SpaceX's contracts were absolutely subsidies - the contracted Falcon 1 tests and the resulting Falcon 9 contracts were an expensive moonshot for the USG at first - but even if you discount them, Tesla absolutely hoovered up subsidies like the EV tax credits.
From Wiki [1]:
SpaceX spent its own capital to develop and fly its previous launcher, Falcon 1, with no pre-arranged sales of launch services. SpaceX developed Falcon 9 with private capital as well, but did have pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights once specific capabilities were demonstrated.
Customers: DARPA, DARPA, DOD/NASA, mass simulator (instead of the intended payload after the first three launches), Malaysia (the intended payload of the fourth flight).
"pre-arranged commitments by NASA to purchase several operational flights" is a subsidy, as were the milestone payments along the way.
I'm a huge SpaceX fan, but let's not pretend they could've done this alone. They very nearly went bankrupt on Falcon 1, per Musk - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/29/elon-musk-9-years-ago-spacex... - and had they needed to self-fund those launches/payloads entirely they would not have survived. It's a beautiful example of how powerful public/private partnerships can be.
I have no complaints here. It's a good use of subsidies. Government should use subsidies for this sort of purpose.
I just take issue with pretending they aren't subsidies, and incorrect assertions NASA/government had little/nothing to do with their success.
I'm an enormous fan of SpaceX - you could probably have heard me scream a mile away when they caught the booster last month - and have a personal dislike for Musk since the Twitter acquisition and his hypocrisy there. Nothing in this thread from my end criticizes SpaceX for being subsidized. In fact, I'm all for it.
Would you call all options and futures subsidies? Are airlines subsidizing oil companies when they purchase oil futures in order to hedge their oil costs?
There is no indication that these commitments were underpriced by the government, so to call them subsidies is at best baseless misinformation.
> Are airlines subsidizing oil companies when they purchase oil futures in order to hedge their oil costs?
No; both parties in the deal have successfully accomplished their respective roles repeatedly before. The airline isn't doing anything new; the oil company isn't doing anything new.
(And they both absolutely get subsidized!)
> There is no indication that these commitments were underpriced by the government...
They got paid for a launch of an untested platform and a student-built payload, regardless of success, in hopes it would result in a good tested platform. What else do you call it?
No question that NASA was pivotal to SpaceX’s success, especially COTS program. However that wasn’t subsides. They only got paid when they could deliver. Had they fail to launch Falcon 9 or cargo Dragon they would have gotten no dimes from NASA.
You can argue that all government contracts are a different form of subsidy, but in common parlance people do not use the term subsidy when describing government contracts.
A government contract paying to send up student payloads on an untested in-development launcher with no requirement for a successful launch (and there were three failures) is absolutely a subsidy.
That contract financed tiny part Falcon 1 and was likely given to the government for an extremely cheap price. Yes, you can call that a subsidy but its one of very few things you can really call that for SpaceX.
They even have a page about them: https://www.tesla.com/support/incentives