SpaceX just put a payload into orbit in a capsule lacking only an abort system to be man-rated, and recovered it, for a total cost to date of about $500 million. The company was founded in 2002.

Bigelow Aerospace has two inflatable test modules (unmanned) in orbit right now.

Several other companies are working toward first flights.

I call that a pretty good start, and at least there's forward motion.

Your adoration of the government is noted, as always, but governments tend to build amazing monuments and plant flags, not generate useful and practical technological systems and advancement that create more wealth than they burn. Witness "investments" in green technology, mass transit, and many other money holes. I'm sitting in a state going into the fiscal toilet and they want to build Supertrain.

I note in passing that those nations where all research and development is funded and controlled by the government have not exactly been wellsprings of technological achievement.

Then again, technology alone isn't everything.

The rockets and capsules the Russians are selling us are based on technologies from thirty years ago. They steadily built plain workhorse rockets because they couldn't carry off anything else.

Meanwhile we created technological multi-billion dollar marvels we couldn't afford to build more than a dozen of (in the case of the Saturn V) or five of (in the case of the Shuttle). At least the Shuttle was partially reusable. The Russians managed to copy our Orbiter faithfully, flew their version once, and quit.

Here's a little P.S. on the NDEA and its results. More light than heat, I guess.