For the first few decades after WWII, the rocket and space industry was run by brilliant engineers. After Apollo it got taken over by mba's and political types, and basically stagnated. That is why you have SLS which is actually inferior to Saturn V.

But then Musk took over and once again a brilliant, innovative engineer was in charge, and so we are back to making real progress in space travel.

By the way, I am not talking about the space probe designers. They have been brilliant, and have produce an astounding series of scientific advances. But the rocket industry has stagnated.

You didn’t even read his argument. He isn’t talking about the golden years of NASA when real engineers like Werner von Braun made shit happen. It is about the time after.

Sure there are lots of brilliant engineers in the years after but these guys were not making top level decisions.

You can see that in all industries. MBA guys have kicked out engineers as leaders. I have seen the same while working in software engineering. Business thinking dominate over engineer thinking. You end up with these really short sighted decisions and there is an inflated fear of trying anything new.

Look at the SLS disaster: stuck on coupling together a whole bunch of old tech to the point that it creates its own complexity.

I'm a real fanboy of SpaceX but, yes, you're absolutely right.