I think one of the problems they had was losing sight of the objective. It became a public relations project, publicity was its prime objective. It can be argued that publicity was necessary to entice contributions and vendor cooperation but they went too far in that direction. The necessary engineering and construction suffered de-emphasis due to the bandwagon management. For many years NASA suffered the same problems, they focused on publicity, "space camp", classroom science programs, and other Disneyland-style promotion. Too bad, it looks like Bloodhound will be all for naught.
Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