And there are other examples, such as the East India Company having its own army, navy and effectively ruling a big part of India at a time.
Air travel only began because the US Mail paid for airmail deliveries.
NASA only began because the post-war MIC needed to develop ICBMs.
Public education only began because industrialization required an educated workforce.
Air travel is one of the safest modes of mechanized transportation in the world, space launches would be among the least and probably wont change much in their overall reliability.
This is a very, very strange assertion.
Airflight was incredibly dangerous 100 years ago. Yet now you claim it is one of the safest, thereby validating that technological improvements, and design improvements, can change safety.
Then you say, effectively "things won't improve" for "this other tech over here".
Which is it?!
My point in all of this is, while space travel was a monumental achievement 60+ years ago, it's simply not that big of a deal now. Endless commercial corporations now engage in the act, for profit, because there is profit, and because it is so commonplace.
And this trend will only increase, eventually leading to people actually being station in space (eg, the moon, larger commercial structures, mining, etc). This will lead to more trips, and for people visiting said structures for business, and on and on.
Just as with planes, this will become safer, more common, more regulated, more... normal.
What part of this iterative process do you believe will block launches from being more safe? NOTE: don't use today's technology as a blocker, please.
To be fair, everything else has been like this. The first railways were government funded, the first airlines (in most places), this is quite typical.
Then as things mature, as there can be a profit-motive, government tends to get out of the lime-light, and private orgs take over.
Space-X, as an example, is just that. And space travel is about to become mundane, common, normal. Just like air travel in the early 50s.
And this doesn't mean the government has zero power here. It can take over companies in time of war/national emergency, it can compel for national need.
Again, what we need to do... is realise that space travel is becoming like air travel. And I for one, would be horrified if all control to air travel was through governments only.