why is it wild? spacex has to contend with NASA and the FAA. NASA is a member of an international coalition of space-capable countries.

i guess she's the one to blame for the starship delays and lawsuits though she gets cover for it because of musks notoriety,

https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/spacex-starship-growth-paused-environment

the government doesn't build that shot, they just write specs for someone else to build it.

3d printing to withstand temperatures and pressures of space vehicles, technically extruding metal is 3d printing but other, cheaper, forms seem would suffer from inherent material defects.

public funds pay for services, even services you don't use nor are entitled too. the largest customers are governments for space travel now. the commercialization aims to shift that, shifting that also insulates the 'private companies' from large government budget swings. there are other US based rocket companies, SpaceX just won the bid. even NASA didn't build the original space proam machinery, it was contracted out, but those contractors were diverse aviation and industrial system companies. back then there was no practical thought of sending an everyman into space...ohh wait, I think that was Sally Ride, oops Christa Mcaullife was the teacher recruited as an astronaut, and might ve been a few others where NASA was trying to market the space program to the public so budgets didn't get cut doing science in space that has no monetization avenue at the time.

estimated 2 years, actual 4 years service life. I'm thinking maybe they can redesign the panels to have some kind of thin film cartridge that can basically renew the surface at least once. maybe even an antistatic film to boot. the land based ones must have more structure on the panels then an orbiter.