> Nearly everything NASA does outside of operating the missions themselves is contracted out, especially the SLS which is all of it:

Kind of but not quite AFAIK. The design, specification building, and various prototyping happens within NASA. They contract out once they know what they want to build. Musk doesn't have the ability to cancel the SLS. That would require an act of Congress and face all the same obstacles as why the SLS got created in the first place (to save jobs that would have been cut after the cancellation of the shuttle). However, he would be able to cut the design and specification building & prototyping that NASA does and instead force them to contract out for that (preferably to SpaceX).

The entire focus of DOGE seems to be to reduce the number of employees, not to cut programs. The reason for that is also tactical sabotage. It's hard to cut programs because politics gets involved. But if you could mass fire employees so that government can't succeed at those programs, then you can follow up later and point to how government is incompetent and the programs need to be cut since they're not meeting their goals.

> Unmanned programs like Hubble and the other Great Observatories, New Horizons, Spirit/Opportunity/Curiosity, and the two Voyagers inspire the people far more than manned programs.

Unmanned programs inspire people already inclined to science & exploration of the unknown. They do not inspire people who aren't so inclined and who instead look towards heros to show them what's possible or ask "why are we spending any money on space exploration". Said another way, unmanned programs don't inspire people to become astronauts or value spending on research into exploration. Neil Armstrong landing on the moon inspired a lot of people to dream of becoming astronauts and perhaps spark their interest in science in the first place.

That's why the Mars program is important even if scientifically it's of limited value.

One thing I'll highlight. While Musk is a darling for SpaceX today because SpaceX is competing aggressively, over time SpaceX will inevitably morph into the next Boeing and put us back into the same problems if they're allowed to monopolize the government funds.