This question was, lest say, discussed between the EU and the US for litteraly decades regarding Airbus subsidies and Boeing subsidies. The former came directly the latter came through government contracts. Government contracts are one of the easiest ways to subsidize a company, and SpaceX got plenty of those.
I am well aware that EU claimed for decades that Boeing's military contracts were some sort of hidden subsidy for its civilian business. That does not make said claims accurate, or why McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed would not have sought to benefit from such subsidies, as opposed to selling itself to Boeing and exiting the airliner business, respectively.
SpaceX gets plenty of government contracts because it has proven, reliable, and volume-capable launchers of government payloads. Many within NASA were fiercely opposed to SpaceX for years.
In regards to SpaceX that is simply a mischaracterization, they do not receive subsidies they have contracts with the government. SpaceX received money from NASA to help develop its Falcon 9 rocket, but this is little different than other procurement programs, and was just a component of a large ISS cargo delivery contract, the bulk of which is a straightforward deliver cargo get paid / don't deliver cargo don't get paid system.
A subsidy is not the same thing as NASA ordering private contracts for actual “products”
Spacex didn’t get money handed to them (unlike the corn and oil industries).
It got orders to complete certain tasks that NASA thought it might do better than itself.
Boeing and many others got these types of orders too. It explains nothing about why spacex succeeded.
This “Elon did spacex thanks to government” is a serious misrepresentation of what happened, and if it was true, why is the government funded EU space program struggling so much?
Subsidies are one thing, contracts are another form of support. Government contracts are what kept SpaceX afloat in 08, when they couldn't find private clients, and these contracts can be excess of 100 million.
SpaceX was "subsidized" by the govt even as they provided services to the govt in exchange for money. That's called business, and the customer here is the government. It's also in the best interest, long term financially, to have an American space launch company, so we don't have to give money to the Russians or Europeans to launch our astronauts or satellites. Language matters, subsidy vs. contract is an important distinction
SpaceX is a supplier to the US government. That is not the same thing a subsidy. They're actually saving them money.
Tesla is a recipient of government subsidy, but you pretty much have to operate in the auto market. Everybody else (big auto companies, big oil) are the recipients of massive subsidies too.
Can you elaborate? How was Boeing subsidized in this instance and SpaceX not? It's my understanding that it was closer to the other way around. Both Boeing and SpaceX won commercial crew contracts, but Boeing (at the time) had a stronger track record. It was a strategic move by NASA to not put all their eggs in one basket and it worked out well by subsidizing the early dark horse (SpaceX).
SpaceX got money from the US taxpayer. It wasn't a lot by the standard of rocket development, and Musk put in a lot of his own money, but SpaceX wouldn't have survived without the government. Elon Musk is very up front about that.
Boeing gets a lot of support from various levels of government as well. They get cushy tax deals at the state and local level. And what is a virtually-guaranteed military contract for cargo and tanker aircraft worth when you're developing a new air frame?
There is a waste over estimation on how large SpaceX government contracts are.
You are ignoring that Airbus is also getting additional government contracts. Arianespace gets massive infrastructure subsidy, they are gone get at least 5 billion all said and told for Ariane 6, and that does not cover the last 20 years of sub-component level development for things like the engine and the solid fuel. Lots of the testing and development for sub-components is all done in govenrment funded institutions that all have their own public funding.
In addition to Arianespace has received lots of 'contracts' for development of things like engines, carbon fiber second stages, different re-usability prototypes and the list goes on.
And when all that is done, Ariane 6 will STILL GET GOVERNMENT contracts, such as launches from ESA, EU governments projects like Galileo and countries own launches.
SpaceX actually likely lost money on development of Dragon 1 and Crew Dragon. The had incredibly competitive bids and the govenrment got absolutely amazing deals by anybodies accounting.
For Arianespace to claim SpaceX is subsidized and that's why they can launch cheaper is simply the height of hypocrisy and and Arianespace actually knows that they are outright lying when they say that.
The reality is Arianespace and Europe dominated the market for 20 years and barley made any technological or price progress in that time. Even in the 2010s they mostly launched Russian rockets developed in the 1960s. If that's not a complete failure I don't know what is.
