I’ve come to see this as a feature not a bug. To get a significant amount of money from elected officials there has to be a there, preferably their district. SLS was the giant scaffold that allowed for the effective seed of commercial resupply missions to occur and grow. Without SLS’ distributed network of Government friendly contractors and contracts all lined up in an immaculately conceived waterfall the focus would be on the commercial efforts which have to be run a different way to get better results. Imagine instead of Joe Rogan, Musk is spouting off to some committee of crusties. That wouldn’t be pretty, and success means avoiding that conflict in world views by funding SLS. In some ways it is kind of like funding a semi-fake cathedral in order to attract and develop the bazaar you really want.