I really don&#x27;t like national, or jingoistic-based comparisons of contribution by country, since personally I am an individualist. I am hoping for the day we have no borders or tribes or nations (does that make me an anarchist too?). But, if lines are to be drawn, I believe you&#x27;re short-changing history here a bit. The U.S. doesn&#x27;t just &#x27;holding firmly in production and sales of space-ready elements for high orbit satellites&#x27; - it innovates and funds them, and many other areas of tech. The U.S. is number one in most advanced country in space technologies. France is number three, Germany number five. The UK didn&#x27;t make the top eight. Maybe the ESA would be competitive, but that is a 72-member group, not a single country.
The High-Tech sector, Google, Apple, and many others is dominated by the U.S., however, that doesn&#x27;t account for sheer size. In technology, R&amp;D, tech personnel, education and patents, and accounting for per capita, it is countries like South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, Israel, Germany and others. The UK is ten on that list, the US one.
There is a sub-culture in China of farmers building flying tricycles, deep-sea manned submarines to collect seafood, and lots of other cool (and dangerous?) stuff. Unfortunately, they are bound by an information-filtering, state government, but oddly have freedom in the countryside to do just such crazy tinkering. Check YouTube for those items. Amazing. I have lived in SE Asia for over 7 years, and I can tell you that I sometimes feel more free to do things here than where I grew up in Brooklyn, but to a point. I would be stopped once I became &#x27;visible&#x27;. &#x27;Tallest blade of grass&#x27; and all that jazz!