[exe34]

SpaceX is also doing right now what Apollo and the Soviets are not doing right now. That's very important, because they are using modern materials and manufacturing techniques and developing new concepts. If SpaceX (and soon their competitors, hopefully) manage to keep themselves in business (and they might, because of the profit motive, which is enduring, rather than national pride, which comes and goes), there's a fair chance our species might bootstrap its way out of the ancestral gravity well this time around.

[biscottigelato]

Profit has not been the goal. If profit is the goal, one'd start another eyeball catching internet application. As the joke goes, the way to make a small fortune in space, is to start with a big fortune. SpaceX is the exception, not the norm. It worked only because of the unwavering, perhaps maniacal drive of one man. The man being hated on all over the place here that shall not be named.

I'd suspect the space industry will slow down drastically again if somehow that man stops putting space as a priority (or at least one of his priorities). Currently I don't think there's any one or company that is able to push the envelope AND still turn an operational profit at the same time. Even Starship program is not. Making it work is the exception, not some inevitable norm as others are making it as. Aka - "just because of government money".