Your example of men on the Moon is precisely what drives people to support more privately driven progress.

Because that was an amazing achievement orchestrated almost entirely by government, but then once the geopolitical factors motivating government to support it faded, the entire human space program was defacto cancelled.

Over the next 50 years progress in human space sharply regressed and, if not for Elon and SpaceX, we would very likely still be on that trajectory.

Governments can be whimsically unpredictable in a way far beyond how companies can normally behave. In fact this is exactly what this topic is about!