They're a private company funded personally by the richest man in the world. What makes you think there is such a thing as a "starship development budget" and that it's limited?
Musk's interplanetary delirium aside, HLS is the customer for Super Heavy/Starship. They've reported spending all of the NASA's 3 billion and delivered very little of contracted capability so far.
SpaceX filings show $3.8B of funding from various mostly undisclosed investors, Musk's own stake can't exceed that can it?
The richest man wouldn't be so rich if he didn't watch his money.
> They've reported spending all of the NASA's 3 billion and delivered very little of contracted capability so far.
This is not 'reported'. This is just something somebody who doesn't like Musk made up and is successfully spreading it on social media. I have read this claim 100s of time in ever forum, I don't know where this came from.
The facts are literally out-there, but nobody cares. You can literally look up the contract on the official government website.
The payment for HLS has about 40-50 milestones, each gives a part of the money. SpaceX has completed like 25 of them. They have received 2.x billion $ so far. If they finish everything they will get like 3.4 billion $.
And its a fixed price contract, how much money they already spend is completely irrelevant for the government, unless SpaceX might go bankrupt, and they clearly aren't.
SpaceX got exactly as much money as specified in the contract for how far the development has come. This is a far better method for government to pay contractors then what NASA usually does.
