The SLS was very effective as a subsidy to large aerospace and defense contracting firms.
That's not sarcasm. We do a lot of things that are strictly wastes of money, in order to ensure that we have more than we need of something. It's why we subsidize agriculture: we don't want "just in time" food production. We want too much of it, even if it means wasting some of it.
I don't know if we want to continue to subsidize Boeing, but on the other hand, I think America would feel weird if we didn't have a domestic airline manufacturer. Sure, we could buy them elsewhere, but do we want to?
(Answer: not if it's from the company that keeps screwing it up. But we can't just conjure a new one from scratch, one that doesn't mess up.)
It's legalized graft, not a subsidy. The tens of billions flowing into SLS do not bolster productive capability in the civilian or military aviation sector, they tie up engineers in a nonsensical, dead-end project, and totally mess up incentives on top of that.
That's not sarcasm. We do a lot of things that are strictly wastes of money, in order to ensure that we have more than we need of something. It's why we subsidize agriculture: we don't want "just in time" food production. We want too much of it, even if it means wasting some of it.
I don't know if we want to continue to subsidize Boeing, but on the other hand, I think America would feel weird if we didn't have a domestic airline manufacturer. Sure, we could buy them elsewhere, but do we want to?
(Answer: not if it's from the company that keeps screwing it up. But we can't just conjure a new one from scratch, one that doesn't mess up.)