The American people didn’t pay for the R&D if SpaceX, Musk did and then customers did. Customers (including the federal government) that saved millions on every purchase.
NASA gave SpaceX 400 Million just for the development of Falcon 9 and there is a video were Musk said SpaceX was bancrupt if NASA wouldnt have stepd in.
NASA also another 6 Billion upfront to SpaceX for Dragon and HLS.
So yes the american paid for the R&D of SpaceX.
SpaceX took the 'risk' but either succeeding or not in your main business is hardly a risk if you need to succeed anyway to have that business.
Yes, but recall that those contracts were made in a competitive marketplace where SpaceX was the lower bidder.
If not for SpaceX, the American People would have paid more to the ULA group for what has clearly turned out to be inferior results, since ULA has received far more money for far fewer services.
Musk has saved the tax payer (through the government) billions of dollars on every project SpaceX has been involved with. They have earned money by providing vital Internet services to the disconnected and left behind in rural areas all over the world.
What 'new deal'? If you talk about Solar and PV, it adds value already independen of how little it is. Even dense city has roofs on top. Also they have highways which have plenty direct space next to them were no one wants to live or grow produce (due to polution)
germany stoped the investment and killed the solar industry. Not saying that China helped too, but we don't know if germany would have pushed through it without China.
You will have a setup working based on solar energy and battery storage before you get spaceship to not explode anymore and to deliver low price for payload.
And we are talking about AI Datacenters, they are a lot less latency dependend than websites.
Alone the idea that Musk would be able to break through any burocrazy for space stuff and sets up a supply chain for everything space is easier than just setting up some energy and fiber, feels ridicoulys
Every city has phone lines. A phone line allows you to replace it with fiber. A fiber and a tower has long loves.
A star link server has 5 years.
Setting up a terrestrial network is already done and it was relativly easy because you build it up from most profitable to lowest profitable.
Star link only serves 9/10 Million people right now with already 10k satelites whith only a lifetime of 5 years and if this market is profitable, the margins will go down sign due to other competitors. Which are already working on it.
Star link is not a 'no-brainer' they currently have 9/10 million customers and need 10k star link satelites. One satelite costs 300k and works for 5 years.
To this, they need humans operating the space side, the base station, they need base stations etc.
It is affected by weather as well.
Its not a 'no-brainer' and while space x showed its somehow a business, amazon and others are entering this space now too. So they never had a first mover financial advantage making big bucks and others are coming which will drive customer base and margin down.
And data center in orbit is not just a pipe dream, its stupid on a whole new level. Smart would have been to build like a DC City in the middle of the USA were its super cheap and introducing the necessary infrastructure to it. But alone the R&D, the sending it up there, solving hard space problems just to not being able to touch hardware when it fails, man thats stupidity on a whole new level.
It's stupid, but it mostly works because they also own the sat deployment side of the equation as well.
Dropping the cost to launch (replacement sats etc) by continuing to take greater piece of all total space launches along with large step function capacity refinements with each new rocket generation, means they will continue to push the economics in their favor. $300k/sat might not be worth it, but unless there's a number of back to back unmitigated disasters with their new rockets (totally possible given the cost of getting it wrong) launch costs will continue to drop as they iterate. Even in the worst case where starship never works, they can still salvage and continually refine their current proven designs.
That said, I do not trust their IPO valuations at all. I have enormous respect for what SpaceX has accomplished in such a short time span. When the US government deprioritized further space R&D for all launch vehicles and relied entirely on Russian launch vehicles, I honestly thought it was the end of an era of innovation in space in my (current) country. I'm glad I was wrong to some extent, even if it means an over reliance on the private sector to make further progress.
You may point out that private space ventures sadly have similar problems to ceding to foreign nations, and you wouldn't be wrong. The only silver lining for me is getting to see continued progress in my lifetime. It doesn't take all the sting out of government funding drying up for space launch vehicles, especially when our other budgets like defense are so insane, but I'll take it at face value as a victory for humanity to continually improve space capabilities at scale in any form.
To be absolutely clear, as I make no allusions: we operate in a brutal, broken system from the current financial systems under capitalism in its current form. I'd likewise argue that a billionaire "with character" vs a billionaire with none is still highly problematic. The very existence of billionaires is the root of enough social ills that they should not exist as a class of people at all. Many in that class would even claim to be "doing what's best" in all honesty, when nothing could be further from the truth. Sadly that doesn't mean the ruling class simply ceases to exist because of our collective desires. Nothing short of massive societal change through collective action, something humans have been proven to be really, really bad at time and again, would make any other system possible. I digress..
That said, SpaceX engineers managing to perform impressive feats in manned and unmanned space travel still stands as something to be lauded in my book, even if their leadership deserves none of it. These feats are made _more impressive_ given the poor, child-like behavior found in their particular brand of leadership rather than less.
The employees of SpaceX have made their views about leadership very well known several times now, often with real consequences to themselves and their families. We live in unfortunate times. I'll take my slivers of hope for humanities continued advancement in space travel where I can however, even as it seems the fabric of society further unravels.
Transportships even reduce speed to reduce costs.
If the payload doesn't pay for all of this, it was a huge R&D investmen from the american people to Musks scifi ideas