&gt; SpaceX has made several firsts that no company or government ever has before.<p>Not meaningfully, not yet. They&#x27;ve landed the expensive part of a satellite launch system, which is very cool but the USG did it 30+ years ago. I don&#x27;t think the difference between a vertical and a horizontal landing is that important.<p>And fundamentally there&#x27;s no magic private industry pixie dust. A company is just a collection of people, as is a government; they both have to obey the same laws of physics. In some cases competition drives private industry to be more efficient. In some cases the government&#x27;s long time horizons, trusted position, and ability to do things where the benefits are widely diffused make it more efficient. But it&#x27;s only ever a matter of efficiency, not of can or can&#x27;t.<p>&gt; Receiving money from the government doesn&#x27;t mean the government could have done the same thing.<p>It means that government money was a vital part of making it happen. SpaceX built their system on the back of $X from Musk and $Y from the USG (among other sources). If we took some money out of the X pile and put it in the Y pile, maybe the result would have been worse, maybe it would have been better.