Indeed, the U.S. agency seems determined to do everything possible to choke off private travel into space. Indeed, not only has NASA dismissed private-sector efforts to infiltrate its domain, it has done everything possible to block other countries bureaucracies from acting entrepreneurially. And NASA was even happier when Dennis Tito, the California millionaire, was unable to buy his way onto the Mir. The Russians, meanwhile, continuously incentivized by Tito's money, now want to send the American aboard the ISS as part of their national crew, but NASA is fighting that as well. But what's perhaps less appreciated among libertarians is the tonic effect of competition between public sectors.
Nations compete, too.
If there were an ayatollah in space, there would be more Americans in space, too. Just a dozen years later, NASA put Apollo 11 on the moon. Yet because the Soviets had given up the race by 1969, the manned space program was doomed at its moment of greatest triumph. Put simply, since the United States had no one to compete with, it no longer wanted to compete. The result has been three decades of stagnation.