Investment in space.

I suppose the mantra that everything "privatised" is better, more efficient, that private enterprise is cleverer more astute more switched on, has been shown not to be true at least at the high end of technological enterprise.

Yet another spectacular failure of a rocket designed to replenish the space station with stores has occurred and once more we must rely on the well tried Russian rockets to relieve the people on the space station.
What must we make of this.
The space race from the days of the Russian Sputnik and the corresponding American NASA.  establishment was a massive national prestige effort costing billions. Money was no problem and the best engineers were employed to push engineering techniques which allowed the business of getting rockets into space to became very reliable.
It's a strange turn around, the West has now to rely on the Russians. One of the reasons the Communist in the USSR cried "no mas" and buckled under the weight of the arms race was the cost and whilst we are told that the Russian economy is in a bad way since the imposition of sanctions since the Ukraine war they still seem to have the money to launch expensive rockets.
The Russians in their engineering design brought a very high degree of redundancy into the spec.  It was a feature of the superiority of their tanks in the Second World War and even their fighter air craft (MIGs) which were a match for the Western fighter planes, that their designers and the manufacturing establishment were second to none.
Redundancy in this instance is a term used to describe the backup systems, an alternative to a piece of equipment should something fail.  Redundancy and the over specification within the design meant they can launch these technological monsters time and time again without mishap, or  at least any they are letting on to!
When profit, enters the equation then the designs become that fine line of building in sufficient numbers redundancy, which leaks away the profit and, in effect cutting corners to make the project financially viable which the National expenditures would never condone.  
When the engineers are subverted by the accountants you are asking for trouble as was the case in the only major disaster of the American space effort, Challenger in 2007. The disaster was traced to some O rings which a manufacture was supplying and which the engineers had begun to question. The flight was waved on its way by the insistence of the management who, having an eye on the finances were worried about the delay a redesign would take.
Money has bedevilled  mankind since its introduction. Its worth has surpassed that of human life and I wouldn't be surprised to see more disasters as Private Enterprise seeks to turn a buck on an endeavour which should relegate cost into second place.