The moon landing was all of the following things: a transcendent moment in the history of the human species;
a crash program of mostly symbolic importance;
undertaken with little thought about how to follow up;
fantastically expensive;
totally worth it;
unsustainable in the long run.
In the years since its Big Funding Crash, NASA has gotten good at robotic exploration, planetary science, launching satellites, and other interplanetary odd jobs that are impressive and important but less epic than the moon landing. They should keep doing what they're good at -- robotic exploration, space science, propulsion technology, etc.
But designing manned spacecraft that are safe and efficient at scale is something they've never really been set up to do. That job should be left to groups of people with the right incentives built into their organizational DNA:
In the years since its Big Funding Crash, NASA has gotten good at robotic exploration, planetary science, launching satellites, and other interplanetary odd jobs that are impressive and important but less epic than the moon landing. They should keep doing what they're good at -- robotic exploration, space science, propulsion technology, etc.
But designing manned spacecraft that are safe and efficient at scale is something they've never really been set up to do. That job should be left to groups of people with the right incentives built into their organizational DNA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
Hopefully, they'll have more competition soon.