"And the irony is, that he got money for first SpaceX launches from NASA, and got a lot of engineering made for him for free at NASA as well."

That isn't really "ironic" though. All of the technology that NASA develops is "free" for any US company that wants to use it. Pre-pandemic NASA would host an annual NASA Technology exposition at Ames Research that was kind of like a science fair for nerds. There were posters, and often the original investigators, who would discuss what they did, what they discovered, how it could be used, etc. A number of bio-diesel companies got their start from NASA bio-diesel research.

I much prefer that model to the one where the NSF or DARPA funds a university research program that then patents the research and holds it hostage to licensing fees.

The other aspect of your comment is also somewhat out of touch with the relationship NASA has with space craft. NASA has never been the sole supplier of a space craft. They always let contracts to vendors who built components of spacecraft and then they integrated those components into a complete system. Many of the "big" components for space craft are not off the shelf, like engines, so unless you want the government in the rocket engine building business, you buy those from someone else. From the very first, NASA rockets such as Vanguard and Mercury Redstone were purchased from others.

That said, NASA recognized as early as the Mercury project days that they were not ever going to be a "supplier" of rockets to third parties. They use rockets to do science and they need someone to buy them from.

One need only look at the Space Launch System (SLS) to see the travails of NASA trying to project manage building rockets these days. The budgeting process is stuffed to overflowing with politics where congressional representatives make budget dollars contingent on them going to a company in their district or state, and science as a priority comes and goes depending on the administration.

NASA didn't "give" SpaceX money, they bought rockets from SpaceX to meet their needs. Just like a startup that "lands" a big enterprise customer that buys their product and as a result provides the resources for the startup to both grow and build and deliver the product that was purchased.

Looking at the price they paid, they got a good deal. The first "big" contract, the resupply missions, cost NASA way less than it would have if they had paid ULA to launch those missions. At the same time SpaceX made enough profit from that contract to continue improving the fundamentals. Once it was clear they could reliably get things into orbit, other people who wanted to buy "launch services" started inquiring. SpaceX has out competed every other launch provider in the world because they can launch a payload and make money on it at a price that doesn't cover the other vendors launch at all. And they can do that because they are vertically integrated (pun intended) providing the booster, the engines, and the delivery system.

If you want to look at being "subsidized" by the government then you need look no further than the "cost plus" contracts that the government used to write for launch services. Those explicitly allowed the folks as ULA to scrape a few billion dollars off the top every year to "insure a domestic launch capability." Something you need if one third of your national defense rests on being able to use a rocket to put a bunch of nuclear warheads into someone's country[1].

So I think it is important to give credit where credit is due. Elon Musk re-imagined how the space launch industry might be structured and Gwen Shotwell effectively built a company that could execute on that re-imagining. This even when the existing companies in the space called Elon's ideas "fanciful", "ludicrous", or in one case "drug induced."

I continue to watch Blue Origin as well, although I feel as if the team of Jeff Bezos and Bob Smith (the CEO) is not as strong here. It is particularly illuminating to compare choices they have made as a company (secrecy vs openness, prioritizing sub-orbital over orbital, Etc.) and how they have played out.

[1] Hence the research programs of Iran, North Korea, India, and Pakistan to name a few.