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If government wasn't paying for this, SpaceX would never be able to develop Starship. It can only afford it thanks to NASA's contract. This flight won't check
by TheAlchemist 2y ago
If government wasn't paying for this, SpaceX would never be able to develop Starship. It can only afford it thanks to NASA's contract.
This flight won't check any boxes as you said, but that doesn't change the fact that the program is mostly financed by the government.
- ceejayoz 2y agoThat’s fine, but every failure that doesn’t check a new milestone off is money out of their profits. I’m ok with that; we’ve done very well out of the Falcon 9 contracts. (I suspect they’re making quite a bit on F9 to put into Starship, too.)
- s1artibartfast 2y agoUnclear unless you have access to SpaceX accounts. The Starship lunar lander program is 2.8 Billion into a 4.4 billion dollar contract [1] SpaceX has also raised 8 billion in private equity funding since the Lunar contract was awarded in 2020. [2] SpaceX estimated Launch revenue in 2024 was 4+ billion, and Starlink revenue estimated at 8+ billion. It has a separate 3 billion dollar contract to support the ISS. Meanwhile, NASA is into SLS + Orion or 50 Billion so far [3] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_80MSFC20C0034_8000_-NONE-_-NONE- https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_80MSFC20C0034_800... https://tracxn.com/d/companies/spacex/__UIpPfXSDe2O53VUbJNlNoPlcSwZr-1f_r0ie4BjsSaw/funding-and-investors#funding https://tracxn.com/d/companies/spacex/__UIpPfXSDe2O53VUbJNlN... https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-sls-and-orion https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-sls-and-orion