[PaulDavisThe1st]

The GP said:

> Commercial companies like SpaceX on the other hand, who are spending their own money

That's not an accurate description, regardless of whether SpaceX is saving NASA (and the rest of us) money.

[signatoremo]

They don’t spend taxpayer money. They get paid with taxpayer money, after they have delivered. Big difference.

[Cerium]

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the difference I see is that SpaceX is spending money they earned from NASA rather than being given money to develop a product.

[phkahler]

They have done both. IIRC They received NASA money for development projects like the commercial crew program. But in that case they got less money than their competitors and have already delivered results and are now taking people to the ISS for less recurring cost than the competition will if they ever get there at all. SpaceX has also taken government money for other development projects, as have the competition.

Development is hard, and many projects fail. If that area SpaceX also seems to do better than the competition. This is probably because SpaceX basically takes "development project money" to do things they would like to do anyway, and would do on their own given unlimited funds. They do ignore projects that are not in line with their longer term goals.