Congress will eventually wake up and realize they aren’t getting their money’s worth from SLS. More importantly, the new companies will provide the jobs that SLS is supposed to create, giving Congress the freedom to dump this less productive program.

I don’t know why people persist in thinking that Congress will ever evaluate a program like SLS on the basis of the amount of ‘spaceflight’ it provides. Congress is largely not composed of space enthusiasts and really does not care about measuring things on this basis. Consequently they are never going to ‘wake up’ because they have never been asleep. They know exactly what they want to get out of the SLS and they are getting it, money flowing to certain contractors, NASA centers, and congressional districts. Just because our objective is spaceflight doesn’t mean it is anywhere on their agenda.