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The more efficient implementation is SpaceX's BFR. The United States will be able to buy BFR launches that carry bigger payloads than SLS, for a fraction of the cost. The SLS program provides no additional functionality over BFR.

So we're spending billions on this giant Welfare Check to certain congressional districts and aerospace contractors. If we cancelled SLS, we could do a lot of other exciting things with that money.

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Free healthcare and rebooted education for all. That'll never happen sadly.

NASA is a pretty small budget item compared to national healthcare.

The United States couldn't do either of those with NASA's budget... And the SLS is not NASA's entire budget.

I believe that space exploration is an incredibly important national priority, even if only as a means of maintaining our space-related military capabilities. Anyone who believes the US can abandon space travel and still be secure against present and future global threats is just a goddamn clown.

But generally we shouldn't pay $2 for a bullet that we could buy elsewhere for $1. We could buy a lot more bullets if we bothered to try to contain our unit costs.

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