Scott Neuman The booster of SpaceX's mega rocket Starship is recaptured during a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday. Eric Gay/AP hide caption toggle caption That galaxy next door? It's home to a monster black hole "Blue Origin had all the resources they could need and they didn't need to be scrappy or cost-effective or even quick," notes Laura Forczyk, owner of the space consulting firm Astralytical. "So you can really see the difference there between two private companies funded by wealthy individuals who took different paths." The upside for Blue Origin was a successful maiden launch of its latest New Glenn rocket. Both Intuitive Machines, a publicly traded company, and SpaceX, which is privately owned, have received billions in government contracts from NASA for their space endeavors. SpaceX is developing a version of Starship to serve as a lander for NASA's Artemis moon program, while Intuitive Machines is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which encourages commercial companies to contribute to scientific research and help prepare for future human missions to the Moon. In some ways, these companies resemble past government contractors. But because they are perceived primarily as private ventures by the public, they enjoy a degree of immunity from harsh scrutiny for their sometimes very public failures. Due to public perception, NASA "is not allowed to operate in the same way… whereas a commercial company like SpaceX is allowed to keep iterating, breaking, changing, improving, and learning," explains Forczyk. The Space Launch System (SLS), a massive rocket that successfully launched the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the Moon in 2022 and is scheduled to carry astronauts there next year, is often cited as the classic example of the contrast between NASA and SpaceX.