This is John Batchel, conversation with Eric Berger of Ars Technica, also the author of the new book

Reentry about SpaceX and its plans for the moon and Mars. The question is what is to be done

about government inefficiency in the space program. Eric looks very carefully at the SLS program,

which in comparison to SpaceX or Blue Origin and the ULA,

is years behind extremely expensive.

And one-use rocket, one use.

Here's Eric Bergeron what is likely to happen with Elon Musk in charge of Doge and the SLS

yet to succeed in getting ready for the moon.

More of this tonight.

It's definitely a conflict.

I mean, I think what's most likely to happen is that the official space policy of the United

States under the

Trump administration is going to try to move to cancel some of these large and

expensive government space projects probably most notably the space launch

system rocket now David and I think pretty clearly understand that that

program has some very serious issues it It's enormously expensive, slow to produce,

and has been, you know, essentially a jobs program for NASA and Marshall Space Flight Center, Boeing,

and some of the other contractors on the program. However, if you cancel the SLS rocket, you're even more reliant on SpaceX's Starship rocket,

as well as Blue Origin, you know, I launch alliance.

So it does, there is the appearance of benefiting SpaceX, but I also think that like,

if you wanted to find inefficiencies in the US space program, you would pretty much start

with the SLS rocket.

...