The situation is worse, much worse than Charles Krauthammer has described.
The same breed of people who are desperately trying to take over our sterling, world-envied and internationally utilized health care system have been running our space program since day one.
That worked marvelously when they were mostly in their twenties and had not had their nerve killed by the civil dis-service system.
The current half-baked Lunar Return effort should be allowed to die a-birthing. It is an agglomeration of recycled, mostly used space hardware that is being re-arranged to make an attempt to go to Luna on the cheap.
They recommended to the Augustine Panel that the electronics on the Shuttle Orbiter be used on the Lunar Project vehicles “because it is fully proven and reliable” !
Have you watched the electronics in recent Mercedes Benz auto ads?
And these guys think we should save money by going back to Luna using Shuttle electronics that were originally designed in the ’70s and have gone though a dozen upgrades since?
Look, when we did Apollo our space efforts were exciting, new, innovative and truly heroic.
The current effort is downright boring.
It is technologically a lesser effort than the mid ’60s Gemeni precursor project that led up to the Apollo flights.
And at a time when “a trillion dollars” is bandied about like penny-anti poker in other government projects, they are so short of funds that combustion instability (pogo) in their key solid rocket motor, instead of being re-designed out,
will be accepted by adding “springs” to the support structure!
That’s about on a par with installing better shocks on your old car because the tires have developed lumps.
The recent revue held by the Augustine Commission (he was my boss when I was Crew Systems Manager on Skylab at the Martin Co.) had a public meeting to hear suggestions. Every person who appeared proposed using recycled parts
from existing hardware to build our Luna voyager. They clearly knew that this was what NASA wanted to hear.
The argument was that would “save money”.
Now, there are two kinds of expenses associated with such a project: Recurring, and Non-recurring.
The problem with the Space Shuttle is that NASA was forced by the Nixon Admin. to build a Space Shuttle that throws away almost all of itself on every flight.
The only recoverable parts are the steel casings for the solid rockets and the Shuttle vehicle, itself.
Consequently, the cost per launch (the recurring  costs) have been estimated to exceed $850 million.
That was because the Nixon Admin. that inherited the Shuttle Program, directed NASA to cut its budget in half , and then cut it in half again.
So they saved on non-recurring costs, but committed to such exorbitant recurring costs that the Shuttle has been crippling NASA’s annual budget ever since.
Have they learned anything from that experience?
Obviously not.
The more expensive initial cost, fly-back first stage of the original Shuttle design would have made it a truly fully re-useable system, and significantly reduced the awful cost of the some 124 Shuttle flights made since its inception.
So, in typical Civil Service tradition, they are about to repeat the error in returning to Luna, the moon of Earth.
But I do not think the current effort will produce a viable system, and clearly, that will be the lesser evil.
I believe trying to go back to Luna on the cheap will fail, and just as we were almost humiliated by the Russians on Apollo, we really will be humiliated this time by the Chinese or the Indians, unless reason returns in time.

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The Moon We Left Behind