[mikepurvis]

Interesting, though I don't know if any of that really disproves my point. Musk's own money was a self-investment; he didn't need to pitch anyone for that. Jurvetson was involved with Tesla prior, and Thiel was obviously connected through PayPal.

Until the Dragon demo flights in 2012-2013, I think SpaceX would have been hard pressed to raise significant capital from anyone other than Elon's friends. I think the fact that so many private space companies have one or more wealthy benefactors bears this out (Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo to a lesser extent).

[jjk166]

There's a wide gulf between "only a few people with the right skills and personal connections can bootstrap a space company" and "none of them could have been bootstrapped without years of unprofitable R&D on the public's dime"

[p_l]

The missing bits is that they bootstrapped after a lot of heavy lifting was done on public dime, and then landed a crucial bunch of govt contracts way before first succesful draco launch, the same kind of contracts that the previous private contractors also take.