@Ian Johnston.... that isn't really accurate.
Yes, the USG bought the early Falcon 1 _launches_, but those were the "per copy" costs, not the development bucks. Likewise, NASA paid to have a usable Dragon capsule in operation, but the total amount was $396.... which sounds a lot, but the price of a Falcon 9 launch is $62M, and this was while NASA was paying $56M per seat on Soyuz, so basically NASA paid SpaceX the price of 7 Soyuz seats to get the (uncrewed) Dragon. "Huge funding" isn't really accurate.
Yes, Crewed Dragon was a really significant investment by NASA ($2.6B), but again, compare it against (a) what it would have cost NASA to develop the same capability (see SLS!!!), and (b) what the actual unit costs work out at (because those numbers include a number of launches).
SpaceX also pockets large wodges of cash from the US military, but as suppliers, not development contractors. When they launch a GPS satellite for 70% of the price of the incumbent (ULA) -- which they do -- it's clear this is not the typical government-funded operation.
But here's where it gets interesting: Falcon Heavy was privately funded (hence the payload: Musk's roadster), Starlink is privately funded (1,378 satellites launched and operational to date), and Starship is privately funded.
Sure, they couldn't have got this far without the government's help, but that's true of a lot of businesses (telecomms, IT, aviation, transportation); separating pure private development from development for particular customers is hard and pointless!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
