[vlovich123]

> because pouring national wealth into gigantic single-use rockets was unsustainable

You mean what SpaceX does as a matter of course and proved you make it cheap just through scale and iteration?

[sobellian]

SpaceX uses flight proven boosters. The rockets aren't quite as gigantic nor as single-shot as the Saturn V. Also, they launch satellites into LEO for commercial reasons. It's quite a different beast from lobbing LEMs at the moon where the money is essentially lit on fire.

[vlovich123]

But it’s not like NASA had a mission change - they were just forced to carry on doing the same thing but contracting out the tech building.