Critical time

About the SSP, it seems congress is sort of
considering it as an option, but more of a 40-50 year,
launched completely from Earth deal. Where is
everybody's vision? How cliche can humanity's state
of mind about space get? I would hope for a 10 year
moon-base-aseroid-SPS as a viable solution

While I don't normally like to use the word, this is a paradigm problem. The congress is being realistic in terms of how business is done now. Use the space station as a measuring rod. Is it reasonable that the aerospace industry with NASA supervision can acheive even a one time total earth launch SPS in less then 40 years?
The question is how to change the paradigm. SSI was founded because O'Niell felt that the paradigm could be changed by doing basic research. This has had some effect but not enough to overcome the NASA self employment mindset. I created InnerTransit.org for collaborative engineering as a way of changing the paradigm. We need to almost ignore NASA because it is a given in the current paradigm that when space station is finished that the next project will be another one shot extravaganza. The goal is to find things that we can do now that could make NASA irrelevant 40 years from now.
Mitchell James