I get what you're saying about where the conversation started but I was really only responding to the paragraph i quoted. The idea that there's nothing unique about govt funded research vs private research is true except for when you look at the incentive structure that drives it, as well as (often) the amount of funding available.
So on the flip side you could posit the argument that the government is also capable of mass production which makes technology more widely available. The problem being that as you noted, the government doesn't necessarily have the incentive to do so.
The incentives and pressures working on govt for a lot of this technology aren't necessarily capitalism or even democratic will... E.G. most of the technologies we're talking about are byproducts of war and/or military concerns. Even NASA is to some extent an outgrowth of the military industrial complex.
But a lot of this is simply historical circumstance. It's impossible to actually say what would've been possible without NASA or the DOD or for that matter what would be possible without market capitalism without delving into speculative counter factual scenarios. All that can be said for certain is how things did happen.
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