When the government just hands out money to commercial space companies, there is no motivation to succeed, except to delay a program and get more money from the government. If commercial space companies use their own money, there is the will to succeed.

Foust Forward | Third time's the charm to return man to the moon? - SpaceNews.com

President Trump's directive is the third time in less than three decades that a president has formally called for a human return to the moon. The two Presidents Bush made similar declarations, 14 and a half years apart, only to see them falter, one undone when it was saddled with a $500 billion price tag and the other failing to survive a change in administrations.

From article, (The directive offers a hint of what might work, though. The new paragraph added to the space policy directs NASA to lead “an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners.”

This third proposal, arriving as if on cue nearly 14 years after the second President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, will have to be different. There’s no sign Congress is willing to significantly increase NASA’s budget to pay for a conventional, NASA-led approach, or for raiding funding from other agency programs.

International interest in lunar exploration has been growing in recent years, such as the campaigning by the European Space Agency’s leader, Jan Woerner, for his “Moon Village” proposal. Japan’s government recently endorsed cooperating on NASA’s proposed Deep Space Gateway as a way to send Japanese astronauts to the moon.

The commercial sector has demonstrated increasing capability for supporting a human return to the moon, and willingness in doing so. Blue Origin, for example, has proposed building a lander system for delivering cargo to the lunar surface to support human missions there.

Even SpaceX, which has long been focused on Mars, has a new interest in the moon. “If you want to get the public really fired up, I think we’ve got to have a base on the moon,” Elon Musk said this summer.

Translating that commercial and international support into a sustainable program to send humans back to the moon will be a key challenge for NASA, the National Space Council and the White House.)