A number of issues here.

> The Saturn V also took many years to develop

The Saturn V basically bootstrapped the whole US space industry. The Saturn V had 2 engines, F-1 and J-2 that had to be developed and put into production. It invented technologies and had incredibly complex computer systems for the time.

You are comparing a project from a fledgling industry to a highly mature aerospace industry.

And Saturn V is significantly larger and more powerful then even the eventually SLS 1c. This SLS is not even close to what Saturn V was able to do.

> NASA is not incompetent or corrupt
NASA is not some perfect organization on a hill shined on by god. NASA makes mistakes, NASA estimates things badly. NASA has group think and is influenced by its history.

I wouldn't say NASA is incompetent, but that doesn't mean they are competent in some aspects either.

In addition to that they are hamstrung by the politics of the situation and are not actually free to act on many things.

> and neither are its contractors.

Here I have to disagree with you. The contractors spend a huge amount of money on influencing NASA choices thew politics, and that is pretty close to what I call corruption.

And there is also real corruption, if you have followed NASA then you would know that a director of human space flight was just fired because he shoveled information to Boeing. There is a believe with some in the space industry, that unless you give lots of money to Beoing, NG and LM your project is still born. This is a real issue and its series, both in civilian and military space.

The contractors have no intensive to actually finish the rocket on time, despite horrible performances they keep getting bonuses and the and they keep a whole army of engineers employed that gives them political power. And they lose non of their profits.

> The reason why things are so expensive and take so long is because of how our society demands that government act.

That is quite a nebulus concept. Society doesn't demand anything in itself, society doesn't act or think.

> The response to failure of any kind is pull the plug, and skin those responsible alive in the press, and treat it not as a setback or a problem to be solved,

Funny COTS and CommercialCrew had plenty of failure but everybody evolved on the government side didn't get put infront of a firing squad and won prices instead.

> but yet another play in a partisan-ideological football game.

That wrongly assumes that these issues are about democrats vs republicans. But this is not the case. Its political football, but not actually partiasan. Its a total misunderstanding of the politics of space and NASA to think this is about party.

> The people saying that they hope it fails so their preferred vision can be implemented do not understand that if this fails, then that's just more years away from the goal.

I have never said I hope it fails. But this is simply not true depending on what the goal is. If your goal is 'single mission to moon' then maybe it would be more years away.

But if your goal is, having a sustainable successful moon program and space program, then it would actually be closer if SLS fails.

The reality is that SLS is a hold-over from old NASA. A purely political creation that was never in NASA interest and simply exists for political reasons. SLS/Orion were literally the price the Obama administration had to pay for CommercialCrew to exist.

> There isn't some tiny group of people you can point to and say "its their fault."

There kind of is, a group of senators from Florida, Alabama, Utah that made sure when they wrote Space law in 2011 that forced NASA into this course of actions.

> The enemy here is actually broader society reads about, talks about, and votes about its government.

That overestimates the influence of the general public and underestimates the power of large contractors and employers in major stats.