The president can't just appoint whoever they want. Officer commissions have more oversight than say judicial appointments. They have to be approved by the Senate (eg this situation) and also have to meet requirements for the position/rank set out in regulation by congress. So a president could theoretically only promote the most conservative officers in the pool, but it's already a small pool.
Even so, as we see here, it only takes one senator to block promotions. This isn't even a fillibuster, the Senate passes this routine stuff through bulk unanimous consent.
Stenographers usually use something pretty similar so I doubt it. The ones I've seen (to be fair, live captioners, not stenographers) use something that's closer to a piano than a normal keyboard, and it types full words rather than letters, but also has a regular typing functionality. Pretty cool to watch honestly.
You can't really outsource to the US in that way. Launching with SpaceX is outsourcing to the US. Your other options are just picking a different US launch provider, which is still a private company. The US government isn't providing launch as a service in the way that SpaceX or other launch providers do.
If the legislative has delegated the execution of certain fiscal policy to the executive, and given the executive certain bounds within which it can operate on that fiscal policy, then the executive is within its prerogative to do so.
The legislative branch has been abdicating power to the executive for some time due to its own consistent deadlock. I don't think that's a good thing, but it does mean the executive often ends up with some limited purse string control.
We call em worksonas