[devdas]

Rockets were publicly funded research. A lot of airplane research was publicly funded.

[WalterBright]

Goddard was not publicly funded.

The Langley prototype fell into the Potomac like a sack of wet cement, and cost 20 times in government funding what the Wrights spent on their entire R+D program. Langley clearly had not solved any of the problems necessary for controlled, powered flight.