Plotting The Way Out

At NASA's request, Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace has contacted several other companies in the aerospace industry to gauge interest in the establishment of a largely private lunar base.  He found the interest is definitely there.

NASA's concept is that the agency and private firms could co-develop technologies useful for both a lunar base and deep space exploration.  Private efforts could then take the lead in building a lunar base while NASA pushed deeper into space, going to asteroids, and eventually to Mars.

It's a rational, extremely promising way forward.