SpaceX exists because of that government's significant funding of the company and the prescient decision to award multiple (fixed-price!) Commercial Cargo/Crew contracts.
It is undeniable that NASA/NROL/USAF contracts and support benefited spaceX especially early on .
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 .
"“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).
"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."
Don't forget SpaceX was the first private company which achieved orbit without external money, and did that for awfully less money than e.g. Air Force thought possible.
Thanks for the links. I can't find in the article how much DARPA gave SpaceX, in dollars, and the second link talks about payment for the launch, not the grant.
The mission carried a $6.7 million price tag covered by the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
How big share of about AFAIK $90 millions spent on Falcon-1 program was from SpaceX investor(s) and how big was from external sources? In other words, how material was that external funding?
I think it stands to reason that if they were nearly bankrupt after flight floor, having to self-fund flights one, two, and three would have definitely bankrupted them.
I think they had money to make up to 4 flights. Looks like they got some money even before the flight 4, but not sure how much compared to their own expenses.
> SpaceX exists because of that government's significant funding of the company and the prescient decision to award multiple (fixed-price!) Commercial Cargo/Crew contracts.
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.
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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.
That's an interesting cost-based criticism of Starship. I hope you are wrong and SpaceX can actually do this profitably, otherwise its potential will be much reduced.
The development is what already being spent... Each flight, after development is complete, will be reusable - that's the plan - and will cost less than $0.1B == 100 millions dollars, if total per-Starship expenses are divided into the total number of that Starship flights. Yes, I hope the eventual costs per flight would be lower, the point is the cost of the program is surely way more than $4B.
and the government should continue to fund private enterprise for innovation.
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
> 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.
> The charger thing is misleading. The money hasn't been spent yet
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.
Sure, and if we’re still at ten completed charging stations in a few years, I’m happy to criticize.
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.
2030 for 500K chargers is just separate political goal, it isn't connected to the $7.5B allocated by the bill.
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.
> 2030 for 500K chargers is just separate political goal, it isn't connected to the $7.5B allocated by the bill.
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.
"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."
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.)
Turning Elon Musk into the richest person on earth was a US government project on the same kind of scale as the TVA and Apollo program. It’s actually kinda funny when you think about it.
This is reductive, in the extreme, to the point of being incorrect. SpaceX had to sue to win its first contracts, Tesla was actively cut out of Biden administration EV programs and awards. Whatever success they've had, they have absolutely earned.
the command of critical projects Elon has is unnatural. He builds his massive projects with no permits or regulatory approvals;
see:
- the massive supercomputer in Memphis, no power power approval from TVA and did do an EIA. The city council never new about the project.
- 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.
