NASA has a tremendous pool of talent, that's not the problem. The problem is the bureaucracy and the organization. Just compare the unmanned vs manned parts of

NASA has a tremendous pool of talent, that's not the problem. The problem is the bureaucracy and the organization. Just compare the unmanned vs manned parts of NASA. On the unmanned side there is a huge diversity of projects, mission architectures, and destinations, and a lot of recent accomplishments across the Solar System. They take the effort to separate out technological development projects, they use incremental development processes, they build on what they've accomplished previously, they deal with budget constraints in sensible ways, etc. They still have huge problems from time to time and are still hugely bureaucracy heavy, but they get things done. On the manned side things are completely different. The average project is some huge multi-billion dollar venture of questionable value, with a reasonable chance the project will be cancelled partway through (X-33/VentureStar, Constellation, etc.) In large part a lot of the blame for that falls on LBJ and the way he pushed the Apollo program through congress. LBJ was a consummate politician and he used every political horse trading trick in the book to make Apollo happen, largely by siting manufacturing and staffing in powerful congressional districts, funneling funding to those areas. A situation that has continued to exist through the present day and is a huge driver for the shape of NASA manned spaceflight (it is the entire reason the SLS exists, for example).