That's something like 0.15% of the annual military budget of the US.
For comparison, the F35 program has already cost nearly $500B and is going to cost at least $1.5T over its lifetime.
$9B - for a Moon rocket - is pocket change.
Sure, cost overruns = bad. But let's at least have some perspective here.
Do you use the same reasoning in your personal life as well? Buying worthless stuff as long as they cost less than 1% of the cost of your house?
Yes, let's have some perspective, starting with you. The perspective is not some "waste on military" like so many in this thread claim, the actual relevant comparison is what the $9 billion could have done invested in other rocket companies. You've set up a "big entrenched corp player only or else nothing" dichotomy that was possibly relevant for the 1960s-2000s. But it was obsolete at least as of 2010 with the successful launch of the Falcon 9. If we're talking billions for relatively blue sky research, there are now more players, and players with far more proven capability to deliver and far, far superior designs and ambitions. The SLS even if realized as planned is garbage at this point, to have a sustained lunar presence requires far better economics then it could ever offer. It's not the 60s anymore, and NASA's (and the US government overall) own stated goals the point is not merely to get people back on the moon for a bit then leave but rather to develop something more permanent and useful. A fully reusable methalox stack is just a fundamentally better goal there.
Should NASA continue to support R&D? Absolutely! And I'd fully support putting even more billions into that. But just because it's a "rounding error" to the US budget doesn't make billions "pocket change", it's still completely reasonable to expect value for the money. The same is true anywhere else, just because some people are spending more and have higher budgets doesn't mean they want to piss that budget away. I'd love to see NASA pouring billions into the BFR and Blue Origin's efforts or even more blue sky stuff like going back to some older experiments with a modern twist and working on methalox linear aerospike engines, and then making all that available to US businesses. NASA doing both science and also risky but potentially big payoff basic rocket R&D would be awesome and valuable, and well worth billions. NASA flushing billions down the Boeing drain is not equivalent, in fact what makes it so enraging is precisely that it could be working towards space exploration and development so much more effectively (still providing American jobs even!).
Now for cost over runs for something I am pretty sure isn't going to work? James Webb tele.