You remember that footage from the movie, The Right Stuff?
Rocket after rocket blowing up at Cape Canaveral in the 1950's
and early 60's.
NASA and the Pentagon lost scores of rockets and dozens
of payloads in those early years; they had the money and
incentive to write off all those losses

A private corporation would quickly go bankrupt if it tried the same thing.

But? There are bits of technology, old and new, that may shift
the balance to the private sector pretty soon.

It's now possible to use kevlar-carbon epoxy fiber composites of +120,000 PSI
tensile strength, plus a unique polymer fiber from Hercules, Inc [based
in Delaware] that has an astonishing tensile strength of over 260,000 PSI.
You could make superstrong, lightweight rocket fuel tanks
that can hold compressed oxygen gas and compressed methane gas
at over 10,000 PSI, close to the density of LOX and other cyrogenic
rocket propellants in their liquid state...
At such pressures, O2 & CH4 rocket fuel wouldn't require cumbersome
expensive and sometimes unreliable turbopumps.

The problem is?...Where's the mass production macjhinery to turn those
polymer and carbon fibers into mass-produced rocket fuel tanks, etc?