Let's talk about ten years from now and Sci-Fi....

The issue with speeding up Artemis and the Mars mission is not the science. It's the money. As long as NASA is funded by the HUD and other independent agencies subcommittee rather than defense, there will be a bias against NASA. If it is part of Defense appropriations bills, personnel doing work under R&D and procurement contracts in aerospace will simply shift form DoD contracts to NASA contracts with no change in  403(b) totals.