The US government is a big customer if that’s what you mean. It does not overpay to use spacex (goes with lowest bidder between them an ULA).
You’re vaguely trying to imply that spacex is only kept alive by the government like Arianespace and that’s pretty dumb. It has at least one US competitor to beat on gov contracts and global competitors on non-gov contracts that it consistently takes the cake from on cost.
> Also, nobody outside of SpaceX really knows how much their reusable first stages really saves them.
The implication being what? It spends a fortune on barges and refurbishing as an elaborate hoax or fraud because its not a significant cost saver?
For heavy, as a sibling pointed out, the center stage is reusable. The recent launches paid extra to sacrifice it for orbital parameters. “At the customers request” on the webcast.
Look, I’m all for competition in the launch space because I don’t like monopoly players, but pretending spacex is like the others living on a government feeding tube is laughable.
Here’s the litmus test. Which company wins bids for non-government contracts?
If it was always going to the lowest bidder, SpaceX would beat ULA on price on most missions and ULA would likely no longer be viable. They make sure ULA wins enough contracts to remain viable, even if that costs more than giving them to SpaceX
Arianespace is a shitshow. Our Yankee analogs are Boeing and Lockheed. They could each absorb unlimited funding to design substandard packaging for peanuts.
The US government funds satellite/space stuff generally. Look at how much money has been spent on DoD polar orbit, MEO (GPS, etc) and geostationary orbit satellite development, construction, launch costs and associated earth station construction over the past 20 years. Mostly from traditional DoD contractors like Boeing and United Launch Alliance. Throwing some money at SpaceX is actually quite "new".
If you stop building any highly technical thing for a long period of time, you lose the institutional knowledge base and engineers/technicians who can do it. The UK had a great deal of trouble and delays when they re-started nuclear submarine construction after a 15+ year gap with the Astute class, because everyone who was involved in that industry had gone and done something else or retired. It's pretty logical from a national-security point of view that the Europeans and ESA want to maintain a minimum level of capability to launch stuff on their own, even if it's not as "good" as a re-usable Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy.
The US government "funds" SpaceX in the same way you fund Apple when you buy an iPhone or Shell when you buy gas.
They are a customer, they pay for a product/service.
They are not giving money for free just to keep them afloat.
It's a bit different. Without the US gov as a early customer taking lots of risk, they company wouldn't exist. Apple or Shell wouldn't change even if 100,000 customers decided not to buy their products/service anymore.
> The first two Falcon 1 launches were purchased by the United States Department of Defense under a program that evaluates new US launch vehicles suitable for use by DARPA. The first three launches of the rocket, between 2006 and 2008, all resulted in failures, which almost ended the company. Financing for Tesla Motors had failed, as well, and consequently Tesla, SolarCity, and Musk personally were all nearly bankrupt at the same time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2005%E2%80%932009:_Falc...
OK, it's like early Apple customers buying the Apple I.
Without those customers taking the risk Apple wouldn't exist today.
Still just a customer buying something, not "funding" in the way you make it sound.
SpaceX only get paid as they can deliver. Europe cover the cost of Arianne 6 development, and will continue to do so.
Falcon 9 will likely have up to 100 launches in 2023. Arianne 6 is planned to have at most a dozen launch when it’s matured, which is still several years away
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but to me it came across as the gov't giving money to SpaceX just to keep it alive instead of the US gov't actively doing business with a company successfully launching their assets into orbit.
NASA continuing to award Blue Origin contracts is funding BO since they haven't done anything.
Also, nobody outside of SpaceX really knows how much their reusable first stages really saves them. That’s especially true for the Falcon Heavy (which is comparable to the Ariane 6) where the center stage does not / cannot be reused.