NASA Chief agrees with me
As the final presenter to the Aldridge commission, Sean O'Keefe stressed:
"Business as usual, if we simply try to overlay this [vision] on top of an existing structure, isn't going to work. There is no way that the present organizational structure, and how we do business today, will be the most appropriate way to go about doing this."
In short, NASA will have to change its entire approach to space. Instead of defining the mission, designing everything, building everything, etc, or hiring single subcontractors to do these things, NASA must shift away from the Cold War instrument that brought Apollo to the moon.
NASA must focus instead on the last word in its name. It must become the instrument that helps industry clear the regulatory and legislative and licensing and insurance hurdles that cut so heavily into the profit margins of space commerce. It must administer America's ascent to the moon, mars, and beyond; not by building everything and doing it all themselves, but by setting objectives and paying for achievement of those objectives.
If NASA needs a 1 meter resolution map of the moon, then they should set a price (what they consider to be the value of such a map) and pay it to whomever can deliver - and not one dime before. If NASA needs a space station at L1, then they should set a price for that and pay whomever delivers to spec.
In short, NASA needs to downsize, by a large fraction, perhaps by more than half. The rocket scientists who are laid off will go on to form their own space companies - at least the good ones will. And it is those companies which will get a large share of the contracts or subcontracts or subsubcontracts for building and flying the hardware that would meet NASA specs.
A prize structure similar to the X-prize would work for this sort of thing. Say a hundred million dollar prize for the lunar 1m map; that is serious coin, and would attract plenty of attention; total investment by various companies would likely surpass the value of the prize itself; total investment by NASA would be less than if NASA just made the map themselves, probably by an order of magnitude; the space industry as a whole would benefit far more than if NASA just paid a big contractor like Boeing or LockMart to develop and launch something; and NASA's risks are transferred away from the agency and absorbed by the industry instead.
That's how you commercialize space, not subsidiary technologies like Tang or infant heart rate monitors. Government agencies cannot do it by themselves, by definition: they are government agencies, not businesses. They are part of government, so the best they can do is govern the activities of Americans in space. Continuing to view infinite space as NASA's personal fiefdom can never commercialize space or make space travel economical. It is only by directly involving industry and the market that NASA can promote the commercialization of space.