If their pitch convinces people to part with modest cash for an unneeded product at 10x the price on the pitch of, “We’re poor kids who need to be encouraged by kind strangers”, it’s in that neutral zone between marketing a real product/idea/innovation/commodity, however modest, and panhandling.

I’m willing to admit I’m potentially in the grip of illusion, but I like to think that actual business, again however modest in scale, requires that the customer actually want to buy the product and consider it worth the price, or that the investor consider it reasonably likely they will make acceptable return, as opposed to merely thinking ‘let’s encourage the youngsters’.

No blame attaches to 7 year olds running a lemonade stand either, but people don’t stop because they really want lemonade.

That said, SpaceX is doing a bit more than “selling USG the fantasy that they have a space program.” They’ve put together a mid-weight launch vehicle with American reliability but a Russian price tag. That doesn’t sound glamorous but it will have a big impact on the launch industry (government and commercial) over the long haul, even if their more ambitious plans don’t come to fruition. There’s quite a bit more development trajectory left in their approach as well.

Contrary to how it’s being portrayed, it’s not revolutionary new technology that’s letting them do this. It’s finally putting into practice the ideas that Truax, von Braun, and others were talking about in the late 60s, with further gains from actually applying the best of current materials science.

It sounds like they had an absurd price model that didn’t have a hope until they started marketing themselves as a charity case. I suppose you could call that aggressive pursuit of venture capital. Sounds to me like rent-seeking.