In his review of An Army of Davids, Sam Dinkin provides an interesting follow-up to the discussions we’ve been having about the future of NASA on our last couple of podcasts:

Reynolds misses that NASA as Goliath is vulnerable to Davids like Musk, Bezos, Bigelow, French and others taking to the Moon and the planets by themselves. Just as Richard Branson could start Virgin records with a song and a prayer and rise to become a major label with little more than the chutzpah that Reynolds is just shy of himself with his home recording, and personal personality cult, Branson has started his own space program and may yet unseat NASA as the biggest space organization on the planet. $50 billion a year in government space research could quickly be eclipsed by a space tourism industry dominated by 2-4 players bigger than NASA if it exceeds 10% of the terrestrial tourism industry.

The point of contention is whether only a government behometh like NASA can afford to fund big-ticket space exploration. Dinkin’s answer to that is a resounding…well, not for long.