This is all deeply hypothetical (and I'm super biased), but I think it's important to distinguish two different questions: - Is it possible for a private compa

This is all deeply hypothetical (and I'm super biased), but I think it's important to distinguish two different questions: - Is it possible for a private company to make it to space without government money? - Is it possible to do that while competing with other companies that do get the money? Observing that "company ___ would not have succeeded without government money" is answering the second question but maybe not the first.