A space race, not between the US and China to set up a base on the moon, but rather between NASA and private enterprise. There are several companies trying to get cheap reusable ships into LEO for touristry purposes. Well, NASA was just ordered to scratch plans for the OSP, scrap the shuttle by 2010, and get it done some other way. Why not race? Why not spy, share notes, get it done however possible?
There's a precedent: the human genome project. It was begun by the NIH because it seemed so monumental, so time-consuming and tedious and yet necessary. It was expected to take decades. But then Craig Venter showed up, with his novel approach and his for-profit company, and the genome was decoded in a matter of years, not decades.
There are lots of reasons why this moonshot attempt doesn't really apply. But it's too attractive to NOT try, because I agree with a lot of those 'space-libertarians', that NASA is too bureaucracy-driven, and not innovative enough, to pull this off.
Someone, think of something.