[laurowyn]

Where did anybody expect Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic by this point? 17-20 years of R&D, building on decades of rocket science and space exploration, consulting with NASA et al. and between the three of them, only 1 has been able to send humans into orbit and that was only very recent.

20 years to go from a pile of cash and no experience, to a full production line of safe orbit-capable launch vehicles is a very big ask. SpaceX has achieved that, but at the cost of many of its employees (just look at the press around SpaceX working conditions).

Yes, it's longer than the time between the Mercury missions and Apollo 11, but the 50s-60s era of space travel was significantly higher risk. If corners could be cut in the same way, no doubt 20 years would have been fairly reasonable. Add in an existing presence in space R&D and the shorter time frames of the space shuttle program seem even more reasonable. But that just isn't possible in today's safety first world.