For another way to look at it, consider how quickly commercial airline travel became available after the Wright Brothers' first flight.

Compare that with how long it's been since Yuri Gagarin's first flight, and we're just now getting to where we can imagine passenger flights to space in the next few years.

Of course aviation may be easier than spaceflight, but I think a large part of the difference is that aviation was developed by companies trying to make a buck, while spaceflight until recently was dominated by governments who were in it for political purposes.

Myself, I'll take the faster progress you get from the profit motive.

I truly believe that if spaceflight had developed under private enterprise like aviation did, you and I would have been able to buy tickets years ago.

Similarly to air or water, I see no problems with companies building the ships that ply the medium. Do you find it odd that Boeing and Airbus make most of the airplanes that you fly on? Government sets regulation where it can and allows the market to operate within those regulations.

You can bet that when and if a lunar, astroid, or any other colony burgeons beyond a sizable hotel that a local government will form and begin to assert its own regulations, not unlike towns of the American west or trading posts operating underneath a larger national trading company. Under what form that occurs has yet to be seen.

I will never understand this sort of idea?

Did you think the future as a space fairing civilization would be all run by one government agency?

Do you think NASA would fly tourist to moon and the mars?

That seems absurd to me. We don't have government building cars, or airplanes, or trains or anything like that. Why should rockets be built by government?

If government wants to do something in space, they have a wealth of private options.

I would prefer the government doing this, instead of SpaceX. But I prefer SpaceX doing it, instead of nobody doing it.

What public space? The public and global governments aren’t interested in space exploration and haven’t invested heavily since the Cold War.

Suggest spending taxes on this to the average joe and they’ll grumble “sort out the problems on earth first” or similar instead

It doesn't seem worse than private companies literally owning people's lives (and having the audacity to call it not slavery). But it seems this is where we're headed, some sort of dystopia ruled by wealthy people.

As for space launches - well, the US Gov did a "great job" at saving what they learned from building the Saturn V, can't imagine them being better at space exploration, either.

Besides, all of the planes and ships are built by private companies, and it's worked OK-ish so far.

Quite the opposite - I'm really happy that now it's individuals taking over what used to be government monopoly.

I find it exciting how well on track we are for the cyberpunk dystopia.

In what way are they 'taking over', and what space?

I would claim they are expanding the market and generally that is beneficial for all stakeholders.

We are not discussing a finite resource like forests, here.