That's the thing, it wasn't politics as we understand it that killed the X-33. Aerospace developers had too much to gain from it. Military interests had too much to gain. The prominence of the U.S. reputation would've gone over the top, which leads me to conclude that it was the deep state working to make sure the U.S. could no longer maintain their space dominance that killed the X-33. As the narrator remarked, the space shuttle program was scheduled for retirement. The U.S. government knew that it needed to make sure that they could maintain their military dominance through space, which was just the logical extension of air power supremacy. That's where the X-33 comes in. However, the deep state couldn't afford for the US to maintain its space dominance with a new type of shuttle which could operate at half the cost of its predecessor provide remarkably improved performance, and deposit significantly larger payloads into orbit. So they had a NASA administrator make a vote of no confidence, while simultaneously requiring that NASA rebuild the craft with the original intended fuel tanks. This drove up costs just enough to give deep state owned congressmen justification and rationalization with which to terminate the X-33 program despite having a flight ready prototype. At which time, the only question bouncing around in my head was, why would the deep state want the U.S. to be unable to launch new or continue servicing their artificial satellite fleet?