Will he get bailed out by the Feds again though? SpaceX launch 3 failure was bailed out by the DOD. Tesla was bailed out by Obama.

Possibly. I don’t know if being bailed out is a sign of business acumen. Maybe political acumen? In any case bailing out present day Tesla or SpaceX will be very expensive, unclear of taxpayers will go for it.

Which is presumably why Elon is aiming for retail as the bail-outers

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vessenes 13 hours ago | parent [-]

SpaceX is emphatically not in need of a bailout. I don't know the history of launch 3, so I can't opine, but saying Tesla was bailed out by Obama is reductive in the extreme. Elon is the single largest taxpayer in US history.

It's not a bail-out Elon wants, nor is it 'safety' for SX. He wants capital to go build out space as fast as possible; he needs retail capital to do it.

	▲	wat10000 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		People mix up (deliberately, I'm pretty sure) bailouts with payments for services. The other commenter might be referring to the NASA CRS contract for Falcon 9 and Dragon which was awarded after that third failed launch and pretty much saved the company. But that was payment for providing resupply to the ISS, just like they've done with other companies, not a bailout. Tesla did get a DoE loan in 2010 at a critical point its early history. It's worth noting that the amount of this loan was approximately 5% what the government spent bailing out legacy automakers in 2008, and about 0.5% of Musk's current net worth.