Sixty years after John Glenn orbited Earth, the private sector leads in space travel

See Who Built That Spaceship? by Andy Kessler. 

"The Mercury program cost $2.2 billion in current dollars, more than $300 million a launch. Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced last week that launches into orbit will cost $10 million within two or three years." 

"Let’s look at the numbers. In 2019 U.S. research and development spending was $656 billion—three quarters by business, the remaining $170 billion divided among the federal government, universities and nonprofits. Google spent $26 billion on R&D in 2019, Microsoft about $17 billion, Apple $16 billion, Intel $13 billion. I guess they did build that. For the record, federal money for research goes, in order, to the departments of Health and Human Services, Energy, and Defense, and then NASA.

A lot of that nonbusiness R&D spending is for basic research, as it should be. Where does basic research end and development begin? Alphabet, Google’s parent company, funds an experimental R&D group named X, which it describes as a “moonshot factory,” funding projects like self-driving cars, robots, internet-access balloons, geothermal energy, and advanced artificial intelligence. That’s a lot of basic research before product development. Unlike government projects, Google management can decide when to expand or kill projects based on their economic merit, not on how it affects a senator’s state. Universities can provide valuable basic research, as can government labs. But turning them into commercial products that scale to millions or billions isn’t a government trick."

"Stop with the “you didn’t build that.” Every entrepreneur knows he stands on the shoulders of giants. Even though government-run GPS satellites orbit the earth, do you think Chuck Schumer could write code to direct an Uber to your location?

Government might still be good at basic research, but certainly not at execution. Remember when the Food and Drug Administration required CD-ROMs sent by paper mail for the early Covid-test applications? Or how in 2020 New Jersey put out a call for Cobol programmers to upgrade ancient unemployment-benefits software? The private market’s accountability would never have permitted these errors."