This is arguing about the wrong thing. You can have an organization where everybody is very competent and earnest, and still have bad results, because they are

This is arguing about the wrong thing. You can have an organization where everybody is very competent and earnest, and still have bad results, because they are trying to do the wrong thing. SLS has some technical design issues. Large segmented solid rockets for the Space Shuttle were originally politically motivated. Ares V and subsequently SLS inherited them. They make operations really hard. They are very heavy and dangerous. Liquid rockets can be moved around empty and fueled on the pad. A lot easier and safer. No matter how great an engineer you are, if you have to use large segmented solid rockets, you're probably not going to have small launch infrastructure, small crew or frequent launches. Another way to move humanity towards spacefaring would be instead to work on a rocket that's fundamentally designed to be more operations friendly.