Thomas James writes about libertarian versus statist approaches to space colonization. A different way of framing it might be a dynamist versus a stasist approach. Unfortunately, for the most part (at least in terms of planned expenditures, the small effort toward prizes and COTS notwithstanding), Mike Griffin’s NASA seems pretty firmly in the latter camp.

Thomas also has a new pillory of the space luddites up (his previous one spurred the post about libertarianism in space).