[skissane]

> But it is not the goal of a government to be profitable, nor is it to hand technologocal monopolies to eratic billionaires.

So instead it should award contracts - without any competition even - to big established aerospace firms such as Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Aerojet? SpaceX, by contrast, won its most important NASA contracts (ISS cargo and crew, HLS) by open competition.

> Supporting alternatives is always good, and it maintains know-how and technology at different companies, which is also a good thing.

If NASA wanted to do that, they would have spread the SLS/Orion money around newer and more innovative players (not just SpaceX-Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Axiom, Relativity, etc), rather than giving billions to Boeing/Lockheed/Aerojet/etc to keep alive technologies from the 1970s. Of course, Congress wouldn’t let NASA do that