[pavon]

> And again something you can't discount here is that Eric himself has written extensively about NASA frequently carrying out/endorsing poor decisions (SLS/Artemis being the low hanging fruit there) owing much more to political pressure than pragmatic decisions about the best direction for progress.

The reason he was able to write about this was that he had sources within NASA that would tell him the inside story behind the decisions, and how much politics influenced them. Now his sources are telling him that this decision was not political. I don't have any reason to trust his previous sources but not his current ones (especially when many are the same).

[somenameforme]

No it wasn't. It's based on visible logic, as everybody knows this, well at least everybody within the 'space domain.' People outside of the 'space domain' don't realize how absurdly dysfunctional things like the SLS or Artemis are, and generally have a completely erroneous impression of NASA.

If you want to see this in action search for pretty much any article on SLS or Artemis by him. The one I offered with the former NASA administrator was to clarify to people who might want to claim he was just speculating or whatever. NASA is the posterboy for making bad decisions under political pressure, and not just in contemporary times...