Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry
by WalterBright on Thursday May 30, 2024 @04:53AM
(#40521539)
SpaceX did not get subsidies from the government. What they got was a contract to deliver a rocket for a price. They delivered, and got the money.
Paying for a product is not a subsidy any more than you buying a Ford car is giving Ford a subsidy.
Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry
by TMWNN on Thursday May 30, 2024 @04:55AM
(#40521553)
>SpaceX did not get subsidies from the government.
I do not disagree.
Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry
by asadotzler on Thursday May 30, 2024 @09:57AM
(#40523787)
However, you are still wrong.
Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry
by throwaway1105q on Thursday May 30, 2024 @02:15PM
(#40526931)
Could you clarify, then?
Indeed. SpaceX didn't have infinite amounts of capital during the years it developed Falcon 9 and Dragon. Until Tesla's market cap blew up during the COVID-19 era, Elon Musk had a "mere" few tens of billions of dollars. Boeing/ULA's pockets were and are gigantic, too.
Jeff Bezos has been among the world's wealthiest men for far, far longer than Musk's entry into that group. Let me paraphrase an excellent comment I saw on Reddit, in response to one of the usual lies about how the only reason SpaceX is a decade ahead of the rest of the world is that it got zillions in subsidies from the US government:
>If large amounts of funding is the only thing required to succeed, Blue Origin would now have a nuclear-powered spacecraft orbiting Pluto.