SpaceX has begun launching a much larger proportion of commercial missions. During the last 14 months SpaceX has flown 15 times, and just four of those missions have carried government payloads. Accordingly, the company’s fraction of purely commercial launches has risen from 45 percent before April 2016 to 71 percent since. SpaceX’s next two launches will be for commercial customers as well, so it seems plausible by the end of this year that about three-quarters of the company’s Falcon 9 launches will be for private customers rather than the government. In short, it is becoming difficult to argue that SpaceX is now becoming anything but a commercial space company.
In addition to honest criticisms, there have also been a raft of wholly dishonest aspersions cast at Musk and the company. This undercurrent of anti-Musk sentiment alleges that SpaceX exists solely to milk the government and that Elon Musk is a great “swindler.” The criticism has emerged on some right-wing websites. The reality is that SpaceX is now saving the government quite a bit of money, and we can have increasing confidence that it will do so in the future on an even grander scale.