An expensive solution to a problem we don’t have. It’s a good history of how we got into this mess over the decades:

SpaceX is advancing in all directions —a human-rated spacecraft, reusability and a million-pound-thrust LOX-methane motor—and despite normal setbacks, it has failed to fall on its face as many people believed it would.

Hence GenCorp’s concern. But its solution runs counter to the total-launch-service model used by most of the industry, where the prime contractor selects or builds its motors. As SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said last week: “It would be very unusual for us to buy a critical piece of our strategy and our technology from somebody else.” I think that she meant to say “are you out of your tiny mind?” but was trying to put it diplomatically.

Since Seymour expects a government-funded development program after a paper-and-components competition, too, the next question is: “What new technology is the government funding here?” High-chamber-pressure LOX-kerosene rockets may be new to U.S. industry, but not to the world.

If big U.S. government money is going to be spent on space launch, and if SpaceX can provide an “assured access” backup, why not spend it on reusability—the only strategy that promises dramatically lower costs. The X-33 did not fail, and the shuttle did not miss its economic goals by a parsec or two, because reusability is a bad idea: Lousy requirements did it for them both. A modern, intelligently sized two-stage reusable system is like G.K. Chesterton’s view of Christianity: It “has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” It’s time to change that.

Yes. But expect policy makers to continue down the same failed well-worn groove.