And the other poster is right: NASA never stifled spaceflight; they don't control aerospace worldwide, and there was nothing stopping anyone in other countries from getting into spaceflight. They sure didn't stop the Chinese and Russians from building spacecraft.
The environment outside the US was even worse. For example look at OTRAG. Aerospace is a highly politicized field, not to mention risky.
1. Self-driving cars are coming. That's pretty major.
2. Space-flight has been stifled for decades by NASA, no wonder we're finally seeing advances.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?