There is plenty of blame to go around for NASA's actions over the past twenty years. For example, the military originally demanded Shuttle missions that drove a lot of the final design, then decided to go elsewhere for launches. As for the rest, you pretty much end up with what you get when you let committees and political interest groups drive design and development. It wasn't all NASA's fault, except insofar as they are inherently driven by politics.

The private sector will mostly do whatever missions make money. The key is to convince someone there is a long-term profit in things like asteroid development. That's going to take a while.