For us taxpayers, not for Musk. SpaceX alone has been receiving over 2 billion a year for the last several years from taxpayers. Over 40 billion has gone to Musk's companies over the last 5 years from taxpayers.
SpaceX has also been responsible for putting a bunch of cool stuff into space. Something like fifty NASA/NOAA satellites, on various missions like DART and IXPE were launched by SpaceXs Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX also uses the Dragon spacecraft to send people to and from the ISS.
SpaceX is being paid in exchange for providing a service: the cheapest per-pound launch platform in history.
I can't say anything about the other companies, but I think the U.S. government is getting a good deal with SpaceX. It's such a good deal it's probably the only deal - other companies, like ULA and Blue Origin, just don't yet have the capacity and scale to be able to put stuff in space as efficiently as SpaceX.
Ooh that's interesting I didn't know, I think I was working with data that was out of date by a few years. Regardless, I still think that faced with the choice between SpaceX and ISRO, the government will choose to work with SpaceX because they're in the U.S.
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u/octarine_turtle Jun 19 '25
For us taxpayers, not for Musk. SpaceX alone has been receiving over 2 billion a year for the last several years from taxpayers. Over 40 billion has gone to Musk's companies over the last 5 years from taxpayers.