That's not even the root cause. The need for so many parties came from the need for a large enough market to justify the program. And the need for a large mar

That's not even the root cause. The need for so many parties came from the need for a large enough market to justify the program. And the need for a large market came from the large cost of developing the launcher. And that came from the top down decision for reusability combined with overall inefficiency of the NASA-industry development system. And that is sourced back to Congress viewing NASA and space spending primarily as a pork delivery vehicle, not as an effort intended to achieve real results as economically as possible. It took SpaceX to slash costs, accelerate development, and choose an approach that really made engineering success to push partial reusability over the finish line. SpaceX was not subject to the perverse incentives under which NASA is forced to operate.