NASA is hamstrung by Congress here. Congress mandated the SLS program. It's not meant to be competitive with SpaceX. SLS is a jobs program for key districts, no

NASA is hamstrung by Congress here. Congress mandated the SLS program. It's not meant to be competitive with SpaceX. SLS is a jobs program for key districts, no more, no less. It's welfare for Boeing. I don't know if NASA personnel cannot plan for or even discuss SpaceX. It's probably not that overt. The powers there probably just realize it'd be career suicide to do so. I completely agree that reducing LEO payload costs (in $/kg) by 2 or even 3 orders of magnitude will be game-changing. Personally I'd like to see a viable competitor to SpaceX here because competition is good and it drives innovation. But it isn't Boeing, ULA or even Blue Origin. I actually think Blue Origin is so culturally broken that you'd almost be better off starting from scratch.