4 ms·

NASA is a large customer of Spacex. Those profits earned via NASA, which go towards Starship development, are paid by taxpayers. It is de facto tax payer fundi

by LightG 5y ago

NASA is a large customer of Spacex. Those profits earned via NASA, which go towards Starship development, are paid by taxpayers. It is de facto tax payer funding as there isn't another customer like NASA for Spacex to go to (realistically).

trothamel 5y ago
The're a large customer, but probably not the largest. SpaceX has a lot of commercial customers, including a fully private manned spaceflight (Inspiration4) later this year. When it comes to Starship, it seems like one of the main applications will be to launch hundreds of Starlink satellites at once. I don't believe that there is a noticable amount of NASA funding in Starlink - it's possible they might be using it for some reason, but it'd be as a customer.
- _Microft 5y ago
  NASA is the largest single customer of SpaceX but does not make up the lion's share of SpaceX launches.
  - sebzim4500 5y ago
    Maybe they consider Starlink to be a customer of SpaceX? NASA would still be the largest customer though, with 36 launches versus Starlink's 33. That would probably change by the end of the year though.
    - trothamel 5y ago
      That is sort of of what I was thinking. It's not exactly right, but out of 20 launches in the first half of 2021, you have 13 Starlinks, 2 Transporter (SpaceX-brokered rideshare), 2 NASA (Crew/Commercial Resupply), 2 Commercial, and 1 Space Corps. The second half of the year looks more NASA-Heavy, with CRS-23, Crew 3, and CRS-24, plus 2 science satellite. But that's among 17 other missions. I guess my point is that SpaceX probably won't lose NASA, but they're not as dependent on government business as ULA is.
- lizknope 5y ago
  Wikipedia has a list of Falcon launches and a column with the customer name. NASA is on there quite a bit but there are plenty of other customers including other US government agencies, other governments, and private companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
iso1631 5y ago
If you think government subsidies spacex, you should see military contractors.
kiba 5y ago
So are ULA, Lockheed, Boeing and other dinosaur OldSpace giants. Rather than pork going to aerospace contractors working on an already obsolete or soon to be obsolete SLS, I rather that that states get money to work on whatever made possible by the Starship program.
SECProto 5y ago
SpaceX does a couple NASA launches a year, for which they make 100-200 million each and have to actually provide a service that costs them a decent fraction of that cost. They earlier this year had an investment round worth about a billion, which was all dedicated to R&D for Starship and Starlink. Total external investments are around $19 billion [1] So yeah, some of the NASA dollars probably provide profit to the company that they reinvest in R&D. But a larger portion comes from external investment specifically for R&D. [1] https://craft.co/spacex/funding-rounds https://craft.co/spacex/funding-rounds
- LightG 5y ago
  Fair points. But where do you think that $19billion came from? Looking forward to the downvote :-)
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > where do you think that $19billion came from? Most dollars that have been paid to a SpaceX bank account, by investors or customers, came from private parties. NASA was indisputably critical in enabling SpaceX. But SpaceX was not taxpayer funded if that word doesn't encompass virtually all economic activity in America. Today, SpaceX could do fine without any NASA contracts. Naturally, they help. But there is a lot of demand for launch, in part due to the price competition SpaceX started.
  - SECProto 5y ago
    The 5.9 billion (19 was a typo) was investment capital. Per the source, investors were: Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Scott Banister, DFJ Growth, Google, Rizvi Traverse Management, Fidelity Investments, Threshold, Rothenberg Ventures, Elon Musk, ACE & Company, Bill Lee, David Sacks, Valor Equity Partners, Sherpa Capital, Ecosystem Ventures, Baillie Gifford, Barney Pell, Vanedge Capital, Matthew Pritzker Company, Capricorn Venture Partners, Musket Research Associates, Tao Capital Partners, DBL Partners, Michael Cheung, Otter Rock Capital, NASA, Syren Capital Advisors, FoundersX Ventures, The K Fund, 7percent Ventures, Space Angels, Troy Capital Partners, M13, Seed-Resolute, Equidate, Microventures, Alphabet, G Squared, Peter Diamandis, Oakhouse Partners, Craft Ventures, Hemisphere Ventures, All Blue Capital, Bracket Capital, TH Capital, #adm VENTURES, ACE Capital, Threshold Ventures, Manhattan Venture Partners, Gigafund, Decacorn Capital, StraightPath Venture Partners, Zillow Group, Aeon Family of Funds, Team in Residence, ADIT Ventures, GC1 Ventures, Ernest H. Pomerantz, Lord Rothschild, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Most of these are non-taxpayer sources. NASA was small as far as I know, I don't recall seeing them listed in any of the recent (much larger) rounds. Unless you count the Ontario provincial government paying their teachers including their pensions, and the thus-funded pension fund investing in SpaceX.

by LightG 5y ago

trothamel 5y ago

The're a large customer, but probably not the largest. SpaceX has a lot of commercial customers, including a fully private manned spaceflight (Inspiration4) later this year. When it comes to Starship, it seems like one of the main applications will be to launch hundreds of Starlink satellites at once. I don't believe that there is a noticable amount of NASA funding in Starlink - it's possible they might be using it for some reason, but it'd be as a customer.

