That premise doesn't inherently follow at all. Quite the opposite.
The uncharted territory combined with Musk & Bezos being willing to do audacious things with billions of dollars, is why breakthroughs are about to accelerate again. With scale and greater R&D capabilities, SpaceX will (perhaps along with Blue Origin and others) be responsible for the next great leap forward in space technology - finally.
Whereas the US Government launch platforms, through NASA and ULA, had been extremely stagnant in several areas that SpaceX & Co are operating in, due to eg wild (but typical) Congressional incompetence (constantly shifting goals, setting up the context where ULA was granted a monopoly (again due to Congressional incompetence or worse)). The Space Shuttle was an absurd production in all regards, it set US launch progress back decades due to the hyper bloat / cost that was entirely unnecessary. The Shuttle was the space equivalent of the F35, a boondoggle that isn't really great at anything and costs several times what it should have. Now that the incompetent Congress is much further removed when it comes to deciding which way to go (how to get there, why, etc etc etc), space tech will accelerate again.
Consider the capability they had with Saturn V and Apollo. Also, compare how easy it was to make Skylab happen, compared to the ISS. With the Saturn V, a smaller people launcher and Apollo they could have done so much more.
Imagen the next Space station after Skylab, they could have launched 4 Saturn V and launch a Skylab size station each time, creating a vastly bigger station then ISS at a minimal cost.
Now they are recreating the capability with SLS and Orion at a cost that is so absurdly high that its hard to even wrap you head around the numbers, specially when compared what the pay for COTS and CommercialCrew.
Yeah, I accept this argument, but I guess the point I was trying to make is that, as always, they're standing on the shoulders of giants, and Musk is the first to acknowledge the huge contribution from NASA towards their success.
I'm rooting for them though to keep doing what they're doing.
The uncharted territory combined with Musk & Bezos being willing to do audacious things with billions of dollars, is why breakthroughs are about to accelerate again. With scale and greater R&D capabilities, SpaceX will (perhaps along with Blue Origin and others) be responsible for the next great leap forward in space technology - finally.
Whereas the US Government launch platforms, through NASA and ULA, had been extremely stagnant in several areas that SpaceX & Co are operating in, due to eg wild (but typical) Congressional incompetence (constantly shifting goals, setting up the context where ULA was granted a monopoly (again due to Congressional incompetence or worse)). The Space Shuttle was an absurd production in all regards, it set US launch progress back decades due to the hyper bloat / cost that was entirely unnecessary. The Shuttle was the space equivalent of the F35, a boondoggle that isn't really great at anything and costs several times what it should have. Now that the incompetent Congress is much further removed when it comes to deciding which way to go (how to get there, why, etc etc etc), space tech will accelerate again.