People seem to forget that NASA isn't much of a rocket manufacturer. Those "NASA rockets" of the past were manufactured by corporations contracted by NASA.

People seem to forget that NASA isn't much of a rocket manufacturer. Those "NASA rockets" of the past were manufactured by corporations contracted by NASA. Space Shuttle orbiter? Built by Rockwell. Mercury-Atlas launch vehicle? Convair. Saturn V? Various contractors, particularly Boeing for the first stage and Rocketdyne for the F-1 engines. This ruffles the feathers of a certain sort of "space commie", who have traditionally hoped that exploration of space would be impossible for capitalism, leaving space as the great utopia for the future of state-run communism. This was always a dumb point of view, but SpaceX has them particularly upset now because NASA is less involved in the design process than ever before, and it's becoming apparent that capitalism has no trouble getting to space.