Yeah, but that seems pretty rational. VCs are only slightly less short-term than public markets. While rockets are awesome, it is not clear that there can be a

Yeah, but that seems pretty rational. VCs are only slightly less short-term than public markets. While rockets are awesome, it is not clear that there can be a 10 year positive return on them. It could be possible that a startup with a bunch of VC could develop a ton of useful rocket-related technology and still not see a financial return for 50 years. By contrast, internet businesses return or bust in that timeframe. It does appear that we don't have a great funding mechanism that is expecting long-term returns vs short term. Past the 10 year expected payoff mark, there's debt, and there's grants. VC is a possible solution, but, there is very little willingness to stretch funds out past 10 years, since the 10 year mark is kind of a benchmark that is marketed to investors in the funds. When you are playing with other people's money, 10 years is already a really long time.