[BHSPitMonkey]

I think it's more fair to say that transportation from ground to orbit became commoditized to the point where the better allocation of NASA's talents became designing and building telescopes (like the JWST), Martian rovers / aircraft, Earth observation satellites, and plans for future deep space exploration missions.

It's beneficial for NASA, companies, and other countries to have cost-effective access to a range of competing American launch providers (whether SpaceX, ULA, RocketLab, and perhaps BO in the next few years).