The (Deplorable) MUSEman wrote, “the government gives over $5,000,000,000 to a wealthy businessman to create industries out of whole cloth without turning an annual profit on any of them.”

First, your numbers are wrong. SpaceX’s contract with NASA for crew Dragon flights is for $2.6 billion, not $5 billion. Second, the contract was not for something “out of whole cloth,” that did not exist. Both Falcon 9 and Dragon existed and were flying and profitable when the contract was awarded. NASA merely wished some upgrades before they’d put their passengers on them.

Third and most important, since 2014 SpaceX has completed 81 successful launches. I haven’t run the precise numbers, but probably only about 25% were for either NASA or the military. That means 75% were commercial, at a launch price ranging from $50 to $67 million. Even at the lower figure, this means SpaceX made about $3 billion on these launches alone. Probably more.

SpaceX is not being subsidized by the government. It is offering a product to the government, which is better than anything anyone else is offering, and the government is buying it, as a customer. You should be aware of the difference.

“Elon Musk is like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden combined (their offspring?) in Atlas Shrugged.”?

I don’t recall the part of “Atlas Shrugged” where the government gives over $5,000,000,000 to a wealthy businessman to create industries out of whole cloth without turning an annual profit on any of them.

Just saying.

You must still weigh in the cost of getting the gas to the gas station.

Yes the prime vehicle can remain in orbit, and then proceed with it’s presumed deep space journey, but the there is still the cost to get the propellant up there in the first place.

So long as Hawthorne had a national security exemption from Covid-19-related closure orders, SpaceX could also turn out smaller Starship parts there – and continues to do so. But a plant stood up solely to make Starship hulls would likely have been subject to the same open-ended closure order as Fremont. So Elon elected to minimize his suddenly much more highly probable future losses and cancel ASAP.

The ultimate fallout from the Fremont re-opening dust-up in May is likely to be a longer-term de-emphasis, or even full withdrawal, of Musk-related manufacturing enterprise from CA. If McGregor suddenly starts producing Raptors as well as testing them and/or there is suddenly a new “tent” at Boca Chica cranking out Starship aero-surfaces, these will be early indicators that Musk’s corporate footprint in CA is headed for zero.

Musk’s recent memo establishing Starship’s top priority within the company does not mean all development will now focus on Starship, just that it will have first call on engineering resources. There is still Dragon XL and other comparatively minor development efforts to continue and this will be done. But these other things are mostly less time-critical than Starship.

Now that NASA has some weight resting on Starship as well, this new prioritization will also be in line with NASA’s interests. That is, at least in part, probably behind NASA’s recent contract mod to allow reused hardware on USCV missions to ISS. The other part of the decision is likely NASA’s insider knowledge that Boeing isn’t going to be making any USCV runs of its own for at least two years. If SpaceX is allowed to conduct such missions with used hardware, it can keep Crew/Cargo D2 production at extant rates, shift the refurb workforce smoothly from Dragon 1 to the Dragon 2s and fly extra USCV missions in Boeing’s place for as long as required without needing to shift any resources away from Starship. That wouldn’t have been possible if SpaceX was going to have to do double duty on USCV runs with the previous “new-vehicles-only” policy in place.

This is just one more bit of evidence that SpaceX, over the past 6 months, has decisively replaced Boeing as foremost in NASA’s corporate affections. Great things have already come of this. A whole lot more is sure to follow.

If that’s the case, lets just hope SpaceX tests refuelling at out a low enough orbit that any explosive debris reenters quickly!

If Spacex can master on-orbit refueling as they have (nearly) mastered relanding of boosters, ships like Starship will be able to roam the planets, landing on and exploring them and returning to Earth orbit, in many instances without using throwaway stages. With in-situ refueling we could see a golden age of space travel that would make Heinlein smile!

Ps. Spacex HQ is in Hawthorn, California. They build F9 and Dragons there, so maybe it is phased out an HQ moves to… Houston? Orlando? DC? But they build Raptors there too…

Faster than pretty much anything we have seen in rocketry (ever?).

Even more/faster is going to be awesome!