Give us back a real "free market", and the economics will take care of itself. First step in doing that, reduce government. Drastically...
I did not say that.
Look, after World War II, the Air Force made a concerted effort to build jet planes that would counter those being built by the USSR, as well as a plan to break the sound barrier. In those days, specs were about 10 pages max, and proposals were in low 100's to meet these specs. During this time, we had explosive improvement of the hardware, albeit with the loss of many brave test pilots.
Now, the specs are nearly as long as the healthcare bill, and the proposals and final documentation have increase accordingly. Also, with NASA, you have too many set asides for "disadvantaged" businesses, etc., plus you have to deal with the politics of multiple NASA centers competing for the same piece of work.
Space travel is still in the test phase, but it seems most think it should be as safe as air travel. We need to approach space with the mindset of testing. Otherwise, we have bloated budget, overdesigned, overspecified programs, that too often get killed because of these issues.
Finally, there hasn't been a successful "commercial" space company that hasn't sucked at the government teat, including SpaceX.