First of all, I thought the part I was commenting on was specifically referring to the space race of the mid 20th century.
Second, how are these examples evidence that private industry does a better job than government? Has government even tried to offer public rides to space? If not, how can you compare the government's efforts to the private efforts? This is exactly my problem with Paul's comment. During the 50s / 60s, I don't recall any private industry even trying to get people into space. So, how can he possibly say that private industry would have done a better job?
The US approach to the space race, and the resulting innovation by the private sector, is interesting.
In essence, the government encouraged private innovation in aerospace technology, by underwriting the R&D costs and thereby greatly reducing the risk involved in developing new technologies.
The government did this by setting challenging goals in the field of aerospace, and then inviting bids from private contractors to meet those goals. The contractors that won the bids got substantial R&D financing to innovate new technologies and techniques in aerospace.
Today, Boeing (for example) has a profitable commercial space business, founded solidly on technologies that it acquired, the R&D for which was originally funded by the US government.
So it's an interesting scenario. The vision and funding were provided by the government: The know-how and innovation were provided by the private sector.
Military technology is developed in a very similar manner.
This is why I'm glad to see NASA transitioning some roles to the private sector. Ideally, NASA should only be involved in moving payloads (human or otherwise) from earth to orbit so long as doing so is a challenging goal requiring substantial R&D effort and business risk.
If getting humans and supplies to the ISS isn't cutting-edge, then NASA should transition it to the private sector and shift their budget to the Next Big Thing (whatever we end up deciding that should be).
