A better way to space

Michael Malone is a corporate reporter, with some of the attendant Wall Street philosophy baggage. But he makes some great points about how we could do a much better job than NASA's next Moon plan. Highlights:

• Entrepreneurship [...] Better that $104 billion be treated as venture capital money, spurring new ideas and ferocious competition among smart start-ups in the private sector, rather than guarantee GS-12 jobs in Houston.
• Liberty and Equality [...] If we are going to send a group to the moon and leave them there for a few months, then they should vote in both terrestrial and lunar (and eventually Martian) elections — thus setting the precedent for all time, as the British did at Roanoke and Jamestown, and the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony.
• Risk - The biggest mistake NASA made in its first half-century was to make space exploration look increasingly benign and the organization itself appear mistake-free.