Can you not see the potential of space exploration/settlement? There will be industries we can't even imagine that will be worth trillions. Imagine an economy that is more massive than all state economies on earth combined. That is space in the next 50-100 years.
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.
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.