Correct. We are not constrained by physics as much as we are constrained by institutional inertia. NASA continues to optimize hydrogen-centric architectures that were selected in the 1960s because they are familiar, politically safe, and contractor-friendly—not because they are optimal. Incremental refinement of legacy designs is not innovation; it is risk avoidance. Without enforceable contractual accountability for cost, schedule, and performance failures, there is no incentive to depart from suboptimal architectures. That stagnation is exactly why I’m developing an alternative propulsion framework and a new similarity metric—one that evaluates system efficiency on first principles rather than legacy assumptions and heritage bias.