This may, unfortunately, work against NASA. Science is hard, snobbish, rigid, mostly wrong, scary and against God, right?
See NASA Design Reference Mission. Virtually all of it is Zurbrin's "Mars Direct" (Semi-Direct) Mission Plan. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/373665main_NASA-SP-2009-566.pdf
^Ah, a pdf from before constellation was cancelled. Just another powerpoint presentation. Get back to me when they start implementing something resembling Direct.
The bottom line is that whenever they are ordered to prepare a manned Mission to Mars the Design Reference Mission will be where they start from and it is Mars Direct derived.
Fortunately explorers in the past didn't think as you do. We're always going to have earthly problems, so if you're waiting for the perfect time for funding space exploration it's never going to come.
I'd prefer to disband NASA and incentivize commercial development in space. Government(any government) is too risk adverse, too bureaucratic, too inefficient, and too uncreative to be in charge of taking us into space. For all the lessons NASA learned, all the improvements in technology, materials and engineering, the price to put a pound of weight into orbit did not drop. In fact it increased once we moved from the Saturn Vs to the Shuttle. And that is a failure that should doom NASA to the ash-heap of history. And there have been many other missed opportunities. http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/time-privatize-nasa Get government out of the way and let the private sector have a try.
Ah, the old external tank proposals. Didn't use of them in orbit turn out to be impractical? Basically, they were never designed to last in that environment and the argument that "with little additional cost" they could be modified wasn't anywhere near the truth.
I'm no engineer, nor do I have any particular knowledge on the matter. But what orbital conditions could possibly stress an external tank more than that of the launch? And no it is not a rhetorical question, I'd genuinely like to know. Micro-meteorites? Containing an atmosphere? But that is a weak argument at best for getting rid of NASA, arguing what they have not done. The stronger argument by far is what they have done. They have made it much more expensive(even with inflation adjusted) to put stuff into orbit. That is government waste at its finest.
An economy based on innovation is the only economy with a reliable future. A well funded and highly motivated space program necessitates innovation like nothing else can. Americans are pretty damn good at getting shit done when they have the motivation and the resources available for them to do so.
This is the ideal time to launch my drive for a crowdfunded mission to Mars. How much do you think i'll need? Can't cost more than a season of Enterprise, surely.