>My understanding is that the Starship program is fully-funded already
Where does that information come from? SpaceX just raised another round of money. I keep seeing things about how profitable the organization is, but it looks like the operations are shareholder subsidized. Rockets are expensive, I don't think this stuff is profitable yet.
Musk is very aggressive about raising capital to accelerate scaling up. That Musk is raising sheds no light on profitability. He'll raise even with fat margins if he thinks it's the fastest path to his goals.
There's no question F9 has been deep into profitability for ages. Most people estimate they're operating at about 10% of the cost of their competitors now on a per flight basis.
Just from general announcements around this. As you mentioned, they just raised a round of funding which will probably be used for Starlink and Starship. Another big chunk of change came from Yusaku Maezawa for the Dear Moon project.
SpaceX is a private company and doesn't disclose its financials so there's way to know for sure; that's why I qualified my statement with "My understanding is".
Also their launch business (Falcon 9) is massively profitable already, there have been public statements by the company on this matter.
Starship being largely privately funded does not mean it's profitable.
One can exist without the other.
From NASA's perspective it's irrelevant whether the funding for Starship is coming from extra margin on Falcon 9 launches, or from outside investors putting money into SpaceX.
Where does that information come from? SpaceX just raised another round of money. I keep seeing things about how profitable the organization is, but it looks like the operations are shareholder subsidized. Rockets are expensive, I don't think this stuff is profitable yet.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/spacex-raises-valuation