Europe is so dependent on the US. It feels like a lot of things start in European labs but have to be brought to market in the US to get the funding.
Like most companies SpaceX benefitted enormously from NASA / public funding, whose greatest weakness was that it was at the whim of the US political system, which is evidently a complete failure. A multi-decade reusable rocket program was never on the cards with a continuously rotating gaggle of oligarchs changing funding and throwing spanners in projects. SpaceX was able to swoop in and hire all the top talent; thousands of engineers etc that chose the path hoping to join NASA.
It’s not that it can’t be done in Europe. It’s that America had the talent pool from the space race, plus a vulture capitalist plutocracy that guarantees higher profits and worse worker rights.
