Beyond sending the occassional tourist ballistic, will private industry really have much use for human spaceflight? What will employees do up there?

Mining? Is there any ROI on brining material back from space? Have we run that short of stuff ?

Research? If industry want zero g, all it needs is LEO, no?

And with the bottom line being what it is, wouldn't it be a lot more effective to send up robots to do the research instead of people? Want people in the driver's seat? Fine, why not have them control the robots from the ground?

My point is, if NASA isn't going to get us to the moon and Mars, why on earth do we presume private industry will? What's the payoff for all the investment it'd take?

The end of the VSE (and perhaps NASA with it) will signal the end of America's human presence beyond LEO, at least for a very long time, won't it?