In 2008, after three failed tries, SpaceX launched its first rocket – enough to earn it a $1.6 billion contract from NASA for flights to the International Space Station. Years later, most of the company’s work and plans involve flights to the ISS, which itself exists only as the result of public investment. The core technology of space travel depends heavily on NASA-funded work. This is not to negate the company’s innovations—in particular, lowering the cost of rocket launches and perhaps fanning visions of space exploration cheap enough for non-billionaires. But SpaceX is not driving the future of space exploration. It is capitalizing on a deep pool of technology and highly trained people that already existed, and it is doing so at a moment when national support for NASA has diminished and the government is privatizing key aspects of space travel. Likewise, Musk’s success at Tesla is undergirded by public-sector investment and political support for clean tech. For starters, Tesla relies on lithium-ion batteries pioneered in the late 1980s with major funding from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Tesla has benefited significantly from guaranteed loans and state and federal subsidies. In 2010, the company reached a loan agreement with the Department of Energy worth $465 million. (Under this arrangement, Tesla agreed to produce battery packs that other companies could benefit from and promised to manufacture electric cars in the United States.) In addition, Tesla has received $1.29 billion in tax incentives from Nevada, where it is building a “gigafactory” to produce batteries for cars and consumers. It has won an array of other loans and tax credits, plus rebates for its consumers, totaling another $1 billion, according to a recent series by the Los Angeles Times.
Amanda Schaffer, “Tech’s Enduring Great-Man Myth” in MIT Technology Review (8/4/15)
