finally has achieved a successful orbital flight, Musk only has $30 million left and was unable to support both SpaceX and Tesla for two months. Contrary to popular belief, Falcon 1's flight 4 did not directly lead to more customer contracts. Through 2008, SpaceX launch manifest at the time only consisted of RazakSAT. Rather, it was NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and subsequent Commercial Resupply Services contracts that provided SpaceX much-needed fund to save it from bankruptcy."
Give the credit where it's due, as they say.
No; SpaceX received DARPA (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20060048219/downloads/20...), Air Force (https://www.space.com/2196-spacex-inaugural-falcon-1-rocket-...), and NASA funding (COTS, in 2006) prior to their first orbital success with Falcon 1.
The mission carried a $6.7 million price tag covered by the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
This was the claim of OP I replied to, Are we not moving the goal posts here? Government support for early stage startups is absolutely not what OP claimed
DARPA AND USAF funding is important and also available to many companies before and since, the size of them is however not significant in comparison to what it takes to run a rocket company or even R&D.
> Contrary to popular belief, Falcon 1's flight 4 did not directly lead to more customer contracts ...
> Even Musk doesn't make that claim.
In the alternate reality where Falcon 4 succeeded but there were no COTS and CRS , would SpaceX have survived? Yes I think so, Musk would not have been able to keep it funded personally yes, but it is hard to see the first private rocket company with a functional rocket not being able to raise any money from investors at all.
We can of course argue how much Musk loosing partial control would have affected the trajectory of the company, quite possible they won't be where they are today without singular focus he was able to drive in the company, who is to say ? but they would likely be still here. It is also possible that Musk is talented and effective enough even with constraints external investors would have been still able to achieve the same kind of things, keep in mind SpaceX does have lot of external investors and raised outside money heavily in the last 15 years including a $1Billion from Google in 2015, Musk has been able to operate with that so not that far fetched.
---
Nobody is denying that US Gov has been instrumental in the success of SpaceX and rocketry in general. After all even with zero government support, SpaceX would still need the rich talent pool US Gov developed and allowed to work in the private sector to build a rocket at all.
The point is how much the revenue from Government launches helps/helped not how they has helped at all. US Gov is a large customer but not so large that loosing those contracts would make the TAM impossibly small, there is enough business outside to make it viable business not just attractive but viable nonetheless.
--
So, two flights to the Moon - ~$4B. SpaceX already spent around that on the developments in Boca Chica, each flight - expendable - is estimated at $0.1B, we already had 4 and they are surely more costly. We still have to have 2 HLS to fly and 20-30 Starship flights to refuel them, and that's the lower bound in expenses.
Big chunk, likely. But definitely not nearly all the money.
SpaceX just happens to be the best in every aspect.
much of the billions for a charger network for EVs has made <10 chargers, they could have provided that to Tesla. similarly the EV tax credits provided to private companies has fueled EV proliferation
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/08/trump-misleads-on-the-cost...
> Just looking at the $5 billion program dedicated to building charging stations along major highways, Nigro said updated data from 10 states shows the government’s share of building each port is $150,000, on average. That works out to more than 30,000 ports and as many as 7,500 stations, assuming each has four ports (Nigro said the station number will likely be lower, since many stations will have more ports). Even more charging stations and ports can be built with the other $2.5 billion.
They did Tesla an enormous favor by pushing the other car manufacturers to adopt their standard. A good use of government power, IMO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Charging_Standa...
Not certain if that is any better. If an organization can't execute, it can't execute. It doesn't matter if it is some frankenstein of Boeing prime contractor and Rocketjet subcontractor or Federal and States.
I think that’s unlikely.
Phase one is “submit your plans”. Phase two is “we review, approve, and fund your plans”. I’m not surprised these have taken a while to coordinate across 50 state governments.
The bill allocates $7.5B over 5 years. He said most will be coming online 2027+ but seemed to admit that the expectation was for more to be online by now. While I agree the "9 stations for $7.5B" there are reasonable concerns here that the money will be well-spent. I can't even find anything on how much has been actually allocated to far and how many chargers are expected.
https://d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/02_22_24_Letter_to_Sec...
Yes, it is. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/congress-ev-charger... "Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure package into law in 2021 with $7.5 billion specifically directed toward EV chargers, with an eye toward achieving his goal of building 500,000 chargers in the United States by 2030."
> The bill allocates $7.5B over 5 years.
Yes, to hand out to the states. Who then get to spend it on projects. Allocation is the start of the project, not the end.
https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/12744
"FHWA must distribute the NEVI Program Formula Program funds made available each fiscal year (FY) through FY 2026, so that each state receives an amount equal to the state FHWA funding formula determined by 23 U.S. Code 104. To receive funding, states must submit plans to the FHWA and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation for review and public posting annually, describing how the state intends to distribute NEVI funds. The FHWA announced approval of all initial state plans on September 27, 2022, and FY2024 plans were approved in 2023."
> https://d1dth6e84htgma.cloudfront.net/02_22_24_Letter_to_Sec...
You'll find me fairly unconvinced by a letter from Republican House Representatives to Biden. (You probably would find a letter from Democratic reps to Trump similarly useless as evidence.)
The number of stations does not appear in the bill.
https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ58/PLAW-117publ58.pdf
The 500,000 charger was a campaign promise in 2020 not directly connected to the funding allocated in 2021
https://grist.org/energy/biden-wants-to-build-500000-ev-char...
https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2023/building-the-2030-nat...
Incidentally this was the inception of the Tech Right. Before that, Elon exclusively voted for Democrats.
I didn't realize the impact back then: https://x.com/mualphaxi/status/1817562306764566824
- Starship and Starbase, no lauch approval
- Tesla FSD, no regulatory approval
-Starlink version 2 upgrade, the competition is still fight. Again, no approval
and many more.. all this projects a massive like really massive.. True Elon is a government project.
Pretty much this. Polaris Dawn is happening because Jared Isaacman wanted it to. And my point is that SpaceX has gotten the price down to the point where he was able to afford multiple trips.
relax! i am not saying Elon isn't the greatest engineer ever, and SpaceX is not a great company.
space flight is a dangerous business.
Rich people being willing to spend buckets of money on an experience is not evidence that it is "safe" or "cost effective", it's just evidence that there are people in the world with more money than they know what to do with.
Jet set was a thing in 50/60s Jet travel was viewed as a play thing for the extremely rich . Even today there is staggering 80% of the world population who have never flown in airplane ever in their life[1].
From the perspective of that 80% they can say airplanes are "just evidence that there are people in the world with more money than they know what to do with".
It takes a long long time for transportation to become affordable. What SpaceX has done so far is just make it a bit cheaper to make it possible for civilians to be able to even pay any money and do this. No innovation will be ever enough, that doesn't mean we demean it.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/boeing-ceo-80-percent-of-peo...