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A comment on SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately ... by sidlls on Friday July 28, 2017 @12:19PM (#14875370)
I'd argue that Musk, using the facade of "Private Market Hero", has made government spending on research in this area palatable enough (again) to make progress. Sure, he's a key personality, but it's not like he's accomplishing these things outside of the context of being heavily funded and guided by the government.
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Re:SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately ... by simonh on Sunday July 30, 2017 @08:39AM (#14885684)
So what? Do none of the achievements of the engineers that drove the US space programme through the last century 'count' because they were government funded? What a bizarre world view.

As it happens none of the re-usability programme (Grasshopper, the drone ships, etc) was actually funded by the government. That came from around a billion dollars of private capital investment. Musk talked about this in a TED talk.

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