"Wow, "NASA," and "too much money" used in the same sentence! :-)

I sense a fundamental philisophical difference here. I agree that the NASA house needs to be put in order, and they need a direction to move in (something perhaps more specific than "up"). But I'd also love to see their budget raised along with their sights (yes, I'm an American taxpayer and it comes right out of my pocket...but it's well worth it, imho)."
I think it's qute possible that if NASA's budget was 1/2 as much as as it was over the last decade, we would have made more progress than we did; if NASA's budget was double what it was over the last decade we could had made less progress than we managed.
It not matter of Space Exploration not being something worth lots of governmental money. But politically, it's funding is related to how much value NASA is "producing"- and in that score, it's failing miserably. The only reason NASA hasn't been terminated as an agency is because the space frontier is important for our future. NASA feeds off *The Hope* and gets funding as a job program as it's "practical" purpose.

"Let's leave the LEO business (mostly) to private industry, but let's not leave the moon only to the Chinese. After all, I'd bet that even Rutan's lunar lander isn't too far beyond the napkin-sketch phase. Unless we're willing to play second fiddle, it seems to me NASA still has a big and necessarily expensive role to play in America's space program."

NASA's job is NOT to build or operate spacecraft- it doesn't matter where these vehicles go. It's NOT NASA's job to build and operate a Moon (or any other [Mars, LEO, or wherever] Bases, nor is it's NASA's Job to get into the mining business, nor in the Space power generation business. NASA's main job is Exploration. It would be nice IF NASA would explore the Moon. But after over 3 decades, we STILL don't know if there is minable water on the Moon. This lack of information about our Moon is a sure indication that NASA is NOT doing it's Job. If you were in the oil exploration business, it wouldn't mean you had to manufacture the drilling bits or run a fleet of Helicopters.