[bogs_carut]

Perhaps it's fair to say that they're at the absolute bleeding edge of /applied science/?

After all, SpaceX's plans for a reusable rocket are certainly more ambitious than anything governments have been doing for the last several decades.

[Iftheshoefits]

The internet, heaps of computing technology advances, several trips to the moon, space stations, and a shuttle program all have been done by the government "for the last several decades."

It is undeniably government funded, backed, and run research that has fostered the technological "magic" we see today. I wrote "undeniable" because it is a fact--not a conjecture, opinion, or item subject to debate. Government funded and government run research programs created our space-age technology (literally) and the internet, and fueled a great percentage of the other developments that have advanced our technology so rapidly in the last several decades.

Private companies (whether held privately or publicly traded) are mainly creatures of fear and risk aversion--even the ones that are relatively less so than others. There's nothing especially "bleeding edge" about SpaceX or Tesla, or just about anything else Musk has been involved with. Historically, it has usually taken a great thrust by the government to make big advances, whether through subsidies (i.e. corporate welfare) or direct involvement (NASA/DARPA).

[bogs_carut]

And yet the US government was never able -- nor did they try -- to develop a fully-reusable rocket, which is something SpaceX is currently doing.

Saying that corporations are risk-averse followers is inane. Governments broadly fund a great deal of seed-level research. Sometimes they develop applications based upon it. Sometimes corporations get there first.

We're seeing an instance of the latter with SpaceX, I think.

[Iftheshoefits]

What is inane about the statement regarding corporations? Generally speaking, unless there is a significant level of government backing or subsidy for the research, corporations just don't engage in it. There are of course exceptions here and there, but most of even that research is hardly bleeding edge. It's mostly very conservative iterations on the original research done by the government (or with government backing). This is true in medicine, space, computer, and just about any other human endeavor one can think of.

Aside from that, your statement about a fully-reusable rocket may technically be true (I suspect that NASA actually has investigated a 100%-reusable rocket, but don't know for sure), but it is trivial and unsupportive of your point, since the concept isn't ground-breaking (the shuttle was completely reusable, even if the delivery system was only partially reusable) or even very risky, given the decades of research and engineering that the government has put into space rocket technology. That was, in fact my point. "Being conservative and risk-averse" is not synonymous with "never does anything new."

[nzp]

I'm not sure about the US, but USSR developed one, the Energia II. It was AFAIK never built, it shared the destiny of the rest of the Energia/Buran programme, but they were certainly able and did try. I can't find any references ATM, but I'm pretty sure the US also had plans for a fully reusable Shuttle complex, before the whole thing got ridiculous in planning stages.

EDIT: And what's with the fixation on reusable rockets? It might lower some cost but it's hardly an amazing feat of science and engineering.