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Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi... by mikece on Monday March 22, 2021 @02:11PM (#26544472)
I know SpaceX gets plenty of government funding these days but, unless I'm significantly mistaken, that isn't how they boot-strapped. To me this is a case study of an agile entrepreneur creating value and savings for customers through innovation versus giant incumbents encumbered by bureaucracy and being unable to adapt until they are threatened with being pushed into insolvency or extinction.
Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi... by thinkcontext on Monday March 22, 2021 @04:43PM (#26546713)
Falcon 1 got funding from DARPA. Falcon 9 got funding from NASA as part of the effort to develop resupply for ISS. For both efforts there was significant private money put in as well. Musk has said they would have succeeded w/o government money but it would have taken longer, which is debatable.
Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi... by systemvoltage on Monday March 22, 2021 @05:42PM (#26547604)
Musk also put in his Paypal earnings into it.

Let's put it this way - if it wasn't for private entrepreneurship and Musk's vision, SpaceX wouldn't be here no matter what DARPA or NASA would have done.

Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi... by 6pac3rings on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @04:45AM (#26552554)
Elon's leadership drive and capital had the catalyzing effect. Without Elon, all the capital in the world would've gone into laggy bureaucratic procurement and project management pie in the sky bridges to nowhere. ARPA might've done what today's DARPA/NASA does not do.
Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi... by NikolaeVarius on Monday March 22, 2021 @08:24PM (#26549368)
Elon literally put in most of his wealth to build spacex and was on the verge of bankruptcy if he couldn't prove his launcher worked and get funding.
Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi... by thinkcontext on Monday March 22, 2021 @08:32PM (#26549424)
Nothing I said contradicts that.
Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi... by nickik on Monday March 22, 2021 @04:50PM (#26546813)
Well, SpaceX Falcon 1 started with private money. However their first 'test' costumers was a DoD student project.

However then they did got significant (200-300M) in funding because of the effort around commercial resupply of ISS and more later but that financed the whole Falcon 9 and Dragon program.

That funding they used to offer a rocket that then accumulated a huge backlog of launches because of the low pricing they offered. Note, this was before re-usability was even a factor.

Its also true of course that other companies, including ULA (and its parents LM and Boeing), Orbitl ATK and others also had to option to commercially bid for those government contracts.

Orbital ATK did however their rocket met with no success in the commercial market.

Rocket Plane Kistler tried, but their efforts were very much Old Space and they couldn't raise the insane amount of money they wanted to raise and NASA kicked them out of the program.

Overall, SpaceX was certainty helped by the need for Commercial resupply of ISS and without that they might have gone bankrupt. However, what they did with the funds, was truly amazing and beyond what anybody could have hopped for.

Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi... by YouthfulMarxism on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @01:45AM (#26551516)
And this was one of the best decisions NASA ever did.