> Or did they just take that money and bail with it?
The Starship portion of the Artemis contracts are structured such that SpX only gets money once certain milestones are completed (i.e. reach orbit, show orbital re-fuelling, land on the Moon, etc.
Just an aside, SpX is one of the few (only?) big space companies that don't bid on "cost+" contracts. They've only taken fixed cost contracts so far. And they've saved NASA ~ 7-14B$ to date on those contracts (by NASA's own numbers). Just look at the ISS crew program, they've taken ~1/2 of what Boeing took, they've finished the first tranche of crew missions, they're now on the 2nd tranche, and Boeing hasn't flown one crew mission yet. In fact they've fumbled the test flight so bad that there's a real possibility that they'll have to re-do it.
The Starship portion of the Artemis contracts are structured such that SpX only gets money once certain milestones are completed (i.e. reach orbit, show orbital re-fuelling, land on the Moon, etc.
Just an aside, SpX is one of the few (only?) big space companies that don't bid on "cost+" contracts. They've only taken fixed cost contracts so far. And they've saved NASA ~ 7-14B$ to date on those contracts (by NASA's own numbers). Just look at the ISS crew program, they've taken ~1/2 of what Boeing took, they've finished the first tranche of crew missions, they're now on the 2nd tranche, and Boeing hasn't flown one crew mission yet. In fact they've fumbled the test flight so bad that there's a real possibility that they'll have to re-do it.