Ha!
A non-profit named SpaceIL sent an unmanned spacecraft called “Beresheet” to the moon using a rocket built by yet another private company, known as Spaceflight Industries, mainly funded by private donations. This is the first privately-funded “moon mission”, generally.
Was there any commercial benefit here? Well, the thingamajig will drop off a container “containing over 30 million pages of data, including a full copy of English-language Wikipedia, the Bible, children’s drawings, memories of a Holocaust survivor, Israel’s national anthem (Hatikvah), the Israeli flag, and a copy of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.”
Sounds mighty useful…
Oh, wait! Beresheet will also “measure the Moon’s local magnetic field to help understand how it formed.”
I don’t think that will quite recoup expenses…
So, if useless, pyramid-like, “national greatness” projects can be done using the free market, what do we need NASA and Israel’s governmental space agency: סוכנות החלל הישראלית for?!