It may be relatively free — each space agency has to provide something, however small, in order to be part of the partnership — but with the very low launch rate, SLS is hardly useful, making Gateway even less useful.

“Wouldn’t it be better for the U.S. to have its private commercial space launch industry sell its goods to these leeches, rather than have them living off our taxpayers’ dime?”

In order to get anything useful done, these space agencies already will have to purchase services from the private commercial space launch industry, and maybe even the private commercial space habitat industry. These space agencies will have to join other governments, companies, universities, organizations, and individuals (e.g. Yusaku Maezawa) to purchase space services from commercial space companies in order to get anything done in a timely manner. Otherwise, they will find themselves left behind when companies or organizations start to land people on the Moon and on Mars.

In the 1990s, Americans grew weary of waiting for governments to do anything worthwhile in space, so they started forming their own companies in order to do so. The philosophy was to reduce costs by operating rockets and spacecraft like the airlines operate airplanes. The desire for reduced cost in space access and operations has not gone away but has increased, which is why Bigelow, Blue Origin, and SpaceX are such popular companies. It is also why small satellites and CubeSats have become so popular, encouraging development of inexpensive commercial small rockets.

The American taxpayer isn’t getting all that much for its dime (NASA’s manned space program costs each taxpayer around a dime a day), and these new companies believe that they can do more for less. This is the beauty of free markets, competition, and commercial companies: a race for efficiency and effectiveness.

If governments and their space agencies continue to insist upon doing things the expensive way, they will be left behind by the upstart commercial startups due to their lower costs and better availability.