The way I’ve heard it described is a lot of the NASA funding is intentionally spread out across many states, funding many jobs in those states, to get the support of many representatives to vote for the funding. This also means that trying to optimize costs would get a lot of push back, since it will cause jobs to be lost in many states. And these are states which voted for Trump: Alabama, Texas, Florida, etc.
The way I’ve heard it described is a lot of the NASA funding is intentionally spread out across many states, funding many jobs in those states, to get the support of many representatives to vote for the funding. This also means that trying to optimize costs would get a lot of push back, since it will cause jobs to be lost in many states. And these are states which voted for Trump: Alabama, Texas, Florida, etc.