To top it all off, the head of NASA then dares to decry the lack of vision among the American people when they hesitate to pay for this mediocrity. We have vision, lots of vision, NASA has simply failed to deliver a product Americans want. If only for a brief visit. Unfortunately, at several million dollars a ticket they can't. Conventional wisdom is that space is so expensive only governments can afford it.
Space is expensive precisely because it has been almost totally a government domain.
Remember, these are the same people who bought us the million dollar toilet. Frankly, if the current space agency had been in charge of the American Frontier, all that would lie west of the Mississippi today would be a luxury condo for four government employees somewhere in Kansas. If space is a real frontier then we must treat it as such. We must decide that opening the frontier is the goal by which we measure all of our human space activities, not science - settlement. This is a major distinction demanding a whole different national discussion.