The US and USSR governments' effectiveness at early space travel had less to do with the ability of public entities to innovate and more to do with the existent

The US and USSR governments' effectiveness at early space travel had less to do with the ability of public entities to innovate and more to do with the existential threat of the Cold War. Constant fear of nuclear annihilation is not worth the increase in practical government research. The same can be said of the Manhattan project with WWII. CERN is a valid counterargument, but I think it demonstrates that markets need to be occasionally corrected (to acomodate basic science research in this case), not that markets need to be dismantled.