Theories
It took decades until the exact composition of NASAs SRB and ET was known and it is in fact a lithium/aluminium alloy.
Could it be that the stagnation in progress within the private sector as with 3D printing was the time taken for patents to expire? Seems that if you want to prevent a technology being used, patent it early then sit on it, meanwhile raking in the profits every time a competitor tries the same thing or simply buy them out.
Evidently this happens a lot in Big Pharma and also high tech, case in point that Sloot fellow who (allegedly) came up with multi-GB effective video storage in the 1990s possibly based on a high density version of a near-lost technology still used in analogue storage chips but it vanished when he passed away. Makes you wonder what is being kept quiet to further profits.
Its also well known that NASA used technology that (for a while) could not be replicated because it was reverse engineered from early German work and brought over to the US by "Operation Paperclip" among other efforts, also much of their biological knowledge later led to the CDC.
In fact ballistic missiles are very similar in many ways to early rocketry and the chemicals used are similar.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
