Are we speaking military expenditure, basic research, or entrepreneurialism?

I'm also uncomfortable of this suggested idea about American exceptionalism. We have been bested by foreign competition despite our superior economic resources and liberty. I mean, we had to completely begin shifting gears away from public, politicized development in the launch market when our best option became hitching rides with one of our worst enemies.

That's because we suck at politics, not space. America is not just exceptional, it is unique.

The US has been bested by foreign competition which has flooded innovation markets with cheap money.

The US could have done the same, but chose to use cheap money to skim profits from its economy instead of investing in real invention and innovation.

And US "liberty" is a self-serving myth.

Try hawking a truly revolutionary invention around potential funding sources and see how far you get if you don't have the "right" social background.

Conversely, try hawking a terrible non-working idea around and see how far you get if come from that background.

Even Lockheed (or some other aerospace company) at some point was a risky venture developing far fetched tech, doing basic research

So I’d answer: all of them

It’s odd that you use a government-funded program as an example of US liberty and poor economic resources failing. Isn’t SpaceX a shining counter example in the fact that it is successful without involuntary taxation as its entire operating budget?

SpaceX is built on the original state-funded R&D that allowed NASA to create a space program in the first place.

Likewise for the entire computer industry, which would never have existed without government funding for Whirlwind, TX-0, SAGE, and other critical seed projects.