Comment by soco
4 days ago
But isn't SpaceX money coming mostly from the government anyway? So still your pockets getting emptied, only over two extra hoops which each take their share as well. All this to bring the magic solution called software engineering because we all know how software consultants always save the business.
No it isn't. Most of their revenue comes from starlink and rocket launch services that they sell in open markets.
Significant improvement in cost and capabilities over competition that enabled SpaceX to capture so much of the market has massively driven prices down and certainly saved taxpayers a lot of money for the services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...
SpaceX does get government grants of course like most companies. It's by far not most of their revenue though, and generally competitively available and tied to particular goals. Investing and supporting in high tech, high value industries like this is often a good thing and returns more than cost to the country, as it certainly has with SpaceX. So it's the opposite of pockets getting emptied.
Not to mention the national security advantage of being able to service the ISS and to launch humans into space without help from adversarial regimes.