this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2026
246 points (93.9% liked)
Technology
89251 readers
4598 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Revoke launch licenses until NASA gets what they need. Export ban on company and tech. Nationalize launch assets if absolutely necessary. Or at least threaten these things. SpaceX needs starlink, the kind of AI revenue they’d otherwise need is never going to materialize. Force them to play ball.
Sure, those are all things the government could do in a world where this wasn't the intended outcome.
NASA is being fed to SpaceX like a prime rib.
All of these are rational national plans, if only the administration is rational and working on national interests.
If it was built with public money, it should be appropriated to public use.
They generally weren't given money.
They won contracts and provided services. They did it almost entirely with fixed base price contracts as well. None of the cost plus, which was typical in space, and leans more into handouts as people intentionally try to milk the government by going over.
Its like if the US government buys billions of pieces of paper a year from paper suppliers and you expect them to own the paper companies that sell them the paper because they took government money for a sale. Many even own their own mills, but thats now a government mill since the government bought their paper.
This analogy falls apart in several ways. The majority of all funding for SpaceX comes from the government. This isn't like a paper company that has massive contracts outside of the government. Furthermore a paper company is a dime a dozen and probably not a national security issue like the sole provider of needed launches.
Governments would probably never need to take over a mundane company like a paper producer, but they most certainly would need to take over a critical supplier of national security needed services because it is run by a space Nazi.
Well that's kind of the definition of "funding". What other funding would there be? If you mean revenue or income, I think that would be possible, but that claim could use a citation.
I believe SpaceX is funded through a combination of private equity investment, US government contracts, starlink revenue, and fee contracts with the ISS and HLS.
I can see your point with the technicality of the word funding. I was definitely using it as a catch all for all their revenue streams.
Ok, that sounds about right.
And with all that in mind, I do think government funding is a significant part of their total income, but I would be very surprised if it made up for more than say 20%. I'm trying to keep in mind that less than 5% of their launches are actually for NASA. And honestly, being a telecom/ISP has been a lucrative racket from day one with the bell telephone company. (So I'm willing to bet that starlink is their cash cow)
You are correct, Starlink accounts for about 55% ($4,290 million out of $7,814 million) of their revenue. A closer examination reveals government contracts, not consumers, is the fastest growing market from 25% to 40% over the course of one year (2024 to 2025) of total Starlink revenue.
Doesn't really matter if the government is the main source that gets it off the ground.
Maybe a upstart paper company was able to snag a contract and they could undercut existing companies because they found an abandoned mill that they got for pennies on the dollar.
National security is definitely an issue, but again nothing to do with how it was built. Thats entirely outside how something is funded.
Edit: just to clarify the majority of all early funding. Today its starlink, government money isnt the main thing now.
Musk also desperately needs that starlink revenue to continue until he can merge Tesla and SpaceX to cover for dropping Tesla sales.
Yeah that'll happen. I'll just stay standing while holding my breath until it does.
And who will make these restrictions? Until someone shoots trump, that's not going to happen. Hopefully it happens soon.