thowaway9883

The majority of NASA's missions are instrument-driven science missions designed to answer questions about space (ex: JWST). Neither SpaceX or Blue origin has displayed serious interest in replacing this function of NASA. They are mainly engineering organizations, and while they are effective at doing what they do, they are organizationally not pursuing models that research fundamental astrophysics, heliophysics, or earth science.

Advances in ground computers do not translate to space computers. Most space-qualified processors are still on the order of tens to hundreds of MHz.

I currently work on a space science satellite launched in 2015 for NASA and our flight processor is 40 MHz.

https://www.geek.com/chips/nasas-orion-spacecraft-runs-on-a-...

During the Apollo era the NASA budget was about 10X what it is now as a percentage of the federal budget [0]. Given the budget is a fraction of what it was back then, compounded with the fact all of the people who lead during that era are now retired, the NASA request doesn't seem unreasonable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#/media/File:NAS...