Government isn’t meant to be efficient. It’s meant to be strategic and to do both the fundamentals everyone needs access to and the things private enterprise won’t do because they are not profitable yet.
The US doesn’t really understand or appreciate that concept. Also, NASA’s job is not to explore the universe, but to prevent rocket scientists from defecting to North Korea. And to develop technology SpaceX and others will later use. A lot of CFD work was pioneered there, for instance. There would be no SpaceX, or Blue Origin, or ULA without NASA.
