It's a feature if you're feeding at this particular trough. It's not a feature for the nation as a whole. It leads to money being squandered. The goal should be to benefit the nation, not maximize a budget line.
Is the effort to build a scaffold squandered since it is used to build something but is not the thing being built? I'd rather see economically sustainable off-Earth enterprises built without a scaffold but I'm not so loss averse to take nothing over something.
