It's hard to make an apple-to-apples comparison here as private companies in the past decades have been forbidden to do what NASA has done. Not to mention, NASA's most memorable achievements were fueled largely through patriotic furor.
I suspect that it's possible. Much of NASA's flouted benefit are the technological discoveries it has made while solving the problems of Space exploration. Assuming that those discoveries have benefited our society economically more than NASA has cost it (an argument I've read before) then it seems like their would have been at least one sufficient financial incentive for private industry to pursue space if given the chance. Not to mention R&D that can only be performed in a zero gravity environment. A patent system could make all this profitable.
But there are still so many other concerns, such as national defense that crop up in talk of private space exploration that it's really hard to make any real comparison.
I suspect that it's possible. Much of NASA's flouted benefit are the technological discoveries it has made while solving the problems of Space exploration. Assuming that those discoveries have benefited our society economically more than NASA has cost it (an argument I've read before) then it seems like their would have been at least one sufficient financial incentive for private industry to pursue space if given the chance. Not to mention R&D that can only be performed in a zero gravity environment. A patent system could make all this profitable.
But there are still so many other concerns, such as national defense that crop up in talk of private space exploration that it's really hard to make any real comparison.