NASA is a pale shadow of what it could be were it not so cozy with their prime contractors. Had NASA insisted on real cost reductions in space access then they would be doing 10x the science they do today. SpaceX with their reusable boosters isn’t doing anything that could not have been done as early as the 1990s. It was just not in the interest of Boeing, Lockheed, etc. financially, therefore NASA had no interest in it either.

I’m old enough to remember NASA lying to Congress about the flight rate on the Shuttle (one going up every two weeks). This was done so they could amortize the fixed overhead cost to hit their per launch targets. They were lying. Congress knew they were being lied to. And the prime pitched in to support all the outlandish claims. NASA couldn’t have cared less what it cost to launch a shuttle. Everybody got what they wanted. The primes got paid, Congress got their pork, and NASA expanded their bureaucracy. Nobody cared that the amount of science that could be done was a fraction of what might have been.

That operating dynamic continues to this day. Most of the upper echelon at NASA are more pissed at SpaceX for potentially upending the apple cart than they are excited about how much more science they can do with significantly cheaper launches.