But it's not incompetence, these companies have made exorbitant amounts of money doing this. Congress rewards being late, overbudget, and inefficiently structur

But it's not incompetence, these companies have made exorbitant amounts of money doing this. Congress rewards being late, overbudget, and inefficiently structured. The companies extoll the benefits of manufacturing in practically every state. We know Boeing was in bed with NASA, per Doug Loverro's removal. There's even the story of Boeing killing ULA's fuel depot ambitions because it threatened SLS. > "We had released a series of papers showing how a depot/refueling architecture would enable a human exploration program using existing (at the time) commercial rockets," Sowers tweeted on Wednesday. "Boeing became furious and tried to get me fired. Kudos to my CEO for protecting me. But we were banned from even saying the 'd' word out loud. Sad part is that ULA did a lot of pathfinding work in that area and could have owned the refueling/depot market, enriching Boeing (and Lockheed) in the process. But it was shut down because it threatened SLS." https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-says-that-boeing-squelched-work-on-propellant-depots/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-say... Even if the majority of employees are just there to work on the future of rocketry, if the incentives all reward the companies for being as overbudget and underperforming as possible, they are going to respond by being overbudget and underperforming.