i agree. 53 years to make more powerful than Saturn 5 engines????
first, xuring these 53 years, we have had many probes, some still working. the epitomy of engineering was a suborbital, go up ccome down space glider!
what the heck happened to all the tv broadcast von brauun space designs we saw on tv in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s??
why aren’t we colonizing the moon, as was forecast back then?
we had spacelab. we have an aging ISS, with no future plans for a true station, at a point between earth and moon.
didd we scrape the budget to pay porch monkeys, welfare baby mommas, and an occasional illegal bastard or two?
Congress mandated nasa reuse as much of the shuttle infrastructure. And the engines are just that.