But a historical prerequisite is understanding https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative unless you're old enough to remember.
Then carefully read Mike Griffin's career history: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
He self-funded with money from PayPal until the first successful Falcon 1 launch.
"In 2002, Griffin was President and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia where they attempted to purchase ICBMs. The unsuccessful trip is credited as directly leading to the formation of SpaceX.[11] Griffin was an early advocate for Musk calling him a potential “Henry Ford for the rocket industry".[12]
After In-Q-Tel, Griffin served as Chief Engineer and Associate Administrator for Space Exploration at NASA Headquarters.
In 2005, he was appointed NASA Administrator where he conceived and introduced Commercial Resupply Services and crew transportation services for the International Space Station.[13] Twenty aerospace companies applied to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, but only SpaceX was selected and given $396 million--a surprising bet given the new company had never flown a rocket.[14] In December 2008, with SpaceX again on the verge of bankruptcy, Griffin awarded SpaceX along with his own Orbital Sciences company each contracts with a combined value of $3.5 billion.[15] Elon Musk credited the NASA contract as saving his company.[16]"
If Musk can be said to have founded Tesla because he was an early investor, then the same logic must apply here. Musk was given $400m by the government before ever flying a rocket.
SpaceX didn’t have a successful launch at the time let alone a proven system, but they had plenty to show. Further they where one of 2 winners splitting the initial 800M budget for COTS with Rocketplane Kistler. They are remembered because Rocketplane Kistler failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketplane_Kistler
Substantial amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, are being provided to the private companies. If SpaceX continues on along its current path, it will have received approximately $1.2 billion in government money from the collective programs. I’m rounding, but with this recent $400-plus million award under CCiCap [Commercial Crew integrated Capability], that brings the total SpaceX funding to something around $1.2 billion, maybe a little more.
That’s—I will only say in my view—excessive, especially since in testimony last year the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, indicated that the private funding involved was not more than $200 million. $100 million of his own money that he had brought in from a prior enterprise, and then he alluded to the fact—I’m trying to recall the testimony on an ad hoc basis, but the point is that there’s less than $200 million of private capital in SpaceX and $1.2 billion of government capital.
(Michael Griffin worked closely with Elon before SpaceX was founded at the Mars Society and worked on Brilliant Pebbles and DC-X which the Falcon 9 was based upon)
Given all that government money, it was a low risk private investment for Elon.
Fix cost government contracts can look really awesome when they work out, but they are not a 1:1 equivalent to private funding. Essentially what you need to look into is what percentage of that money was profit and assuming say a ~20% profit margin it works out to something like 200 million from the government and 200 million from private investments.
You can dig into the specifics but docking with the ISS involves stuff like the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Berthing_Mechanism
See APPENDIX 2, milestones 1-12: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/189228main_setc_nnj...
I remember this quite well--I was at NASA at the time of this contract award. It is also written up in the book Liftoff if you want to see for yourself.
The book Liftoff is mostly Eric Berger regurgitating an origin story Elon told him, not reality.
They were weeks away from not making payroll before they received customer down payments and bridge financing following the successful launch of Falcon 1.
This is all covered in Liftoff. It’s a good book; I recommend reading it.
A clasic conspiracy theory is basically conformation bias run wild. So someone thinks “thousands of satellites must be useful for X” but never really look into just how tiny each individual satellite is and how much of that must be used to fulfill it’s cover story.
That's true for v1 satellites, but the v2 (to be launched with Starship) are huge.
> it's just a conspiracy theory
Its open knowledge that SpaceX is building these custom military satellites for the military (Space Development Agency). Not a secret at all.
-The Space Development Agency awarded $193.5 million to L3Harris and $149 million to SpaceX to build four satellites each to detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles.“
-“We want to show that we can take commoditized commercial components and perform a DoD mission,” said Tournear.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-l3harris-win-space-development-...
The point still stands, it’s clear the Starlink constellation is independent. They are simply reusing a useful platform the same way the DoD buys PC’s etc.
The issue with Starlink’s network is they don’t have polar coverage which is needed due to nuclear subs in the Arctic Ocean.
Coverage of the Arctic Ocean is insufficient for ground observation. It could change but would be really obvious as you would have polar orbits through the Pacific Ocean which would be really wasteful for their business model.
Just like the biggest driver of EV car adoption at the policy level is Puting, current gas prices, inflaction, and OPEC trying for more profit mongering.
Frankly I'm mystified as to why Musk posted that weak tweet to ending the war. He's in the perfect situation to be a war profiteer, and he doesn't even provide weapons.
But to the conspiracy nuts out there, the constellation is perfect cover for a smart rock interception network.
Firstly getting any contact details like a phone number or email is close to impossible. Then you just don't get any response from them anyway. It just looks strange.
And even more hilarious that this comment is a garden variety take from armies of anti-Elon posters that are astroturfers. The word "Elon" is an internet lobbying battleground (and there are likely armies of pro-Elon roboposters). Armies driven by, at least initially, by funny money hedge fund bets. Bets that would have come true about 5 years ago if Tesla/SpaceX were pure hype/bullshit.
SpaceX/Tesla are tremendously high valued because they still have an order of magnitude or two of readily apparent growth. And a CEO's job of growth companies is to hype that growth, to drive investment/stock price, which drives the scaling and R&D.
Uber: well. they do provide a physical service. It's just a taxi company at an app with google maps, but, I guess it is a physical service.
Meta: once a monopoly, only exists due to ad fraud, and turnkey Big Brother infrastructure
Google: still a monopoly, but also only exists due to ad fraud, and also provides turkey Big Brother infrastructre
How about you, 'idiotsecant', you seem emotionally invested to some pointless deep thread on something with the keyword "Elon Musk", what motivates your subconscious after spending 10,000 hours deep in social media and speculating on crypto?
God forbid someone tries to apply some rational thought to "Elon Musk is the WORST" twitterlogic grouphate. The ISSUE IS that the entire world's panties are in a bunch over Elon being the "worst person ohmygod" when if you rank him in "worst CEOs in the world" he's probably about #20,000 after mining execs, petroleum companies, bankers, pharmaceutical companies, automotive execs, amazon execs, facebook/google, sweatshop manufacturers, meatpackers, pesticide makers, plastics companies, Xe, security companies, shipping, defense contractors, firearms manufacturers ... It shows a complete lack of understanding of the world and the serious shit we are in.
Of course this manipulative bullshit you just posted means you're equally ignorant, even if you think you're not. Christ, and your day job is in alternative energy, you should know better. That's depressing.
Also, why not also commercialize it, if it's simple? Just because you're being subsidized by tax payers doesn't mean you can't turn some extra profit.