it feels terrible when incompetent people take over and start pissing away our money, essentially holding whatever defense concern they managed to monopolize as a hostage. So that part to me is very depressing.
My bigger point was that this process is not linear or predictable. Saturn rocket was a miracle that seemingly no market forces could afford to build. Organizations that built that miracle have exhausted and are nowadays essentially welfare. Now, SpaceX and starlink are a private miracle that was hard to imagine just a couple decades ago. Not sure what the moral is here, but somehow we seem to find a way, whether private or public.
My bigger point was that this process is not linear or predictable. Saturn rocket was a miracle that seemingly no market forces could afford to build. Organizations that built that miracle have exhausted and are nowadays essentially welfare. Now, SpaceX and starlink are a private miracle that was hard to imagine just a couple decades ago. Not sure what the moral is here, but somehow we seem to find a way, whether private or public.