Tom,

It is clear that launch costs must come down by at least 2 orders of magnitude (to < $100/lb) before colonization is practical on a private basis. I don't think it is appropriate for the government to spend hundreds of billions to establish space colonies although I might support spending tens of billions. I'm not sure the public would support it though, so I think the potential for colonization really does depend on getting it within the reach of private individuals and groups. I agree space commercialization could be a strong driving force to drive down launch costs.

However, anyone who thinks NASA should just close down and get out of the way is living in a dream world. The failure of Rotary and many other private space ventures shows that this is a high risk area with no garauntee of success. To claim otherwise is blowing smoke. Until private ventures have proven themselves to be good at more than publicity we need NASA to work on bringing launch costs down. Off course this does require improvements in the way NASA has been run, but that is the fault in part of the mandates it has been given. NASA stagnated for decades then overreached with X-33. Hopefully lessons have been learned.

Your bureaucracy comments are out of line. Most NASA employees I've met or seen on TV are clearly are driven by the dream not simple job security. Even Goldin clearly had the dream.
It was not overstaffing that caused the Mars probe failures, it was trying to do too much with too few or poorly defined procedures.

Whose mistakes were worse? RR, Mircorp, Globalstar, Iridium or NASA's? The first 4 were near total failures. NASA has had some notable successes along with the failures. The statistics are pretty clear who is more dependable at the moment.

Regards,
Mark