Routine_Shine_1921 t1_iwhynbp wrote
Reply to comment by spcialkfpc in How many different companies now have built a rocket and used it to deliver anything or people to space (besides government organizations like NASA and the Russian equivalent)? by Courcy6185
Not true. SpaceX put its vehicle in orbit for the first time in late 2008, they paid for it themselves, with a mass simulator. DARPA did pay for two launches earlier, neither of them was their first orbital test.
Far from "access to the launch site" being subsidized, the government not only charged them for it, but also screwed them, literally, multiple times (as expected, the government exists for the sole purpose of screwing the people over). They paid for Vandenberg, built a lot of infrastructure then, and then the military said "yeah, we weren't expecting you to actually use it, you can't launch", so SpaceX lost all of that investment and had to move in a hurry.
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