This article concludes with a quote stating NASA needs to remove unnecessary ("gold plated") requirements and that they can't afford Artemis without commercial

This article concludes with a quote stating NASA needs to remove unnecessary ("gold plated") requirements and that they can't afford Artemis without commercial support. I don't know if I agree with either totally but both are a symptom of decades long cutting to NASA. Both in terms of overall money and in terms of missions. Engineering organizations (I'm speaking towards mechanical engineering oriented ones) thrive when then are consistently trying to do bigger and better things. When they are constantly taking on new technical problems, new missions, and being asked to do more and funded to do more. In this situation they draw many of the best people because they are doing many of the most challenging things, they keep these people around as they keep throwing new problems at them, and ultimately create an organization of experienced mentors and enthusiastic mentees. As soon as you start to cut doing new and cool things you loose the young enthusiastic people coming in. As soon as you start cutting capability you loose experienced mentors. As you loose both of those populations your ability to take on challenges declines, your understanding of why you do things declines, and your ability to advance your processes declines. Overall you move from an organization that is advancing to one that is struggling just to do things the way it did before.