unless they're talking about something minimalist on the order of the Lunar Gemini concept, is also being ridiculous. I don't have any interest in that, either.

Even if they dusted off the old Grumman Lunar Module plans from microfiche (yes, they exist), it'd probably cost $5 billion or more to restart the program and build the first one. Most of the people who built the old LMs have long since moved on to other jobs, retired, or died. Most of the technology and all of the tooling is gone, so it would have to be recreated and recertified. New materials and technologies would allow you to build a better LM, but new technology isn't cheap, either.

Manned spacecraft are expensive, and no amount of wishful thinking is going to change that, especially if it's part of a government acquisition. If Congress pays for it, then a whole host of Federal Acquisition Rules (FARs) apply that drive up costs like most people can't believe.

The best thing, IMO, is to build systems capable of multiple uses and amortize them over the widest number of missions. That way, you not only lower the per-mission costs substancially, you have the ability to properly test (incrementally, of course) the technologies as you move on to more difficult missions.

$5 billion a year is still quite a bit of money, especially when NASA's current budget is about $15 billion. The current Shuttle/ISS suck up a big hunk of that, so unless someone can convince a skeptical Congress that the same NASA management that so thoroughly hashed up the Shuttle & ISS (and many more projects) deserves more money, it doesn't seem likely that any of our hopes will happen anytime soon.