It's not seed money, it's buying from a private contracter. The Air Force doesn't build planes, it buys planes. The Navy doesn't build ships, it buys ships. The

It's not seed money, it's buying from a private contracter. The Air Force doesn't build planes, it buys planes. The Navy doesn't build ships, it buys ships. The Army doesn't make tanks, it buys tanks. Now part of that process involves a lot of military oversight and specification to make sure things are up to their standards. I know that the military is involved in the design of systems from Day 1. But all of those things are made by private corporations and they have no commercial equivalent. NASA operates this way already to a large extent. Boeing, Lockheed, etc are primary contractors that design & build a lot of this stuff. What NASA is going through right now is a switch from that model to using straight Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) stuff. The government buys plenty of things off the shelf with no motification or input if it meets their needs. Space X just happens to provide lift capability instead of laptops, but in the end it really is no different as long as they're not launching people.