OK. That’s a valid argument. A counter-argument is that hiring a contractor to do routine travel is less expensive. NASA hasn’t actually OWNED a routine launch vehicle of any kind for many years. Ownership Delta and Atlas, for example, was spun off to ULA years ago.
Does NASA own the SLS/Artemis hardware?
Artemis is a joint project. So the answer on that is probably “”it’s complicated”.
NASA’s biggest problem these days is we no longer believe in big ideas. NASA has a miniscule budget, and not much of a mission anymore. And I think that’s true for a lot of the western world, which is why the biggest thing going right now is a joint project of half a dozen countries. Space is a big idea, just because of the nature of how hard it is. And if you’re country isn’t into big ideas, and the money and support those take, space is out of reach.