Existing players generally get to keep their funding for a while.

Space Launch System is ticking along, going to be $20B to first launch and then $2B per launch after that - just imagine those costs.

I have no doubt old Astro existing projects will continue hoovering up the $$. That's fine, some of these are major sunk costs.

I'm pitching throwing some new funding streams at new ideas / providers. Lock out the folks who don't see opportunity (they can still do what they do, just don't have them hoover up the new money).

Or set an observing objective (ie, planets around other starts) and only pay a fixed price on delivery, and put it out to bid.

You need to understand, most of astro now is not delivery based, it's cost based.

At UC berkeley, if you get a grant for your research work at your oncampus office, before you pay for any of your own overhead, berkeley will take probably 40%-60% for just straight "overhead". So a $100M grant, 40M of that will evaporate immediately. No delivery is actually required BTW - just incurring costs -> that's the billable metric. And note, that you are "on campus" when working from your house these days!