It stems from a more fundamental misunderstanding about how allocation of resources works. If a space program costs $10b and you suddenly defund it, you don't

It stems from a more fundamental misunderstanding about how allocation of resources works. If a space program costs $10b and you suddenly defund it, you don't get $10b to spend on other stuff. You get a bunch of unemployed people, most of whom are interested in and good at launching things into space. I believe this phenomenon is responsible for SpaceX's success: a huge group of smart, motivated people, interested in space, being grossly mismanaged. Projects canceled, bureaucracy, etc. SpaceX comes along and says "we actually want to go to space; we're gonna do it for real" and all the sudden those people are breaking their backs working 80h weeks to hit impossible deadlines. You can't just buy that or materialize it from thin air, not for all the pork in NASA. If these rocket scientists and engineers are doing anything other than rocket science or engineering it's a loss for all of us. Certainly for them as well.