It was extremely cool 45+ years ago. But the space race ended, and while government-funded space programs did some fantastic work beyond that (space telescopes and Mars landers), it took capitalism to develop the resuable rocket, then scale it up to Starship proportions.
A more accurate analogy would be giving contracts to Exxon back before they had ever found or drilled a single oil well, as their primary source of revenue to subsidize their R&D and learning curve, in the hope that they would eventually be able to supply the government with needed oil, and ultimately succeeded to become a key supplier.
[−]somenameforme · 2026-11-15 Sun 02:34 UTC ·
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They only gave the contract once Falcon had already gotten into orbit.
Absolutely, wings only work in Earth's atmosphere. Rocket propulsion can work anywhere. Leaving the landing gear on Earth is also a no brainer since it's only ever used there so why bring it all the way to orbit with you? Thankfully all the other rocks we'd want to land on have much lower gravity so landing on them can be done with lightweight legs. Hell, maybe there's a way to send the landing structure ahead of time like some variation on that Chinese cable catcher they used for their copycat.
No, unfortunately I cannot. I've looked. So I can't dismiss the possibility it's apocryphal. I do remember seeing it so I'm not just making it up (but frustratingly I cannot present evidence to convince you of that).
Part of its design specification was the ability to recover satellites from orbit, it's rumoured this was to have the ability to capture soviet satellites.
That’s like saying 25% of Exxon’s development came from tax payer money because the government uses a shitload of oil.
It's like saying tax payers are funding charmin because the pentagon uses its TP.