Re: If you had actually listened to your glorious leader ...
"pork rocket"
It's nickname is the Senate Launch System. It's not something that NASA wanted to build. The cost to engineer this beast to nowhere along with supporting a minuscule cadence takes away massive amounts of funding from the science programs they would like to advance. The rocket isn't optimum for any mission. They'll bodge together something to make some moon runs, but if it were done properly, the design brief would have going to the the moon as the primary driver of the design.
The upside is that enough senators were paid off to keep the project from getting axed just after the next election cycle. That's a pretty common thing for NASA. If you can't get your mission substantially done before your patrons are up for re-election, chances are high that it will be scrapped and replaced with something that can be built in the next office holder's election district.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
