I said it was debatable, but you may be right. I still think if we hadn't already put a human on the moon by today and had a 10-year deadline to do it, it would basically not happen because it would get killed by bikeshedding, or red-vs-blue politics, or it would get highjacked by aerospace contractors and the funds milked dry with nothing to show for it.

If you find a place to share these thoughts maybe link them here? I'm very curious about the issue.

It is sadly political, because funding science and open ended research is now political, because that's the way modern politics has played out. I could point some obvious fingers here but no need to upset the easily offended.

You can't really do any project nowadays that's longer than a presidential term. It'll get torn up by the next govt in some fashion, and maybe eventually brought back by them to get their name on it.

They burned $1B on spacesuit development that is never going to be used.

To be fair, space suit is basically an entire self contained space ship the size of a suit.

Facts. It's an enormously difficult, high-stakes-if-it-fails design problem.