It's an extremely fair point.

So is this: now make a list of all the other meaningful space programs and their budgets, it's a really short list. ESA is soon going to have a mere 1/4 the budget of NASA. The rest of the world outside of Russia and China should really be stepping up their space game.

And I expect them to cheer there efforts as well, and as they do I'll be cheering for them.

Except this effort was for all intents and purposes entirely financed by the American Government through contracts with SpaceX.

That comment was quite surly aimed at »[…] here and nowhere else«.

Yes, but what other country has a private company like SpaceX?

Really?

- Arianespace

- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

- Antrix Corporation

- COSMOS international

- Eurockot Launch Services

- International Launch Services

- ISC Kosmotras

- Sea Launch

- Starsem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_service_provider

So I guess that's a no?

> Really?

Yeah, really. Has a single one of them launched a rocket and then successfully landed it? No. That's why you're here, talking about Space X and AMERICA.

That's the entire point of this part of the discussion, there are people that think it is awesome that the people at SpaceX managed to achieve this but they really don't care that it is an American company. I wouldn't be any prouder or whatnot if it were a German company.