This is an important comment. Governments, politicians, love to take credit for what other people accomplish, when, in reality, at best, they might provide money.

Imagine a scenario where you start a company that solves a really difficult problem --taking years of hard work-- and then a VC who provided funding takes credit for the effort. Even worse, the news organizations give the VC credit for the results. That's what politicians do.

In general, but Kennedy set the goal for a manned Moon mission, which was a very expensive and risky undertaking. LBJ and Nixon kept what Kennedy started going, but had Nixon won in 1960, it's doubtful that he would have focused on the same goals for space.

Sure, yet, they didn't "do it". They provided the means. They can take credit for that, justly so. They cannot take credit for the work of the massive numbers of people who did the actual work that got it done.

I feel that's a very important distinction. It's like taking credit for cooking a meal at a restaurant just because you paid for it.

The other side of it is what politicians do when things go wrong: They blame the people doing the work. Well, if they take credit for the success they should be equally liable for all failure. That, of course, will never happen.

Same thing with the economy. When things get better, they did it. When things are bad, the prior administration was at fault. They all do this, regardless of which political party they might align with. You know, just like three year old kids.

The Obama administration should be credited for ending the government's monopoly on leading the direction of space endeavors. And Trump's administration mostly followed that course and stayed out of private aerospace's way. It's only been the current administration (ironic given Biden's connection to Obama being his VP) that's tried to reverse course and return to the cost-plus MIC paradigm that entrenched players loved so much.

COTS began under W.

Lets also not forget that even then, much of the administration had to be dragged kicking and screaming into opening things up for private space enterprise. It took a lot of effort from a handful of people to make the government even give it a chance.

Recently I learned that the opposition to the idea was so harsh that an FBI investigation lasting 4 years was even kicked off based on a theory about how Obama, Musk and NASA's deputy admin Lori Garver were conspiring with foreign powers to destroy the US space program.

> Let's not pretend any administration got it right

Well allowing and encouraging commercial space missions to unlock private sector was politically challenging and a huge win; not something you’d see in many other jurisdictions

> At best, administrations from the past may be somewhat credited to foster an environment favorable for something like this to happen.

That is exactly what they did and lots of politicians tried to prevent it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportat...

We need something similar in the EU... and we definitely need less France in the EU.

SpaceX was nearly bankrupt when NASA awarded them $1.6 Billion to deliver cargo to the ISS, saving the company when it only had one successful launch. Then later on for the commercial crew program they selected SpaceX along with the (then perceived to be) safer bet of Boeing. Not to mention all of the other launches SpaceX has done for NASA or other government organizations.