_Microft 5y ago
NASA is the largest single customer of SpaceX but does not make up the lion's share of SpaceX launches.
- sebzim4500 5y ago
  Maybe they consider Starlink to be a customer of SpaceX? NASA would still be the largest customer though, with 36 launches versus Starlink's 33. That would probably change by the end of the year though.
  - trothamel 5y ago
    That is sort of of what I was thinking. It's not exactly right, but out of 20 launches in the first half of 2021, you have 13 Starlinks, 2 Transporter (SpaceX-brokered rideshare), 2 NASA (Crew/Commercial Resupply), 2 Commercial, and 1 Space Corps. The second half of the year looks more NASA-Heavy, with CRS-23, Crew 3, and CRS-24, plus 2 science satellite. But that's among 17 other missions. I guess my point is that SpaceX probably won't lose NASA, but they're not as dependent on government business as ULA is.
lizknope 5y ago
Wikipedia has a list of Falcon launches and a column with the customer name. NASA is on there quite a bit but there are plenty of other customers including other US government agencies, other governments, and private companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

iso1631 5y ago

If you think government subsidies spacex, you should see military contractors.

kiba 5y ago

So are ULA, Lockheed, Boeing and other dinosaur OldSpace giants. Rather than pork going to aerospace contractors working on an already obsolete or soon to be obsolete SLS, I rather that that states get money to work on whatever made possible by the Starship program.

SECProto 5y ago

SpaceX does a couple NASA launches a year, for which they make 100-200 million each and have to actually provide a service that costs them a decent fraction of that cost. They earlier this year had an investment round worth about a billion, which was all dedicated to R&D for Starship and Starlink. Total external investments are around $19 billion [1] So yeah, some of the NASA dollars probably provide profit to the company that they reinvest in R&D. But a larger portion comes from external investment specifically for R&D. [1] https://craft.co/spacex/funding-rounds https://craft.co/spacex/funding-rounds

LightG 5y ago
Fair points. But where do you think that $19billion came from? Looking forward to the downvote :-)
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > where do you think that $19billion came from? Most dollars that have been paid to a SpaceX bank account, by investors or customers, came from private parties. NASA was indisputably critical in enabling SpaceX. But SpaceX was not taxpayer funded if that word doesn't encompass virtually all economic activity in America. Today, SpaceX could do fine without any NASA contracts. Naturally, they help. But there is a lot of demand for launch, in part due to the price competition SpaceX started.
- SECProto 5y ago
  The 5.9 billion (19 was a typo) was investment capital. Per the source, investors were: Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Scott Banister, DFJ Growth, Google, Rizvi Traverse Management, Fidelity Investments, Threshold, Rothenberg Ventures, Elon Musk, ACE & Company, Bill Lee, David Sacks, Valor Equity Partners, Sherpa Capital, Ecosystem Ventures, Baillie Gifford, Barney Pell, Vanedge Capital, Matthew Pritzker Company, Capricorn Venture Partners, Musket Research Associates, Tao Capital Partners, DBL Partners, Michael Cheung, Otter Rock Capital, NASA, Syren Capital Advisors, FoundersX Ventures, The K Fund, 7percent Ventures, Space Angels, Troy Capital Partners, M13, Seed-Resolute, Equidate, Microventures, Alphabet, G Squared, Peter Diamandis, Oakhouse Partners, Craft Ventures, Hemisphere Ventures, All Blue Capital, Bracket Capital, TH Capital, #adm VENTURES, ACE Capital, Threshold Ventures, Manhattan Venture Partners, Gigafund, Decacorn Capital, StraightPath Venture Partners, Zillow Group, Aeon Family of Funds, Team in Residence, ADIT Ventures, GC1 Ventures, Ernest H. Pomerantz, Lord Rothschild, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Most of these are non-taxpayer sources. NASA was small as far as I know, I don't recall seeing them listed in any of the recent (much larger) rounds. Unless you count the Ontario provincial government paying their teachers including their pensions, and the thus-funded pension fund investing in SpaceX.