Guess it was too hard, political considerations and such, certainly some aerospace CEO's got rich regardless in the meantime, so good for them yes?
US aerospace funding by the government is clearly broken, this is known the world over. SpaceX came along and cut costs by half within a decade, that's surely common knowledge by this point?
https://theconversation.com/how-spacex-lowered-costs-and-red...
I generally agree with you here - but we'll need to separate "privatizable" aerospace projects from others.
Rocket design is quite old, being a prerequisite to all else. No wonder a lot of experience was gained and - by now - private enterprises can optimize this, so governments should step aside.
At the same time there are projects which could produce commercial benefits after much longer time spans. Automatic interplanetary stations are in that range. So are space telescopes.
That explains how, simultaneously, SpaceX can outwit NASA in rocket design - yet doesn't yet venture into space telescopes business, nothing serious there.
A man with a ridiculous amount of money and a cult following hired a bunch of very smart people, many who used to work for the government, to work for him to build rockets for other people so he could make more money.
NASAs goal was never to build rockets for cheap. It was to do great science.