http://spacenews.com/the-big-changes-that-may-not-be-coming-to-nasa/
“Pledging allegiance to SLS
“If the intent of the plan, or at least the leaked email, was to shake up the status quo at NASA, including cornerstone exploration programs like SLS and Orion, the opposite seems to have happened. People have since lined up to profess their support for SLS and Orion as essential programs, whether NASA continues its ‘Journey to Mars’ or takes a near-term detour to the moon. …

“‘The exploration of space for all purposes, including commercial spaceflight, is our interest. And to that end, the CSF [Commercial Spaceflight Federation] is announcing that we see many potential benefits in the development of NASA’s Space Launch System,’ said Alan Stern, chairman of the board of the CSF. ‘The SLS can be a resource that benefits commercial spaceflight.’ The CSF’s endorsement of SLS is particularly surprising since some of its member companies, such as Blue Origin and SpaceX, are developing their own heavy-lift vehicles that might ultimately be competition for SLS. …

“‘CSF has evolved over the years. There’s a strong net benefit in SLS,’ Stern said.”

Alan Stern is the planetary scientist who was the principal investigator on the recent New Horizons mission to Pluto. There is a traditional competition for funding between manned space and planetary science, and that Stern is willing to endorse the expensive SLS, which sucks a lot of money away from projects that have more immediate usefulness, suggests that he currently believes that SLS will be useful, someday.

I am not that optimistic for the prospects of SLS’s usefulness. Depending upon scheduling and funding, SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) or Blue Origin’s New Armstrong may be available before any payloads requiring SLS come into existence. So far, SLS has no useful mission, outside of Orion’s voyages to the Asteroid Redirect Mission’s redirected asteroid. SLS, Block 2, and SpaceX’s ITS are expected to be able to lift about as much as the Saturn V, and I suspect that New Armstrong is being designed with the same payload capability, as well.

From the Space News article: “This confluence of endorsements may simply be a coincidence: people expressing their support for SLS and Orion for their own reasons, rather than a coordinated campaign. And even without their support, any effort to eliminate or bypass SLS with commercial alternatives would likely face strong opposition in Congress, where many key members remain strong advocates of the rocket.“