Comment by ericd
Comment by ericd 17 hours 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.
Comment by ericd 17 hours 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.
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.
It hasn't been disbursed yet (entirely). They get rewards for certain accomplishments.
Starship program is funded in part by NASA as part of Artemis program. So some of this money is ours.
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.