The pork funnel is going to exist unless something major changes; so I'd rather get moonshots out of the pork.

But how many Moonshots could we have got out of $100 billion of vegetarian non-pork?

Everything about SLS, and most of Artemis, has been dictated by Congress, often overriding expert advice.

Why not just give NASA the money and let them get on with it?

The same happens with the US military, Congress constantly deleting funding for programs they don't like to fund ones they do.

	▲	trothamel 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We're about to find out. The new NASA administrator, Isaacman, seems to have done a very good job of convincing the various Senators to, if not get rid of the pork, allow him to allocate it in a way that benefits the lunar program. The result was the Ignition event, which looks like it's planning to send up 17 small and 4 crew-capable landers by 2028, along with a fleet of orbital assets. You can find out more https://www.nasa.gov/ignition/ , especially the "Building the Moon Base" section. The cost is $10B spread out over 3 years.