Elon Musk is only an investor, and has invented nothing.
The Wright Brothers had no product.
A plane capable of a hundred feet of tenuous flight is not capable of being sold as a product.
It was the Navy that funded it into a product.
Government has always funded the main advancements of technology.
For example, firearms, mass production, and the assembly line were funded by the government, when Eli Whitney produced muskets for the government.
{...
The motives behind Whitney's acceptance of a contract to manufacture muskets in 1798 were mostly monetary. By the late 1790s, Whitney was on the verge of bankruptcy and the cotton gin litigation had left him deeply in
debt. His
New Haven cotton gin factory had burned to the ground, and litigation sapped his remaining resources. The
French Revolution had ignited new conflicts between Great Britain, France, and the United States. The new American government, realizing the need to prepare for war, began to rearm. The
War Department issued contracts for the manufacture of 10,000 muskets. Whitney, who had never made a gun in his life, obtained a contract in January 1798 to deliver 10,000 to 15,000 muskets in 1800. He had not mentioned interchangeable parts at that time. Ten months later, the Treasury Secretary,
Oliver Wolcott, Jr., sent him a "foreign pamphlet on arms manufacturing techniques," possibly one of Honoré Blanc's reports, after which Whitney first began to talk about interchangeability.
Whitney's gun factory in 1827
In May 1798, Congress voted for legislation that would use eight hundred thousand dollars in order to pay for small arms and cannons in case war with France erupted. It offered a 5,000 dollar incentive with an additional 5,000 dollars once that money was exhausted for the person that was able to accurately produce arms for the government. Because the cotton gin had not brought Whitney the rewards he believed it promised, he accepted the offer. Although the contract was for one year, Whitney did not deliver the arms until 1809, using multiple excuses for the delay. Recently, historians have found that during 1801–1806, Whitney took the money and headed into South Carolina in order to profit from the cotton gin.
[16]
Although Whitney's demonstration of 1801 appeared to show the feasibility of creating interchangeable parts,
Merritt Roe Smith concludes that it was "staged" and "duped government authorities" into believing that he had been successful. The charade gained him time and resources toward achieving that goal.
[16]
When the government complained that Whitney's price per musket compared unfavorably with those produced in government armories, he was able to calculate an actual price per musket by including
fixed costs such as insurance and
machinery, which the government had not accounted for. He thus made early contributions to both the concepts of
cost accounting, and
economic efficiency in manufacturing.
...}
en.wikipedia.org
Edison could not have ever sold a single light bulb if not for the government producing generators and stringing up the wiring for them.