Frankly, neither do public endeavors. Public endeavors have the interests of the politicians first and foremost, and NASA funding is, for all practical purposes, another pork program intended to draw in votes in Florida and Texas, with any gains for humanity as a positive side effect to be exploited in campaign ads. In the past 50 years this model has failed to deliver improved access to space. SpaceX has managed to reduce costs (and, by extension, increase accessibility) by a hundred fold. I know everyone hates Musk, and he is well and truly an asshole, but the current space renaissance is due to SpaceX.
Frankly, neither do public endeavors. Public endeavors have the interests of the politicians first and foremost, and NASA funding is, for all practical purposes, another pork program intended to draw in votes in Florida and Texas, with any gains for humanity as a positive side effect to be exploited in campaign ads. In the past 50 years this model has failed to deliver improved access to space. SpaceX has managed to reduce costs (and, by extension, increase accessibility) by a hundred fold. I know everyone hates Musk, and he is well and truly an asshole, but the current space renaissance is due to SpaceX.
“The government has a defect: it’s potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they’re pure tyrannies.” -Noam Chomsky