I said: "Prior to even the pre-landed stage, you would have a landing site with at least a beckon- perhaps a robotic lander which could give pictures of landing area and serve as communication relay."
Meant "beacon" not "beckon"

And while I'm here, I'll comment further on what Nick said:
"I think you need to review your figures more closely."
Generally speaking, I'm attempting to provide a general roadmap of what I think NASA should do. The facts are: That there is good possiblity of commerically minable water at the lunar poles. It's NASA's responsiblity to explore space. To determine if there is actually is minable deposts of water at the Lunar pole is exploring space. Because of the potential economic significance of these water deposits, it should be a high priority for NASA to do this. In the past NASA has royally screwed up- whenever it does any significant program, and in order to get further funding from Congress and the tax payer, the Lunar program I'm suggesting is a departure from the normal way NASA approaches a large program.
Hmm, what other facts? Ok, and the idea of using significantly smaller boosters than the Saturn V, is from an engineer prospective is doable. NASA has studied this in the past (Gemini to the Moon) and has studied it fairly recently (Golden's call for mission plans for a manned mission to the Moon which would cost less than 1 billion).
Now, my opinion:
I think NASA (If they want to go to the Moon at low cost) can get the needed funds from Congress- regardless of the fact that ISS is way over budget, and the federal budget is tight because of the "War on Terrorism".
The idea of NASA ignoring "Near Earth Space" so as to not "interfere" with potential private investment- is a "bad idea". I think it is pretty safe to say that without NASA (or some other govt agency) further exploring the Moon, that no American company will do anything important regarding lunar development in the foreseeable near term future. Now, if NASA begins a lunar program, undoubtably it will spark some interest in the Moon (that's fine & good, but it shouldn't distract NASA from doing a low cost program). If there is interest from private sector in "going to the moon", NASA should "encourage" this interest. With the idea in mind that the reason NASA is going to the Moon is to determine whether there is minable deposits of water (and NASA ISN'T going to be the entity which does the actual commerical mining). Now, one way that the private sector does anything is by involving "sponsors" [like those annoying ads on your TV]. So, this is a way of "encouraging" private involvement in the NASA lunar mission [if private interest are investing in things- cameras, probes, robots, landers, or whatever] NASA *could* be involved by say providing the launch (assuming that NASA is actually getting "something" related to their objective- an example could a robot which give pictures and communication of the landing area. This would be a "gold mine" from the prospective of private sector. Think of it. Pictures of first crew returning to Lunar surface- logos plastered on "everything"- it could make the Olymipics, Titanic footage, or SuperBowl seem utterly insignificant. Rather than making it exclusive (this is done in private sector to drive the price up) make it inclusive- anyone who want to invest in this (by making whatever hareware) can "join in". And NASA doesn't "have to" ensure that cameras are "good enough", "these guys" are going to want really fast transmission of data, and highest definition obtainable. The fact that this data valuable to NASA- "NASA uses our camera" is just that much more good PR. It could also "work out" that NASA doesn't even pay for the launch, and *may* at some point "have to" limit the amount cameras "cluttering" the landscape. The competion could easily go "overboard" and NASA should try to get various companies working together [NASA only really needs one camera, but several cameras lowers risk that the one camera will fail, or be delayed developing it for the launch].
Now taking pictures of the lunar landing, is just one obvious example of how the private sector could be involved, and you wouldn't limit the private involvement to this one event.
Now, how would NASA start this. I believe what is needed is someone at NASA, who understands how FBC works, and who is in the position in run with this idea. This person would need to be able to find out what boosters are available- meaning for a low cost and what rough schedule they could/would be available. This means this person needs to be able to talk to the two American launch companies [Lockheed & Boeing].
From this data, a rough timeline can be established.
[If the person actually knows how to run a Faster, Better, Cheaper program, they know this isn't another "technology development program", they want to get this program done FAST, which requires using as much off the shelf technology as possible. They also know they want a "small" team, who are really smart and gung ho. Cheap is achieved by being FAST and SIMPLE. Better is done by correctly choosing the technology (risk vs cost- Plus "correct" redundancy to deal with risk).
So timeline must be fairly aggressive- but doable and at same time be flexible- this is a FBC management of multiple FBC projects. You are going to need some time in beginning for the various FBC projects to "form" (it can't be ordered from TOP management [that's not what FBC is]. Once you have timeline, you would go to Administer. Administer goes to Congess to get approval to "generally" work in this area- we are not talking about any commitment of additional congress spending at this point. Publish rough timeline, and get feedback- both from NASA and private sector.
What will emerge from this is more concrete plans. If you have something which can be done which will get the objective: determine if there is minable deposit of water at lunar poles, and will be low cost (less than 5 billion and less than 5 years). Then administer goes too Congress to get the funding. The deal with congress is this program will be different, involve private sector, and will absolutely will not cost more than (say 6 billion) and will not continue beyond (say 6 years) and should be part of legislation that program will be terminated if either of these conditions is met. The program will also be ended once it's objective is met- minable water deposit are found (or the opposite [which is harder to prove] that there isn't any minable deposit of water);
either of these objectives done at a low cost, will indicate that NASA has been successful. The fact of any company has actually begun any mining operation is not really the point- it's not something that NASA can control, of course it would great if NASA found "rich" easy to mine deposits of water which immediately interests companies to develop the Moon.