"NASA spends about $15 Billion a year and is not only still stuck in LEO, it can't even get back there without killing astros left and right. Face it, laying them off is far kinder than frying their asses."

I think NASA should end it astro training program. Is there any reason why NASA needs to train astros, rather having some other institution do this. Meanwhile without it's own training program, NASA can "afford" to keep it's current astros, while some other institution gets up to speed.
NASA needs to determine if there is minable water on the Moon. A large extent of this function can be done without a manned mission, and perhaps the entire job can be done without using any crew. But I think this program should have a manned aspect. There are several reasons why I think so. First, I don't think that using crew for exploration is neccessarily more costly than using robots, an often touted advantage of robots is not requiring human being to risk their life.
I don't think that going to the Moon is particularly riskly, I think the most dangerous aspect is the taking off and landing- something we do in our LEO operations. Apollo 13 might be used as an example to disprove this notion, but the fact is no one died from Apollo 13- the mission was scrubbed but they did manage to return safely. And while we're on the topic of return, that is one advantage of robots- they don't need to return, whereas this is a requirement of crew. One aspect of having water on the Moon, is it gives the capability of "easier return". I view "easier return" as the beginning capablity of having lunar water mining, and the "more advanced" capablity is actually making it easier to get to the lunar surface- lunar water is shipped to L1 and rocket fuel is made in L1. And making easier to get to lunar surface is about 1/2 of the story, the other half is making it easier to get to Mars (for manned missions).
[Hmm, I just had a thought, if any crew should die in Space, should they have the option of being "buried" in the space. People are spending money to have some of their ashes sent to the Moon. Would astros want their remains on the Moon? Could it "even" be seen as an entitlement. Some people want to buried in the ground somewhere, and other want their ashes spread somewhere. Now, the govt probably wants to retain the right to make decisions and do whatever is more practical- probably willing to expend considerable effort to return remains to Earth. I wonder if astronauts have any say in what happens to their remains.]
Anyway. So one purpose of mining water is to make return easier and being able to lift stuff from lunar surface, also makes it easier bring back Lunar samples or even mine stuff and bring back to Earth [mainly thinking of PMG, though maybe He3 or jewelry quality lunar material]. And of course with more "advanced" capablity you can bring more than water back to L1- ores, sheilding, iron, or whatever. So rather than the often touted use of lunar water as for drinking purposes, lunar water's main value is getting stuff off the Moon- this is the critical value in early development of the Moon. This is what makes the Moon a destination, once there is enough volume of traffic (demand) then you can have things like mass drivers, tethers, space elevators, or whatever and thereby reducing water's value for transporation purposes, and become more valued as drinking water, or something to swim in [or whatever].
Since the purpose of water is for return and the crew exploring for water need to return. There should some way to bring these together, but of course, you can't have "finds no water, therefore can't return":). This can be solved by bringing the capablity of minimal return and with additional water a "enhanced return". And this could be bring "stuff that makes water into rocket fuel from water" and actually bring water from Earth which is processed on moon, then later crew adds more lunar water. This go this route, then you might want your power source nuclear, and might want to put it into a crater, but first you want a relay at crater rim which can communicate to Earth and crater bottom.
Getting back to robot vs crew. Non crew missions, find area of minable water, land on crater rim, land reactor in crater, land crew directly into crater or at rim. Now you might want the camp to be a fair distance from reactor, so as to need less sheilding- and sheilding could added later using lunar material allowing camp to be closer.