Hero? Is he really doing anything special or is he just doing cool things with the government's money, and would they have survived without the cash injection? Surely its harder to bootstrap a business, those guys should be called heros.
SpaceX was always primarily funded by Elon personally while starting up. It is a business. No, most businesses are not more difficult to bootstrap than commercial space launch services.
People have done far worse things with the government's money.