No, I'm not imagining a NASA centered future. I'm seeing "business" trying to con the US Tax payer into spending the hundreds of billions instead of them on the R&D and Infrastructure they will need to exploit space.

I could careless what prize is conceived on Lunar O2 extraction competitions. If it is doable and makes economical sense mining companies would be there yesterday.

As to Mars and the Moon we seem to be going to the Moon right now...maybe...no matter how nutty that is we seem to be heading there anyway. This is like the ISS as far as I'm concerned. It was an okay idea and worth someone doing (read companies not governments here) just it won't be executed in a sane manner and will cost many time what they claim right now. I personally think NASA should be doing Mars exploration not Moon exploitation. And the hand waving of Mars being far or we need to learn more about working in space still doesn't make hundreds of billions throw down the Moon hole a good idea. The Moon is not an ideal location for a fuel station and pretending it is not a good idea. There are better uses of tax dollars than a Moonbase/gas station. Also, I don't think a thirty to forty year old spacecraft system will be a good thing to use for even a single manned mission to Mars. Especially as it will be a cobbled together (not design for Mars missions) system. If we accept the concept that Mars is a bridge to far now a decades old bunch of hardware will not be the way there.

If business on it's own does step up and do the R&D and builds the infrastructure I would have no objection to their exploitation the Moon or asteroids. In fact I would like to see a day when NASA is more like the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was.