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this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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They have a $25B yearly budget.
What is SpaceX spending on R&D? From what I've read, Starship is estimated to cost $10B for development and their R&D budget for 2023 was $1.5B. If NASA was going to build something similar themselves, they've had nearly 70 years and hundreds of billions to accomplish it.
In reality their budget goes toward companies like Boeing, Northrop Grummon, and Lockheed Martin, who then pocket it and build substandard equipment. This is all public information so I can't imagine why people are downvoting other than being extremely emotional for some inexplicable reason.
You are omitting the lede. Public appetite for failure on tax payer funds is near zero. That increases time, complexity, and cost for launches (with or without humans aboard).
Which can be a failure in itself when you spend 10 years and tens of billions building something "perfectly" only for it to break on its maiden voyage. That makes you wonder what was the point of doing everything so methodically when they could have taken a more efficient and iterative approach.
I'm not saying it's a good system, but one that exists due to the nature of the funding. Those external pressures (especially when it gets political) just don't allow for the same amount of mistakes.
Remember, SpaceX was one failed launch away from bankruptcy.