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I literally thought they were joking the first time I heard the "catch the rockets in giant robot arms" proposal. Under careful consideration it makes a ton of sense to keep as much mass and complexity as you can on the ground rather than attached to the rocket, but come on. Giant robot arms.
New Glenn might be there soon: they successfully reached orbit using a booster that could in theory be landed and reused, even if that first attempt didn't survive reentry.
Maybe Electron too: they've recovered at least half a dozen orbital boosters (albeit via splashdown, not landing), and they've reflown an engine. I'd bet against them reflying a whole booster this year (splashdown is rough, and it sounds like their recovered boosters have only recently started passing any requalification tests), but I wouldn't bet a lot.
It is embarrassing for everyone else who thinks of themselves as a launch provider, though, isn't it? The first reflight of a new orbital booster design was done by SpaceX, and the second was again by SpaceX, now with a design ten times bigger.
You say "massive government intervention/control" like it was a benefit rather than an obstacle. Government space used cost-plus contracts, tried to create as many jobs as possible with as many subcontractors as possible, considered commercial applications to be an afterthought to money-is-no-object military use cases, and ended up captured by contractors to the point where Senators wouldn't even allow NASA to talk about any ideas like orbital refueling that might undercut the most expensive contracts' justifications. The only way that kind of behavior can lead to market capture is by making the market look so unattractive that nobody with enough money to enter it would be insane enough to try.
The US space program started out as a massive government push, and during the heyday of the Apollo program NASA's budget went as high as 4.4% of the entire federal budget. It definitely got results, and its the reason any space program exists at all. Lots of bad behavior has definitely snuck in since those days, but without the whole Space Race thing there is zero chance we have anything like the industry we have today.
Looking at the rest of the globe there is a strong correlation between "has an actual space industry" and current or prior national level "Space Race"-tier efforts. I.e. Russia and China have actual launch capabilities, their direct geopolitical adversaries in Japan and India have developed fledgling capabilities in response (as has Israel due to similar threats), and then you get giant blocks of highly educated, wealthy, sophisticated nations that have somehow managed to produce what is recognized in official policy documents as more of a jobs handout than actual space program, mostly due to a complete lack of any initial kick in the butt.
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