interested in this assertion in particular:

The public/private partnership model also has its own risks.

Big exploration programs need political support, and if the leaders of these companies — like Musk — align themselves with one political party over another, as the SpaceX CEO has done with the Republican Party, it could turn people off to the space program at large.

“If they see NASA enriching a strongly Republican-associated” individual, “that can alienate a big swath of public from this whole endeavor, more than spending an extra couple billion dollars on a rocket built in Alabama,” Dreier said.

i think it’s a lot more likely that partnering with musk would cause problems because he’s largely a charlatan who is simply good at marketing his “innovations” to other rich techbros and decision-makers, not because he favors republicans. i don’t think most people care about the political background stuff here, i think they care if he can do it in the first place–and that’s an open question, even with what’s being asked of SpaceX here (a lunar capsule).