Making intentionally and obviously bad plays that directly work against the agency's goals because that way they get more free government money is corruption.

The ‘a 50 year old rocket that was the first of its kind was expensive too!’ excuse doesn't make sense when anybody with the most modest bit of understanding about how rockets work can look up the industry and come up with a plan about a factor-10 more cost efficient that's significantly safer both from a human and a technical risk perspective, and could have been done on much shorter timelines.