Dave Huntsman has an interesting comment at this article about merging ESMD and SOMD:

Many (not all) in the ‘Code M world’ – including the relevant NASA centers, and some managers at NASA Headquarters – are viscerally opposed to the establishment of a competitive, American-led creation of new commercial space industries. Some literally see them as competition to the old Apollo way of doing things, which they consider sacrosanct. Others have been told – falsely – that expansion of American industry into economically-sustainable space industries that lead the world somehow means the death of human spaceflight and exploration. Not only is that not the case, sustainable human space exploration – space exploration with humans we can actually afford to keep doing – is in the long run dependent on the creation of economically sustainable space industries to support them, particularly for routine operations.

As Elon Musk has said, if you don’t do things that pay the bills you won’t achieve the ultimate objective of humanity’s expansion into space. The cutting edge far exploration items – to asteroids, Mars, etc. – are always cost sinks; after all, even Thomas Jefferson failed in his effort to get Lewis’ and Clark’s explorations to pay for themselves in the nearer-term, and he didn’t have to build rockets to go up the Missouri. That is why it is absolutely incumbent that NON-cutting edge far exploration items, such as LEO trucking and taxi services, followed by space servicing and refueling services, absolutely require economic viability and the development of sustainable industries. That will be threatened if these cost-sharing partnerships with industry is lumped in with the NASA Code M organization, whose very history has never been intended to work for anything other than those human space programs that NASA totally funds, owns, and operates.

Let’s consider re-creating Code M for the shuttle transition, space station, and NASA exploration (beyond Earth) functions. But in my view it would be a violation of our direction via Law and National Space Policy to subsume innovative commercial space development and partnerships to some of the same folks who are working so furiously behind the scenes to prevent sustainable space from ever happening. The Apollo-style Code M organization needs to be separate from innovative commercial space development partnerships.

I hope that Charlie and Lori understand the nature of the saboteurs that persist in the bureaucracy at the centers and HQ.