Musk needs NASA and the US government more generally to fund Starship development
but more crucially he needs government support for the technology to do more than just land at Mars. ISRU is going to need either a submarine-style nuclear reactor (necessitating government licenses and whatnot) or a supermassive solar farm, and there are serious problems launching anywhere near either of those (necessitating a heavy rover and miles of cable to move your power station out of the debris zone).
I don't think SpaceX is actually making any money at the moment, setting up Starlink and Starship and Starbase and the oil rig conversions and so on, while still maintaining the fleet of Dragons and Falcons and everything else.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Wed 21 Jul 2021, 15:37,
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