It's risk mitigation. Elon Musk is an eccentric billionaire that gives no !@#$s. I'm not sure what evidence you need other than a million different headlines an

It's risk mitigation. Elon Musk is an eccentric billionaire that gives no !@#$s. I'm not sure what evidence you need other than a million different headlines and his own Twitter account. SpaceX is a here today gone tomorrow kind of company, because it does whatever Elon Musk wants it to do. You don't want space exploration for an entire country (and to some extent—at least currently—the entire world) to rest on the whims of one man. The government often awards contracts to "backups". So NASA decided to sign a contract with a second eccentric billionaire. Lol. This is America.