[anymouse]

Mercury funding was not that great and the government had not yet fully committed to the project.

I guess 10+ years and Billions of dollars spent on military missile development didn't give the Mercury guys much of a head start?

SS1 was multiples of factors of safety better than Mercury. NASA calculated that Al Shepard had about a 50/50 chance of surviving the launch. Rutan built in many more graceful failure modes into SS1 than any NASA vehicles have ever had.

[CWOJackson]

Again, Rutan had the luxury of technology and composites that already exist...much of it from the efforts within NASA. In a way, NASA paid for much of his work.