At the Apollo program's peak the US was also putting more than 4% of the total US budget toward the program. If the EU put more than 4% of it's total budget toward ESA I'm sure they could do something similar.

But that's not the point. The point of Falcon 9 was to reduce the price of getting to space. That was purportedly the promise of Ariane 6 but now there has simply been goal post moving to "it's to maintain independent access to space".

The price of a launch is not necessarily determined by the money spent developing the launch capability.

What is the EU spending compared to what SpaceX spent to develop its launch vehicles?

People love to quote this 4% total budget thing. Like yes we get it, but please stop just repeating that stuff.

Government did much less stuff in 1960s, that was before the Great Society and many other things. 4% total budget in 1960s and 4% in a modern Western state are totally different things.

Is it wise to overfit on the exception rather than the rule?

Is the state sponsorship the same in both cases, or are there noteworthy differences?

> State sponsored programs can move fast. Kennedy gave his "man on the moon"

By hiring private contractors and throwing lots of money at them.