Every last dollar in the Federal budget has its own constituency, loudly bleating that cuts (or, far more often, a simple failure to increase the budget as much as they'd like), would mean absolute disaster.

Why should my own favorite ox be immune from goring, if I'm going to support balancing our budgets and fiscal discipline?

NASA is developing a new launch system using Apollo concepts, and largely existing propulsion systems. Given what they intend to spend on this, one can be forgiven for suspecting that they are less worried about being able to do the job than they are about possible shrinkage of payrolls at extensive government and contractor facilities. What others have called "keeping the rice bowls full."

If somebody came up with a way to do the same thing for half the money, you really think NASA would be interested?

Fortunately, in the long run, I think the private sector is going to pick up a lot of the slack. It looks better right now than it has in years.