Is SpaceX getting a little government help for its Falcon 9 launcher?
Perhaps to launch a space plane for the USAF?

See here:

Final frontier revisited: the US responds to space requirements

By Bill Sweetman IDR Technology and Aerospace Editor

So far, little attention has been paid to a potentially important new start in
the Fiscal Year 2007 US defence budget: the first funding line in years to be
dedicated to a military, partially reusable space launch vehicle. If it survives
this year's budget deliberations in Congress, the Affordable Responsive
Spacelift (ARES) programme could start with flight tests of a small X-plane
demonstrator as early as 2010.

Another little-publicised new development in 2005 was that the new-start SpaceX
(Space Exploration Technologies) company announced an order for the Falcon 9
expendable launcher from an unspecified US government customer. The US Air Force
(USAF) had previously ordered launches from SpaceX, covering the small Falcon 1,
but this was the first US government order for a medium-class launcher from a
non-traditional company.

The philosophy behind ARES is to balance the advantages of the reusable system
with those of the expendable - which, like SpaceX's Falcon, is quite simple and
can be cheap to develop. Compared with a fully reusable system, ARES requires
the development of about one third as much reusable hardware, with a less
challenging speed and temperature envelope. Compared with a fully expendable
system, ARES expends about one third as much mass. In a study by the Aerospace
Corporation, the hybrid approach turned out to be the best choice in about 85
per cent of the scenarios examined.

Underlying this philosophical approach is the fact that ARES is much more about
responsiveness than economics, although the USAF is looking to reduce costs by a
factor of three to six. The first step in the ARES programme, according to USAF
documents, is to define and build a small-scale demonstrator. This would be
about one quarter the size of a full-scale ARES and would weigh about 6,800 kg
without booster fuel. Its main goals would be to demonstrate the integration of
modern materials, avionics and propulsion technology in a low-maintenance,
high-flight-rate vehicle - one specific target is to launch five times in 10
days with a 15-person crew - and to demonstrate a flight profile in which the
booster would release an upper stage at Mach 7 and return to its launch site.

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