I wish they would! I know it likely wouldn't outperform a broadmarket fund but I'd love to own a share or two of Spacex just to feel like I gave a little money towards it.
Hell, I wish they'd sell non-functional models of their rockets. I'd buy one just to put on a shelf at home to look at and simultaneously support them with a few bucks of profit.
On the other side I've been in and out of Telsa multiple times in the last 2 years. I get swept up in the hype, make or lose money then come to my rational senses.
Can you (or anyone) explain this to me? It's not like there's a bunch of briefcases floating around in space with $4B in them...why would there be any private interest in space exploration? Seems like even the private companies are just being fed money from governments anyway, so in the end it's public funding.
Public funding and government obviously because they were the only ones with the capability for space exlporation up until maybe 10 years ago. Now that the private sector can, it will, and much more efficiently than government ever could.
I think the only way to solve this is private industry i.e. SpaceX IPO. Then you've got plenty of cash, fast moving ideas, economies of scale, and most importantly market incentive -> no better type of incentive.