> Everytime I read news like this it just furthers the impression in my mind that Congress's SLS (and that rocket program is truly owned by Congress, not NASA)

> Everytime I read news like this it just furthers the impression in my mind that Congress's SLS (and that rocket program is truly owned by Congress, not NASA) is an incredible waste of money that makes your average military recruitment contract red-faced with embarrassment. Welcome to alt-space point of view of a few decades. Looking at NASA contracts - and Congress mandates for them - you can easily guess that the goal of them isn't space related, but something else - maybe politics related, when you have a fell-good agency, lots of work contracts distributed across many states and producing jobs for same old ways of doing things. If one would care about space exploration, one should definitely use modern opportunities for faster, better and cheaper technology. And even if, as in case of SpaceX, you have more mission failures for unmanned missions, you still have net savings and tremendous advantage in the speed of development.