To me, and what I would guess were most of the engineers around me, the whole point was space exploration. Full stop. Not climate studies, not "science for science's sake", but engineering (not science) to get us into space.
Maybe there is a role for a government organization dedicated to researching quasi-commerical science and engineering, but I would hate for NASA to become that agency. I want NASA focused on putting men in space.
There's obviously another branch of Nasa, otherwise how does James Hansen ever work there?
There are multiple NASA centers who generally see the enterprise of space exploration differently. JSC and KSC are more focused on "putting men [sic] in space" (as the parent commenter said). GSFC is more focused on observing Earth and the Sun from space. JPL is more focused on robotic planetary exploration. Those are gross generalizations, because GSFC has been heavily involved with Hubble, and JPL does some Earth missions, etc.
I'm all in favor of Startup NASA. I'm merely asking for things to be done in a way that doesn't mess with what's being done right already.
My least favorite part about the traditional ways are that they tend to be very poor at estimating FTE/WYE needs for a body of work, and will more often than not err towards over-estimation. This ends up necessitating the creating of busy-work to make use of all assigned personnel. Mostly by adding extra checks and documentation that many would agree are not very beneficial.
It's hard to be lean when you're given 15 more people than you actually need, basically.
But you are right, nothing can go unbounded.
Let us hope commercial success won't change the motivations of the organization...
Commercialization is good, as long as it does not leak everywhere.
But I wanted to respond to a different thing you said in the first comment:
> why not try to commercialize existing NASA technologies
I never said commercialization of the technologies is a bad thing. In fact, I'm all for it. But it has to be done in a way that doesn't break what's already being done right.
The entire trend around public agencies trying to earn their own living on the market seems increasingly ridiculous. The whole point of having government agencies in a market economy at all is to have someone do the work that is necessary but doesn't make sense in market economy. Like feeding the poor, healing the sick, or doing basic research.
Agencies like NASA are one of two primary ways for society to tell the market: "you're a great optimization engine, but not perfectly aligned with our needs; sometimes you fail and we need to compensate - for instance, you rejected X, and yet we want X to be done". The other would be to become Elon Musk and keep shoving electric cars down market's throat until it gives up and suddenly there's a demand.
As Americans you can not - hell, as the world we can not afford agencies like NASA and ESA to drop basic research and pursue things that can be done by any random government contractor, but better, because said contractor would have less accumulated red tape.