You have tumbled on to the fatal flaw in the entire pentagon acquisition managerialism coupled with a "manager lead" [e.g. Harvard Business School finance types] military industrial complex. The first rocket design should have been considered a testing prototype, and should only have gone into final design and production after thorough cycles of testing to work out the bugs, flaws, and errors. That's why Musk is successful. And that is why the Challenger crashed.
You cannot override the laws of physics through "management" decision making devoid of engineering input. But they did. And they do today. And it takes too long, costs a bundle and is inherently flawed. And that is why all the angst in Defense procurement and among the so-called prime contractors. Like everything else in government it is populated mostly by process people who protect their useless jobs. NASA is just as bad.
KC here, safety engineer and yes, I have had tilts with management who seen to believe their job is to supply business risk taking when risk taking is part of safety engineering too. One time I was overruled but the customer sided with my position anyway— did cause a slowdown in my salary though. Disagreeing with management carried es a price— as these Rocket engineers learned.