Re: 2 out of 3 is not bad
To be fair to NASA, it has an Advanced Concepts office which works on stuff like that, it does a lot of cutting-edge aerospace R&D, and the planetary exploration (unmanned) office does incredible work that constantly pushes boundaries.
Manned spaceflight is governed by the pigs in Congress and the Senate, like Senator Shelby, shoving their noses in the trough so that NASA keeps jobs in their states. They've no interest in anything new that will threaten their votes or campaign funding, so they demand white elephants like the SLS and then underfund them so the the project never reaches its goals but the money keeps rolling into their pocket.
And then there's Trump, who wants to bask in the glory of a new space race but doesn't care about anything else.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
