There should have been a warning this was a Jeffrey Bell article. I stopped reading his stuff some time ago - bad for the blood pressure. In the ones I did read, there were always factual errors and I always disagreed with his conclusions.

As far as NASA goes, I think their key problem is that they are trying to do things that government institutions simply cannot do well. Yes, I want them to do research, but when it comes to manned space services, they should be buying them, not trying to do it themselves. Going to the moon was a specific, well focused goal, with a heavy "We don't care how you do it, just do it" attitude. We don't have that today.