> This is the truth, and while you could frame it as a negative, I see it as a huge positive.

I see a clear split.

When NASA does something brand new, where private industry doesn't have incentives, it is a jobs program doing pioneering science, producing unique scientific and technological progress.

Since those projects would not get done otherwise, the inefficiencies are not really inefficiencies. Just cost of project.

But when NASA does something industry has found incentives for, the result is massive money-wasting redundant lower-quality, economically deadend work. The SLS is a monstrous parasite, tragically sucking up NASA/tax-payer resources. The only "purpose" for each build, launch & discard, vs. buying an economy class Starship ticket, is to "justify" the cost of doing so!

So I applaud NASA's manned missions in the past.

And I applaud NASA's current unmanned missions exploring our solar system and universe. And asteroid deflection missions. And human habitability research.

But manned transit, and near Earth resource missions, are best left to the growing list of companies that are funded, incentivized, better managed, and single mindedly optimizing those activities so well that they not only pay for themselves, but grow unbounded.