* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
Most of the modern technologies that we use in recent years has had initial funding from government:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/17987621
This includes early bootstrapping of the Silicon Valley ecosystem:
* GPS — government technology
* the internet — a government technology
* ai voice assistants — Apple literally hired the head of this research straight from DARPA after DARPA had released its work to the public
* touchscreens — DARPA
* accelerometers — DARPA
* speech recognition — more DARPA and MIT tech
* digital cameras - Bell Labs which had a government enforced monopoly that required them to fund and release research
If you'd like a more thorough historical breakdown, I'd recommend economist Mariana Mazzucato's book on debunking public vs. private sector myths.
https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state
The government and industry both have a role to play. Maybe part of the reason the myth persists is because it is simpler to believe it's one way or the other -- government creates technology or private business creates technology -- than to think in terms of the more complex reality.
Money pays to protect money, so all sorts of convenient myths are part of the common knowledge.
Privatization is destroying the world. Capitalism is only a plausible economic system under heavy regulation and governments with more power than the corporations.
We had a couple of key customers like that who hired us despite ourselves. NASA hired us and told us how to do our job. Intel hired us because they needed an alternate compiler to their official one for the i960 (they needed it to exist, it didn't have to work). We knew how to port gcc, gdb etc, but we didn't know how to do the job (i.e. send the reports and updates that a big corp needs). McGeedy flew down, read us the riot act and told us how to do our jobs.
A few customers like that and we had it down pat.
NASA and open-source software:
https://lwn.net/Articles/923223/
HN post on the matter:
List's actually shockingly short: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landings_on_extraterre...
You might be interested that Rocket Lab's Electron now can launch small interplanetary spacecraft for low-eight figures (~$10 million for the launch to lunar orbit for NASA CAPSTONE, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPSTONE#Launch).
However, the Electron payload capacity is small (a few hundred KGs). I doubt it is enough for much equipment, but I believe a camera/radio/parachute is feasible. Take these prices with a big grain of salt, as I am just a hobbyist, but now you can get a spacecraft to an interplanetary body for probably around $20-$30 million dollars. As costs fall and other next-gen rockets become operational, I am hopeful that we see more interplanetary landings over the coming decades.
(disclosure, I am a RKLB shareholder.)
Regarding title: FTFY
The US government is probably the most successful venture capitalist in history.
Scott Galloway defends this thesis admirably: https://www.profgalloway.com/welfare-queens/
I have a sneaking suspicion that the semiconductor industry as we know it would not exist without copious and frequent government funding.
Highly recommend Steve Blanks "Secret History of Silicon Valley" for more on this:
Also Astra sells one too (I read they bought the company and it's like their only revenue generator currently) https://astra.com/space-products/astra-spacecraft-engine/