The most over engineering in the world won't help you if you don't have good to great engineers when you're talking about stuff that is off world. So while they

The most over engineering in the world won't help you if you don't have good to great engineers when you're talking about stuff that is off world. So while they aren't going to be guaranteed be the top 10 engineers in the world, they are easily some of the best engineers in the world and deserve that to be acknowledged, NASA attracts the best, and even though they don't necessarily pay Silicon Valley salaries for cream of the crop, a lot of people aren't strictly motivated by money.