Comment by ggreer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ggreer | Hacker News Reader

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Starship development has been funded mostly by SpaceX, not by the US government. SpaceX did win a contract for the Human Landing System, but the payouts are contingent on certain milestones, such as demonstrating in-orbit refueling. Also much of that funding goes towards developing the lunar lander version of Starship, not the Starlink version that SpaceX has been testing with. If they meet all the milestones, SpaceX could be awarded $4.4 billion for the Starship HLS program, most of which would be for crew-rated lunar landers.[1] SpaceX has already spent over $5 billion of their own money on Starship, so even the largest payout wouldn't cause the majority of the funding to be from the government.

For comparison, NASA's SLS has cost $32 billion in 2024 dollars and has an annual cost of $2.6 billion. They launched one unmanned mission in 2022, and plan to launch again no earlier than 2026.

1. https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_80MSFC20C0034_800...

They also make $3B in profit every year so they generate a huge amount of tax revenue and will continue to for a very long time with Falcon and Starlink.

It's nice of you to assume they pay a "fair" tax rate but based on Tesla I don't see that happening: https://itep.org/tesla-reported-zero-federal-income-tax-in-2...

I'm not sure if deferred losses counts as 'unfair' or not, they exist in Canada and other western countries too. Employees, vendors, capital gains, property taxes, fees, etc generate plenty of tax revenue regardless of federal corporate tax rate. It's basically impossible for an $8 billion a year revenue business to not result in large amount of tax revenue for the various branches of gov.

Sure, but I guess what i'm implying is that some companies and business tycoons will do everything in their hand to pay as little tax as possible, and I'm pretty sure Musk is one of those people.

And yes, most companies will try to minimize taxes (shareholder obligations and all that), but I do think some use much more aggressive tactics than others and will use every loophole and every accounting trick possible.

I'm sure they're still deploying years of loss carry-forwards. Nothing wrong with that, but I doubt they're generating tax revenue yet.

That'll eventually change of course, and they'll be the best space game in town.

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