[anacoluthe]

SpaceX was awarded $1.6 billion for 12 cargo missions 10 years ago. Given their current pricing, that sounds a lot like public investment...

The model is simply different in Europe where public money funds most of the development costs: market size is smaller in Europe (compared to US institutional market for example), geographic return makes things more complicated and it is of course all about independent space access.

Finally, all US institutional satellites must be launched on American launchers ("Buy American Act"), which is not the case in Europe. Free market, were you saying?