> You can never convince me profit is not a cost.
It is a cost, but with the cost you are getting something. And NASA (the US) as it happens literally got the best deal maybe in human history.
The US was literally sucking in space, their rockets were shit. Their human launch was shit. All their major space project were going to utter and complete shit and were literally an intersectional embarrassment. And btw the companies were still making profit, never in its history did NASA not primary work threw independent companies.
Then they bought things from SpaceX and yes SpaceX made some profit. That encouraged the largest ever investment surge into space industry. SpaceX used the profit to build a reusable rocket revolutionizing rockets and the US went from doing like 0% of the global commercial launch to like 80%.
Because that lowered cost many new in space ideas became possible. And US companies have taken that opportunity the best. Where in GEO launches the US was in tough competition against Europe and China. In LEO US is utterly dominated.
In addition to that a whole new crop of rocket launchers were designed. Many of the people designing them only got into the field because of SpaceX.
The location of SpaceX head quarter now sits in the most successful aerospace cluster in the world.
The US went from not making the best engine to making the most and the best engines in the world.
Let alone all the new companies trying everything they can think of. Space based solar to increase sat power. Platinum mining. And so many other things.
The US military profits form that too, cheaper then all global competitors. Allowing it to launch even more. And thanks to all competition in the launch market, some switched to hypersonics. Giving the military hypersonic test platforms they didn't have to develop themselves. Let alone all the crazy startups that pop up because they can find venture money.
Sorry that nobody takes you seriously when you complain about SpaceX making profit on launches when that very profit is what allowed for the US to go from being stagnate in space to being the unquestionable juggernaut all while the government was paying less then they had ever paid in their whole history.
Unless you can explain, how this would have happened, without allowing SpaceX some profit, go ahead.
To expensive homes. Expensive vacations. Expensive cars. Expensive meals. Private jets. Buying a social media website. Etc. All waste. Finery.
That’s like saying “theoretically you could get to space by flapping your wings”—you just need to ignore inconvenient laws of physics. Economics describes forces of the real world, you cannot just wave them away.
The point is that you have to account for those second order effects even in theory. The consequences that arise from those effects isn't some conflict between theory and practice. It's a defect in the theory itself, because the theory ignores relevant variables.
But of course they do understand that and the primary nationalized the resources, and have a model where the nationalized company bids for that resource against private companies as well.
But, like, that's divergent from "This SpaceX contract is pure grift" that OP was not so subtly implying.