jacobr1 6 months ago

The taxpayer money is for r&d. We should be very tolerant of failure. Aggressively testing with real hardware is a key part of how we learn to make a more robust systems. Fear of failure and waste will slow down progress.

Reply View 0 replies
ericd 6 months ago

They're blowing up their own money, unless you still count it as being the taxpayer's after the government pays them for launch services.

Reply View 10 replies
  • pclmulqdq 6 months ago

    R&D for starship has a several-billion-dollar NASA grant. Something like 30-50% of the money being blown up on this program is taxpayer money.

    Reply View 7 replies
    • Workaccount2 6 months ago

      The savings Spacex has promise of delivering to NASA make every dollar given to them probably an easy 2x-3x ROI.

      Without Spacex, the typical cohort of gov contractors would have been happy bleeding NASA dry with one time use rockets that have 10x the launch cost and carry 1/4 the cargo.

      Reply View 4 replies
      • pclmulqdq 6 months ago

        Sorry, Artemis carried more than one banana and actually made it to orbit. SpaceX has not provided any ROI yet. You can't compare the (very optimistic) promises of SpaceX against the actual returns of the rest of the industry.

        Reply View 3 replies
    • ericd 6 months ago

      Fair. I think that was for HLS rather than the launch systems, but I guess if it’s already been disbursed, it’s probably all commingled.

      But that still means it’s not just taxpayer money, it’s mostly theirs. They’ve been raising equity rounds this whole time.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • Alex-Programs 6 months ago

        It hasn't been disbursed yet (entirely). They get rewards for certain accomplishments.

        Reply View 0 replies
  • drillsteps5 6 months ago

    Starship program is funded in part by NASA as part of Artemis program. So some of this money is ours.

    Reply View 1 reply
    • [removed] 6 months ago
      [deleted]
      Reply View 0 replies