These are common but post-hoc justifications. Government launch monopolies have suppressed a lot of competition in the market, that would exist in plenty if the

These are common but post-hoc justifications. Government launch monopolies have suppressed a lot of competition in the market, that would exist in plenty if the money was fairly spent. A particularly salient example in light of Russia's war is that Congress repeatedly underfunded the Commercial Crew Program in favor of over-funding SLS, while we were trying to wean off Russian dependence. But this is far from the only case. We could have had redundancy in Artemis by designing for commercial lift; half the money split between three providers would have given a lot more lift and a lot better cadence than SLS. We could seek out redundancy for SLS now, by buying rockets Artemis already requires, modified for SLS' flight profile, and spending a tiny fraction on, say, ULA and Blue's rockets. We would have more backup launch capabilities, and more relevant talent, and more institutional knowledge, if we just invested the money in open-market demand for products, rather than supporting and endorsing monopoly-making. Was Congress more up in arms over Starship HLS, or ULA EELV? Think what it says to the market when a government is more willing to give money to a company for forming a monopoly and to penalize them for flying commercial payloads, than in purchase of a product. The motivations for these programs aren't actually grounded in the betterment of the industry, nor of the US' launch capabilities in general. There is no way ~$100B on SLS/Orion is a sane allocation of money for that.