Lost me with the "well-worn Frankenstein conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Orbital-ATK, Aerojet-Rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman, Boeing", etc. being called "space (sorry, need to stop here for a second and just say that I have to use stupid words to get my point across. I know that means I must have a weak argument, but that's why I use bad words).". I get it. NASA is bad. SpaceX will save us.Apparently, the default view of today's academia is that NASA can only be considered a messed up arm of the U.S. Government.
NASA is bad.Nevermind the Agency's inspiring working Mars rovers, the visits to Pluto and Saturn and Jupiter and Ceres and Vesta and comets, the deep-space spacecraft that keep working for decades, the discovery of extrasolar planets, the incredible international ISS achievement, etc. Nevermind that NASA itself has fostered commercial space with the many-billion-dollar commercial cargo and crew contracts. All done by an Agency that is a fraction of the size it was during the 1960s.