Uhm, they do a lot of purely commercial space launches (comsats, LEO missions, commercial dragon flights) even including for some of their direct competitors to Starlink (OneWeb)!
> SpaceX certainly will not.
That's always been a stated goal of SpaceX to do exactly that. That's why they funded on their own dime the development of a massive reusable vehicle that has literally no reason to be that large unless your explicit plan is to design it for interplanetary cargo.
> Almost all of SpaceX's income, absent Starlink subscription fees, traces to tax dollars.
Not true. As stated explicitly by SpaceX in several years ago, the revenue split of SpaceX was 1/3 NASA, 1/3 other government and 1/3 commercial. But in recent years the commercial fraction has dramatically increased (simply as evidenced by the tremendous numbers of missions happening from non-government customers).
Re:Why Not Mars
by moloch-hai on Monday January 02, 2023 @05:15PM
(#34224434)
> That's always been a stated goal of SpaceX to do exactly that.
Yes, but his lips were moving.
Almost all of SpaceX's income, absent Starlink subscription fees, traces to tax dollars.