Im generally pro the new direction, but I dont think either side put their case very convincingly.
Firstly the question of government verses private space is only meaningful in the short term. In the longer term of course it should be commercial. The only question is what is the best way to get there
Against the case against:
Saying the private sector is not up to the job.. As I understand it NASA generally does not build rockets, the actual work is done companies. I might just be missing the point here. There are big differences in the way these companies were paid, but what difference is the writer referring to?
Mentioning Rotary Rocket and Kistler. Maybe These companies failures were a good thing. If they had been government projects, maybe they would have been forced to work by application of vast amounts of money and eventually abandoning the far fetched elements that justified the funding in the first place.. and then forced into missions that could have been done by cheaper, safer, more conventional designs. ..or just been dropped after sufficient billions were poured into them. NASA has overpromised and underdelivered on occasion too!
Against the case for:
This article really said very little about why funding commercial businesses now is better than funding nasa projects now.
"metals, minerals, energy and real estate—are in near-infinite quantities in space."
Not relevant at this point. Of course we want to get to the point where companies are mining asteroids. No one is debating that that would be cool. But a prime justification for funding NASA is to push technology to the point where this is viable. This is what the article must work to discount.
"An average half-kilometer S-type asteroid is worth more than $20 trillion"
This is a specious argument. By the time we are actually in a position to exploit these materials, they will be as cheap as dirt and probably more useful on location. Todays prices are highly misleading. Also it is not relevant now, as above. Its just fluff.
"As the generation that has never known a world without "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" matures, it will not be content to watch only government astronauts walk and work on the moon."
Well this is just personal, but I reckon Starwars and Star Trek have breed a nation of nerds who have absolutely no interest in space until we can get to other earth-like worlds in a television-hour and can guarantee a universe full of greenskinned slave girls