[sfifs]

The Space shuttle program was run by people who were in the taxpayer wealth extraction business. As we've seen already, no one really imagined how we could progress on costs when companies actually get into space transportation business

[tintt]

You’re totally right, Saturn V, Space Shuttle, SLS – all of them are great technology, but financially speaking, they were all doomed from the get go. I weren’t trying to compare NASA and Space X, I was trying to point out that optimistic outlooks on large reusable rockets usually don’t fully consider implications of increased complexity of such project.

[tsimionescu]

SpaceX money is also made the same way. It's US gov money that funded much of the research anyway, US launch facilities that handle the launches, and SpaceX is charging the US government many times more per launch than it charges for commercial launches (they claim the government has extra requirements) .