If the SLS/Orion won’t fly crew during even the next presidency, I don’t understand why Trump would support it. The same congressmen can be won by getting much more useful NASA jobs projects instead for the same money.

While SLS superficially looks like the shuttle without the shuttle, a cheap simple and quick stop gap replacement, in fact they redesign EVERYTHING! Even the engines they have in storage. And all infrastructure around it. To start all over from scratch by redesigning exactly every detail, but remaining constrained by a 40 year old legacy design as if it was a historic re-enactment show, tells me that it will not be possible to engineer this thing. It can never fly. Congressmen will have to get out of this scandal one way or another. I doubt that Smiths replacement will be an enthusiast.

“I got my mind set on you…. But it’s gonna take money.
A whole lot of spending money. It’s gonna take plenty of money,
To do it right child.
It’s gonna take time, A whole lot of precious time.
It’s gonna take patience and time, um,
To do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it
To do it right child.

And this time I know it’s for real. The feelings that I feel.
I know if I put my mind to it.
I know that I really can do it!”