Drawing the line between private/public/government is kinda tricky. The way I understand CALT and CASTC is that they are government owned enterprises as opposed to a government agency like NASA. Maybe its a distinction without a difference, especially when their contracts are all government and presumably their "profits" go back to government as the owner?
I agree. The point I was hoping to get at is that most people misconstrue Spacex being the first “private” rocket company as the first non governmental manufacturer. ULA is public in the sense you can buy stock, not that it is run by federal servants.
Maybe the difference is mostly marketing in that SpaceX seems to make more of its non-governmental identity than many other US companies and within the US other companies, if thought of at all, are thought as part of their linguistic or national heritage. Like Arianespace "is" French or any *cosmos "is" Russian.
I was thinking that SpaceX seems more private because they have a seemingly valid consumer market with StarLink, but how different is that from Hughes, HughesNet, EchoStar and Dish Network? Ok, Hughes didn't build their own rockets but they still had to pay for them.
https://spacelaunchnow.me/launch/long-march-5-change-5