[nkoren]

Nope, aside from the Lunar Excursion Module and its simulators, NASA did nothing like this until the 1990s, with the Delta Clipper. And that wasn't really NASA - it was a BMDO project which later got taken over by NASA. (NASA then crashed the Delta Clipper on their first flight with it, and promptly went back to their preferred innovation strategy: very large contracts which result in absolutely nothing).

[JshWright]

>very large contracts which result in absolutely nothing

That's a moderately ironic statement, given the fact that SpaceX wouldn't be doing anything remotely close to what they're doing today without the very large contract they got from NASA.

[nkoren]

Actually, no irony at all here. The large contract that SpaceX (and Orbital Sciences) received were for shipping cargo to the space station -- cash-on-delivery. No delivery, no cash. This is profoundly different from the business-as-usual NASA contract which is: give a contractor a billion dollars. Contractor produces a bunch of powerpoint slides. Give the contractor another billion dollars. Contractor goes a further billion dollars over budget, and produces a bunch of powerpoint slides. Rinse & Repeat.

This is how NASA was able to spend over 30 years and $30B trying and failing to develop a new orbital vehicle, where SpaceX was able to do it for under $400M.

[InclinedPlane]

Without NASA contracts (to be noted: fixed price contracts predicated on delivery of goods, for the most part) SpaceX would have much less cash on hand and their pace of R&D would be much slowed. But they would still exist and still be pushing the state of the art, just at a slightly slower pace. They have one of the most competitive orbital launchers on the market, they have a ton of commercial business already on the docket, and the next 3 SpaceX launches are, in fact, non-NASA commercial flights (a Canadian weather satellite, a commsat for servicing East Asia and Oceania, and several Orbcomm commsats).

[JshWright]

That's essentially what I meant... They'd still be making progress, they just got to make progress much faster thanks to some big contracts from NASA.