[mostdataisnice]

The fundamental problem is that NASA's funding is tied to politics and not a business model. Both Democrats and Republicans gutted NASA over the last 15 years and essentially killed any chance we had at even launching basic rockets. The SLS was the last serious project NASA tackled and it was shuttered.

Private space exploration has brought us innovation at a pace NASA could have never delivered because it always had to be pessimistic and scared of funding cuts if anything ever failed.

[dantheman]

SpaceX raised about 6 billion in total, NASAs budget is 23 Billion/Year -- why did NASA lose the ability to get people to space?

You can blame whatever you want, but at the end of the day - they're failing.

[ModernMech]

Didn't they just land a robot on mars? Maybe they aren't failing but have different priorities. People marvel that SpaceX docks with the ISS but the existence of the ISS and the people on it is taken for granted at this point. How did they get there before SpaceX?

[dantheman]

Space Shuttle and then Soyuz.