This is not the first time you have expressed your considerable disappointment with NASA. I, too, believe that NASA in its present form should go away and be replaced by two programs. One, an award program with government and private enterprise in partnership, focused on human space activity. The second, a space science program focused on robotic exploration of our Solar System and beyond. The first one could offer awards from both public and private funds to firsts. For example, the first to create a completely self-sustaining enclosed living environment here on Earth….the prize $10 million. The first to establish a human occupied permanent station at a Lagrange Point……the prize $100 million. That to me would foster healthy competition and create the kind of technology we need to do anything else in space with humans aboard. The second program would be funded by government, research institutions, private endowments focused on technology, etc. Anything else done in space would be left to private enterprise. If a corporation wants to mine asteroids, as long as safeguards are in place to ensure that no exobiology is compromised, the company is welcome to proceed. This is not the purview of government.

I also strongly believe that space is not a national enterprise but one that should be based on international goal setting. The Cold War is over and does not need to be re-energized in a new space war between an emerging space program such as China’s and established space programs from the U.S. and Russia.

Well, it’s not so sure that the US or the world needs NASA itself. NASA has evolved into an insatiable black-hole money pit. Its management seems indifferent to cost/benefit analysis of various mission proposals. NASA has transformed into just another bloated and mediocre government institution that mostly serves the interests of the politicians, bureaucracy, and contractors. It maintains the classical bureaucratic studied contempt for the public interest.
Ask yourself why SpaceX systems, a private for profit company, can put a pound into orbit at about 1/10 the cost of NASA systems. The public would be better served if NASA was completely abolished and a start-from-scratch new agency formed to address space activities. The new agency might be named something like: Cybernetics Development Agency. Its initial focus would be on development of strong AI. Even if no space missions implementing the emergent technology were ever launched, at least the taxpayers would get some returns from enhanced production here on Earth.

If we can’t master space with AI robotics, we sure as the devil can’t master it with hominid mush meat. I’m guessing NASA will never attempt a sealed “manned space station” in the middle of a desert on the Earth’s surface, because it knows its likely failure would kill all funds for a boondoggle L2 manned space station. NASA is an embarrassingly costly quasi-solution in search of a worthy problem.