“When the government is hiring you to design, develop, build, and operate a thing, they’re the customer,” Shotwell said. “They’re paying for it. They get to have their hands in the design. The decisions. They’re covering the whole thing. But no one was paying us for design or development. They were paying us for flights.” This offered an advantage in that SpaceX could build the rocket that Musk and his engineers wanted to—but it came with a big downside. Unless Shotwell sold a multitude of launch contracts, the company would die.
