You do realize that most of the money NASA has given SpaceX has been in the form of contracts to launch missions for them? I'm pretty sure very minimal tax dollars are going to Starship development right now, especially compared to other launch providers (ULA, Blue Origin, ect.) It's because of SpaceX that America is able to launch Astronauts to space without using Russia since the Space Shuttle was retired.
Plus they limited it to act 1 only. So I don't get how you could even claim it was a "full release game released as early access". You literally couldn't even play the whole game.