That's how it is. Asteroid mining TODAY would yield a hundred times the invested money as profits, however, since the initial investement is so extremely high (new technologies, etc..) the likelyhood of it happening is zero - since national space agencies have a fixed budget and private sector isn't big enough yet.
[–] Dfens ago
NASA's budget now is equal to the average budget of the Apollo days. The problem is we get much less for our money today. NASA wastes most of it. They actually provide their contractors a profit incentive to fail instead of providing them an incentive to succeed. That's why SpaceX can do things for half as much.
[–] Apeabel ago
Yes, inflation is a thing there. An Apollo-style mission couldn't be done with nowadays budget anyways (if they still want to do other projects, which they do). I also don't think NASA wastes most of their budget. They are working with unproven, new technology.
Now, the same can be said about SpaceX, however, they are working in an environment that has been familiar for decades (Low Earth Orbit). One of SpaceX's major goals is to reduce the costs of bringing cargo into orbit, that's where private contractors can shine - increasing efficiency. But if we're talking about a manned Mars mission then SpaceX won't be able to do shit for half as much. Even a billion dollar company can't deal with the costs and risks for something like that. Moon missions, that have been done before, will probably go private too but exploring the actual undiscovered frontier? You need a country behind a mission like that.