Charlie Bolden is nearing the end of his tenure as administrator of NASA—he will likely leave the agency after the presidential election this year or early in 2017. Perhaps for this reason, he is more willing to really share his mind on the private sector and its ambitions to build large heavy lift rockets. And Bolden clearly does not approve.

On Tuesday, during a Q&A session at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space 2016 Conference, Bolden was asked for his opinion on the emerging market for small satellites and launchers. He chose to respond instead with his thoughts on NASA's own rocket, the Space Launch System, and private-sector development of larger launch vehicles.

"If you talk about launch vehicles, we believe our responsibility to the nation is to take care of things that normal people cannot do, or don’t want to do, like large launch vehicles," Bolden said. "I’m not a big fan of commercial investment in large launch vehicles just yet."

The comments from Bolden, the four-time astronaut who has led NASA since July 2009, are notable in that they come a day after Jeff Bezos revealed some initial details about his New Glenn rocket. Although Bezos' company Blue Origin did not disclose how much lift capability New Glenn will have, based on its 3.85 million pounds of thrust, estimates of its payload capacity to low-Earth orbit range from about 35 to 70 metric tons. This is in the same class as the Falcon Heavy rocket being developed by SpaceX, expected to have a 54.4 ton capacity to low-Earth orbit.

The implication of these developments is significant, as it would mean two private US companies are now developing heavy lift rockets with a capability roughly on par with NASA's own Space Launch System rocket and its 70-ton lifting capacity. The key difference, of course, is cost. Development of Falcon Heavy and New Glenn will cost US taxpayers nothing, or next to nothing, in direct expenditures. Per-flight costs will probably be roughly on the order of $200 million per launch.

The space agency, however, is expected to spend $13 billion on design and development of SLS and its ground systems alone through its first flight in late 2018. An estimate by Ars suggested that it will cost NASA about $60 billion for 20 launches of the SLS rocket through the 2030s.

Despite the demonstrable efforts by both SpaceX and Blue Origin, Bolden nonetheless said that "normal people" cannot, or do not want to, develop large launch vehicles. What the administrator appears to be asserting here is that NASA is more special, or better, than those in the private sector when it comes to building rockets. This exceptionalism is curious, considering that NASA hasn't actually built a rocket since the 1970s and the space shuttle and that the SLS is highly derivative of shuttle components, including its engines and side-mounted solid rocket boosters.

It's also unclear why Bolden would not be a "fan" of commercial investment in large launch vehicles. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin, at their own expense and risk, are seeking to build heavy lift rockets that will augment the launch capability of the United States. Both companies have developed brand new engines (the Merlin 1D by SpaceX and BE-4 by Blue Origin) at a time when a major new rocket engine hasn't been brought forward in the United States in decades and when US national security offices must rely on Russian engines to deliver their spy satellites into space.

Finally, both SpaceX and Blue Origin are designing their heavy lift rockets to reuse the large first stages by landing them on the ground or sea-based platforms. This aggressive approach to reusability, which has the as-yet unfulfilled promise to substantially lower launch costs, stands in contrast to the Space Launch System, which is entirely expendable.

With regard to his perception of large rockets, Bolden's philosophy differs strikingly from that of his former deputy administrator, Lori Garver, who left the agency in 2013. Speaking about NASA's SLS rocket and private developers last year, Garver said, "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.”