In recent years, SpaceX has upended the rocket industry. Whereas established rocket companies like United Launch Alliance and Arianespace once scoffed at the California upstart, the success of SpaceX has them rapidly scrambling to cut their own launch costs and pursue reusable rockets.

SpaceX has also had an uneasy relationship with NASA. One one hand, the company’s founder, Elon Musk, broke down in tears in late 2008 when a $1.6 billion contract from NASA to supply the International Space Station saved his company.

At the same time, Musk has said repeatedly that his ultimate aim with SpaceX is to land humans—perhaps even himself—on Mars. NASA also has a program to land humans on Mars. And just as NASA is building a heavy lift rocket to begin to accomplish this, so is SpaceX. Only its Falcon Heavy rocket will likely cost about one-tenth as much to launch as NASA’s Space Launch System; it will begin flying two years sooner as well.

This has placed NASA in an uncomfortable position. Should it compete with the private sector? Can it compete with the private sector? For Lori Garver, who spent four years as NASA’s deputy administrator from 2009 to 2013, there’s an easy answer: No.

During a panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations last Thursday, Garver recalled the attitude at NASA when Musk announced he was building his Falcon Heavy rocket, which would enable the private company to send missions beyond low-Earth orbit and into deep space.

“The NASA people would say, ‘Come on Lori, you’ve got to talk to Elon because we got out of low-Earth orbit. We’re giving him that, but you’ve got to get him out of long-term, deep space, because that’s ours,’” Garver recalled. “I thought, fundamentally, you just don’t understand. We’re not in a race in a swimming pool where everyone is racing against one another. We’re in a cycling race where the government is riding point and the others are drafting behind us, and if someone comes alongside us and can pass us because they’ve found a better way, we don’t get out our tire pump and stick it between their spokes.”

During her tenure as NASA’s deputy administrator, Garver made more than a few enemies in Congress and at NASA. She stepped on the toes of center directors. She got crosswise with the astronaut corps. And she didn’t always play nice with NASA’s traditional aerospace partners, who expected fat contracts from the space agency but also flexible deadlines.

Garver noted that NASA’s Congressionally mandated Space Launch System, or SLS rocket, is being built by traditional contractors with traditional accounting measures. It's also powered by 1970s technology, space shuttle engines, and solid-rocket boosters. It is so expensive to build and fly that NASA can only afford to launch it about once every other year. None of it is reusable.

Private rocket companies, meanwhile, are building modern engines—generally smaller and more efficient rockets—and making strides in efforts to recover and reuse their boosters. Their overarching goal is to reduce the cost of reaching space.

“You have lots of people who grew up with Apollo and want to build the biggest rocket,” Garver said. “So my question would be, who said the public would pay for you to do that when there are other ways to do that that would be more efficient? It is the public’s money. But Congress has jobs in their district, and NASA has largely become a jobs program. We built an infrastructure with the Apollo program that we’re trying to keep because that is in particular districts. It is one of the reasons I was focused on expanding commercial advancements.”

While Garver praised NASA for investing in SpaceX, Boeing, Orbital ATK, and other private ventures to deliver provisions and eventually crew members to the International Space Station, the space could be doing much more with the private sector.

That’s because during the last 10 years, outside investors such as Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Virgin’s Richard Branson, and many others have brought new ideas and money the aerospace industry. NASA should be investing in the basic technologies that private companies can then develop in cost-effective ways to really open up space. But instead, she said, Congress has directed NASA to take a top-down, centralized government approach.

“NASA was a very symbol of capitalist ideals when we went to the Moon and beat the Russians,” she said. “Now what we’re working with is more of a socialist plan for space exploration, which is just anathema to what this country should be doing. Don’t try to compete with the private sector. Incentivize them by driving technologies that will be necessary for us as we explore further.”

Another panel member, Charles Miller, a former consultant to NASA and advocate of commercial space, largely agreed with Garver. By building the large SLS rocket, Miller said, NASA is betting on large appropriations in future years that will enable it to undertake a massive, Apollo-like approach to landing on Mars. The problem, Miller said, is that NASA has not been able to command that kind of budget since the 1960s, when the space agency’s goals were aligned with the country’s national security aims to undermine the Soviet Union.

“We have a clear, stark choice that most people really don’t understand,” Miller said. “But it’s really stark. You can either control where the jobs are and make sure they’re in your district, which many politicians with control of the purse strings of NASA do, or you can let go of control. There’s going to be the same amount of jobs, but there’s going to be a lot more dynamic innovation. And we’re going to achieve our national goals in space of putting humans into the solar system. With the first choice, we’re just not going to get there.”

NASA’s present policies are unlikely to change during the next year to 18 months. However, a new president may reassess NASA’s SLS rocket, which is not due to fly until 2018 at the earliest. Although there has been little overt talk of space policy during the 2016 Presidential campaign, a change in approach is certainly possible. Garver was Hillary Clinton’s closest advisor on space policy during the 2008 election, and some of the Republican candidates favor further commercialization of the space industry.