| You are just connecting unrelated evidence. Nobody denies that SpaceX got government contracts. That still doesn't validate the overall story. SpaceX got paid to provide services, and they did so. It had little to do with SDI or any long term demand for missile defense. Most of the money is from experimental NASA program to find a cheap way too get money for ISS. SpaceX got almost no money from DoD for quite a bit of its history. > That’s—I will only say in my view—excessive Its not 'excessive'. You can't just say 'excessive' without evidence. You actually have to show that they got overpaid for the services provided. In reality, they got underpaid and lost money on those contracts. The thing is, most of that money was performance based. Go look up how COTS and Commercial Crew actually worked. You only get money once you reached specific milestone. Having such a contract requires you to raise private money (can be stocks or lending), and then you can try to execute, if you do, you get paid. If you don't, you wont get paid. Look what happened with Kistler Aerospace for example. They failed to raise sufficient private capital and were kicked out of the COTS program. So for this argument to make sense, show what contracts SpaceX got, and explain how the government could have achieved the same results cheaper. Most experts agree, and pretty much everybody calls COTS the most successful NASA program in decades. And Commercial Crew as almost as good. NASA achieved a huge amount with little money. > less than $200 million of private capital in SpaceX and $1.2 billion Again, you don't just get 1.2 billion. You have to raise private capital, and then execute on your development program. Some of those 1.2 billion $ took years until they arrived at SpaceX. For example, Griffin included 400 million $ for CCiCap. Guess what, that money didn't fully arrive at SpaceX until way after 2013. Griffin only account for Musk private funding, not all the other money raised by SpaceX. Griffin is a very opinion person that often goes against what most people believe. I would not his interpretation and evaluation as gospel. He is a politician and a bureaucrat. His whole spiel during the last 15 years has been that government should own the intellectual property for things like capsules and such. The thing is, most of NASA simply doesn't agree with his opinions. And most expert that look at NASA performance, seem to agree. He is very much outside of current thinking at NASA. |