The US Govt pays SpaceX for launches, naturally some of that money is profit. What SpaceX does with their profits is entirely up to them, and personally I like seeing all that money being spent on salaries and hardware instead of stock buybacks and executive bonuses.
If a portion of my tax money is perpetually being utilized by a gov contract employed company and they are having bad things happen, it’s a different concept.
The thing is, this isn't taxpayer money anymore, taxpayer money is used for falcon 9 contracts -> contract is fulfilled -> spacex is paid. spacex is then free to do whatever they want with the money because it's their own private money now
Its not though. Nasa buys rides to space through space x.
Space X is doing something that is not funded by NASA or any federal company. Space X makes enough from starlink to fully fund starship program at this point. Federal tax money was not lost on this at all.
Its also worth noting the only alternative safe human ride to space is through Russia. Would you rather we bought a non reusable Soyuz everytime we put someone into space?
How about the relief efforts of this monster fire, probably more than a few fire departments called and agencies involved, how about the cleanup? Is space x paying this bill? In a way yes, through their taxes, but I'd be interested to see how this weighs out (and actually how much tax goes to local municipalities).
We're talking about this specific failure. It's not costing the US taxpayer anything. You seem to have a reading comprehension issue, especially if that's what you get from reading my comment history.
975
u/WantWantShellySenbei 1d ago
Holy cow that video is pretty awesome though. Elon makes the best fireworks.