Andy Pasztor

Burt Rutan

On February 24, 2010, Andy Pasztor wrote an article titled "Space Pioneer Burt Rutan Blasts New NASA Plan," claiming that Burt Rutan had written a letter to Congress sharply criticizing President Obama's plans to turn over portions of its human spaceflight program to commercial providers. A couple days later Burt Rutan released a statement saying that "the WSJ chose to cherry-pick and misquote my comments to Cong Wolf."

SpaceX

Immediately following SpaceX's inaugural launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, Andy Pasztor wrote in a WSJ article titled "SpaceX Illustrates Privatization Risk" on June 7, 2010 alleging that SpaceX claimed it would require $1 billion to build a launch escape system for its rocket, and that the company would likely require future assistance from US taxpayers. When asked about this, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded saying:

"Andy Pasztor’s article in the Journal was, I’m sorry to say, rife with errors. He was off by a factor of ten on what it would cost SpaceX to develop a launch escape system. Also, under no circumstances would SpaceX be seeking a financing round from the taxpayers. That doesn’t make any sense."

Despite that statement by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, SpaceX has received substantial money from U.S. taxpayers in the form of NASA contracts. In May 2011 a Government Accountability Office report titled "Commercial Launch Vehicles: NASA Taking Measures to Manage Delays and Risks" stated that starting in November 2011 SpaceX had, in addition to a contract of $278 million, been awarded $118 million for additional Commercial Orbital Transportation Services ("COTS") risk reduction milestones, bringing the company's total COTS contract to $396 million. In April 2011, SpaceX was awarded $75 million as a participant in NASA's CCDev2. In August 2012, NASA announced that, as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Integration Capability program, SpaceX won a $440 million contract.