Most of their income comes from government subsidies and grants. So, it is rather funny to see the owner of the company running around the government and "cutting" costs.
SpaceX's total funding from government grants and subsidies is effectively $0. They do sell commercial services to the government and bid on competitive commercial contracts, but those are neither grants nor subsidies.
No, they didn't. The government wants to get to the Moon via the Artemis program (which will never go anywhere, but that's a different topic) and so NASA solicited proposals and bids for a 'human landing system' [1] for the Moon. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics all submitted bids and proposals. SpaceX won.
Amusingly enough Blue Origin then sued over losing, and also lost that. They were probably hoping for something similar to what happened with Commercial Crew (NASA's soliciting bids from companies to get astronauts to the ISS). There NASA also selected SpaceX, but Boeing whined to Congress and managed to get them to force NASA to not only also pick Boeing, but to pay Boeing's dramatically larger bid price.
SpaceX has since not only sent dozens of astronauts to the ISS without flaw, but is now also being scheduled to go rescue the two guinea pigs sent on Boeing hardware. They ended up stranded on the ISS for months after Boeing's craft was deemed too dangerous for them to return to Earth in.
> so NASA solicited proposals and bids for a 'human landing system' [1] for the Moon. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics all submitted bids and proposals. SpaceX won.
To go to the moon ... in 2021 ... yet we just keep giving them more and more money.
