Interview with Peter Diamandis

RLV News has a number of links related to commercial space, including one with an interview of Peter Diamandis. He has the following to say on what NASA should be doing:

... It should be doing things that there are not commercial markets to do. Sending humans to orbit, sending people on zero-gravity flights, building commercial stations in orbit--these are things that private companies can do and probably do better.

We have a long history in the United States of the government pioneering, and private industry taking things over, and the government moving to the next step. You've seen this in the aviation industry, you've seen it in the computer industry, you've seen it in the Internet industry, and we should see it in the future in the space industry.

...

NASA should be focusing on: Is there life on Mars? Is there life on Europa? Understanding the Jovian and Saturn systems. They should be focusing on building infrastructure the same way that we had the railroads, but I also think that NASA should be purchasing, wherever possible, fixed-price content, information and technology from companies.

So the best way to go to the moon is for NASA to say, "We will pay a contract for the first company to go and set up a habitat on the moon,"--very much the same way that we're doing our Google Lunar X Prize.