Those companies were not financed by taxpayers. Taxpayers bought some of their stuff, like flights to the space station from space x. Notice that not only did Boeing charge significantly more for human flights to space than spaceX, almost 50% more than SpaceX but they failed to deliver.
On evs, any company could get those subsidies that were designed to kick off the market. They worked brilliantly to kick off the market, it is just that most legacy car companies failed to produce evs, thus they had to pay other companies (Tesla is far from the only company to get money on top of sales for producing evs).
That's not correct. The US government doesn't subsidize SpaceX, it purchases launches and technology. It's just a customer. And it buys those things for much cheaper than before. You as the tax payer are actually saving money compared to what NASA and the DoD were spending on the big contractors.
It’s important to understand how SpaceX got to where it is, because it’s often reduced to a “commercial versus government” narrative that is not really accurate.[1] I say this not to take away from SpaceX’s very real entrepreneurial spirit, but simply to fill in the rest of the picture and make the point that “get government out of the way” is not the answer here.
SpaceX received government funding in its early days from DARPA, who hoped to spur the development of small launch vehicles. This money was essential in getting the company to the launch pad. SpaceX ultimately abandoned its small Falcon 1, but a DARPA official said much later that the government had more than gotten its money’s worth from helping jump-start SpaceX.[2]
In 2006, NASA started an innovative program to fund private contractors to develop systems to deliver cargo to ISS. This is sometimes looked at as a dramatic departure from past “government run” NASA programs, but the truth is that all those old programs like the Apollo CSM/LM and Saturn V were also contracted out to private companies. What NASA did differently with Commercial Cargo (and later Commercial Crew) was that it contracted on a fixed-price basis rather than the usual cost-plus system which more or less incentivized the contractors to make things cost more money and take more time (except in special cases like Apollo where there was serious political pressure on the companies to deliver on-time and on-budget). SpaceX ultimately won one of these development contracts, which allowed it to start developing the larger Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule.
In 2008, after SpaceX first launched Falcon 1 successfully, the company actually still nearly ran out of money. It is not easy to find customers to fly their expensive satellites on a barely-proven new rocket. Fortunately, they won the contract to operate supply deliveries to the ISS (the follow-on to the 2006 development contract). This money saved the company. Even Elon Musk (who isn’t the biggest fan of sharing credit and who will happily call out the government when he’s mad) will tell you that SpaceX would not be here without NASA.
Since then, SpaceX has won the Commercial Crew contract in addition to Commercial Cargo. In addition, SpaceX has launched numerous satellites for NASA and the military.
It’s important to note, contrary to the company’s detractors, that this government money was not some kind of corrupt “giveaway” to SpaceX. NASA and DARPA paid SpaceX to develop and operate useful services for the government. We all benefit as taxpayers from the savings that SpaceX has delivered over the legacy contractors.
The lesson for Europe here is definitely not to stop letting the government plan anything. Commercial cargo and crew capabilities exist in the United States today because the government planned for it. And they also exist because the government was flexible with its plans and partnered with whoever had the most promising ideas instead of insisting on doing everything through the same legacy contractors with the same ineffectual contracting methods. That’s been a really hard lesson to learn, and Congress mostly still hasn’t learned it (larger NASA programs like SLS and Orion are still done the old cost-plus way with the same gravy-train lobbyist-heavy contractors; Commercial Cargo and Crew barely slipped through because they were small and not taken seriously by the space-industrial complex). It will be hard for Europe too, who has a symbiotic relationship with legacy job-machine contractors like ArianeGroup. I really hope they can learn it, because humanity will benefit when cheap reusable launch is common around the world.
[1] Eric Berger, the author of this article, does a good job of painting this full picture (in fact he just wrote a great book about the early days of SpaceX called “Liftoff”), but journalists who aren’t as familiar with the industry tend to miss the picture.
What immense government subsidies did Tesla and SpaceX rely on? Tesla got a loan it paid back early and a $7k tax rebate per car for the first 200k cars which other car companies also got. SpaceX got a contract to build a rocket and capsule NASA wants to use, for a fraction of the price Boeing and Lockheed charge for same job.
Has the government "subsidized" SpaceX? AFAIK the government has been a consistent customer of SpaceX and they've leased facilities from NASA but it seems that overall they aren't being subsidized but rather patronized.
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